Kind of an interesting back and forth with B6 today. I would be very surprised if a complex sim would draw a very large following, but methinks its possible
MMO talk

I hope they don't do this till CLOD is fixed...otherwise you will have a buggy game X2.

It will be interesting to see how this MMO built on the new IL-2 game engine is going to effect the continued development of the this series. IC publishing could use their own development crews or hire new people, or will IC use Luthiers crew? Annoucement in June??

If they use the CLOD game engine it will have to be fixed. The MMO alpa is due in 2013. Whatever happens it appears IC will continue to refine the CLOD game engine, but the big question will be if it still will be applied to the CLOD series of sims.

This IMO will be the death nail for the series. The team has been struggling to fix COD without much progress forever now. Add the fact they were working on BOM and now the are hashing out an MMO. They have shown recently that they can't code their way out of the paper bags that have been slung over their heads, and now Luthier is probably all glossy eyed over the potential revenue of the current MMO craze. The MMO will be priority one for him now IMO, and he will sideline resources for COD and BOM to get it done. It's basically him with outstretched arms and both middle fingers extended to the community as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't read the article, but you can count me out of any IL-2 MMO for sure. I'm very unlikely to buy anything from these guys again to be honest.

Wow Force you're profiling right now

Well, all those the work on grass for a flight sim is now explained.

Sorry....just pissed....and shaking my head in dis-belief.

Will the MMO be released as a Alpha or Beta? will it need 2 or 4GB RAM? will it have a epilepsy filter? all these questions will or wont be answered by Luthier or blacksix maybe in 6 months if we are all good boys and dont upset anyone.

I hear you Force



... will I be pretty, will I be rich........ que sera sera........'

Never thought I'd find a segue for Doris Day in this forum

Well I hope that its not the end of the series going into other theaters, but I have that feeling...bad vibes

Good post! I think you've hit the nail on the head. I also believe that they don't have the ability or desire to make Clod into what they promised. Let's face it the sim is only half finished and patches are few and far between and one step forward and two steps backward. Even making the sim a non frustrating experience will take a very long time at the present rate.

I'm very disappointed that it seems likely that we'll never see CloD in all its glory. Being English I love the subject matter of the Battle of Britain far more than anything BOM or any MMO could offer me. I think that has been part of the problem with the devs on this though ie their hearts are not in it at all. Without the campaign work by Heinkill and the Desastersoft add on CloD would already be dead in the water IMO. Even so, with things like the radio commands still not working after 15 months my patience with the sim is wearing very thin.

Battle of Moscow, MMO, no thanks, whilst CloD is still unfinished and bug ridden I'll give it a miss!

And that, boys and girls, sums up my feelings precisely. Un Fecking Believable.

I wouldn't say the sky is falling yet. An MMO might be a good thing that could help fund further development of the new IL-2 series. I could easily see the development continue to support and refine the new IL-2 game engine for a number of different ventures. Which was actually the plan from the beginning, although this series is probably still on very shaky ground. That said the IC developer/publisher must have some confidence that they will eventually stabilize the new game engine if they are now considering it for the MMO engine.

That is my optimistic thought as well. Although I completely understand Force10s fears as well.
I think this could go very right or very wrong(wronger:))
I'm still hoping for the best though. If they make this engine work well and into a money spinner, it could fund the support we all crave.
Boko.

I'm going to take off my sarcasm hat for a minute here. We don't know what will happen to the series. If it fails, I won't feel as bad as many others will because I have several other types of games I enjoy. I run the full gamit: RTS, turn based strategy, Tactical shooters and of course flight sims. I will feel worse for people like Chivas that have maintained a stiff upper lip and always backed the devs and figured they would pull it off. There are folks that have been following this one intently for years and have built systems many times for it's many release dates. It's these folks that have lived and breathed it for years that I will feel bad for. If 1C lets these folks down I hope its the last business decision they ever get to make.

Oh no... I have no words left now, well I still have a couple in fact. MMOs can't survive a week if they are full of bugs. If ClOD was anywhere near the level of polish that a MMO needs in early beta to have any chance to survive, I would be happy. What is wrong with this company? Is that the reason why Oleg ran away? Ok, now I've ran out of words, but I'll have plenty of sighs in stock...

Knowing how MMOs work, I anticipate this MMO will be a huge runaway success,
with half a million players, all of whom will be pilots, always found in the
ready room, playing checkers and gossiping about the latest indiscretions of
pop stars and reality tv pseudo celebrities.
I can see it now... yup.

Actually it won't bother me much. I quit flying the original IL-2 a couple of years ago, but completely enjoyed the almost ten years I did fly it. I've basically lost interest, and hoped COD would rekindle my interest, it never really did, but there is still hope. Hope is far less stressful than fretting. Maybe that why I'm not upset, because I'm no longer that emotionally invested in the outcome, but still understand how difficult and complicated the process is.

I heard about this last night from a Squadmate while flying RoF. He posted the link to 1C about it but I've had my fill of the usual crowd of peckers over there so don't venture in any more. MMO ! they must be having a laugh. I would rather flush the cash down the chod bin than pony up for that. Whats the advertising going to be ? 'Bringing a broken game to the masses'.

