From - Wed Oct 23 13:07:18 1996 Path: netcom.com!howland.erols.net!EU.net!enews.sgi.com!news.cais.net!news2.cais.com!news From: "Edward D. Willis" Newsgroups: alt.games.mechwarrior2,rec.games.mecha Subject: Re: Activision Refuses refund of Buggy Mercenaries!!! Date: 21 Oct 1996 12:29:42 GMT Organization: Medical Transcription Services Lines: 151 Message-ID: <01bbbf4b$121d8ec0$3913abcf@ayn-rand> References: <01bbbdfd$6541b080$3913abcf@ayn-rand> <01bbbe49$f4e29280$28d186cc@Millennia.micron.net> <54elk8$jqt@news.istar.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm9-24.pacificnet.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155 Xref: netcom.com alt.games.mechwarrior2:27690 rec.games.mecha:79762 The bugs that are in Mercenaries are quite large and numerous. If they were not Activision would not be spending so much time and effort on a patch this early after the product was released. To say that there only problems with Mercenaries with really weird systems is a great overstatement. Mercenaries was: 1. Obviously not tested adequately given the Mech Lab bugs that by Activisio's own admittance causes Mechs to become corrupted. I have found that it is not even worth it to use any mech with ammo using Mechs in the game since doing so after they become corrupted and attempting to fire their weapons results in my machine locking up in Win95. Or, 2. Activision tested the product but decided to release it anyways because Activision's Upper management with the agreement of the programmers on the project decided that Mercenaries should be shipped now because we need money and we will just 'fix' all of the problems with a patch. Here is a list of bugs that I found after playing the game for a few days (I have since stop playing Mercenaries since the game was unusable.) 1. After installing you are given the choice to electronically register and you will be given a rebate. The problem is that when registration is complete a box asking if you want the rebate pops up (with time limit for reply) but the mouse cursor will no longer move, and there are no shortcut keys to hit yes. So there is no way to get the rebate. (To be fair to Activision they did send me the rebate anyways via Email) 2. There is a bug in weapons repair/reloading that causes the weight to be added to the previous mech that you are driving. This allows you to keep putting more equipment on your mech without a weight limitation, although extra heat sinks added by this method do not seem to do any good. You also lose the ability to do any useful modifications to the mech that the weight is being added to incorrectly since extra weight keeps you from being able to save the changes. Seems to affect the mech you drive the most not so much as the other starmates mech except for the mech previous to you. 3. Aerospace fighters do not work. Hitting Alt-X with a aerospace pilot hired and assigned does not do anything with 2 or more starmates. 4. I have yet to see a mission where you can use more than 2 starmates although you can easily have more men and mechs available you cannot simply use them. (I have not finished the game though more on this in a moment) 5. (Possible money cheat) When double heat sinks become available try converting a mech with alot of single heat sinks and then just add one double heat sink then click the next or previous buttons. Click no to changes and your money and single heat sinks go back to the way they were but the extra double heat sinks stay! Do this for awhile and you will have millions! 6. You cannot repair double heat sinks in the field (in a multi-month mission in the drop ship). This is even when you have plenty of double heat sinks see #5 above and money also #5 above. 7. During the Tournament in the first mission immediately walking backwards into a the wall behind you places your mech underneath the floor (I believe this is an old Mech2 Arena bug) allowing you to shoot all of the other mechs with impunity. 8. Later in the game the bug in # 2 above along side with multi month missions and weapons that use ammo that are damaged/use their ammo and the repaired/reloaded causes extra ammo/extra weapons to be mounted on your mech. This is the CORRUPTION that of Mechs THAT HAS NOT EXISTED IN ANY OTHER VERSIONS (MechWarrior II, GBL). Using any of these weapons/or even the original ones IMMEDIATELY HANGS YOUR SYSTEM forcing you to do a cold boot. I am just lately found that under Win95 hitting CTRL-ALT-ENTER will close the Crashed Merc game, I would recommend immediately rebooting your system though, 9. Using the mouse to set the target reticule to a certain height and then doing combat maneuvers (i.e. just fighting someone) every few seconds the target reticule will reset it self briefly to the default height (the same as if you hit the "/" key) making this form of targeting unusable. Plus a host of other minor bugs that would be acceptable if they were fixed later in patch (I'm realistic) But all of the above are pretty serious bugs (CAT 1s) that warrant being fixed before shipping. I cannot think that Activision's QA and Beta testers could not find these bugs they are pretty glaring. And anyone who says bugs in Mercenaries, what bugs, either has not played the game and is posting messages in this newsgroup or does not know how to play Mercenaries because these bugs are in core parts of Mercenaries, otherwise why would Activision be recommending selling your mechs after every few mission because they might be "corrupt"? Tell me that does not affect the fun and gameplay of Mercenaries. Also Fitness for a particular purpose, Merchantability, and Truth in advertising (Legal terms that mean a Seller must sell something that does what it is supposed to do) applies to Software just as it does to other products that consumer's buy (Take the Class-Action lawsuit against the manufacturer of SoftRAM). Salvage in MechWarrior and Battletech terms is the value of the parts remaining of the mechs that you have killed or disabled in your battle not some NON-RANDOM salvage that you PSEUDO-RANDOMLY may or may not get. This is definately not Salvage. And saying what Activision ment when they put salvage on the box as a feature and not describe it as being different from regular salvage when an attempt at the rest of the game (IS double Heat sinks take 3 slots instead of 2 like Clan ones do) is false advertising, otherwise given the outcry Activision would not be considering adding that feature (One of the ones obviously left out to ship the product early.) slarty@magi.com wrote in article <54elk8$jqt@news.istar.ca>... > -=> Quoting Mreindl@psnw.com to Unknown <=- > Mr> Subject: Re: Activision Refuses refund of Buggy Mercenaries!!! > > Mr> OK, great. Bug fixes over the Internet are wrong; Activision sucks > Mr> because they won't refund money, blah blah blah. I was as > Mr> disappointed as anyone about the problems with this game. I too was > Mr> expecting salvage to work as promised and was surprised by the number > Mr> of bugs in the game. HOWEVER, you should remember that Activision, like > > Greetings... > > Actually, I read the box. They do mention salvage on it. > > You get money at the end of the mission due to the fact that enemy > equipment was salvaged. You get what the box advertises. > > If you read " Realistic salvage based on the left-over value of > disabled enemy property so as to encourage selective targetting > and excellent marksmanship" you didn't read the same box I did. > > It's pseudo-random salvage, so ?? Computers have been selling > pseudo-random as random for quite some time... Big whoopin' deal. > > Where was that promise ?? > > The bug situation is unacceptable... Patches because a Kamchatkan > clone of a model 234b52a Deluxe edition joystick doesn't work in > combination with a model8237645aaa video card and a CPU whose serial > number ends in a 3 digit prime number is quite acceptable. > It is somthing that reasonable testing could have missed, or > overlooked as being due to something else than the tested game. > > Mission being impossible to finish is unbelieveable. > > Slarty > > ... ///\oo/\\\ Bugs? What bugs? ///\oo/\\\ ///\oo/\\\ > --- > þ Blue Wave/QWK v2.11 þ > > >> Slipstream Jet - The QWK solution for Usenets #UNREGISTERED > >