Friday the 14th Development Update

[bongodriver]

call me a sychophantic fanboy if you like but I think the 'milestone' is an internal development target and not something that concerns the wider public.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by PotNoodles

What on earth are you on about? If it's the last patch for COD how can it be a beta? It has to be the last official patch for COD alone.

There will be another beta test before release...

[Stirwenn]

I really do not understand how this project is managed : as it is confessed, few of them were working on Cliffs last months but till the last beta patch they regain some customers who would certainly jump in buying the sequel if.... they do not hear : "Sorry guys, we messed the job... ahem... please do not forget to buy the sequel in two or three years..." but "Sorry, we messed the job but we do not let you down, we keep one or two devs on part time work to fix the most crying bugs till the sequel is out".
Incredible to give up that after 18 months of investment and it is starting to pay NOW !
Hope you get the feeling, english is not my natural language.

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Glad you find it funny, but I suspect because of the awful mess that is CLOD and the amount of time it has taken to still not fix it, and the missing features and the dumbing down of graphics, the poor netcode, the lack of coop's, poor campaign's, the broken GUI in single player etc etc, that the sales of the sequel will reflect what I consider to be rather shoddy treatment from the dev's. If you consider the above to be good for business then you are deluded.

Every point you make is valid and accurate. However, the only real way any change will be affected is if there was a competing product.At this point in time there is no other option for the paying customer to support.

[macro]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

They are called beta patches for a reason...

come on krupi mate, the whole of clod has been a beta test for the russain front, why do you think they did bob first instead of the other way around?

to fund it. thats why.

fact is, id pay for a modern 1946, with all the theatres and aircraft. id just wish theyd admit it. this version of the game was a money making beta. nothing more. the money has to come from somewhere.

Its going to take alot of time and effort and money to get to the stage 1946 got to. that money comes from us with each release of this series,
I will buy each release of this series. because it will get better time after time. I just wish they hadnt started with BOB. by the time the game does get better and more playable for the 1946 crowd, the later era ww2 planes will be more popular to play (ie p51, fw190) and the BOB era will be forgotton. just like 1946, thats the main thing that annoys me the most.

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

call me a sychophantic fanboy if you like but I think the 'milestone' is an internal development target and not something that concerns the wider public.

Look at the ' milestone' as a payment schedule. If 1C were to miss this target date or the work does not meet the quality standards, no payment is made to 1C. They than need to tap their line of credit to pay their employees, assuming they have acess to a line of credit.

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by lokitexas

We are called customers for a reason as well.... and we see how that turned out.

we are called Beta testers, your a customer if you purchase the mythical sequel. I move to rename Cliffs of Dover, the new Forgotten Battle.

[broken pixel]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

You forgot a very important part of running a business here Luthier, you missed out the word 'CUSTOMERS'. After selling us this product with no mention of any of the problems that you were fully aware of you should put your CUSTOMERS before anything else. You have failed to do that in my honest opinion, your priority for the last 18 months should have been all hands on deck fixing what you sold us rather than concentrating on your next money making scheme.

These days "THE CUSTOMER" does not mean crap to company's or corporations. It is all about the almighty investors, sad days man, sad days.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by macro

come on krupi mate, the whole of clod has been a beta test for the russain front, why do you think they did bob first instead of the other way around?

to fund it. thats why.

fact is, id pay for a modern 1946, with all the theatres and aircraft. id just wish theyd admit it. this version of the game was a money making beta. nothing more. the money has to come from somewhere.

Its going to take alot of time and effort and money to get to the stage 1946 got to. that money comes from us with each release of this series,
I will buy each release of this series. because it will get better time after time. I just wish they hadnt started with BOB. by the time the game does get better and more playable for the 1946 crowd, the later era ww2 planes will be more popular to play (ie p51, fw190) and the BOB era will be forgotton. just like 1946, thats the main thing that annoys me the most.

Sadly that's what it looks like , but I have logged over 500 hours in the game so I must enjoy it warts and all

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

You forgot a very important part of running a business here Luthier, you missed out the word 'CUSTOMERS'. After selling us this product with no mention of any of the problems that you were fully aware of you should put your CUSTOMERS before anything else. You have failed to do that in my honest opinion, your priority for the last 18 months should have been all hands on deck fixing what you sold us rather than concentrating on your next money making scheme.

C'mon Tree It's simply impossible that you work in the private sector of what the rest of us call "the economy"? Basically it's about the fact that if your company does not make a profit it gets shut down... Fast.

So - who would put up the money to have the team working on patching a product for 18 months that unfortunately must have been a financial fiasco? 1C? Ubisoft? Just get over it, CloD was a failure - both financially and technically. End of story. Now they have actually spent too much time trying to get it right as they are naturally embarrassed that some bean counter forced them to release it while the engineers with Oleg at the helm most certainly wanted to do a second (or third) restart of the project with a new engine... Which was naturally impossible after that last managed code experiment that failed...

A pillar of the market economy is that you don't throw good money after bad. The only reason we have gotten patches the last 18 months is that Ilya and "the new" team convinced someone with money that they could do a sequel based on the failed project to get some money back from that seven year investment. The financier probably realized that even if a sequel was successful, they would never get all the money back for the previous seven years. As they don't live in Northern Korea they know the meaning of "sunk costs" and agreed to finance the development of a sequel anyway, as the costs to have the team running another 2.5 years would be smaller than the expected revenue from the sequel (keeping in mind that they did not start from zero). Ilya probably had to get a new suit for these meetings and certainly got some milestones set that they had to deliver along the project time line or the money tap would get shut down at any point...

I really would like the CloD we all dreamed of, but we have to to accept the fact that it will not happen. Every hour spent patching CloD that does not benefit the sequel increases the risk that MG will have to pick down the sign next year (or this year if they don't show good progress). That sequel has to get decent reviews at least and sell a couple of hundred thousand copies. That's the only way we will ever see a FW 190 in the future in this engine...

And no, the argument that they have to fix CloD or no one will buy the sequel is naturally bull. If the sequel hits the market next fall and gets reviews in the > 80% range every single one of the customers that bought CloD will buy it as we there are only 1-2 decent simulators released every year. We are not that many anyway - so it's the ones that did NOT buy CloD that they need to get green figures at the bottom line

EDIT: The ones we have a right to be pissed at are the publishers 1C/(Ubisoft) - that actually released the game to the market in the state it was, I don't hold MG responsible for that bad decision at all... But - if it was that or nothing I must say that I've had quite some fun with CloD anyway that definitely makes up for my $39.