Personally I hope they do it, if they think the flight sim community is a tough crowd wait 'til they get a load of that lot. I can see it now 'Well, you haven't emptied your cache so you can't expect it to work very well can you ?', 'what do you mean you only have a new Dell laptop, its hardly the games fault that you don't have a £3K computer is it ?', 'don't worry about how it is now, think about how good it will be.....er.....some when'...... Carnage ensues.

Really, it is priceless.

"Clutching at straws" springs to mind.

Might be good?.....



.....(sound of Jedders running footsteps).....

It's almost funny if it wasn't so sad.

So at this time, they are working on patches for COD(laughable) working on and releasing BOM and now trying to release a MMO by 2013?

I'm not sure it's Maddox Games, it's 1C or rather a "dedicated online activities department" of it. Not that I am particularly hopeful about the whole MMO enterprise, but that may be the only reason why the 1C executives haven't closed the MG shop, yet.

This is just hilarious.
Do they really think that anyone is going to drink from the poison chalice a second time?
Not me that's for sure.

Can't believe I'm seeing this post.. I have an awful feeling this will go Pete Tong..
Most guys have been hanging on and hanging on, waiting for the day we can get CLoD in it's full glory. Then the BoM rubbish before we even have CLoD up to full scratch, and now this.. are these people flippin mad?
I haven't played CLoD since October last year, and that is very sad for me, as I have so wanted this bloody thing to be the ultimate WWII flight sim..
God, I don't know what to think now!

Yes but if the MMO is using the COD engine, which i think is correct then it would have to be the same coders right? training a whole new set of developers and releasing in the time scale needed doesn't seem possible.

It's not exactly new news that any kind of "follow on project" depends on a working CloD engine, is it?

Let's see they will be using the CLOD engine in a game that will be an alpha released in 2013. Seems like a good thing in terms of continued work on CLOD.

When the last CloD dev leaves the building?
Would he please turn off the lights.

Force10 hit the nail on the head.
Chivas needs to put the bong down.
Furbs, we all share the pain.

BlackSix needs to return to his broom and dust pan duties.

This whole 1C "thingy" reminds me of a "Benny Hill" episode....that bombed.

Ya why use a bong when we can post like Force10, full of anger personal attacks and insults. Oi!! |

Well, Bish....If you refuse to "see" the recent revelations as a built in excuse to
siphon off resources or abandon CloD?

Don't know what to tell ya further.
I do have an appreciation of your humor.

Just because you speculate that way it doesn't mean that's going to happen. I mean the whole affair smacks of boundless confidence of 1C in Maddox Games (which is weird in itself) or of a complete lack of common sense in the 1C management, but so far we haven't gotten any hard facts beyond that 1C is thinking in this direction. It remains to be seen what will really come out of this - and I reserve myself the right to be very sceptical - but all we do is reading tea leaves.

You are correct of course.. but if you read tea leaves for months on end it tends to addle the brain somewhat..

"We were lost in the jungles of 1c, and Oleg had gone. There were too many of us and we didn't know wtf we were doing, we had access to too much money, too much Vodka, too much dodgy performance data and equipment, and little by little, we went insane....."

~Simpocalypse now



I just laugh now, what else can ye do? Ah well, so it goes.

And none of you thought about this possibility when you first saw mannable AA guns years ago, and drivable tanks...

Yes Uther, but i prayed i was mistaken.

lol...I understand the bong reference, but I don't think I have attacked any members here personally?

No I meant your reference to the paper bag wearing memebers of the development team,Force

I love this comment

But I agree it does, and it is (ie weird)

Well if the bag fits......lol

Seems to me that thaey must have confidence in the engine to suggest something like this (whatever it is, we don't really know yet).
It may even turn out to be really good, a combined operations sim that the tank people and the plane people can play together for common objectives coould be awesome. B6 has said that it will not be 'arcady' but sim based (just about the only thing he has said btw), so what could be wrong with that? Sim means no dumbing down and no levelling up, remember they've said MMO not MMORPG or anything like that. MMO to me means lots of people playing online at the same time, nothing wrong with that per se.
Lets find out what the anouncement actually is before we all have a big fight about it.

No, no we'd prefer to first have the argument and then find out what it is we are actually fighting about later, much later.

My wife and I do that all the time

Let's wait for an official announcement first shall we? Still, it's very hard to keep a straight face about this.

The whole point of these forums is that we can discuss things.. Conjecture, intuition, hunches, reading tea leaves, it's all allowed.. if we waited for 'official news' we would have bugger all to talk about.
Plus, the 'official news' (when they bother to get off their backsides and give us some) is about as enlightening as a brick in the face..

