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CRS still sucking it big time
axishatr
Member UncommonPosts: 167
Yep CRS is still doing a bad job. Still dragging its feet trying to get its "new" engine up and running. I guess jumping from PONG graphics to DIGDUG graphics is just to much for them.
They still are self-centered and to much into loving themselves to get these updates done in time for the paying customer base. They continue to promise time and time again about the update happening, but STILL nothing. They did however have enough time to have a party and sit around talking up themselves to only people they okayed to come out of the players that are still around.
Bad thing is they will in no doubt in my mind, only make MORE things to drive you nuts in game with this "new" engine. As if the cornflakes, firebugs, bushes not rendering, lag, oh yeah the lag, lag deaths, no customer service, smarta$$ed game managers, and oh yeah, the lag aren't bad enough already.
God I hope the "effort" they are putting into this engine actually gets the players something other than more frustrations that the CRS team will not answer to. You'll just have to put up with it and keep waiting as in the years past. All this and still a graphics engine that is about where the Oregon Trail was when I was in elementry school. YIKES.
At least they are trying to throw off the attention to these issues by getting in game with squads and running around with them. If not to smoke and mirror them into sticking around......then to infiltrate a clan and take ideas and make it CRS's idea and give no credit to the thinkers. Then make money off it. Kinda like using a wall full of books behind your desk to make you really seem like a history and weapons expert. Then you can continue to belittle your customers and make yourself feel BIG sitting behind your fading monitor (hmmmmm Doc maybe?)
No more money spent with them from me.
Comments
Your persistance amazes me, get up and move along.
WWIIO is a great game, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Interested players should disregard posts by this individual and download the trial to judge for themselves.
No, I believe the game and its managers did a terrible job on several occasions and as a former paying customer I am telling people about it via these forums. Just as I would do if a friend or myself was posioned at Burger King. I would tell people about it.
Now go back to CRS and get 1.30 done already for those that are still around. Is this DOC????
What made you so upset Sonny?
What has CRS stalled according to you? Not released v1.30 fast enough? So it is you that decide the deadline for when to release the next patch. I didn't know this.
I understand you know far more about game testing and game design then the whole lot of us. I bow for your great wisdom Axis-Hater!
It is a real pity CRS didn't release v1.30 when you told them to do so. I bet it has been done and ready for weeks and CRS just holding it back to make fun of you since you understand these kind of thing so much better then them.
Since you are such an intelligent person, what do you do for a living. Run Cisco or Microsoft maybe? Or just kicking back after collecting your last Nobel Prize even?
Well I am on a sabbatical from the game too. After 8 years of playing it exclusively I became tired of the lack of developement of variations in things to do in the game. While it is still the most intense and hardest WWII game ever brought to the net it still falls short of the expectation caused by a dev staff that is full of game managers and practically no programmers or artists. After 8 years the game still has to be started manually by the staffers and still has less than a smidgeon of its total game world developed.
The naval element with the possibility of attracting a true following of online naval buffs itching for a coordinated fleet action has never been started. The current naval game is a hodge podge of only a few widely variable entities that outclass each other respectibly and that have practically no link to the game other than making other players mad by shelling buildings that cannot be destroyed any further. The Destroyers big 5 inch guns can barely kill a tank out in the open on a hill and trying to kill infantry huddled behind a building or even running in the open is near impossible. Seeing a Destroyer roll 15 degrees with a broadside has reduced the naval combat portion of the game to WWI Monitor and gunboat style stationary combat. The developers broke the game they had by trying to put in a "neat" recoil action that they never returned to in over 4 years make historically/physically correct.
The air game while decent enough for any 3 or so online variations of the basic WWII Online flight sim suffers from a lack of variation. The dev team in order to make advancements appear to be occuring make subtle changes in armament and firepower in few small basic air frames. No where are the classic 4 engine bombers or the equally classic torpedo bombers such as the Swordfish, HE115 or JU88. The French Airforce starting as a wonderfully brilliant example of never before in online sim game models. Even the supplement of later US variants to enhance the French Army's ability to remain fighting for longer than the real French in 1940 are not really that bad for gameplay though without the entry of the Americans in general the game will always have that tainted aspect of UK players not wanting to play as French units. The entire air effort seems to be shooting down endlessly supplied enemy fighters never having the ability of winning true air superiority. Again the simplistic strategic bombing put in while decent enough in concept suffers from this dev teams lack of staff in making variation in the game for tactical bombing. They do not even have an on staff vehicle development programmer right now.
