Combat Mission status

[Jarhead0331]

Try rolling back your driver to one that was released in December. That should do the trick.

Ouch. That should go over about as well as a heart attack. Good luck with that one.

Yeah, I've seen that suggestion by users on the CM forums (and the games seemed to be fine in December) but I'm not thrilled with "rolling back" drivers to something 9 months old (nor am I sure how to do it).  I get that Battlefront can't be expected to respond to every change by nVidia or Microsoft the second they occur but after 9 months, I would expect Battlefront to issue a patch.

I think expecting the customer to roll back progress to the possible detriment of everything else is an unreasonable solution unless very temporary. Its almost as bad as telling your customer to turn off your AV software in order to get their game running. No thanks. 

[Philippe]

I played and loved the early Combat Mission games.  Every time I start wondering if I might consider taking the plunge and buying some of the new ones, I read something like this and look for other sources of frustration.

I'm surprised Battlefront stays in business with this kind of thing going on.

[Elvis]

I think expecting the customer to roll back progress to the possible detriment of everything else is an unreasonable solution unless very temporary. Its almost as bad as telling your customer to turn off your AV software in order to get their game running. No thanks.

Not only is it reasonable but it is fairly common. Google somefink like "nVidia updated their drivers and now my game won't work".  You will see all manner of games that had/have issues because of updated video drivers. Pretty much all games can have this type of issue from time to time. The onus is on the 3rd party software, whether it's nVidia or a sound card driver or Radeon or anything else that is third party. Otherwise software producers (large and small) would spend unnecessary time chasing down issue with each driver release for every possible 3rd party producer. Here's an example of a Radeon driver and a big game, Dragon Age: https://community.amd.com/thread/215905

That is what is unreasonable. Expecting software companies to devote time coming up with patches to fix problems caused by 3rd party producers. It makes my head spin thinking about what would be involved to monitor the effects of any changes to the massive amount of possibilities. On top of that, it is some weird unknown combination. I have the same driver for the card on my laptop as the people who have experienced the issue and mine works fine. So, what causes it to be fine on one computer and not on another? Who knows. How it interacts with the processor? Maybe. How it interacts with the specific RAM on someones system? Maybe. How it interacts with any component on someone's system? Maybe. Certainly not something that Battlefront (or any other gaming company) should be working on a patch to fix. The next driver that they release may cause someone else to have a problem.

Fortunately, these are not that common. And frankly, it's a miracle that a workaround was found. A crash like that could take months of banging your head against the wall trying to diagnose before it was discovered.

Ditto AV software. I've probably mentioned on these forums before that I stopped using them a long time ago. They have gotten so lazy that they aren't worth the effort. As long as you have a basic sense of what might be dangerous to click on or install something from a site that you don't trust it is hard to have a problem. And they change what they determine to be a threat even more frequently than driver producers.

[Grim.Reaper]

I really should stay out of this thread.....not sure why I even consider supporting this company and its games.  For the first time, I can honestly say it is no longer a lock to purchase any more of their products.

[stolypin]

I think expecting the customer to roll back progress to the possible detriment of everything else is an unreasonable solution unless very temporary. Its almost as bad as telling your customer to turn off your AV software in order to get their game running. No thanks.

Not only is it reasonable but it is fairly common. Google somefink like "nVidia updated their drivers and now my game won't work".  You will see all manner of games that had/have issues because of updated video drivers. Pretty much all games can have this type of issue from time to time. The onus is on the 3rd party software, whether it's nVidia or a sound card driver or Radeon or anything else that is third party. Otherwise software producers (large and small) would spend unnecessary time chasing down issue with each driver release for every possible 3rd party producer. Here's an example of a Radeon driver and a big game, Dragon Age: https://community.amd.com/thread/215905

That is what is unreasonable. Expecting software companies to devote time coming up with patches to fix problems caused by 3rd party producers. It makes my head spin thinking about what would be involved to monitor the effects of any changes to the massive amount of possibilities. On top of that, it is some weird unknown combination. I have the same driver for the card on my laptop as the people who have experienced the issue and mine works fine. So, what causes it to be fine on one computer and not on another? Who knows. How it interacts with the processor? Maybe. How it interacts with the specific RAM on someones system? Maybe. How it interacts with any component on someone's system? Maybe. Certainly not something that Battlefront (or any other gaming company) should be working on a patch to fix. The next driver that they release may cause someone else to have a problem.

Fortunately, these are not that common. And frankly, it's a miracle that a workaround was found. A crash like that could take months of banging your head against the wall trying to diagnose before it was discovered.

Ditto AV software. I've probably mentioned on these forums before that I stopped using them a long time ago. They have gotten so lazy that they aren't worth the effort. As long as you have a basic sense of what might be dangerous to click on or install something from a site that you don't trust it is hard to have a problem. And they change what they determine to be a threat even more frequently than driver producers.

I hear you and as I said in a previous post, I don't expect Battlefront to address every single issue every time nVidia or Microsoft makes a change.  But, at the same time, the CM titles rely upon "3rd party producers" to run and Battlefront cannot (or, at least, should not) bury their heads in the sand when changes affect their games.  Other games I play like Command: Modern Air & Naval Operations, Grigsby's WITE/WITW, and Graviteam Tactics frequently update their products to address issues.  Battlefront does not. 

[RyanE]

I gotta say, as far as the AV issue goes, I have never had an AV issue with any other game.  That includes Matrix, Steam, and Graviteam (independent from Steam).  With any CM game, I have to specifically white list all BFC directories.  It becomes a pain on reinstalls.  I can't count the number of times I have missed a directory and spent an hour or so tracking down the exe file and figuring it out.