Hmmm, well, someone gifted me IL2 Cliff of Dover. I have to say that my initial impression of CLOD is overall, negative. How many years was it in development? Hell, I can't say that it is just the Luthier team, though. I waited two years for fm fixes in ROF, before I threw my hands in the air and vowed never to buy another 777 Studio product, field mod or add-on, pre-order, etc, so long as 777 Studios refuses to provide the level of service I expect. I expect the level of service that companies, like Bethesda, deliver with quiet humility. I recently watched a video of Chris McDonough, discussing the importance of not delivering World of Darkness, until it is a finished product. Flight sim companies think they are entitled to deliver unfinished products and that they are entitled to shift the blame for their failures; while companies, like Ubisoft, are falsely accused, by flight sim fanbois, of causing the failures of the flight sim teams.

Flight sim companies take the loyalty of their customers for granted. We give them loyalty, by buying beta products and they give us two weeks. Do they have loyalty to their customers? Why is ED making a Nevada map in Minsk? When is ED going to support out of work graduates in Nevada, while making a Nevada map? No one in Nevada knows what Nevada looks like? Western customers, often paying four times what their Russian counterparts pay, for the same product, are told to get used to paying for half finished products, waiting years for fm fixes and for what? So we support the developers? Let the flight sim developers support their customers, by investing in the USA, where we are paying four and five times the Russian market price, for half finished Russian made betas!

No, companies like Bethesda and CCP have earned my trust and respect. They work hard to keep me happy, failing some of the time, but not as a rule and not as a habit. These companies also create jobs in my home market. They don't release half finished products and they don't argue with me, while I am doing them a favor, by buying pre-orders. I will not buy any flight sim, so long as the flight sim companies are releasing unfinished products, not creating jobs in my home market and so long as there are companies, I can otherwise deal with, like Bethesda, doing right by me and my home market. I will put my gaming money into Elder Scrolls Online and WOD, since this will help my home market and will allow me to thank companies for doing right by me and my home market. I will not invest another dime in ED, 777 Studios or Luthier's team. S! MJ

There's actually no MMO coming, they're just preparing the excuses for BoM.

@cheesehawk: Heheheh I almost thought the same

I have no idea whats coming and don't much care any more,but isn't it true that whatever it may be,most of us will end up buying it?
We are so hungry for another ww2 flight sim that these seemingly unscrupulous companies can take advantage of that fact,and they do.
So sad.

As much as I'd like to agree with you as I really need a decent WWII fix, I'm not going to buy anything from these chaps until I see hard proof that the game is actualy worth buying..

Well, I will not be one of those customers. Frankly, I am satisfied that enough MMOs, from EA, Bethesda, CCP and other companies will draw the tail end of Gen X, Gen Y and the younger, yet equally awesome, generations, so it depends on the generation. Maybe boomers will put up with this poo? I sure am not going to do so, anymore. No one would let me get away with this two weeks crap, so I am not going to stick by development teams taking me for granted. To top it off, I am also convinced that EA and CCP will do a much better job of cornering the majority of pc gamers... females. Somehow, I don't see large numbers of twenty year old women flocking to take abuse from flight sim teams, when they could be role playing; as independent, elegant, sophisticated and socially connected, metropolitan vampires, wearing Vera Wang style clothing. [giggle] S! MJ

The thing is for me, i have zero confidence in the developers to make anything half decent, it will be another half arsed botch job with more excuses and promises of fixes and patches.

If they cant get COD fixed in 15 months AFTER release, what chance of getting BOM released and a another full blown MMO sim made in a year or less.

They wont be getting a penny from me unless i read very good reviews.

Given enough time they should be able to stabilize the engine. I would prefer that they finish BOB, then release BOM, press on with either Africa, China, or Berlin. Then they should have a very stable engine for an MMO, which could be quite fun if done right...and I will have a nice off/on-line selection to choose from until the MMO, which I hope will be a stand alone...hey I can dream!

I wouldn't buy the next game from these guys even if it was the best WW2 sim ever built.
Sorry. But it's an absolute insult the way these guys have treated their customers.
How people can keep defending them is an utter mystery to me.

What happened to the "patch" anyway? Must be the epilepsy filter. Oh wait. We used that excuse already.

Incompetence and lack of funding I can forgive. But not what has been going on over there for the past 18 months.

The news suggests that the developers will continue to work on the new IL-2 engine for atleast another year or so. Of course this doesn't mean they will continue to work on the single player series, but there has yet to be a suggestion that work will stop, other than speculation from the same negative group. Despite all the negative speculation of its demise the development continues to make very slow improvements to the game engine, and haven't quit yet. When and if the development does go under, I'll let you have a hit on my Bong so you can finally celebrate being right about something.

I think BoM will be the MMO, there's been nothing said that indicates it won't. Chivas has told us how most resources are still on CoD, with a few unnecessary guys working on the new project, and knowing that, they can't have any more people to work on a 3rd project, so BoM will be the MMO.

Can't wait to spam the LFD channel, hoping to grind a few more IL-2s (if the spawn isn't camped), collecting enough tokens to complete my Epic FW-190 armaments... and then my pvp standings will be leet!

...

