Kriegsmarine - Thumbs Down

[Erik2]

Testing a scenario when it is fresh from the oven is a lot of work. Trust me

During beta-testing there is usually 4-5 updated versions of scenarios based on feed-back from the testers. This means new issues may crop up in edited scenarios. Sometimes it may be a game of wack-a-mole. Even when the campaign is considered 'done' issues may crop up when the public is unleashed on the scenarios. I see this a lot with business-software in my 'real' job as well.

Beta-testing is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. I will usually try to play through the campaign once for each new edition that is published. This takes time and I will surely miss some issues because players will use different approaches when testing.
Personally I like new DLCs on a regular basis as each new campaign gives me more units to use in custom scenarios.
As for the Kriegsmarine, I think one or two more scenarios where the players get to use the fancy units would help a lot.

[kondi754]

Hmm, although it's not altogether unsurprising i think that it might be misunderstood what some people are trying to say here. I don't think anybody in this particular topic is claiming that there isn't enough DLC being released. I also don't think that most people who claim that things are unrealistic or whatever really have a point.
What people are saying in this topic is that upon release of the game there were still considerable amounts of bugs, quite visible and that it might have been better to fix these before release and postpone that for say a week.

It seems to me that there are 3 groups of complaints:

1 - Historical accuracy

I personally I don't care too much about this, for me these are nitpicks. For example I suggested to add planing hull trait to all submarines because using a torpedo to take down a submarine would be silly in WW2, but the effect on gameplay is very marginal.

2 - Gameplay mechanics

New naval combat was a big point of discussion and I personally like it because you need to make constant tradeoffs between dealing damage and receiving damage. Both these factors depend on your ship's movements. Having the option to make predictable tactical choices is good for the game. To be fair it's not perfect. As before I found cruisers to be far better compared to battleships. Ideally I would like each unit in the game to have a role and be useful in some situations (even if it's not historically accurate).

3 - Too many bugs

The DLCs often contain bugs and the last release was not an exception. I personally reported several bugs and they were really annoying and I had to play around them in some situations. On the other hand we should not forget that it's not that easy to test all cases. Just consider how many test cases there are, here are some factors that contribute:

- hardware configuration (OS, Graphic card...)
- difficulty level (yes this can effect units on the map, it's not just AI behaviour and resource settings)
- deployment of core forces (some scenarios change AI units based on your deployment)
- order of objective steps relative to each other and relative to turn number

I could go on but I think now it's quite clear that it's unreasonable to demand completely bug free game. I think the most important thing is not how many bugs are present, but of which type. This is my list of bug types:

A - breaks the game (the game can't be played after bug happens)
B - breaks the game, but game can be resumed after restart
C - part of the game content can't be reached (secondary objective that effects another scenario)
D - part of the game scenario can't be reached (secondary objective that effects only current scenario)
E - minor functionality doesn't work (objective counters display incorrect data but are working fine internally)
F - marginal issues (event picture is missing)

The game on the release state should not contain bugs of A, B, and C type. In the case of Kriegsmarine in my playthrough I found no bugs of these types. Yes, there were lot of bugs of D, E and F types, so overall release state wasn't great but I think it was ok.

Very good post.
We have reported many of these errors during the tests and they have been fixed. I am very surprised that you report them now.

[Andy2012]

@Mojko: Agree with most of this.

I would have gladly paid 15 bucks for a Kriegsmarine end of May where all the kinks would have been evened out, especially the game mechanics. For a DLC with awesome, dramatic mission design (come on, this is pretty tepid...), 20 bucks would be fine, too.

[Andy2012]

Testing a scenario when it is fresh from the oven is a lot of work. Trust me

During beta-testing there is usually 4-5 updated versions of scenarios based on feed-back from the testers. This means new issues may crop up in edited scenarios. Sometimes it may be a game of wack-a-mole. Even when the campaign is considered 'done' issues may crop up when the public is unleashed on the scenarios. I see this a lot with business-software in my 'real' job as well.

Beta-testing is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. I will usually try to play through the campaign once for each new edition that is published. This takes time and I will surely miss some issues because players will use different approaches when testing.
Personally I like new DLCs on a regular basis as each new campaign gives me more units to use in custom scenarios.
As for the Kriegsmarine, I think one or two more scenarios where the players get to use the fancy units would help a lot.

Yeah, but your Blitzkrieg 41-42 was so good it didnt feel like work. (Still took me several weeks.) And it was on par with Kriegsmarine, easily.

