"It's a state of affairs, and all the fresh air in the world won't do a damned thing to fix it"!" But yeah, I was reffering tot he fact that Lanthius just seemed to make assumptions about other people, than when corrected made further false assumptions. At any rate, I do give Wargame EE credit for being a fairly decent product. My angst with Eugen lies squarely with RUSE, and what it SHOULD have been. The way I see it, is that I am going to give them this one last kick at the cat to make things right between me, the paying customer, and them the contracted developer (if by no other contract than a social contract). So far I am happy. But will reevaluate that in a month or so. If I feel like I am a lab rat by than, than no more money for Eugen, ever.

I still remember getting a thrill out of the noise of a modem handshake. And an even bigger one when a modem to modem game of warcraft or whatever I had at the time worked out. That being said, I am no dinosaur of the past, and am more technically capable than 98% of the general population when it comes to computers, technology, mechanics, and so on. So while nostalgia, yes, labrat, no. Corporate goon or sucker, no. I just remember that the customer comes first, not last, and that game companies seem to have forgotten that.

The only assumption i made was that you were a new breed of PC gamer..turns out you are instead just -snip- living in the past What was the second assumption?

Anyway, can I have your stuff when you leave?

This. Why don't people just adapt?

It's all a trade-off between quality - cost - number of features. Players demand features, and you have to match competition there. Cost - if the cost of developing an acceptable game is high, many games just don't see the light of the day. Would you be happy if games like W:EE got never made because the game company thought the cost of making it acceptable for people like you would be so high it could be never matched by sales revenue? The market would only have the likes of COD and Deer Hunter XIII.

Well, quality is of course good. We don't want our games to crash and such. But games today are complex beasts - and also there's value in bringing them to the players early in the life cycle - players can give more feedback before all the screws have been tightened in the product, and as a result it will be more like what the players really want. That's also usually thought to be part of the concept of quality, by the way. Giving us customers what we really want.

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Fix decks and save minor nations - viewtopic.php?f=91&t=28335

Jet set willy for the ZX spectrum had a attic that if you entered actually corrupted the entire game turning all rooms into instant death traps. I personally experienced this on my mates speccy in the 80s. When we had games on cassette tapes.

Guess what? Bugs existed prior to patching or even the internet. There is a trope page describing how speccy games had game killing bugs indicating how wide speed the problem was.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/U ... ctrumGames

Rose tinted glasses much?

LOL...you really should read the whole thread and see who/what I was replying to least you look a bit silly...

Cool story bro, but game breaking bugs existed prior to BBS.

wiki has "notable" software bugs occurring as early as 1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs

The very nature of coding would indicate that "bugs" have been with us as long as "computers" requiring "software" for instructions have been around.

BBS and the internet nearly allowed for consumer patching after purchase. You know how you patched a spectrum game, you brought a later version if the developers bothered to correct the bugs in their second "print" run.

Ok..you want to keep going with this.....sure...

"and do remember when games shipped much more stable"

Do you see ANYWHERE that I say that bugs did not exist? "Much more" is NOT a statement of absolutes in the English language so why you interpreted it that way is a bit of a mystery. They did exist. To be very clear to you, all I said was there was a change when the easy of distributing fixes became common to the degree where BBS numbers were shipped with manuals.

The very fact that I state that I think it's neither better or worse should have given you a clue that I wasn't looking at the past in a favorable light.

So right back at you. Nice irreverent story as I never said game breaking bugs DIDN'T existed prior to BBS.

Yeah I think I do, I don't think games have become "much more" buggy due to the advent of BBS or the internet. The Internet or the BBS are not the independent variable here.

Programming by it's very nature leads to bugs even with organisations programming with “mission critical software” such as NASA. The internet made it easier for a much wider group of people to identify a bug leading to a form of confirmation bias. For instance I did not know those broken spectrum games were broken until several decades later with the advent of the internet.

Look at these bugs in Super Mario, I never experienced them as a child yet the game, a flagship title had bugs prior to the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXVptriKm8
NES had no capability to patch much like the Spectrum or the Atari 2600 ect

Hiding behind “much more” begs the question: But once modems became common in the late 80's and you could patch from BBSs, things changed.

Did they? Because for your argument to be true you need to prove that Modems and BBS are the independent variable. Frankly you can’t as bug riddle software has been with us since before the ability to patch things from the internet.

What you and people you were replying to in varying degrees was harking back to some golden age where either bugs did not exist or were multipled by the internet.

look at this game, it's fps renders it utterly unplayable: SNES had no patching capability.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NB_CcwH ... h_response

What is this, some torture device to be used on AMERIKA'S enemies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-wgQa6H ... ure=relmfu
Nope just a buggy unplayable nonsensical game prior to the internet.

...and for every YouTube example you put up I can do the same...

It's to the point these days that devs are launching games not even complete and relying on "patches" to finalize their product.

When asked what the post release patch for BF3 would have, the devs replied "All the final stuff".

A demo would really go far to produce a consistent increase in purchases, as some people miss free weekends.

A price drop would also be a practical idea. As much as I enjoy the game, it's not worth £30; permanently drop the price to £20, and then I think it'll be a fair representation of the game.