I have to agree. I will not buy their products. To add insult to injury, these flight sim companies will not make games in my home market or in other national markets, where I would like to see jobs go and grow. It is as if it is criminal to seek to create jobs in the USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Iceland or Norway. I am told that it is because no one would pay the cost of products made in these countries, but that is so much nonsense. I was glad to buy Skyrim, at full price. I received an awesome product, at a reasonable price and I helped to maintain jobs in my home market. I am called a protectionist, but it is the flight sim companies that ask for protectionism, by soliciting the support of the flight sim community, from their customers, when they appeal to us to stick it out with them, even when they fail us, so utterly.

If these Globalist flight sim developers are so disgusted by my protectionism, then let the geese live by the law of the goose. These flight sim companies, unlike TML, in Germany, CCP, in Iceland or Bethesda, in Maryland, have failed me and for the last time. I will not subsidize their excuses, rather I will exercise a free will, free market decision, to place my money where my interests lie. Let the whole bunch go out of business. When they do, a company will surely come along, probably in Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Norway or the USA, at some point, realize that the flight sim market is a sub optimal profitability market, like the market for Rolex watches. They will build a high quality flight sim, compete, right out of the box, no beta anything. They will charge a hundred or two hundred US dollars for that sim. The Western flight sim community will buy it, knowing that they are getting the Rolex of flight sims and not a beta, for life. Anyway, what is an IL2 MMO going to cost? I am sure that MMO, if it is made, will cost Western customers over a $100 to &150 a year and for what, two more weeks ? MJ

I wouldn't be very surprised if the "MMO" turns out to be quite simply BOM with a multiplayer campaign mode supposed to handle a large number of players who can also man ground vehicles (and to be honest, IF they could deliver this, I would prefer that to a true MMO formula, but that's no the issue here) - back before the release of ClOD, there was already the promise that ClOD would be capable of doing something along those lines - well we know how the glorious massive multiplayer recreation of the BoB has gone so far.

The mention of the MMO is just like the eastern front screenshots that made some people assume the development has stopped working on COD. Everything depends on finishing and stabilizing the new IL-2 engine, the venues are the easy part. The engine was originally designed to accomplish a number of different ventures, be it online/offline, MMO, movie making, etc. If the new engine is finally successful the very large main IC developer/publisher could assign any number of groups to continue to add new features to the game engine and other groups to build maps, buildings, objects, and aircraft that could be used in any of the venues. I doubt the development/publisher would limit their revenue sources exclusively to an MMO if they can get the game engine working properly.

The fact that IC is thinking of announcing the development of an MMO in June would make one think they have confidence that the game engine problems will and can be addressed. The biggest obstacles now appear to be the particle and stutter issues.

I suspect that you may be right. On a superficial level, flight simming, as with other forms of gameplay, can be adapted to the classic bare bones elements of an MMO, including, but not limited to, "Skinner box," gameplay elements and what not. Still, most flight simmers are interested in offline gameplay and most onliners, from my experience, are happy with more traditional forms of multiplayer gameplay. The MMO formula really seems to favor political and economic decision making, high levels of interpersonal social partnerships and social risk taking, in a way that is not always overtly violent, like an air battle. In some forms of MMOs there is a push toward rewarding the aversion of direct simulated violence, in favor of effectively employing the threat of simulated violence and other things that will, if my hunch is correct, make other kinds of MMOs more accessible and more attractive to the vast majority of Global MMO players, particularly females, than any attempt to turn IL2 into Eve Online.

To be honest Chivas...I'm not really seeing 8 months worth of work in the last patch. I think BOM or other things have slowed patch production because what we received seemed like a last minute hack job....just removing offending textures or effects didn't seem like a "total re-write" of the code IMO.

Ok, lets assume BOM is the MMO with planes, tanks and AA guns all working together on one map, how is that going to affect player numbers and how many can we have with out having major lag and stutters?
Lets say 50 people per map, we can forget the massive 128 player online wars for a second(its never going to happen) 50 people split into 2 sides, 25 per side, split that into planes, tanks and AA guns, say 10 planes, 5 tanks and 5 AA gunners per side, all over one map?
Now either the maps are small and the battle very concentrated or were just not going to see anyone, its hard enough on the COD map when were split 25 planes per side over a small part of the English channel.

To me all this looks like Luthier going to meetings with the bean counters and trying to persuade them to keep the cash flow going for longer with more smoke and mirrors.

COD has failed, everyone knows it, Luthier, the bean counters and us. BOM will fail too if done the same way, so Luthier had to come up with something else, and here we are....

You nail it Furbs. I have the same feeling, and in any case it's a guess that lines up with our experience with the whole mess so far.

I'm having fun with Rise of Flight and DCS (A10 and P51).

If something comes out of this MMO prospect, sweet I guess as long as it works - still quite a ways away either way. If not, you can go ahead and play that other WWII simulation out there. Which is Il-2 1946 or BoBII.

I agree its hard to see much progress, and I agree it could be construed as just a last minute hack job, but I suspect it was alot more complicated than that. I have no doubt the developer would turn down some aspects of the sim to be fixed later if they were causing some of the CTD issues. Eye candy can fixed later, the main issues is to have the sim playable. I don't believe for a minute that any work being carried out on the sequel has delayed fixing the game engine. The game engine is the highest priority, without it any Sequel or MMO will not sell.