[Erik2]

Yeah, but your Blitzkrieg 41-42 was so good it didnt feel like work. (Still took me several weeks.) And it was on par with Kriegsmarine, easily.

Testing Sea Lion will feel like work. The sheer number of scenarios guarantees that

[NightPhoenix]

I tend to agree with most of what has been said indeed. The game itself does not have any game breaking bugs. It would also be unrealistic to expect every single bug to be removed. Especially with such a small team, and beta-testing indeed taking a significant amount of time. But there are a few things that you would expect to be removed in a final pre-release screening, however you would want to call something like that. I'm talking about the pictures, the misinformation in objectives at least. Not to remind you there was an actual bug that did not allow you to continue the game unless cheating, in operation Torch, where there was not enough strength on the battleships to achieve the primary objective, but that's besides the point especially as it was addressed quickly if I'm not mistaken.
Besides that, there are also still some bugs in the game which fall into the D-E and F category of Kondi754's post, both affirmed and non-affirmed. ( I have no clue as to whether the French VP objective in Torch should be impossible without the flugzeugtrager specialization on normal difficulty, and whether the naval mines should be doing 0 damage in most cases for example ) The problem with bugs which fall into the C-F category is that hardly anybody will wait until these are resolved, which can take months if they are resolved at all after purchasing the game. The replay value is also not that high that you'd be replaying the campaign for a few secondary objectives. It means you are just missing out on content, which is a shame. It's also not that realistic to ask of people to purchase a DLC or entire game with the knowledge that certain parts will not be working properly and might be fixed long after they completed it.

Again, i think the content provided is still worth the purchase even at release, I'm enjoying playing the DLC and applaud the devs for their great work. But i think it's a shame that i have to go into the game knowing there will be bugs and problems for which there will not be provided a solution soon. Just like Andy2012 i would gladly pay a buck or 2 more, seeing the DLC a week later after some extra screening without most of these issues.

[kverdon]

What I am concerned most about is the response from the Dev which partly comes across as "I'm too busy getting the next DLC out to address the issues or fix the bugs in the one we just released." Why not slow down a bit and apply the final fixes and polish the DLC's require instead of worrying about how to bang the next one out the door and "Damn the customers full speed ahead". This is doubly true now that it appears that Kriegsmarine has broken previous DLCs (Marines and Morning Sun reported so far). Don't you think you should please clean up your current mess before creating new ones?

Sure you've got a small team but that just means you have to take more time on each DLC and fixes and polishing take longer. Like Andy, I'd gladly paid double for Kriegsmarine IF it had been properly executed and released.

Note to Mojke: Actually torpedoing Submarines is fine. (Granted it should come from another Sub but that is a minor nit). Google "USS Batfish sometime".

[Mojko]

What I am concerned most about is the response from the Dev which partly comes across as "I'm too busy getting the next DLC out to address the issues or fix the bugs in the one we just released." Why not slow down a bit and apply the final fixes and polish the DLC's require instead of worrying about how to bang the next one out the door and "Damn the customers full speed ahead".

I worked as a game developer for almost 5 years and in later years I also participated in the project management stuff. I can tell you that balancing how available resources are split between bugfixing (existing content improvement) and development (new features & content) is very difficult. It's a game of balance between long term and short term gains. If you put too little resources to bugfixing there is a good chance you will lose customer faith in your product and you will go out of business. If you put too much your resources into bugfixing there is a good chance that you will starve the company as your product development will be too slow. Of course this is just simplification, because the actual thing is more complicated. Factors like your business model, company size also contribute to the whole formula.

In short, it's not that obvious that making the game bug free should be the highest priority.

Note to Mojke: Actually torpedoing Submarines is fine. (Granted it should come from another Sub but that is a minor nit). Google "USS Batfish sometime".