The entire effort for the past 2 years has been the Unity 3d engine and the Chinese patch. Both while near have elongated the attaction of this game as a work in progress. Gone are the advancements of a few years ago where 3 or 4 new things were added to the game each 4 month dev cycle. Maybe when they return to this cycle and the game develops deeper variability in the naval and air game it will become what it was advertised or dreamed too be. Till then infantry-armor land based game is by far the most developed as it is the game. Strange for a game that came from a Air game dev group.
If you have never tried it I recommend that you do but not much more than the free trial is necessary to get the feel for lack of depth and lack of clear programming direction and efforts of this continually buggy program. When it takes a players continual tweaking of processor speed, affinity and other such things to keep the game playable only the truely afflicted addict will enjoy the true visual effect of the large lifelike environment worked on so hard by the artists. (Advice have the fastest and latests video card to play without stutters in crowded town fights especially in the air.)
1.30 went live, the china release slowed the update and you do need quality hardware to run smoothly. That is 128 in veiw..no mattter where you look. Flying over a major town with a major battle can stutter you. I wish they would let me change ground views on the fly from 128 to 64, maybe soon. But it still has more ppl in one view than any standalone, and WoW the darling of all, only hold 2k per shard, lets you walk 3 steps then see a lovely mountain range. Apples and Oranges if you compare ww2ol to any on or offline game.
How can you compare WWII Online to WOW? I suppose you try to win arguments by arguing the the Sky is blue because the grass is green? Bottom line with WWII Online is like all other games from this era of devs squeeze Pomegranate juice out of the loyal player base without much in return except playing time and what the players make of it themselves. I mean look at Aces High and Warbirds both comparable disfunctional dev teams. They break half the stuff that works trying to fix the other half of the broken stuff. Some stuff then never fix at all. 1.30 comes out with nothing but a bunch of crashes and CTHLs for veteren players. The guys have a serious quality problem in coding etiquette. Half of 1.30 was the release of a worthless training island routine the other half was fixing broken stuff that was not broken till 1.30.
There are plenty of promises in 1.30 for the dev teams proverbial "Soon" type of future of the game. I hope they do add spectacular things in 1.31 but I am afraid that the usual this patch will make next patch even better has not really provided a game that is interesting and provides enough variation. The game has a bunch of copy cat stuff for some sort of role playing raise your rank but that is fantasy game stuff of WOW they mimic. Thinking it adds to a true Wargammers excitement about their game is shear folly.
It is still the only true WWII wargammers choice on the net with HC players doing tactical and strategic decisions. Try the game, Yes but dont expect it to be the Wargame of dreams.
1.30 was always known to be the china setup..that worthelsss training island is for them and the money that will keep crs open. The code rewritte was to open the way to add much of waht was promised. If you read the readme you will see short fixes that were in fact time consuming and aimed for the china requirmemts. Rats said 1.31 would be the beginning. As for CTD...I did not have a problem. Didnt even have to delete the old version..but I did not have the beta installed and that may have helped. I havent looked at the ctd problems. All I can say is that I have my manchine tweaked as all shoud be....Binocs for infantry 1 showed me they eventually do listen.
Why would you want a total newbie having access to Tigers. They learn, they get access to the fewer but higher quality itmes to fight with. BTW..Infantry I..with a rifle and binocs is justt as bad as a General with binocs and a rifle. It wasnt leveling it was to control access to the better stuff.
Axishtr, I tryed this game probably about a year ago and it was complete and utter shite. The graphics are TRASH aka GARBAGE and the game just really sucked. I would leave this piece of crap and try to find something better...
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Real as Reality Television!!!
I've played WWIIOL off and on since launch (yes, that far back). I usually stick around for 6-8 months at a time and leave for the same duration only to come check it out again for their often advertised "Welcome back Soldier". Sometimes I stick around, sometimes I don't. I'm not playing now, and don't intend to in the near future. That being said, this is the only game of its type. Perhaps they know this and if there was another "competitor" things would progress differently.
