Waiting to buy and future patches

[PeeDeeAitch]

I hope you are not married, in a serious relationship, or if you are that your significant other is patient and understanding about lost time with them. You will need such.  Other than that, have fun with this game!

[fsp]

I am relatively new to this forum and I think my biggest contribution so far were two critical posts

Yet I always feel the need to jump threads like this one and say
a) The game is very, very polished out of the box. Incredibly stable, I have not had a single CTD in >100 hours playing. I own multi-million dollar releases like GTA, COD etc. and they all have crashed on me. It has a slick UI (could be better in parts, but still a massive step forward for wargames) and allows you to just dive in and attack stuff.

b) The game is in no ways broken. It is very, very good right out of the box and while it has some issues, those are being adressed and worked on. I have yet to read that someone who actually bought the game went back and shelved it.

c) While I did not buy WITP (seems more like a chore than a game to me), I noticed for how long and how lovingly it was supported and this ensured me that WITE would get the same attention (provided of course that enough people bought it to justify the effort) and so I am happily enjoying being part of this very, very good game turning into a brilliant one.

d) The 1941 campaign is not broken. IMO it heavily favours the Soviets (let's please not discuss this in this thread) but nevertheles I was able to win decisively in 1943 in just my second German campaign on normal and had a blast. Head to head has me worried right now, and I am one of those too that believe that head to head is the real experience. But I have faith that this will be worked out as well.

If you love serious strategy games, buy it. You cannot go wrong.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: entwood

I am sure there are others like myself

There are 2 reasons to not buy a desired game when first released;
A) Wait for patches which are almost always going to happen (at least a few times depending on game and company)
B) Price comes down (not expecting here)
In both cases, the customer benefits except for having to wait.

I almost clicked buy a few times in the last few days but I see a lot of 'stuff'; Winter '41 and other that is making me still hesitate. Is there any news about content and estimate of when a new patch will happen? If the next patch is big stuff and soon I would wait. If it will be 6 months wait then maybe buy now and just live with issues and have a bit of fun.

The WitE is continuously evolving and improving... this is non-stop process... you don't have to be afraid that patches / enhancements / improvements will suddenly stop... just check other 2By3 Matrix releases... [:)]

Thus, IMHO, you can safely get WitE right now and enjoy the game! [;)]

BTW, the 1st winter will be tested and improved in reasonably short time (but not 6 months - it will happen much much sooner - just check Joel's posted other thread about our first v1.04 testing).

In the meantime, if someone feels that 1st winter is not OK for 1941 campaign, there are plenty of smaller scenarios and other campaigns (1942-1945 for example) to play and get accustomed to the WitE! [:)]


Leo "Apollo11"

[Zemke]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

The betas have slowed because we want to make a change for first winter before we release the next beta, and we needed to fix a few bugs before we could get there. Then we have to allow at least a little testing before release. We think we've got the bugs fixed that we needed, so we are now discussing what winter changes to make this weekend.

I think the key is to tweak the combat model so the blizzard is not the primary game balancing method. If the German infantry strength is close to historical levels at certain time frames AND rates of advance match historical, then I would say you are very close. Good Luck getting there.

[marty_01]

Thanks for the update on V1.04 Joel.

[holley]

Just wanted to say thanks to you all that took the time to respond to the OP.  Bought the game Saturday because of all your inputs.  Had been on the fence for a couple weeks.
Thanks again.

M.

[entwood]

I spent the bulk of this past weekend playing vs. the AI.  I played the tutorial briefly but found it not very interesting so I dived into a Grand Campaign soon after.  If you devote a hard but fun weekend to it, I think most customers will have a decent understanding of the game.  It would probably take another 2 or 3 days, switching sides, to understand the differences in the Axis and Soviet sides.  I guess that adds up to a week's time of "training". 

Some humble suggestions from my experience:

1. Play the AI on the challenging level or above in preparation for playing real opponents or just for more challenge vs. AI.

2. Have the manual open to refer to.  At the same time, make a little word or notepad doc to take and save your own notes unless you have a great memory, especially for some of the "hot-keys" and writing down how important concepts and functions work "in your own words".

3. The game does convey and is a professional product.  The production values are excellent and solid.  This is all very impressive.  This will make a customer feel better after paying more than any other game out there.

4. The game can have a bit too much of a quartermaster's feel to it at times, but some players surely like that. I like to fight and not check every gas can.

5. I'm still having some trouble and delays trying to find Headquarters for units at times.  I wish the highlighting of HQ and peer counters would be a little easier to determine, especially on a crowded map.  It would also be nice to select and have highlighting categories of units such as armor, motorized, infantry, rail-repair, because it is fairly easy to miss units.

6. Also a nuisance is the need to De-select units while moving; move 1 unit, it goes through a hex with another unit, and if not very careful, when 1st unit continues it's move the other in the hex goes along also, even when you don't want that to happen.  There is an Undo button just in case, because it will happen.

7. I would set the preferences 'message level' at 1 otherwise there is way to much combat messaging for a big scenario.

8. There are some interesting mods available.  Right now, I found and use alternate unit counters, different fonts, some flags, and I'm trying out some other ones also, but just graphics changes. This need to be done manually because the mods are not at the point of having installers/uninstallers with backup original files.

Once the next beta is out, I hope to play PBEM games with some fellow players.