In the quest to sell better, which all of us want for RoF, I thought about this:

Maybe a bigger focus on arcade mode in RoF would fuel sales? - A beefed-up, prominent, dedicated arcade mode with more frequent explosions and flamers and lovely stuff like that...

- I'm thinking a big red button in the main screen taking you straight to instant dogfight against pitiful opponents with relaxed physics and lots of things that go BOOM. As it is, people have to go into realism settings (boring!), graphics settings (boringer!) to change into such a mode.

- Call it Simtertainment mode... Or maybe FUN MODE. - Just as long as it isn't derogatory...

In such a mode all the settings would be fixed at full HDR, bloom, easy physics, unlimited ammo, reduced rez for super-smooth play, etc, etc... - To make it look as much as WoP as possible, and basically just let the players choose cockpit-on or cockpit-off with a big on/off button in the top corner.

I mean, RoF certainly has gorgeous graphics, effects and sounds to rival those of simtertainment titles, so a fun mode would look spectacular in the way the general simming light, sugar-fuelled adolescent seems to love...

This shouldn't take anything away from the realistic RoF we love, but just be an added mode for first-timers, applying the KISS rule to the fullest.

(I posted this in another thread, but maybe it fits better here...)

If you want to attract console players then you need lots of flashing lights, lots of 'DOUBLE KILL! TRIPLE KILL!' flashing up on screen and have unlimited rockets. And jets on them. And alien zombies.

Yup. Some text messages triggered by kills wouldn't be too hard to program, I should think. But, well, they wouldn't be strictly necessary. A good idea definitely!

Can of worms I'm telling yah, can'o'worms...

That was just too good :)) You forgot the babes flying half naked.

Yes, for example, lot of balloons and other easy targets 'in the way', and a sense of 'story' by showing some side faces animated in small flash rectangles in the corner of the screen, which talk from time to time and encourage, congratulate or anyway say something meaningful at the moment.

( P.S. Toma Gabriel, are you romanian? you share my name )

Yes I am! Cheers! This is the first time I meet somebody with my name :)).

Well not the whole name, only Gabriel

(Ma bucur sa vad si alti români in Rise of Flight)

Sim light? You mean like the Strike Fighters/First Eagle series? The only thing I would change is to add an "AI skill" slider for campaign missions.

If you just mean action game, then you'd need an entirely different game altogether. Trying to combine the two always ends in disaster (but let's see what MS Flight will do )

It's a good idea, to put all the arcade settings under one button.

Having console-style rewards, like KILLSTREEK MADNESS and xp points coming off targets... games like this exist already (have names like Wings of War, Wings of Honour, Wings of Glory, etc). I don't think it's worth the programming time to RoF, although I'd understand if they did it.

Movie tie-in simulators bother me though. Poorly made games don't encourage people to dig further, they just put them off.

The flash version of Il-2 was 10* better than the Red Tails simulator I just played with.

Don't quit now, there's more Nazis to shoot down. More content to unlock...

You would have to have icons all over the place, of course. Big red ones around enemy planes and big green ones around friendlies. And big "Put bomb here" circles on the ground, to show targets.
No landing and taking off, too hard. Airstarts only.
I don't know, that's not what they were going for, here. Doubt if they would do something like that. It would be a hard sell , though , at this point. ROF already has a reputation for being a fairly realistic and challenging air combat sim. They would have to have done this right at the beginning.

With all the difficulty on easy, the game is pretty much that . . . like people said, its not supposed to be an arcade game, and would lose out if it went that route. There are already much better arcade flight games out there for those that like such things (HAWX, Ace Combat, Birds of Prey).

Why not just let them play World of Planes?

It's called "Birds of Steel". And I'll be first in line!

One more sim-light (not arcade) feature I can think is an "action camera" that focuses on whatever action is going on. EAW and the Thirdwire sims have this. It's fun to look at what is going on while you RTB on autopilot.

Biggest mistake one could make is to presume that "fun" equals "easy". Take away the challenge, you take away the game.

+1

Ehh, the idea is to sell more copies of RoF...

RoF is free to play, so that won't happen

Best way to attract more players IMO is to go forward with what they are doing: polish the career mode, add more aircraft and be creative with innovative, attention-grabbing features (e.g. the artillery spotting/photo recon mechanic is what sold me on RoF). Rof can already be played as a "sim light" by changing a few settings (we only just need a general AI skill slider :)). "Action mode" isn't going to attract gamers, this is just not their type of game.