[dinsdale]

I played and loved the early Combat Mission games.  Every time I start wondering if I might consider taking the plunge and buying some of the new ones, I read something like this and look for other sources of frustration.

Everyone's milage varies, but if you are not an edge case you will probably never notice an issue with the DRM. If you do, their tech support responds well and can sort it out. I haven't had any driver issues, but I haven't upgraded in a while, so I haven't experienced any issues.

However, the games are sublime. I've always waited for a patch or two before buying, and by that time they are terrific.

Many other games share either a hostile community, passive aggressive staff or staff who are just their own company's worst enemy, Battlefront is a rare case of having all three, but if you stay away from the site, ignore their nonsense and aren't in a hurry for new games, the games are worth it. I understand why people give up, but don't let the collective poor experience influence you.

[Grim.Reaper]

Many other games share either a hostile community, passive aggressive staff or staff who are just their own company's worst enemy, Battlefront is a rare case of having all three, but if you stay away from the site, ignore their nonsense and aren't in a hurry for new games, the games are worth it. I understand why people give up, but don't let the collective poor experience influence you.

That's a lot to overlook :)

[HoodedHorseJoe]

I understand why people give up, but don't let the collective poor experience influence you.

I mean... that sounds exactly like what you should let influence you. If you're unhappy with an experience, you don't buy into it.

[Queeg]

I enjoy their games immensely, so I just play them and ignore the rest.

[markh]

I played and loved the early Combat Mission games.  Every time I start wondering if I might consider taking the plunge and buying some of the new ones, I read something like this and look for other sources of frustration.

I'm surprised Battlefront stays in business with this kind of thing going on.

I am interested in the heat and passion that seems to accompany Combat Mission threads so I thought I would add my 20 cents worth.  Philippe, the answer to your comment is that typically a company stays in business for +18 years because essentially the number of satisfied customers who continue to support the company's products makes the business model viable.  Sure there are dissatisfied customers - and passionately dissatisfied ones by the look of things.  Reading the postings, I would be unhappy if the things being quoted here were happening to me - they do not happen to me, and apparently not to the majority of the CM client base which means that there appears to be a sufficiently loyal repeat customer base.  The reality is that I have every game produced by CM - i.e. CMx1 and CMx2 games.  I love them - have not experienced any of the issues being reported in this thread, and would thoroughly recommend them to anyone.  If you have not tried any CMx2 games - I recommend that you try at least one and then you decide for yourself.

I have Graviteam products, ARMA 2 and 3, Steel Beasts Pro PE 4, VBS 2 and 3 and enjoy all of them.  Having said that, CMx2 has some unique features that means that despite the variety of my wargame sources, CMx2 games continue to be on my menu years after they have been acquired.  There would not be a fortnight that goes by (when I am not away from home on business) in which I do not play at least 1 CMx2 game.

I do not seek to minimise or detract from any genuine complaints that some of the posters have referred to on this thread - my sympathies to them.  However, I thought I would provide some balance to the discussion as an extremely satisfied CM customer that has experienced none of these problems.  I would be disappointed if adverse publicity in this thread caused prospective new customers to not try the product or cause an adverse impact on the viability of future products from that stable.  I say this because many of the products I have acquired (and now love) have come about because I took a risk based on some positive reviews on this website, despite seeing adverse comments about the same products/ or the management of the companies making the products (e.g. criticisms of "dongles" notwithstanding).

For the record, I am an arms' length customer with no association, relationship or interest in CM.

[Boggit]

I enjoy their games immensely, so I just play them and ignore the rest.

Maybe I'm lucky. I find the odd glitch but I'm a fanboy of the series and they don't really bother me. When I have had a problem I've contacted Elvis who usually has an answer within 24 hours. On my personal experience I can't fault him. For the size of the company, I think they do pretty well considering.

My $0.02, and feel free to disagree if you wish.

I've been here before and my opinion hasn't changed. Do I like the DRM? No, not at all, but I haven't had many problems and if I do I'll email Elvis who fixes things pretty quick so I don't stress out about it.

[Cyrano]

I think people would be better about all this if there was a credible alternative to CM, but, for those of us who don't play single-player games, there isn't.

The niche BF feeds is a passionate and hungry one.

And, as I've said before, I've not had problem one with the DRM.  Would I prefer it on Steam?  Who wouldn't.

[Yskonyn]

Re: driver suggestion.
I disagree with Elvis that its reasonable and common to refer back to 9 month old drivers. I would immediately drop any game that required me to do so.
I do find it reasonable to refer back to the previous version or perhaps the version before that IF the issue was well known in the driver set itself and causes problems with more games.

That said, I'll echo Boggit with my experience with CM, its DRM and its customer service.
Overall happy camper here and I own all CM titles save for CMFI.
I play the Cmx2 series of game very regularly still.

[Elvis]

I'm not going to beat this driver conversation like a dead horse. But to explain what I have seen. Not everyone with this particular driver experienced it. If that were the case and it was a more permanent set up with nVidia then sure, you'd have to look at changing something within the game. But this seemingly random combination that affected a very few (I would guess at least half of the players here have nVidia cards and many have or had the February driver and didn't miss a beat). I was fortunate to have found a quick and easy fix for anyone who did contact me and had it. If it had been a more widespread issue I would have dug into it more deeply and now that I am typing this I wish that I had. My standard first suggestion to folks with crashes over the years is to ask them to update their drivers. I should have done this in the case of the parson who posted here because looking at the GeForce driver page there have been 7 new drivers since the problematic February release. Seven.....in 6 months.....

So, I'll change my initial reply to stolypin should have been:

Try updating your video card drivers. If it doesn't help open up a ticket on the Help Desk.

(Lesson, once again, learned)