The game isn't trash, but development has slowed (in my opinion) so much that I don't "look forward" to what they continually promise. I stopped dreaming of that new engine that they talked about for 5 years. I stopped dreaming of North Africa, Italians (or any other country). Stopped dreaming about new theatres, or any significant addition to the game world. We became satisfied with a new vehicle here and there. Eventually we became satisfied with a new variant. With 1.30 being released we can hope development can pick up back to what it was in years past. At least head in that direction.
There are many things to enjoy about the game, and an equally large amount of annoyances. Like angriff said, don't push it aside right away, check out their free trial. It'll give you a good idea of what the game is like (try to join up with a squad and you'll enjoy it even more). After playing off and on for so long, it's always the same faces that come around to defend this game. For years, same faces, same names. I'm glad that you've been able to enjoy the game for that long! I wish I could.
We'll see what comes in the near future. No point in giving up, badmouthing the game, but it has it's flaws (many). Let's see where it goes.
Well Deathtripp, it isn't any ordinary shoebox shooter where you only can see some hundred meters and don't hear anything that is more then 20 meters away.
On the ground can you see over 3000 meter and in the air and at sea can you see 8000 meter in WWII Online. The reason other games can't give you a visual distance more then a hundered meters and a almost silient world is that thouse games priorities the graphics before the gameplay.
You do realize that a game that has to handle fast going aircrafts that not only has to load static buildings and trees also must be able to load hundreds of targets on the ground when they flows a few hundred meters over the ground, over and over again.
To able to do all this must the graphic be less "impressive" to the eye then in a rather uncomplicated shoebox game.
But if you knows something I don't know would I be very pleased to hear about it. So by all means, please list the games that has similar graphical and audiol features as WWII Online has.
1) Visual distance at ground that is over 3000 meter
2) Audio distance that is 400 meter for small calibre, and 3000 meter for heavy calibre
3) Unlimited numbers of players at the same place (128 is visual maximum in WWII Online)
4) A continouos gameworld with no zones/maps to load
5) Ground, Air and Sea combat in the same seamless gameworld
I would sure like to try the games you lists Deathtripp.
Well, if I made a list of all-time games a person should try, this sad game would not be on that list. That's for sure.
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Real as Reality Television!!!
I'm just asking after games that has the same very demanding features that WWII Online has. It would be very interesting especially since you claim the graphic suck. I say the graphic is pretty good considering everything the game does, and not many games deliver the same gaming experience (please tell me just one you think is likewise or even better).
Graphic isn't everything, unless you are saticified with shoebox games. Shoebox games priorities graphics over game play, which isn't my cup of tea, but I know lots of people like them.
I could rant about this and that game sucks too since they have a very poor gameplay.
WWII Online isn't for everyone. People who enjoy shoebox games prefer easy gameplay (want to play the unvincible Hollywood hero that wont die) and stunning graphics. Great graphics is good, but only if it doesn't reduce the gameplay.
I once dropped a 250lb bomb on an A13 is beta...more than 8 years ago and the generated damage log had 55 inputs..from tracks to bodies. Easy to have nice graphics when you hve hit bubbles that count the number of times you hit a tank, then on the Xth hit, it explodes. WW2OL will NEVER have standalone quality graphics, but when I look thru some iron sights on an infantry enemy running at 300 meters and drop him, I know I am playing a game and not looking at pretty pics. As Sparre said, if you like eyecnady before depth, then ww2ol is NOT what you want to play. The first time you put an .55 Boys ATR round into the back of a 38 and slowly watch it smoke, knowing the ammo is about to be flamed the lack ot total smoothness on the berm you are hiding behind doesnt even come into play. Watching a stuka outboard tank start to burn and watch it slowly work its way toward the wing root and see the wing drop off and it spiral in, the lack of pure roundness on its wheels does not come into play. WW2OL will now have been online 8 years in June, don't you think there must be something of value to it?
