Tides of War

But bear with me. I really like the game. I didn't at first but it's been drastically improved by the patch. I just want to ask one thing. Why the deliberate attempts to remove all possibility of cheating and interference from the single player game?

I fully understand that it has absolutely no place in multiplayer. I also know that it DOES detract from the experience; the challenge is lost and what could have been a tough but rewarding game is reduced in difficulty and time to complete. However sometimes I just don't care. It'd be nice, occasionally, to just sit down and treat it as a carefree arcade game, and you know, become invisible/invincible, travel round three times as fast and blow up everything with my special nuclear goat cannon - simply not taking it all so seriously for once. Such possibilities also add to the replayability of a title once completed - you can go back and simply waste some time fooling around.

I know what you'll say; "there's no need to cheat" and "practice makes perfect; just keep trying" but maybe I just don't want to invest as many hours and as much effort as some people - at least not always. Maybe you think I'm looking at the wrong genre, but like I said, I DO enjoy this game. I'm sure this is seen as the wrong attitude but instant gratification suits me fine. I play games to amuse myself and as a time-filler. As it is, I may well not finish this title because of the disproportionate amount of time it'll take a less competent player such as myself to complete. That to me, is more of a loss than 'cheapening the experience'.

Please don't slate me for my obvious lack of seaworthiness; at least I'm not one of those "ware cn i find out iz tha cheats yall?!!!!111!" clowns - it's just my opinion that not everyone necessarily benefits from removing such options.

Cheers! Rob huh2:

Hi Rob,

You have some valid points including some things we've talked about. The biggest challenge is this: The Singleplayer code base IS the multiplayer codebase with a few exceptions. If we add cheats, etc. we have to code twice as much to allow for the different builds.

We have added an easy mode in the patched version that makes you uber tough and well oversupplied (4x) with ammunition in patrols. That was about the best we could do.

Everytime we find something that we can do to make it easier to win and cater to the "quick, fun and overdone" desires out there we will.

Thanks for posting.

--East

I don't know why but........ I found your post refreshing I guess it's the honesty and the lack of whining buxton: I too sometimes feel like logging on and just killing everything in sight to fill an extra 15 minutes I have to spare. (If you tell anyone I said this I'll deny it!)

If you can get through either the German or LFN campaign May I suggest logging on to a Battle Cruiser and run the mission where you get to sink about 15 tankers (someone name that mission for me) and various DD's. I think you will find it fits the bill for what you ask

LOL im sorry but can i use a qoute for my sig?

Thanks. It's certainly nice to be able to talk to the team behind it. I'm supposedly a software engineer so I fully understand the difficulties behind creating such a product, and you indeed should be proud of it.

Having hooked up a microphone for the first time today (surprisingly good voice system by the way), I have to say I'm finding it MUCH easier simply because of the extra information available through that. I advise anyone who's struggling to try this.

I wonder if fully scalable difficulty is the answer. You could have preset difficulty templates (Novice, Easy, Medium, Hard, Nightmare etc. etc.) and a Custom one where you can set the different options independently - maybe permitting something like no damage or infinite ammo. A few recent games have adopted this approach. It's a sort of reasonable compromise between cheating and realism.

Although I have no idea of the multiplayer architecture, this could surely be controlled by the server as a session constant. This could also lead to more interesting and diverse online battles. What do you reckon?

Hm. Well, being an MMO, wouldnt that be rather difficult?

Perhaps when the LAN client is developed it would certainly possible, but I wouldnt expect that until after the MMO version has a solid foundation.