It seems like you haven't read reviews for your own mod either, or at least glossed over the most critical ones. If you'll notice, a lot of people are saying they would rather have fewer added missions than a lot of threadbare ones. Quite a few are even at a loss as to why you would pump HCTM1 with so many missions that look and play the damn same, it makes that little sense. Again, it's YOU that decided to fill the mod with low-quality missions. I have no quarrel with community mappers who make maps just for the hell of it. On their own, they serve their purpose: for mappers to have fun making and playing in them and to develop their skills. As part of this mod, they take away from the cohesion of the campaign. They even take away from how good some of YOUR own missions are. I appreciated the hell out of new tank missions: something any COD2 campaign expansion sorely needed and B2F failed to deliver.
Now, I haven't read the HCTM2 Manual prior to this, but now that I have, it clears up nothing. Okay, there's a new 7-mission French campaign. But what's changed compared to the mission lineup in HCTM1? If I recall, there were French missions in there too. Have you added these new French missions on top of that, or do these replace them? Is the original mixed grab bag of community maps of varying quality still there? And have you addressed at all the flawed mission design that was present in HCTM1? As far as I've seen from the second manual, you've said you've "tightened up things". Not clear enough. I would have asked my first question anyway.
And you are apparently not upset. Sure, kamerad. That's why you allcaps'd at me with several exclamation points after I leveled criticism at the one aspect of your mod I really have a problem with. And your go-to counter has always been "you're not appreciating the effort, maaaaan!". Bro, you managed to re-code a game from what is practically PC gaming's teen years. No one can take that away from you. Your gameplay improvements, while a little excessive in the amount of toys it gives us, far surpass what Back2Fronts or any COD2 mod ever achieved. All I and others like me have been saying is that you could've at least tried to curate your map lineup. Community maps are always going to vary wildly in quality. But you made the ultimate decision in what to include in your mod. The factor here is not our demand, but your ambition.
You need to look at this more objectively, since you're clearly very in love with your baby and all the high praise from all the nostalgic people hungry for fresh COD2 content isn't helping. We all understand that you're just one guy, but goddamn you didn't HAVE to add the whole freaking war into the game all by your lonesome, at least not all in one sitting. I would rather a short campaign that has spent all the time in the world in the cooker than a whole suite of them in which you never know if you're going to play the same map again or if it's actually good this time. Honestly that sort of lootbox keep-your-fingers-crossed thing is what kept me playing through the HCTM1 campaign for so long.
Hell imagine if, instead of uploading a release with all the campaigns you wanted to add, you just uploaded a release with your gameplay features and added each campaign incrementally with each update. Every one of those campaigns would probably play as tightly as possible if not the same as the original ones. You'd be a goddamn legend among the modding community at large for your commitment to your product. But again if you didn't have the time, we don't really need more than a couple new missions. Back2Fronts had precious few ones and I still played through the campaign with it twice. You know why? Because although they had that homebrew community map feel, they were distinct. They were well-curated. And they added to the overall singleplayer campaign experience.
Please do not think that we who criticized the missions you've added are against this mod. Even the guy who was the most vocal about it in the reviews gave this mod a 7. That's how good the rest of it is. I was one of the ones who was hanging on your every word back in 2017. In the end even though I'm probably one of the biggest naysayers on here I still have a lot of faith in this mod. It's the closest thing we'll get to a COD2 remaster. You did what IW couldn't be ****** to do and that's to give new life to one of the games that gave *them* life. That type of passion is always admirable.
sowp27
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