I'm fully aware that there were rare cases of submarine getting hit by a torpedo from another submarine in WW2. It's just that in one scenario 3 enemy destroyers ganged up on my surfaced submarine and instead of using their guns they used torpedos. I laughed so hard I almost fell down my chair

[Horst]

I'm fully aware that there were rare cases of submarine getting hit by a torpedo from another submarine in WW2. It's just that in one scenario 3 enemy destroyers ganged up on my surfaced submarine and instead of using their guns they used torpedos. I laughed so hard I almost fell down my chair

Yes, it looks a bit strange, but it think it's plausible. I haven't read about destroyers torpedoing submarines either yet, but submarines torpedoing others doesn't seem to be that rare as someone might expect:
1914 October 18 - German submarine U-27 sinks HMS E3 with a torpedo in the first ever successful attack on one submarine by another.
1941 November 28 - Dutch submarine O-21 torpedoes the German submarine U-95 in a surface to surface engagement near Málaga, Spain.
Not with torpedo but the whole submarine itself: 1942 November 5 - Finnish submarine Vetehinen rammed the Soviet submarine Щ 305 in the Sea of Åland and sank it.
1945 February 6 - Royal Navy submarine Venturer becomes the only submarine to sink another submarine while they were both submerged when she sinks U-864 off Norway.
Gato-class boats sank four Japanese submarines with torpedoes: I-29, I-168, I-351, and I-42; while only losing one in exchange, Corvina to I-176.

[Andy2012]

Andy, I got your good advice in that other forum, and I replied. Thanks.

I should switch jobs to counseling, I guess. (Just kidding )
I suggest you pour all that energy into playtesting Eriks campaigns. He actually deserves that support.

[rezaf]

This was the first DLC I tried since Morning Sun, since from memory it seemed to be a subject matter the OOB engine could be well suited to.
Alas, I have to agree with most criticism posted herein.

One of my main gripes with Morning Sun was how it totally failed to represent what I feel the China<->Japan conflict in WW2 should be all about. I could go into great detail, but this thread is about Kriegsmarine, so I'll not do it.
But speaking of Kriegsmarine, my main issues with that DLC are that everything feels entirely too gamey and there's a great lack of attention to detail in the design of the scenarios.
As for the former point, one important aspect of that is the naval combat system. It was never a good system, but now it's kinda ridiculous. Battleships struggle with damaging destroyers, torpedos hardly do any damage at all, mines are mostly useless, subs are also still useless but now are forced to surface every four turns as well, BBs can catch up with fleeing boatplanes, ... the list goes on and on.
I had to read up on the new targeting system and I still usually fail to make it work to my advantage. It's not well integrated into the game, it's not communicated well to players and it fails to lead to interesting and roughly balanced naval engagements. Frankly, I feel like it's time to go back to the drawing board with this one. My personal impression is that they should jettison all their visions of how they'll be able to implement a truly great system with a ton of intricities noone else has throught of yet and instead go for KISS (keep it simple, stupid), but any change would be welcome. Unfortunately, that we ever ended up with this system doesn't exactly instill hope.
Bonus objectives and stuff often feel totally arbitary and are often impossible to achieve unless you go totally out of your way and/or game the system. Maybe some people appreciate this, but I thought it was a little disheartening.
And this ties into my other main issue, the DLC feels sloppy. Balancing feels sloppy, scenarios feel sloppy (and far too often quite boring), even texts are sloppy (Objectiv: Destroy 2 Battleships. 0/3).

For me, the main strengths of the OOB system IMO was the depiction of combined operations such as invasions, with supply ships and stuff, as well as carrier battles. None of that plays a big role in the Kriegsmarine DLC. There seem to be ambitions to make this a grand system covering all aspects of WW2 (and most DLCs seem to point at this as well), but no innovations were made to make other systems equally compelling as the combined arms approach.
Kinda disappointing.

[kverdon]

Rezaf.

Well Said.

[bjarmson]

I don't understand those people who claim they don't care about historical accuracy. Why is it a nitpick to expect a game supposedly about WWII to be historically accurate? Why bother to go to the trouble to realistically model a wide variety of weapons used during the war (land, air, and sea) if they are just used to fight fantasy battles named after historical ones? When I buy a DLC titled Blitzkrieg, I expect the Germans will actually utilize the blitzkrieg tactics of 40-41 to quickly overrun France and rapidly advance into Russia. Instead we get the same, plodding tactics (move from one defensive position to the next, slowly batter it down, move to next) as in the Pacific scenarios, which are set on islands where blitzkrieg tactics were not possible, hence my facetious labeling of it as Slogkrieg. To not even try to model German blitzkrieg tactics means the developers either don't know much about the battles themselves, or decided it was too difficult to model such tactics and just defaulted to the style used in the Pacific scenarios, or simply want/need to keep pumping out DLCs quickly to keep the money flowing and feel the need to resort to shortcuts to do so, or some combination of the three. Thus we get DLCs like Blitzkrieg, which has no blitzkrieg in it, and Kriegsmarine, a hypothetical battleship admiral's wet dream with virtually no replayability. Mojko, despite your claim there are several confirmed instances of submarines being destroyed by torpedoes in WWII.