The Answer to that is NONE! Value is a relative thing like beauty. So many fanbois for this game and hard clamped viciously enforced fan forums makes fresh discussions on MMORPG sort of a feeling of true liberty and freedom of speech. The definition of value is;
A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
The exchange rate for this game has gone into the pits. One can imagine why the original financiers tired of this mishappenstance dev teams antics in making the game so ingrained in details that they could not effectively put a quality plan in place to control it. To this day they ruse the introduction of spending thousands of hours making it so each tank tread wheel moves as it crosses land is lamented by the dev team themselves. The game is swamped in details of ballistics and hit theory but lacks depth in playability and variation in things to do which keeps accounts. It was on its way with true brigade spawning and movement but then lost its way in the China Project. The original investors forced the game out of these guys to try an recoup some of its money. After that it was the loyal fanbase that had to finance the continual mishappenstance programming. I was one of them with several accounts going over 8 years. All too often the Dev team themselves complained that the game engine is too complicated to put in anything really decent and new without considerable effort.
Now for the last year the China project has used up the funds of players with the hopes of Soon making a new chance at a finished game. The playerbase have become the investors at almost 180 dollars a year in the China project in the hopes that the investment will lead to something new. The problem is the China project will take resources too to support and the promise of it making significant contribution to increase game developement will not change the venacular of Soon always Soon .. please just wait... you will see... The original investors gave up on Soon.
The original investor was Strategy First and they ran it out the door on june 6th of 2001 over the objections of everyone concerned. SF liked the date and it cost everyone. China will be run by chinese for china. No one will ever see anyone from that server. China does not allow open access to the net so ww2ol is being licensed to some company there. I enjoy ww2ol so to me it has value and it seems that you now lurk denegrating the game as tho your opinion is the only opinion. You don't or didn't enjoy it, but I suspect you want to try and disquade someone from trying it based on vague complaints. Things to do not being varied..that is almost laughable...but I have noticed you complain about the naval portion and I will grant you that the navy is the lowest portion of the game. Then again, it was the lowest portion of the entire war. There are only so many cities on the coast and on rivers.
First off your positive comments are more vague than my discussions of what is good and what is bad about the the game. My comments to try it are lost on a Fanboi such as your who does not look past the simple statement that the game is lacking depth. It has been lacking depth since day one. It was only after a several years that the basics of unit combat was put in the game. It slowly began to show depth with this advancement and gameplayer subscriptions stabilized. The additions of RDP bombing and other such features added to the depth of the game. All only to be lost in a continual tweaking to provide an evenness..
As far as the naval part of the game you couldn't be so far off base than you coud possibly be if you tried. First off historically the historical Naval part is 90 percent of the Battle for Europe, 98 percent of the battle for North Africa and 100 percent of the battle for the Pacific. Ok those two latter theaters are dropped from the dream more than 5 years ago when the Rats themselves showed movies of a tank on the Kasserine Pass model. Shall we discuss the reasons that there are Russian Flags, Italian Flags, US Flags, Commonwealth Flags in the game all that have also be susequently dropped from discussions.
As far as your variation is laughable comment well you have no idea what keeps even you interested in the game. Variation is the fact that you can do something else in the game if you tire of just flying around in circles at an Airfield or town in a buzz match. If you tire of running into a town to hump a capture point. To take a town only to have it lost in off peak times to two people when 75 of you took it the night before. Just how grand would WWII Online be if it had half the 40K people that Eve Online has at any given time? Heck the RATS will not even publish how many people they have online and they dont even tell how many people suscribe to the game for fear of losing players. Variation provides the player with something else to do that is more complex and more interesting and when he tires of that move onto another new adventure. It keeps me wanting to play more it keeps players suscribing. Frankly afterr 8 years and 1 year waiting for the China Patch I became bored with the same thing over and over and left the game. I had contributed more money over the years in a monthly charge than any builder account.
I have been on tons of RDP bomber missions and they can be both fun and exciting but when players have to publish when and how they are flying to the three factories to bomb to get a response then there is simply not evenough players. The same is true for ground combat. Navy well lets say since the early days when I was the French MarNat CO it has not been the same. Why? because there is little variation and the small variation that is in the game provides the opponents with simple methods to counter your hours of efforts in a few short minuts. Players just get tired of spending 15 hours planning and running a naval mission only to have a single plane lift in 5 minutes and single bomb your main force to Davy Jones' locker while 10 ships are fireing away with broken AAA sights that have not been fixed in 6 years. Lest I also add that 6 ships in a battleline have less hitting capability with 6 broadsides against one ship bow on fireing only foward guns. Hitting beause the broadside battle line is hampered by a tweak the Rats put in to try an add recoil to a 2700 ton destroyer and made it rock like a rowboat. They know it is broken but they wont fix it for 5 years.