I don't think Luthier is that stupid. I rather think it's the beancounters who salivate at the thought of milking customers via a MMO. After all 1C has founded a dedicated "Online Services Department" for such activities ...

The problem has nothing to do with COD, BOM, MMO, or coming up with any other product or sequel. None of those products will sell until the game engine is fixed. We know it, Luthier knows it, his bosses and investors know it. The fact that they are even mentioning using the new game engine for an MMO suggests Luthier's bosses and investors are confident enough to let Luthier continue to work on the game engine for atleast another year. No one is going to buy their next product unless they know it works, and if Luthier's bosses and investors who are much closer to the situation than we are, know they aren't going to fool anyone, and are still putting up their money, I'll still give them the benefit of the doubt. Its not costing me anything to see what happens, and the paranoia to fun to watch.

I doubt that BoM will evolve into an MMO. Totally different kind of games. OTOH I'm pretty sure the 1c suits have taken a good look at World of Tanks and its success and, seeing two WW2 aerial MMO titles in development by other developers, thought "Hey, we want some piece of that, too!".

Of course this idea will utterly fail because the competition will shoot down their feeble attempts in flames faster than you can say "told you so".

What does that mean for us?

At best Luthier&Co will get some much-needed cash for providing the engine and support for a new team while able to continue to focus (ha!) on the IL2 series.

At worst 1C will shift resources from the dying IL2 series to the MMO cash cow to let CloD/BoM wither into nothingness...

...or maybe Gaijin will buy out the IL2 name and fold it into its already "nearly completed" WW2 MMO War Thunder: World of Planes. After all, didnt they develop IL2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey?. I guess the IL2 name would be worth something to them along with the team. Just mindless speculation of course.....

Seemingly we will all know more later today.....

I can see it clearly now:
Questgiver to xxxShADoWRichTHofENxxx (Level 1, sharing a squadron with dEAthNiNja1337 and Mastakilla007) "For se defens of se vatherland, get me 8 bat tails and 12 rabbit ears. Hurry pilots!"

On a less serious note, following the development of Ubisoft simulations - even losely - keeps being top notch entertainment.

An actual simulation MMO, and by MMO I mean more than just 32 players on a single server/map, would be great. The current CoD engine wouldn't work for it, their ground handling and FM is all sorts of wrong and the graphics engine is at best a hack. But a real MMO WW2 simulation, which will never happen because there is more monetary game in FPS, RPGs, and simu-sortofs.

Don't expect much out of War Thunder or the World of Warplanes unless you want Battlefield 3: Skies of Duty.

Sorry Natty but clearly you haven't played War Thunder yet. I had. While i agree on world of warplanes (played also, it's a silly arcade game like world of tanks), War Thunder is not an arcade and it has the potential to be the best flight sim to date, both for MP and SP (yes i said it) because the game modes that Gaijin has planned are stunning.

I'm not so sure, not long ago Luthier mentioned all future products will be fully integrated into CoD, which indicates both BoM and this MMO (if they aren't the same thing), will be part of the new IL-2. To me that means, not only will BoM become an MMO at some point, but any further content to CoD will be too.


At least now we know why they haven't wanted to release the Dedicated Server stuff, no point if all servers are going to be in-house, MMO style.

Unfortunately I have. Is that you Nuggetx?

Was thinking the same thing

MMO with tanks? well il be hiding in the trees

I think that Flight simulation is a pc gaming type that lends itself to the sub-optimal profitability model, the model you see used by the makers of Rolex watches. To make this model work, you charge a premium price, in exchange for a premium product. I have not seen anything out of any of the development teams, Luthier's included, that justifies giving more money to these teams, much needed or otherwise. If they need money, get it from their investors. Customers are paying premium pc gaming prices, comparable to the prices of EA, CCP, and Bethesda, but customers are receiving betas and buggy products, from the flight sim developers. If Rolex sold you a buggy watch, would you buy another one? Rather than defend the failures of these teams or subsidize half finished bets, pc gamers are better off just putting their money into finished, high quality, products; since pc gamers, particularly in the West, are spending $50 and up for pc games, anyway. Let the flight sim developers all go out of business. Then they will be replaced by new teams. If the new teams are wise, they will deliver a very high quality product, at a premium price; a flawless study flight sim, for $69.99 to $149.99, like a next generation Falcon 5: They will fall in step with the model of sub-optimal profitability. The companies that do not want this model will turn to making arcade games, but you won't have a team making half assed flight sims, trying to achieve the profitability of an arcade game, while selling a flight sim.

