I've read through the blog post at the RoF forum several times. Tell me, am I reading between the lines or is this new map going to be single-player only? The article keeps referring to how important the map and the Belgian air forces will be to 'career mode'. I hope I'm simply misunderstanding what's being said.

Thanks Luke. That answers my question.

To be honest I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for further enhancements to AI and the dynamic campaign. Those are the features which in my opinion already make ROF a very good simulator but if improved further could make it one for the gaming history books. I understand that 777 needs to make money but why not do it with the dynamic campaign. It is still considered a beta...so leave what there is for free for everyone to try out (or make some sort of trail version where you can only fly a limited number of sorties with each pilot) and improve on that...make a final version and sell that. I would buy that no matter the price.

Adding more planes and maps doesn't really appeal as much to me. The SP is good...but it is not really there yet. The dynamic campaign is well designed in terms of immersion (just missing a better debriefing) but the automatically generated missions need to become better (which would also be facilitated by improvements to the AI...attacking a plane with a rear gunner shouldn't be nothing but suicide and the AI needs to concentrate more on the actual goal of the mission). A good static campaign also would be appreciated...I bought the St. Mihiel but I don't like it very much. The missions I tried are designed very well and the diary thing is a good idea (which should be improved further) but I miss what is the strongest point of the dynamic campaign: keeping track of your pilot and squadron. A combination of both would be the best...the missions from the St. Mihiel campaign combined with the immersive dynamic campaign.

Of course everything is just IMHO but that's the way I feel.

Alexander

@Alexander: Please, I don't mean to sound polemic, but I read nowhere that they are stopping the rest of the development to produce this new map + Aircrafts. On the contrary, I believe somewhere is written that they (777) are still aiming to improve Flight Models and the Sim-Core.

It's just that on top of that they're also releasing stuff for us to buy. On a former post was in fact written they hired new poeple for new models/maps, sorry content development.



I spent almost €30 last month so wifey wouldn't let me pre-order anything. Still I'm deeply in love with the idea of the channel map.
I'll buy it and the streamers/guns ASAP.

Cheers!

777 need to finish what's still unfinished and plug the glaring gap in the existing planeset before they start pushing stuff like this. I'll not part with another penny unless it's for early-war planes like the Fe2.

looking at it nowadays, it was a bad decission to make the N.11/DH2/E.III IMO. Because of the lack of "target"-planes for them, read twoseaters of 1916.

777 had two choices for 2012:
1) make such 1916 twoseaters
2) concentrate on the already much better equipted 1917/18 scenario.

they decided to go 2), even more with adding a new map with some new possibilites with the airwarfare over the sea. I am ok with that, they couldnt do both i guess.

And i belive they will still improve their already existing stuff too.

to ad, i would have also been ok if 777 would have decided to go 1) lets wait what 2013 will bring

Maybe the DH2, E.III, and N11 should have never been created. Now there's this expectation that RoF will cover 1916 as thoroughly as it does 1917-1918. I enjoy the early war birds, but it isn't realistic to think that there's a financial future in it for RoF.

Even the 1917-1918 planeset has some pretty big holes. My $.02.

I think that the new map and new planes can better attract NEW players, thus enlarging the players base. THEN, the time periods can be better filled with the important missing airplanes, which will be bought by the existing players. Maybe this detour is needed to get to that point, financially speaking.

I wouldn't forget to check what the fanbase asked louder than the rest.
Cross that with the foreseen costs of developing such things, and what you get is pretty much probably what we're having now.

But I guess you'd need to be part of the developing team...
I have no idea how they're programming or what the code looks like.

I look at RoF and I smile.
I'm happy to have spent what I have.



Couldn't really ask more.