The problem, as I see it, is that scenarios will continue to be bad unless they are criticized. Why improve them if many people just don't care they're not very good. Bad, ahistorical scenarios result in a boring game playing experience. I won all the scenarios in Kriegsmarine fairly easily, even though I didn't really know what the gameplay might be like at the start, simply by plodding ahead slowly with my surface ships and destroying the Allies piecemeal (illogically they never swarm you with their units). I have yet to feel the urge to replay any scenarios because there was almost no challenge involved in winning them. If this is all some people want, then enjoy it, because it seems increasingly obvious this is where OoB is headed.

[Erik2]

I think the game would play better and be more fun if units didn't instantly lose in effect all movement and combat capability when supply is cut off.
It is very tedious and time-consuming restoring supply when your units are only able to move 1 hex.

Infantry would still march, living off the land. So movement should be unaffected, defense somewhat reduced and attack severely reduced.
Mechanized units could have their movement reduced to say 1/2 for 2-3 turns, then zeroed. Attack/defense affected like infantry.

This would give the player a fair chance to rectify broken supply. And a German player should be able to blitz a bit more.

Adding Blitzkrieg specialization: This could give the German panzers the ability to attack twice if the first attacked enemy unit is retreated. The second attack would be direcrted at any unit next to the panzer unit after it has advanced.

[Andy2012]

@bjarmson: I agree with the replayability statements and bad balance and game mechanics in Kriegsmarine. However, as far as Blitzkrieg is concerned, kondi sometime wrote around here that Blitzkrieg is just what we imagine it to be. Most of the Wehrmacht went on foot and rode on horseback. Was Blitzkrieg ideal? No, nothing is. Was it very good and enjoyable? Yes, worth the money and best DLC yet.
@Erik: Good ideas. But that would require very extensive playtesting and balancing. And I have the feeling that this is not this franchises strong suit for various reasons (time, money, manpower constraints). And no, I wont betatest for free. (Except for your campaigns, of course. Will start with Sea Lion, promise.)

[Horst]

I think the supply system more or less works fine as it is, although basically stunning units on the next turn when out-of-supply is a bit harsh.
I play for quite a while with a fuel-1 setting of most ground units. It definitely provides a good pace with less annoyance by all these AI cavalry and tank units ambitiously cutting you off all the time.

The proposed Blitzkrieg or Panzerblitz spec. sounds similar like the PG2 ability "Overrun" of tanks:
Tank Class: Overrun
Tank class units possess a special ability called Overrun; a powerful advantage usable under certain
conditions. A tank unit that conducts a devastating attack on a weakened foe has the possibility of
‘rolling over’ its opponent. If the tank’s attack eliminates the defender, an Overrun Attack message may
appear in the Information bar at the top of the Main Game screen. If this message occurs, the tank is
allowed to continue with its movement, and attack again. This represents a tank unit’s ability to smash
straight through weakened units. With luck, and a line of weak defenders, a tank may attack and
destroy two or three lesser units in a single turn.

Back in the days, we already had it all by default.

[adherbal]

What I am concerned most about is the response from the Dev which partly comes across as "I'm too busy getting the next DLC out to address the issues or fix the bugs in the one we just released."

With the new auto-update system fixing bugs quickly is far less of a problem as we've hopefully already proved over the past days/weeks.

However a lot of this discussion is about gameplay and design decisions and this often involves personal taste. If we (developers) disagree with something we are obviously not going to "fix" it because we don't consider it broken. As a developer you have to have a clear vision about your own goals because you can't please everyone. Otherwise you'd just end up constantly changing the game because there will always be someone disliking something.

My point is that the best way to affect the design of DLCs or the game in general is as part of the beta testing. While I know there is always room for improvements I personally enjoy playing the game (even after working on it almost daily for over 4 years already) and if the beta testers are also "happy" then we won't be inclined to make drastic changes. So I really wish some of the more critical fans that are taking part of this thread would sign up for the next beta. You're not forced to contribute so there is no harm it trying and I'm sure this would improve the situation for everyone.

[bru888]

What I am concerned most about is the response from the Dev which partly comes across as "I'm too busy getting the next DLC out to address the issues or fix the bugs in the one we just released."

With the new auto-update system fixing bugs quickly is far less of a problem as we've hopefully already proved over the past days/weeks.