Ah, you're right, I of course meant sell more planes (and other content). As for the rest you say I just don't agree. I really think RoF could sell more if it had a "no-brainer" arcade mode button and that way got out to more sim-light players.

I was speaking as a sim light player. Whatever sim I play, be it Strike Fighters or Falcon 4, BoB2 or RoF, I usually put all flight-related options on "realistic", but turn down the "combat" settings (AI skill, number of enemies, view restrictions etc). On a typical mission I'll take off manually, hit autopilot and time compression at around 1500ft and cycle through all external views to enjoy all the visual goodness. During combat I switch icons on/off as needed and I will use padlock abundantly. Then back to autopilot and if I don't feel like landing I'll just end the mission once inside friendly territory. This works great in RoF, just as it did in the days of RB3D.

"Action mode" with bloomy graphics, flashing hiscores, invulnerability and fireballs will only make me feel as if I'm watching a bad CGI movie.

If you start catering to that market with all of the crazy on screen explosions, and high paced action, you're also going to garner the attention of gamers that think that after x number of kills without dying or getting so many points they should receive a free "upgrade." I play BF3, played BF2, and with BF3 you get your base kit and then as you do well and progress you get better kits. Same with CS:Source in a way, do better and get more money to buy more.

That drives a lot of those quick paced high intensity games. Apparently something World of Planes would be going for.

Basically, I doubt they'd buy more planes - they'd expect to get them for free after so many points.

The mode I am referring to wouldn't be aimed at you or any other member of this site. It would be to get NEW people into flight simming...

Then think of how you got into flight simming. For me it was through FS2, then Jet and F16 Combat Pilot on to 1942:PAW and RB2. I didn't get here through playing Afterburner.

To get new people into flight simming, you need a good flight sim, not an action game. Easily scaleable options from relaxed to expert, and the freedom to try things out (i.e., not having to do a mission over and over until you destroy a particular truck so you can get to the next level).

RoF does this pretty well. Sure, some things can be made more accessible/entertaining. I already mentioned an overal AI skill setting and an action camera. Another thing could be tooltips ("Your guns are jammed. Press R to unjam and don't fire more than 3sec bursts") because let's face it, the acting in the tutorials is a bit hard to stomach And finally, an option to advance time and ignore the results of a failed career mission. This day-by-day, dead-is-dead business can be rather tedious

From my experience, non-simmers have a different view of what is "real" and what is "hard." To them, you shouldn't have to worry about crashing your plane. A plane that's hard to fly isn't a hard game, it's an un-fun game. They think of hard as multiple enemies, dodging weapons fire, difficult objectives, etc. Scenarios that are rarely realistic and if they are more often that not were slaughters for one side.
"Real" to them usually means "looks like a movie" which is often their only point of reference. Few can argue that the least realistic console flight shooter still looks a lot better than most of the sims we've been flying for the last 10 years. To people used to watching Jurassic Park, getting them to sit and watch a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animated flick and believe it just isn't going to happen. They will be unable to make the leap to simming with lesser graphics, they need it to be equivalent in appearance.

The biggest problem is usually there is no middle ground. You have your "flight games" where it's easy to fly but hard to fight and live, and you have your sims where it's hard to fly and often a LOT harder to fight let alone survive against just a couple of enemies. Few have been able to find a formula that can sit in the middle.



The Jedi Master

I think you guys think this will be like a gateway drug to get more people to invest money in our sims.

I'm not sure it will work that way.

What is the conversion rate for HAWX players who look for more? Air Combat? Ace Combat?

It's like martial arts. YOU might learn the most from getting you butt kicked, but other people might just want to watch it on the movie screen, and then kick butt themselves in a video game.

I'm saying that people that want to play Ace Combat and HAWX are right where they want to be. I'm not sure a light version will get the sim world more members. Simmers are a different breed, its not that you have unlocked the true depth of available gaming, you are seeking a different experience. I've watched people play Angry Birds. That's a special kind of time wasting there. See, I played it once, it wasn't a gateway to anything more eyerolling myself.

You and I, we might have played f-15 Strike Eagle, or Airborne Ranger on the Commodore, or one of the Jane Titles, and thought "Yes, this felt so good and real. I remember how exciting it was to fly from LA to Boston on some flight game in my dad's compaq, i would run over and check my dials, while reading the manual. It was a 4 hour flight.