No, Instead they spend a year of my subscription money speculating on a Chinese Company's ability to produce income with free accounts and the hope that the effort to sustain a completely foreign version of the game will not take any effort and will be such a money cow that they can go back and finish the game they started 8 years ago for the current suscribers.
You can argue that it is their money and they can do what they want with it. Certainly that is true as they provided me a half finished game to play in whenever I wanted. I did and had plenty fun. However, over the years they always said Soon you will get what you are paying for. Soon now has it's primary definition obsoleted in Webster's because of them and moved to the Fourth.
1 aobsolete : at once : immediately b: without undue time lapse : before long <soon after sunrise>
2: in a prompt manner : speedily <as soon as possible> <the sooner the better> <no sooner said than done>
3archaic : before the usual time
4: in agreement with one's choice or preference : willingly <I'd just as soon walk as drive>
Seems we differ. You dont play, I play,
I only stopped playing May 5. I have stats this campaign.
But then you exist and I dont.
Lots of the missing visual beauty has bad effects also.
As a hard core ATG player, I never forgot about the lacking of smoothness of berms or having so many. Nothing like having a ton of little hills that shouldn't be there (artificially added to provided cover for inf who should be dying when caught at that location anyway) that's just high enough to block your ATG shot but not high enough to stop MG from killing your crew... who still can't move or detach. The trianglular nature of the berm means you can't setup on top of it to deal with the height as either you're pointing into the sky, or into the ground. And CRS had the great idea to put them all around the cover the ATGs would like to use *facepalm*
The horrible inf movement animation added with the laggy floating run makes close inf combat a horror. At longer ranges, you can't see much so not so obvious, but with the addition of MPS and tons of more in town combat.... killed the inf game for me. Nothing like shooting inf and having no idea if you got the kill as with the 1-2 second kill delay they usually get behind cover before dropping. Have to check stats after death to see what you got. I play Red Orchestra for my rifle work. Good grapihcs, much better animation, instant kills, iron sites only, all with the same long ranges (map dependant) and ballistics as WWIIOL (and no table humping!!). Overall map isn't as massive as WWIIOL but then really WWIIOL hardly uses it with the MSP. The most common comms report... 'this msp is too far away'
All the rifle ballistics modelling won't make you forget warping inf, kneejerk hit animation followed a second later (and 5-10 feet of walking) by a slow fall to the ground as you're constantly reminded it's there. Nice graphics can add to the gameplay as in RO. Bodies being tossed up with large HE, limbs blow off with small (yes nades work), and my fav... rag doll death. Nothing like shooting that inf on the top of the stairs and have him rag doll down, take him on the roof and see him slide down and off. Sometimes sends shivers up my spine hehe.
I'd still tell anyone to give the free trial a shot, hell it's free. With air, tanks, inf, AAA, ATGs etc. it's still the most complete combat you'll see. Just so many problems with it now and so many battles all the same due to formulaic way of capping cities, cities on rivers being the rare novelty. Comms are horrible evey time I've tried a free trial or welcome back. I'm bias as I played before depots and AOs when the squads were still strong. Now I see folks drive tanks repeatedly over ridges to die instantly, happily reporting the fact they died to the squad. My days it would have been a WTF are you doing from the guys hehe. I'd might be still in it for the ATG/AAA and maybe tank play (as that's still almost unique to WWIIOL) but not for the full price for two/three classes and for things you quite often can't use. So often only one battle going on at a point where ATG/AAA usage can't be done (inf swarming).
T.
