Quote:
Originally Posted by Alain H. Dawson
We're doing a survey on what Ogre fans most want to see added, upgraded, and/or fixed in the Ogre video game. Please respond with your top three choices of what Auroch should prioritize as they work to improve the game. Also, what new features, options, and/or material would you be excited to see? Your answers can be anything from practical to pie in the sky (Ogrethulhu, anyone?).
Aaaaand GO!
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I'll focus on the "should be fixed before all else" items
1. Fix all outstanding bugs - I’m cheating by putting these together, but they are all related-but-different. There are three general classes of bugs that need to be fixed:
a. Rules bugs - Most of the remaining issues are terrain-related, especially where road/rail is involved. A prime example is a GEV getting a road bonus moving from water to a bridge and continuing along the road. This fails on almost every level of rule regarding how bridges work (illegal move, illegal bonus, etc), but it’s also not the only rules issue. It just happens to be a very visible one. It should really go without saying that the existing rules should be solid before anything new is done.
b. Gameplay bugs - The last update tried to address some of the multiplayer issues, game save/load issues, etc. While there was improvement, I’m seeing that there are still bug reports being made related to online play. Nothing kills game acceptance faster than losing progress or being force to forfeit (and lose ranking points) because the player interaction is borked.
c. Scenario Editor bugs - Arguably one of the biggest potentials being squandered because of bugs is the ability to make your own scenarios and share them. There are so many bugs in the scenario editor that they are hard to count; it’s also a real black eye on the game right now. When someone puts hours into designing a scenario, only to have it broken or lost because of a bug, it’s a real motivation killer. We lost Tim K and all of his work (a multitude of posted scenarios) as a direct result of this (not to mention some passionate words on the subject that don’t help the brand, as it were).
2. Add the missing “standard” armor units - This is defined loosely as “Any basic armor/buildings from Ogre, G.E.V. and Shockwave” LGEVs, et al. This does _not_ include Lasers, Cruise Missiles and Crawlers. This has nothing to do with my bias against them, but rather because they add another layer of complexity the Video Game can’t easily support (LOS, and out of turn attacks on CMs for starters). It doesn’t make any sense why some of these basic units weren’t added at release. Especially the LGEV, which already has the rules in-game to support everything it needs, should be an “easy” add. Trucks and Hovertrucks might be a little harder because there aren’t any existing rules to handle their terrain movement, but I would definitely add them before CMs/Lasers. It also includes making buildings and structures that exist in the Nightfall Scenario available to the Scenario Editor.
3. Better interaction between terrain types while building - A lot of scenario development in the Scenario Creator is severely hamstrung by the fact terrain is limited. The worst example of this is the inability to have road and rail sections in the same hex at the same time. This makes it impossible to recreate some of the existing maps, and more importantly, makes it impossible to do something rudimentary like a RR crossing; a hallmark of every G.E.V. map. There is no such thing as a proper river bridge (which probably contributes to “bridge rules” issues mentioned above), leaving you to fudge things in the scenario that rely on broken rules, or you simply accepting how it should work is not how it actually works, and play around it.
Short version: I want all the canon stuff to be bug free and work as expected/defined in the rules.