"I would check my dials while reading the manual."

I guarentee you, most regular people would roll their eyes at that comment.

So, if you can easily Mod ROF to make it have 100 planes fly out of no where with unlimited machine guns and rockets and you never die and there is a hud with flashing triangles, and it will get ROF more money so that they can make our favorite sim even better, go for it! But if you think you can make more simmers by tricking them into having fun... one in a million baby. You know that you areieare.

I think you are right, but the idea is also valid if more people just buy RoF for the bling gaming and then want more planes to play in... But maybe they won't CARE about different planes... Ooops.

You really need to make your arcade mode comparable with a gamepad. If people like the sim then they may invest in a joystick.

Just make sure every DR1 is painted solid red.

Okay, except for one that is black.

I agree with the OP.

I think that there is room for a combat flight game/sim/whatever that plays like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe did. SWotL wasn't silly. The flying was simple and the campaign required some thought. And it was a lot of fun.

Some folks just want to steer the plane around with a modicum of performance accuracy while they indulge in the fun parts of a flight sim i.e. the bombing and gunnery.

ROF is already playable with a gamepad. When I downloaded the demo I didn't have a flight stick so I used my xbox 360 controller and it worked fine.

I'm not sure this is the right direction to make flight sims more accessible.

What I do notice that is lacking in most flight simulators is simply a good tutorial-one that lets the player interact and walk through the steps instead of simply being shown everything and hope they made a mental note of that in time. The interfaces and numerous features are quite imposing at first, and the developers don't think to make them easy to comprehend for those newer to the genre.

It's precisely the lack of a good in-game tutorial that resulted in me veering away from Falcon 4.0 and DCS: Black Shark while heading toward Rise of Flight and IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. Even then, I still haven't really mastered complex engine management for any particular aircraft (fine-tuning mixture and prop pitch and radiator and all that), instead focusing on learning each aircraft's handling quirks first.

It's also quite telling that I learned a few things about Falcon 4.0 more easily when I had actual human players there with me to help explain the interface and subsystems, moreso than the training TEs and manual ever did.

Speaking of which, while the existing tutorials do a good job covering the general aspects of flight, it's always those specifics that are lacking. This goes double for WWI-era aircraft that have gauges that don't even clearly indicate simple things like Vne, ideal engine temperature ranges, or so forth, and for that matter, it wouldn't hurt to have some optional tooltips that point out what each gauge is and where they all are in the cockpit.

Sure, you can look all that up outside of the sim, but I find that unnecessarily kludgy. Just having that information directly in-sim, during flight, can help a lot when adapting to a particular plane.

Long story short, don't oversimplify things; instead, make it easier to learn while still keeping it as challenging to truly master, and the rest will follow.

I worked on engineering mods for aircraft like the A10,f18,B2,F117,C5B,F15 Japan,A6A, and others. Worked in a lot of
mockups and one sim F16. If your ever get to use a simulator with hydraulics go for the f16 a saddle on an engine.
I say this because ROF get it right. The people that like DCS A10 with all the button pushing should have come to my job
for six months. In 6 weeks they would want noting to do with it. Setup procedure after setup procedure, flight system failure
at 200 ft. " PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP " get redundant system on line, light out do we really have a failure, do it a hundred times over 48 hours. FUN!

Now DCS cliffs off fire 2 get it right for a sim. I love ROF it is what it need to be for the level of our technology.
Like we would say at work, were on the edge of tech can't be has to be something better somewhere?
And by the way the 360 gamepad is just as real as a stick it's called fly by wire and it very 21st century.
In a f18 you have 24 movable surfaces a human can not fly it with out there R2 unit.

When in game fly with the force (no need to look at gages) It works. S!

What he said!

I don't think a new super-arcade mode is required. I turned on all the pilot aids when my kidlets (aged 5 and 3) took their first flights in RoF. My 3 year old had the DFW airbourne for 1/2 hour without incident (granted he wasnt fighting anything but balloons and trucks). It was a similar story with my 5 year old who had the Brisfit up for a similar time interval. I can't remember if there is a general difficulty selector (easy/medium/hard) in the difficulty settings menu or not. If not, it may be something like that could be the the thing to make RoF more accesible for noobs.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6