BTW, while talking all that WWIIOL realism, don't forget dropping a 75mm HE shell 2 feet away from a inf only to have nothing happen, let alone 20 40mm AAA shells while he's hiding in bushes doing squat unless you get a direct hit. Lovely trying to headshot inf with your ATG as the 3-4 HE shots you shoot at him while he charges you do nothing. Something RO models, nothing like clearing out a house room, MG nest etc. by tagging some nearby object with HE.
wow, some very in-depth replies and a lot of thought from people who have played a lot...but (lol)
I notice the main type of player in this game has played it for a long time and (like me) ignored the shoddy graphics in place of some great game play.
However, if the game didn't have these hard-core players there would be no game play, i.e. I play mmo cause no game can ever be as devious as another human..I can't get over guys who log in and sit for hours on end waiting for 1 kill...or guys who spend their whole night driving resupply trucks without shooting anything, or the guys who sit for hours on end in a concrete bunker defending, i guess each to his own?
This is what makes this game, not the game itself? as for V1.30, it was a cock-up, expected though, we didn't see anything great as in graphics but the promise is to come of better?
As for numbers in game..I agree, I don't think there is the numbers on at anyone time that people say there is. But in saying that, just playing against 10 to 20 other guys on a large map is cool.
however, (QED) this game will never progress until CRS gets of their high stuka and lets people play the game..unitl then it is at best a large LAN party with invited guests (see my other posts for ignorant details)
P.S. I already picked this one up...a lot of CRS staff post replies here...hmmm they do care...? I miss you JOKER....hahahaha
Toon, you got slapped down for breaking the rules, stop crying about it and take your lumps. You're like the whiney speeder who gets pulled over doing 20 over the limit that biatches to the cops about all the people doing 21 over the limit that they don't stop.
You right, I did get banned, for 99 days, lol, I seen people cheat in games and get at most a week ban. ANd you should note that I have said some positive stuff about the game, but...
Say again, I didn't get abusive, swear, be racist, sexist or any other 'ist', I just disagreed with the CRS staff member over something he said.
This is the problem with CRS, the staff play the game (as they should) but act as moderators at the same time hence they bring their personal feelings into their decision making. If they don't get your sense of humour or don't like you they will ban you, they have no impartiality hence lack professionalism (excuse my spelling it is not as good as my sense of humour!)
This is the reason this game will never reach its full potential, it will always continue to limp along with a hard-core group of players who just make sure they never do anything to upset a 'rat'. And it is sad to see players kissing the arse of CRS staff when they are in game just to get on their 'good side'. This reeks of a little dictatorship! lol
When I was banned he sent me a message telling me I was banned and I would never see any of my money either. That is personal, JOKER, the name is so apt.
I'd take Angriff with a grain of salt. He's been in a perpetual state of discontent with the game for 8 years now, always on the edge of quitting because nothing is ever good enough for him. He's famous in the community for always having something to complain about.
I haven't played the game in a couple years but during that time I haven't seen anything in the patch notes that makes me want to come back.
They said the China release wouldn't take away development time from the normal game. They lied. I knew it would since they first announced it. So either CRS doesn't know themselves that well or they are lying. I still don't think the China ordeal is going to be anything but a complete waste of time.
I have to agree in the points that Angriff listed out.
I too am a day 1 player however my reasoning for leaving was simple.
CRS began changing the gameplay to meet the dumbed down crowd.
But I have to admit before the killing of the squads it was some serious fun.
Hardcase, you dropped a bomb on a A13 in beta way back in the day? It generated 55 different damage logs thats nice.... Targetware's engine does this AND still has decent graphics. Wait Steel Beasts Pro Personal Edition does this and has a farther draw distance of 10KM.
Sparre, WWIIOL render distance isnt 3000m.... its 2.9KM for Vehicles, 6KM for planes, and ships, 1KM for infantry.
So its variable.
And sounds... haha... I wont get into the silent Armoured Cars, or quite infantry running full speed through a bush tunnel.... or even better the dead silent 2 ton ATG being pushed by a crew of 6 through some bushes. Hmmm perhaps I should mention the silent P39 Aerocobra that can stop 20mm HE rounds with its propeller deflector shields.
Yeah WWIIOL is FAR from perfect. The most fustrating thing is what the OP said.... slow development, the game is run and lead by program managers... but lacking programmers... so you would think in 8 years when you realized you were short on programmers, perhaps some of you managers, would LEARN how to program.
So much crap, so little quality.