However a lot of this discussion is about gameplay and design decisions and this often involves personal taste. If we (developers) disagree with something we are obviously not going to "fix" it because we don't consider it broken. As a developer you have to have a clear vision about your own goals because you can't please everyone. Otherwise you'd just end up constantly changing the game because there will always be someone disliking something.

My point is that the best way to affect the design of DLCs or the game in general is as part of the beta testing. While I know there is always room for improvements I personally enjoy playing the game (even after working on it almost daily for over 4 years already) and if the beta testers are also "happy" then we won't be inclined to make drastic changes. So I really wish some of the more critical fans that are taking part of this thread would sign up for the next beta. You're not forced to contribute so there is no harm it trying and I'm sure this would improve the situation for everyone.

Great post. Thanks.

Auto-update: It must be a good feeling to be able to say in the Tech Support forum "will be fixed in the next update (probably today)."

"Personal taste" includes making sure that the game is FUN. So far, despite everything, playing Kriegsmarine is FUN for me and I see that issues in this DLC and associated patch are now being addressed.

Keep swinging away, adherbal.

[Andy2012]

With the new auto-update system fixing bugs quickly is far less of a problem as we've hopefully already proved over the past days/weeks.

However a lot of this discussion is about gameplay and design decisions and this often involves personal taste. If we (developers) disagree with something we are obviously not going to "fix" it because we don't consider it broken. As a developer you have to have a clear vision about your own goals because you can't please everyone. Otherwise you'd just end up constantly changing the game because there will always be someone disliking something.

My point is that the best way to affect the design of DLCs or the game in general is as part of the beta testing. While I know there is always room for improvements I personally enjoy playing the game (even after working on it almost daily for over 4 years already) and if the beta testers are also "happy" then we won't be inclined to make drastic changes. So I really wish some of the more critical fans that are taking part of this thread would sign up for the next beta. You're not forced to contribute so there is no harm it trying and I'm sure this would improve the situation for everyone.

Agree with the auto-update, that is a huge plus.
I also agree with personal tastes - I am not particularly anal about historical detail as long as it is fun. Others disagree with that viciously. And having a vision as a developer is also important. And those odd movement rules...well, could be worse.
But the balancing and mission design problems are just points which cannot be shoved into the "different tastes" folder and forgotten. They are an integral part of the gameplay and are in some areas rather wobbly (BBs, subs, torpedos). And I doubt that my overpowered Hippergang was a deliberate gameplay decision. BBs and subs were the iconic backbone of the Kriegsmarine and are useless in the DLC named this way. Dont tell me you made the conscious decision to do it this way; this sounds rather absurd to me. Also, missions get easier and easier , which is also probably not intentional and not a question of taste.
Still, I respect your dedication and hard work. You guys are steering a battleship with two enlisted men and an officer, which is something. But maybe a bit more time would have done this a service. I mean, if you can find the time, you can still adapt some stats.

[Mojko]

I don't understand those people who claim they don't care about historical accuracy. Why is it a nitpick to expect a game supposedly about WWII to be historically accurate?

Let me clarify that. I care about historical accuracy and I would like it to be as historically accurate as reasonably possible, however it's still secondary to the gameplay. Let me join you for a moment on the complain train and point out some unrealistic stuff about this game:

- recon planes with unlimited fuel
- possible for vehicles (even very heavy ones) to cross a river without bridges
- small ships providing unlimited costal supply without the need of going back to the base and load more supplies
- you are keeping your core forces from battles that historically ended by surrender (Bataan / US)
- turn based gameplay (that's very unrealistic)

I could go on, but I think the point should be clear. It's a game, you're supposed to have fun. If battleships are in game I want to use them at least in some situation / strategies. I don't care if historically these vessels were obsolete by WW2 and the naval warfare was centred around carriers.

Also I would like to point out that there is lot of criticism around, but not so much of constructive criticism. I'm ok if people point out things that are bad, but it's not really that helpful if you are don't provide at least a brief solution and explain why is it good for the game. Here's an example of my own criticism structure:

Issue: submarines are still underused even if I really want to invest in this tech tree, I feel like I'm committing too much supply and I gain inefficient tradeoff compared to other naval units
Solution: lower the supply of submarines to 1 from 2
Desired effect: submarine usage will increase, but still remains balanced, i.e. I don't think that swarming the sea with ton of submarines would work out
Side comments: I tested this proposal with land recon units and that one is a little bit tricky because swarming the enemy with ton of land recon units is actually viable strategy in early stages of the war