People can speak their mind if they choose. I suggest you quit reading about the players complaining if it bothers you
Do you buy software? They are almost always released imperfect. They apologize, send out a fix, and move on.
S**t happens and sometimes it really sucks. We (Americans) live in a suit happy country where we want to find someone to blame for every thing that may affect us in a negative way and demand recompense for it. The terrible reality is that nothing and no one no where are perfect and sometimes we just have to deal with it.
“All life is sorrowful” sayeth the Buddha.
My 3 cents (inflation sucks too)
IMHO, if some one generally tries really hard to get it right, on the few occasions that something goes wrong you give them a break. Sure, sometimes Clint makes a decision that I really disagree with. But you have to get back to i/ is he trying to do the right thing ii/ could you realistically expect the MEPBM guys to do the job any better than they do already.
Yes and no respectively, I’d say
"if you dont know your product, you are selling say so.
say that at any given moment our months (or years) of hard work can end in defeat for any reason whatsoever."
I don’t use the word “promise” - did so once for my wife and that’s a risk, but for something less important I won’t use the word - leads to double standards as well IMO. I believe the product is sound - it wouldn’t have lasted over 10 years and thousands of games therefore 10s of thousands of turns but there are very rare situations that need the personal touch to sort out sometimes and this is one of them.
I do know my product within the limitations I’ve set myself William. One thing I won’t do is look at the code to find the answers. Very rarely we get the programmer to look at it and give us the answer if we can’t work it out ourselves (so the 1000 game was needed for that - we couldn’t work out why the game hadn’t ended but then thought it might be a turn related thing as many aspects of the game are so asked Colin to check into that) any other way but for example this is the first time it’s come up so it’s something that needs to be sorted and we have clarified the situation. The fact that around 100 games of 1000 have been run and it never came up indicates the rarity of it all. So it can’t end for any reason whatsoever, it can end for very specific reasons that always have a reason for doing so but sometimes in those very rare situations we need to adjudicate.
Of course games can go wrong, but something like this is very, very rare so it’s hard to plan for it advance. It needs a GM to look after it when it goes awry. Who’d have thought that GSI would have a different code to the rules they’ve put forward in the book! No surprise it’s caused problems and unfortunately players have suffered (me too but heh I’m paid to suffer!) :o
As for opening up the code I agree with Steve and most players seem to want hidden aspects of the game. It would quickly become more boring to play if we opened up the code to everyone and would lead to a different playing field (not level) where programmers most able to understand the code would be at an advantage (for example). One guy in another PBM once re-wrote the code for the entire game to emulate the program - ended up more efficient than the game itself.
Hope that helps.
Clint
Since another issue has been brought up in a different thread I thought I would make a comment or two.
The Hostage limit is not mentioned in the rules and if it was reached I doubt the team doing the Kidnapping would not realise for a few turns and its exceedingly unlikely that Clint & Co would do anything about it so the other team gains an advantage possibly enough to have damaged the enemy quite heavily. Now this happens because the game doesn’t allow it…
So when a team wins by a way that although seems to be legal according to the rulebook but the game does not allow it. How can you justify ending the game ?
Thomas
Guys on the “losing team”,
how can you possibly blame Clint for your “assumption”? Remember what is said about when you ASSUME? you make an ASS out of U & ME? There’s a reason for that saying. Assumptions are personal (or in this case the result of group-think by an entire team). They’re not shared. They’re different from one person to another.
I think you guys (many of whom I know and think are great guys) are wacko on this particular topic for this particular game. Take a deep breath, step back and look at the situation. Honestly, you guys made a bad assumption and you lost the game because of it. The other team played by the rules.
it’s just that simple.
Dave
The Rulebook specifically states “Do this and you win.” So the other team accomplished that exactly.
Regarding kidnapping players and creating population centres, for example, along with most everything else in the book, it’s talks in terms of probabilities, “reasonableness” and other such words. Well, it’s reasonable that my ally’s 30 emissary creates a camp in the mountains on turn 2 but my 50 fails in the plains. It’s reasonable that there are limits, like the explosive population growth that occurs from turn 1 to turn 10 or less. As for kidnapping, I’d hazard a guess that was an early game or playtest issue that the game designers implemented for a reason. Just my gues.
But the whole game end thing: If you succeeded with the One Ring order 2 times while possessing the thing and the game DIDN’t end, you’d certain insist on getting the win. If you had conclusive evidence that all opposing nations had collapsed, you’d damn well insist the game ended. And if you had all the strategic pops, same thing.
Short Story: They’re different.
With Dave here… well not the personal bits but the concept that you guys assumed that the rules weren’t in force but they were. Veos comment are also pretty spot on also.
Clint
You can clean up the rulebook without publishing lots of pages of algorithms.
For example Steal Gold is listed as hard though 40A’s can do it. Navy/Armies need to reworded
There are other orders also that should be revaluated and other sections that should be clarified.
Still no valid reason to not have clear concise rules in place.