P.S. Also, consider, if flight sim customers keep supporting the same development teams, customers will continue to get $ 40 to $50 betas, buggy products, the customers will continue to wait years for flight model revisions and the customers will be charged money per pixel, by the time the flight sim developers are finished. Screw these arrogant teams, delivering half assed products and charging top dollar.They make games in low cost markets, trying to get as much as they can financially for their dirt bag Globalist investors, then they want their customers to put up with nickel and dime bs, unfinished products, years for fm fixes and what not. This is the lesson of Silent Hunter 5. If Ubisoft is to blame for anything, it is that they put up with Globalist low cost labor, beta for years, development team bull-sh-t, for far too long. Companies like Bethesda have it right. Make a great premium product, for a premium price and employ people in Western markets, not just in Eastern markets.

I am not on this Earth to help maximize the profitability of a few half assed companies, selling unfinished products, at top prices. NO one would let Bethesda get away with that and I am not worrying about a the bottom line of a bunch of flight sim investors. Screw these Globalist parasites! I will not support a team that failed to fix a product, 15 months after release. I will no longer support a team that puts off fm fixes for years. I will not support a team that develops a Nevada map in Minsk, when they could do so in Reno. Americans and European graduates need jobs. I am happy to pay top dollar for US, German or Swedish premium products. I am happy to teach Globalists that I am not going to subsidize a persistent and degenerate lack of consideration for the Western markets, the markets they charge top dollar for unfinished betas.

Good idea, and understand your sub-optimal profit model, but I doubt its going to happen. There aren't enough companies willing to spend the time and money to make these complex sims. Only small groups of combat flight sim enthusiasts like Oleg Maddox were willing to take on the task. Now these sims have become so complex they can't get them done without alot of help, support, and patience. I like the idea of a higher price product, but not so sure the numbers would work, with the sims demographic. That said in the end you probably spend another 100 dollars purchasing further sequels before COD has all the features we would have liked in the first Sequel.

Help, patience and support, are not luxuries generally enjoyed by workers in the USA, Iceland, Sweden, Canada, German or Nowrway, under the Global Corporate model of International business. These flight sim companies are run by big Globalist boys and big Globalist girls. They can live with the consequences of the Globalist system, the system they hold out as the panacea of International business. They don't stick by me or my home market and I am not sticking by them. The Globalist organization model has ravaged the labor force of the West and has not led to low prices. American flight sim fans pay, when on sale, about as much for CLOD as the Russian market paid, when CLOD first came out. When Clod first came out in the US, many US customers paid many times the Russian CLOD market price. Americans pay, for one ROF add-on plane, almost as much as an entirely new Russian pc game would cost in Russia. ROF must now stands for Rise of Field mods! Western customers have only so much money to spend on pc games or video games. There are companies, like Bethesda, CCP and others experimenting with undoing the Globalist business model, that has ravished the Western workforce. They favor performing redundant tasks in a variety of serviced markets. World of Darkness, Dust 514 and Eve Online could all be made in one country, the lowest cost country, like China, to the exclusion of all other countries, like Iceland and the USA. Considering that Western gamers are disproportionately, under employed, unemployed or out of work, generally so, Western gamers should put their help, patience and support, in companies doing the same for the Western gamer/ worker.

Even though the Chinese middle class may be going in the gutter soon, along with the Indian middle class and the Russian middle class, (Bust-y poo by 2016 to 2020 or so, I would estimate) these game companies could exclusively make their games in these nations, then sell their games to under employed American or European gamers. A Globalist Corporate model would place everything in the country where a game company could get the same or superior work, for the least amount of money. Investor take all, screw the "Spoiled," workers of the Western World, Ayn Rand is our savior, type stuff! The parent company of Bethesda, EA and CCP, have been developing games in Western and Eastern markets, trying to employ skilled and experienced workers, from a variety of serviced markets. This in and of itself is a sub-optimal form of Corporate organization, but it is also a better model for reciprocity with the markets they serve. They are International companies, serving the World, but they are not Globalist, capital-paths, looking to make as much money as they can, without regard to how they impact the markets they sell their products, either. What are the flight sim companies doing for North America or Europe, that we should rally around their Globalist companies? Why should I help, be patient with or support any company that would throw my home market to the wolves, just to make a little bit more money? Let the geese live by the law of the goose.

Greetings......"Ron Paul" Disciple. I could destroy the "Isolationist" Philosophy with one sentence. PWEC is thatta way. Keep this agenda driven bollocks off the forums please.

Thanks.

Leave the protectionist agenda off the forum! Why stand by companies that are not adding jobs to my home market, not delivering low prices and not delivering finished products? Please do keep the protectionist agenda off the forum. Companies like Bethesda, CCP and EA create jobs in the Western and Eastern markets, deliver finished, high quality products and better serve my interests. These are International Companies, serving a Global market, too, You are aware of this, right? There is no logical free market reason for me to stick with companies that fail to deliver a finished product, 15 months after release, that charge me top dollar for products not adding jobs to my home market and such. This is supposed to be a free Global market, not a free loading Global market!

