News Call of Duty 2 fans to strike

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/29/cod2_strike/

 

Hmm... it's good to make a point, but I don't see it doing a whole lot. They made their money already and game companies tend to think along those lines these days by the looks of it.

 

Reminds me of EA and their utter lack of support for a lot of their games, particularly Command and Conquer. That is, until a lot of people started complaining and they started fixing things in Generals and Zero Hour. (oh Westwood, you died too young)

 

kind of off topic here but has anyone tried other westwood games apart from their RTS such as dragon strike, the graphics might be very dated but it's fun:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=335

at the moment were attempting to find out if the PC version is actualy a port of the XBOX version of COD2. I will get back to you when I find out.

 

Ahhh Westwood... happy memories. Dune II nearly made me flunk a year in high school, C&C was another narrow miss, Dune 2000 was utter crap (fortunately), C&C2 or Red Alert never really did it for me, but Emperor: Battle for Dune was truly excellent IMHO. I suppose that was the final Westwood release before they got sucked into EA or am I getting my dates mixed up?

What particularly amazed and disappointed me was that the graphics engine for C&C:Generals was so incredibly taxing on the hardware. That in itself points to sloppy coding with it being "just" an RTS, but the engine also sucked in comparison to Emperor. The graphics of Emperor might not have been 100% on par with Generals, but the engine was SOO much smoother. I wonder what went wrong inbetween those two titles.

To get back to the topic: Good luck to those gamers. I really hope their actions and their "sacrifice" (abstinence?) helps to instill a more customer-oriented attitude in the publisher's mind.

 

How do you plan on finding out such a thing?

 

What I found to be truley a kick in westwood employee's balls was on the Generals main page during the 10 year anniversary event they went around and asked their EA developers about their fond memories of the CnC franchise. After each name they listed what games they had worked on, and each one was "CnC: Generals/Zero Hour." They never had a single brain function on the production of the games that makes the 10 year anniversary so special....

Live on Petroglyph studios!

 

how good was dune 2! its freeware now, if anyone wants a copy i can host it all for you (and the added levels // level editor that they released a few years after)

 

Dune 2 was quality!! The only problem was limited person/vehicle # you could make and multiunit selection.

 

bunch of cry babies if you ask me.

Oh and i too miss westwood. I fell in love w/ RA:2. sadly dune2 was before i got a computer. never really liked battle for dune, every level was the same thing. and generals didn't really do it for me either.

 

RA2 > *
i love that game so much
runs on just about anything too, whiled away many an hour in college playing it on shite school laptops

 

ott tbh

why do they think they have a right to know the answer to these questions? When they bought CoD2, they bought it 'as is' it says no where that by such a such a date CoD2 Patch 1 will be released etc, fair enough it would be nice to know such details but they are just acting like children

 

Maybe they are children? But at least they brought attention to the issues that they want taken care of, it's an interesting ploy to get plublicity.

Back to Dune 2, that was the first real game that I had installed in my computer. My friend came over with 20 odd disketts and some pizza and it was time to play Dune 2. Masterfull game. I loved C&C, and Red Alert was a great follow up. But the rest of the series turned me off from playing anything C&C related ever again.

 

what is the patch supposed to fix? I dont have any problems w/ CoD:2. then again i dont play online cuz the mp sux anyways.

 

I agree. I think they're crying over nothing... and I also dont think it really warrents publicity at all. This has happened before, I have seen petitions in forums about changes made which displeased the userbase. I have seen developers ignore the userbase for various reasons.

What is so bad about CoD2 that warrents this? Why does this reflect bad on the developers? Its my opinion that cheating is in the hands of the community. The servers are hosted by users.. correct? Doesnt that mean that administering and policing the servers becomes the users responsibility?

In the days of CS when hacking was horrible, people cried to valve about it but they did their part by policing their servers. Great communities spawned from that, with great leadership and administrators to monitor gamers who joined the server.

Instead of crying for a patch that will likely only fix an issue long enough for another no-life fool to break the game again so they can gain an unfair advantage.. why not do something that will really make a difference. Start policing your server... be ruthless about it... build a good community of people you know well who play often.. and if you suspect anyone of cheating in the least.. ban em for a day or 2. If cheating is that much of a problem that will be the only truely viable long-term solution.

My guess is they are children... and all they do is clog the net with news of their crying over useless matters cause they lack the wit to actually do something about it. They depend on others and use blackmail as a means to get what they want. Its similar to kids on forums who cry about people cheating to get their post count up... whats the point? get a life!

 

This says it all. They bought the game, if they don't like it they've got other ways of dealing with it. Perhaps they should sell their copy on ebay or to a store that buys preplayed games and try to recoup some of the money they spent on the game. But what's more is that they're going to strike for a day! What a joke. If you want to get something done, you have to go at it full steam ahead. Not playing the game and taking the servers down for 24 hours isn't going to get anything done. All that says is that they like it enough to be right back at it once the 24 hours is up. They might get something done if people started selling their games en masse or went on "strike" until their questions are answered, but this is just pointless and they're just going to make themselves suffer.

I think the real solution here is to stop buying games right when they come out. This will serve as a sign to developers that people aren't willing to throw down $50 on some half-finished product. In addition perhaps game reviews need to be more thorough and reviewers need to be given more time with titles before they put the results out there. That way the consumers will be made aware of any glaring problems with the software when they make their purchasing decisions.

 

while i can agree to not spending your money on a half-assed game(Enter the Matrix anyone?), every game that i have bought that has been made by the cod team hasn't had the need for any patches(for me that is). It's not a full time mp so the developers shouldnt really have to release patches. Valve(speaking of sp games that have mp) are one of the few developers that continually update their games.

I can see the need for punkbuster, BUT the issues that punkbuster fixes are exploited within a matter of days. Americas Army uses punkbuster, and while it does a pretty good job, the admins are what really stop cheaters. These people have no lives, they try to make up for how small the units are by exploiting a game. And they will do this with or without anticheat programs.

Like Asphix said, it is the responsibility of person who owns the server to police it.

 

listen quietly.... can you hear that? its the combined sniggering of the cheaters who realise they have the power to upset the community at large so much they are going to go on 'strike'. if someone is immoral enough to cheat on such a game, they are immoral enough to find this highly amusing, and immoral enough to use the new cheats if/when an anti-cheat system is imposed.


as for the 'strike'.......

<rant>

strikes only ever work if you have something of value to remove. workers strikes work because the company loses its workforce, thus stops making products, thus profits. student strikes work because the universaties are legally obliged to provide the training they have been paid for. customer strikes (product boycotts) work because the customer stops spending, the company loses profits.

so, the servers are hosted by fans. they have allready paid for the game and are producing no income for the producers. the free publicity will only benefit the games producers, not the players.

so, what, exactly, is this supposed to do to encourage activision and infinity to do something? activision and infinity could simply ignore it, as a 'punishment', (i.e. if you dont stop whining we'll give you something to whine about! quick, someone edit that eula and get some licensing options in there!). ok, there may be some degree of 'multiplayer community makes a game more attractive' but seriously, if *everyone* took their servers offline, how long do you think it would be before new people brought servers online? shall we count in nano-seconds or pico-seconds?

i think the large majority of opinion on here is correct. if someone is cheating on *your* server then its *your* responsibility to control it. if you cant control your own server, you shouldnt be running it. this is just an example of people trying to blame someone else for their own inability to control the technology at their disposal.

</rant>

 

well the plan was to get my sister to ask one of her freinds who was on the devlopment team.. but as per usual she's forgoten