Gary Grigsby's War in the East Public Beta Update v1.11.02

[morvael]

Yes, but that still will be too subjective (from metrics you can easily find out how often Moscow falls and on which turn, asking "do you think Moscow falls to easily" is not the same thing).

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: morvael

Yes, but that still will be too subjective (from metrics you can easily find out how often Moscow falls and on which turn, asking "do you think Moscow falls to easily" is not the same thing).

What about "On your last game was Moscow captured by the Axis? Y/N In which turn was it captured? [Insert turn number here]"

[morvael]

I'm not sure we would get absolute truth that way, you can enter whatever you wish into an online poll.

[Telemecus]

Absolutely true - and true of all polls. The real question is of relative utility - you will still probably get a better idea of the general balance of the game across all players than just scanning comments of the few in the forums. And forum comments are even more subject to bias.

Some will state higher numbers, some lower - they will cancel each other out. But an objective question with a large sample is still the most accurate representation you can get.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Is there no way to include thise metrics tracking in WitE?

Not sure why it wasn't there in the first place, as a dev I would love to get all those statistics.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
Not sure why it wasn't there in the first place, as a dev I would love to get all those statistics.

I experienced three big software projects where I was working where the management information needs was specified from the beginning but kept getting kicked down the road. As the consumer launch date arrives it keeps getting postponed. And then in the end with commercial pressures everything is put into a working product for the end user and all other considerations are put to an aside. That was my experience with big well resourced commercial software. Given the limited resources and ambition of WitE I can quite see why this fell off the back end. It would not be for lack of good intentions! [:)]

[RKhan]

ORIGINAL: morvael

I would give a lot to have the tools in place modern games have - like DC3 Barbarossa, HOI4 - where certain metrics are reported from ALL played games online to developer statistic servers, and offer the most objective feedback possible, not limited to subjective biased opinions of the most vocal players only. But that's the reality we have here. If you want your voice or opinion to be heard - please write on the forum.

Also, I admit we're now at least 1 full year after I expected WitE2 to appear, where no one would play this game anymore and I would be free of the obligation to offer support. The longer we continue patching the game without proper testers and manual writer on board, the more it deviates from the original manual. For that I am sorry, but sadly we have to operate in such constrains. I still think the overall impact of the changes we made is positive, even if a few bugs slips unnoticed.

Just getting back to the game after some time off (moved to Wales, lovely place)...

I think you have testers, its everyone who signs up to the beta. I also think its to be expected that sometimes the new features don't work out and that doesn't bother me so long as they aren't promoted to the standard version. I seem to recall a couple years ago there was a new beta feature everyone hated but it got promoted, but perhaps my memory if faulty on this point.

As for the manual, it is a big deal and I imagine it puts off many potential new players. Have you ever consider posting it as a wiki and letting the community do the work? I got started once translating the pdf to word and then a wiki but the pdf to word was not clean and I didn't have the time to fix all the tables. Perhaps if you publish the original document someone more clever than me can set it up.

And thanks for all the hard work morvael!

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: RKhan
As for the manual, it is a big deal and I imagine it puts off many potential new players. Have you ever consider posting it as a wiki and letting the community do the work? I got started once translating the pdf to word and then a wiki but the pdf to word was not clean and I didn't have the time to fix all the tables. Perhaps if you publish the original document someone more clever than me can set it up.

There actually was a fan made wiki for a while - I even briefly saw it. But it crashed and disappeared due to some computer problem.

I guess the two lessons I draw from this are that
i) Only a wiki updated by users can hope to be (more) up to date as a useful source - patch notes are impenetrable and forums are just badly structured to find what you want
ii) A wiki cannot be hosted by users - you do need the developers to invest in the (minimal) costs/time for for making the wiki persist.

[morvael]

I had a private wiki on my own server once, but it was hacked and used to wipe my server. I'm not going to host another one [:)]. Are there some free wiki sites? What are their limitations? Is it worth to work on it when the game is so old and will be soon made obsolete by WitE2?

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: morvael
I had a private wiki on my own server once, but it was hacked and used to wipe my server. I'm not going to host another one [:)]. Are there some free wiki sites? What are their limitations? Is it worth to work on it when the game is so old and will be soon made obsolete by WitE2?

I guess others will know better on the wiki sites. My main point was probably for WitE2.0 - but yes I think it equally applies to WitE1.0 even now. How many times are the same questions answered - why do my planes not fly? How can I paradrop a unit? What do those numbers mean next to the commander? Answering once in a wiki will still save the same question on forums in the future. So even at this stage a crowd sourced wiki would be very productive.

My only question is would the ten quid or so a year subscription cost and the five minutes annually to renew it be something that the developers be willing to do? Would it be worth suggesting to them? That seems to be the only weak point of being left to the fan base. I am sure that would lead to at least an increase of one in sales for WitE1.0 - and that would already repay the cost several times over.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Agree Telemecus. I also believe that it would not be a vain effort, a wiki for WitE 1 will still be used (just look how many questions are asked on the forum and how many complains are there about the manual being out of date) and could be used as a test run for WitE 2 and other games of Matrix.

There are free wiki softwares and also pages where you can create your own one (here is an example: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Barad-d%C3%BBr ), but they contain allot of ads and not sure how well they can be configured to the needs of the game.

It requires Matrix to set up the system, I personally would be willing to convert what I can from the library to the wiki format once the system is set up. I am pretty convinced I would not be the only one.

Also, if Matrix is willing to share the raw data of the manual, it could be quickly updated by a team effort I think.

[Acidman]

Found a bug in the new patch.

Playing the Konrad scenario as Germany. The first thin I did was to change the HQ of 24th PzDiv to LVII Pz corps. When I did, the game freeze and I have to ctrl-alt-del to close the game.

Second try this worked, but instead froze when trying to change 18 SS Div, located in the same stack, to the same corps as above.

[morvael]

I will try to replicate this.