I am not using my consumer dollars to protect the continued existence of teams I see as failing to best represent my interests. The Globalist model is not as useful, for my purposes, as the models embraced by EA, CCP or Bethesda. This is a fact, in my opinion and I do not care to protect the existence of these flight sim teams, so clearly not advancing my interests or the interests of my national market. Companies can serve the World, while serving my interests and the interests of my nation. There can be jobs in China, Iceland and the USA. This is not protectionism, this is a different model of International corporate business organization, where companies, like CCP and EA, make free will decisions, in a free Global market, to create career opportunites in the West and the East, while also making time to release finished, high quality products; a model that better serves a greater numebr of stakeholders, including me.

p.s. How is supporting International companies, creating jobs, all over the World, isolationist? Are you suggesting that the opposite of isolationism is supporting globalist transnational corporate business models, to the exclusion of other corporate organizational models or that my using free market, free will decisions, as a consumer, to favor companies favoring my economic interests or the interests of my national market, is the same as using regulations and tariffs, to hamper free trade? This is surely not the case.

Good luck with that, but not sure how our tiny fifty dollar investment in a small company doing the work the West won't do is killing the world economy. The fat cats in the west would sooner have their products built in China to maximize their profits than put their own people to work. It will come back to bite them when not enough people in the west will have enough expendable income to buy those products. Eventually the West will have a third world economy, decimating the middle class, making a portion of society very rich, with only a few low paying jobs servicing the feudal system.

Fifty US dollars is a lot of money. Fifty dollar investments can sure add up, real fast. Fifty US dollars is a lot of money when the majority of two generations of Americans are unemployed, underemployed, out of work outright or,in some way, self-employed. A waiter or layer works hard for $ 50, so does a small business person; in Western countries, just as in any Eastern country. Money matters and where I spend my $ 50 matters. When I buy WOD, I will spend over $100 to $150 a year, on that Atlanta Georgia made product, on a market I will then sell my future fitness ebook. The money my customers spend on my ebook is not a small amount of money, it is their hard earned and scarce resources, invested in my product. (The book will not be edited by me, so no worries, thank goodness! lol)

Now, I invest in Georgia jobs, making a $100 to $150 investment, ordering a year subscription to the World of Darkness MMO. Then I go find Georgia customers for my product. CCP does right by me, creating potential customers for my products, then I do right by CCP, buying their product. I do right by Atlanta Georgia. I pick up just a few customers in Georgia, not necessarily CCP workers, just Georgians and they more than cover the cost of my WOD game, by their buying my fitness ebook. I invest in the home markets of my customers and I win. EA, CCP and Bethesda are doing something similar, in many countries, including my home market, the USA, but on a much grander scale, than I could ever pull off and all because of $ 50 investments here and $ 50 investments there.

p.s. I don't think that a company will never make a premium flight sim, for a premium price or never make such a sim with well paid Western workers; from countries like Iceland, Sweden, Germany or the USA. Skyrim would not exist, if $ 50 or $60 was not a significant investment or if it always came down to making a pc game in the lowest cost labor market. Anyway, where are the low cost labor market, pc game company Globalist heroes, now? They used to be the future, till they took a Bethesda arrow to the knee! [giggle]

What in the cuckoo's nest am I reading?

I don't know which thread you are referring to, but my position is as follows:

1)I have scarce resources to devote to gaming.

2)I would like to invest my consumer dollars in pc games that are finished, of high quality and that are made by companies investing in job preservation and creation, within my home market, as part of thir overall approach to international business, as this is ultimately in my best personal interests, overall.

3) The flight sim development teams, I have previously dealt with, including Luthier's, 777 Studios and ED, have fallen short of my interests, in a variety of ways. Examples:

a) 777 Studios has not made FM fixes, I consider necessary, for roughly two years, despite my previous and much regretted support.

b) Luthier's team released a poorly optimized game that ran like a slide show on my computer, up till recently, but the performance of CLOD is still far short of my expectations. I certainly do not think that CLOD is worth $12, much less more money I will not invest money into their team or products; including an MMO or any other product.

c) 777 Studios products cost a lot, considering that a new Russian pc game goes for around $12, in Russia. Why would I pay $9 to $14, just to enjoy a single new aircraft or $20, for a single map, without any aircraft? I can put $15 a month into an MMO, made by a Global company, that is willing and able to create jobs in the USA. I have scarce financial resources, so I might as well put my resources into companies that are making a positive impact in my home market. After all, the majority of two generations of Americans are unemployed, under employed, self employed or otherwise, outright, out of work.

d) ED develops a Nevada map, made in Minsk, at a time when Nevada is particularly hurting. Why? No one in Nevada knows what Nevada looks like and can make a map? ED is not investing in my market, even when they are looking to make money off of modeling my home market, so goodbye to them.

4) Where the flight sim development teams fell short of one or more of my personal interests, other pc game companies, like EA, CCP and Bethesda, took a greater interest in advancing all of the interests I seek to advance, so I will side with the companies that side with my personal interests... and to the companies that cannot advance my interests and the companies that will not advance my interests, I leave them with this:

You must be new to the computer.

I am not new to business. I appreciate the positive implications of companies moving away from transnational corporate business organizational models. I know enough to side with such companies, when they do so. When a company can service the World, without drinking Jeff Sach's cool aide, it makes me pause and take that Global company very seriously.

