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Anthropoid -> RE: Game is completely unplayable due to hangs/lock ups (3/8/2009 2:29:12 PM)
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ORIGINAL: J P Falcon
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ORIGINAL: Doc o War
Jagdwolf- just put this game away until they fix it right and play Guns of August- the new 1.3 patch is good and its a fun gaming experience- which this one isnt anymore..
So you implying that there was a moment when World War One was actually "fun" for you?...[:D]...[;)]
Personally, I have been very patient with this game but I have shelved it for awhile...I will admit that my experience with this game has changed my buying habits...I now wait a good three months or more before I will even consider buying a new release and so have delayed buying Jagged Edge, Supremacy at Sea, and a few others. I no longer care about "release dates" since my personal date will always be months later...I guess I should thank AGEOD for that much....
I can empathize with the frustration of the other gamers in this thread.
I'm also a little disappointed in how tolerant of this whole mess some gamers have been. It really should not be considered "okay," how this game release has worked out. Having 'optoins' like: turning off sound, or changing default settings to minimal levels, or turning off basic game functions, or turning off processes in your taskmanager, may indeed be workable ways to make a game that works poorly work well enough to enjoy it for a few hours at a time, but it should never by any of us, be considered okay for that state of affairs to be common among a significant fraction of players with rigs that are well within spec range.
Since buying this game weeks back, I've been very active over at the WWI Ageod forum, and I have to say: Ageod, and Calvinus, and almost everyone involved (testers, developer-helpers, Ageod managers, even the gamer/forum members) has been very reasonable in what they say and do. The Ageod crew has clearly gone 'above and beyond' the call of duty to try to fix or repair the issues with the game, and they have generally been very responsive, nice and committed. Most of the gamers who have complained have been patient, helpful, detailed, polite. Even most of the guys who 'defend' Ageod, and the WWI development team have been pretty reasonable. So, I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone. All you guys seem like really nice fellows, and pretty much everything I've read from most of you seems very nice and reasonable.
But I want to make one point that is a simple fact: IT SHOULD _NEVER_ HAVE BEEN LIKE THIS in the first place.
When problematic launches become considered to be 'okay' that is a slippery slope for this industry.
Innovation should not come at the expense of playability. Market-efficiency and innovation should not be made to be oppositional. Could release have not been delayed through an additional six-months to a year of beta-testing? Look at how long we are waiting for Admiral's Edition; and I'm sure it will turn out to be worth it, and the magnitude of technical problems will be negatively correlated with the dilated wait to release. It might be that Matrix is having to swallow some fiscal overhead right now, during this pre-sales, long development phase, but imagine how much better immediate, short-term and long-term post-release sales will be if that pre-sales period was actually efficient at improving the final product.
Patches are of course a given. But the way things have worked with WWI goes beyond mere patches.
The game was released way too early. Heck, for all I know, there are some fundamental flaws in the game design/code that might require serious workarounds to get past them or else are not fixable at all.
This game has an excellent design, look-and-feel, and an innovative engine and overall structure. In terms of potential the game clearly has a great deal of potential. This is an ambitious, groundbreaking, innovative game design. For promoting the design and marketing of a game like this in the first place, Ageod and Matrix are to be applauded. Pushing the gaming industry forward, with innovative new concepts and designs is a risk-fraught venture, which the gaming business is understandbly loathe to consider. A consequence of this is that popular lines (Empire: Total Frustration comes to mind) become so popular and hyped up, that the maker employs increasingly tricky and 'secure' security and installation procedures, as well as increasingly shiny and fancy 'chrome' (graphics, and other eye-candy that does not actually involve innovations in strategy game design.
All of this makes the situation all the more poignant. The long-term potential of WWI to push the industry in exciting new directions is bound to have been negatively impacted by its early release problems and its persisting problems, and that is a damn shame for all of us.
I was not able to get the game to run after DLing it, but the CD arrived within a couple days of my order. There is a long (and still somewhat contradictory) manual that can be downloaded.
If the developers keep working on this one the way they have been since it was released back in the fall 2008, I think that this game will live up to about 95%+ of its tremendous potential as a very innovative, and groundbreaking game.
Right now I'd say it is at about 80%. There were such serious problems with the game during the first couple weeks that it was released that Ageod offered a money-back offer. Because the most serious issues have been fixed with patches, that offer has been withdrawn. The problems that remain are mostly subtle and fine-detail points, but the game remains fundamentally conflictual with background processes for many machines, with Autoupdaters and Antivirus apps being putatively the biggest problem.
Honestly, when I play this game, I find that I need to turn off my wireless so I'm not networked, and then go into my Taskmanager and turn off as much as possible in order to have close to zero chance to suffer hangs, delays, and CTDs.
That to me is really not acceptable: the game should WORK on a wide-range of systems; Civ certainly does; FoF does; TOAWII does; Pirates! does; LOTS of games work fine with infrequent hang/delay/CTD issues without having to reconfigure your system to prevent conflicts.
I resent the time I have to spend opening up Taskmanager and turning off processes in order to make this game run 97% smoothly, and so should any of us who spent $50 or $60 for a computer game.
Time will tell if the developers actually work this out, but at present, addressing basic bugs, and the few remaining game design issues seems to be their primary focus.
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