New to business that involves computers. Although not foreign to a little crazy.

Just so you know, it's never been cool aide. It has, and always will be, Kool Aid.

Well, we don't drink too much Kool Aid in Scarsdale NY. We do hold professional credentials in stuff like strategic planning and international business, though. So we know about that stuff.

NattyIced, since you are such a computer business pro, would you care to explain to me what is the one thing that is needed to sustain growth in shareholder value? Here is a hint: You need it in order to sustain the benefits of free cash flow?

And yet no knowledge in markets.

NattyIced, since you are such a market expert, would you care to explain to me and the audience at home, what is the one thing that all publicly traded companies need in order to sustain long term growth in shareholder value? Here is a hint: You need it in order to sustain the benefits of free cash flow? =)

...or would you care to just stop trolling? =)

When did this thread become a quiz show, and how come I'm not a contestant?

I'm in!...answer..What is trolling

What is the market demand for a flight/air combat simulation based on WWII planes verse something like an RPG (which is all Bethesda makes)?

There's a huge difference.

Also, you keep saying females are the most numerous gamers. The study I've seen that stated females to be the most numerous gamers included Solitaire and Minesweeper.

-We agree on RPG games drawing a bigger crowd, when compared to flight simulations. This is one of the reasons why a sub-optimal profitability model is a good model for simulation, a model not unlike the one used by Rolex; including a premium price, in exchange for a, relatively flawless, premium product.

-Now, about women: Hey, even solitaire and mine sweeper involve Skinner box game elements, key to current and future MMO game design. If twenty- five year old women are getting a kick out of Skinner box elements in mine sweeper, wait till they get a load of the Skinner box game design elements in World of Darkness or a Mass Effect MMO. Remember, also, women are not only users of pc games, they are purchasers of pc games, increasingly the bread winners of US households, too. Not only do you want to attract women as pc game users, but you want to get women to purchase stuff for guys, purchase stuff for other women, you want women to help create demand pull for your products, etc.

I would not want to underestimate the importance of serving the gaming interests of females, though it is dangerous to think as an Essentialist and to suggest that because a woman is a woman she must like x,y and z. A game, like WOD may fail to attract females or succeed in attracting them, but not for the reasons that the developers thought they would attract females. How do you make an rpg that attracts female gamers, away from other pc games, including solitaire and mine sweeper and then hold their interests? For instance, Skinner box game design elements may not necessarily hold the attention of a female gamer, not sufficiently so to get her to commit to years of MMO gameplay. Understanding the diversity of interests within the female gamer population is a great good thing. I do not think that anyone has serving the wants of females down to a science. You need to know as much as you can about women gamers, if this is your career field and you want to appeal to them, when you can.

NattyIced,
What about my threads, regarding flight simulation teams, do you find so objectionable? I have scarce resources to devote to gaming. I will now only focus on purchasing games from pc game developers I believe best meet the greatest number of my wants, needs and interests. I believe that the flight sim teams fall short of meeting the minimum of my wants, needs and interests, in material ways, so I do not intent to continue supporting their future products. I suggested reasons why I believe they have fallen short of keeping me as a customer, reasons why other pc gaming companies have done a far better job of meeting my needs and ways future flight sim companies might deal with some of my concerns. So, what is your objection, again?

The market demand for RPG's would probably be on par with modern air combat simulations if they all started including such necessities as "complex digestive system management", "fully realistic archery model with windage" or "clickable inventory belt".

Contemporary air combat simulations don't sell because they are all as hardcore as they come to the point of literally functioning like training simulators, suffer from incredibly lame gameplay design, pay little attention to things like immersion (which RPG's generally do really well) and as a final insult generally don't actually run on anyone's computer but the developer's because they are riddled with bugs.

Do as you want MJMORROW, just don't assume that each genre is the same and can function the same. The reason there are so few flight/air combat simulators is because of the narrow profit margin - if they even exist at all. Games that function as escapes - like RPGs - will attract far more than any simulator ever will.

Evil Flower - Gameplay design and simulators don't generally mix. Yes, you can create a dynamic campaign but that's about it from a gameplay design. If you want a game with pretty graphics and great gameplay you get a game. If you want a simulator that may have some decent graphics but the majority of the data being processed is unseen, you get a simulator. If you want both that lacks in gameplay and simulation, you get flight simulator.

So an RPG functions as an escape, but a flight sim doesn't? Right. Gameplay and simulators mixed very nice indeed until the late 90's when simulator went from being "entertainment" into "serious business" and all about anal-retentive technical accuracy to the detriment of everything else. You do realize that scenario/mission design falls under gameplay design, right? A lot of the 21st century sims shipped with missions and campaigns that almost seemed designed to be as unentertaining and masochistic as possible, unless you were an ultra-nerd who approaches the sims as if they were a craft to be mastered. Remember the oh-so helpful "tutorial" missions in Il-2? The ones that are just a voiceover-less demo of the plane flying around and then drop you in the cockpit? Or the original Armed Assault that made ARMA2 seem like kindergarten with its ludicrous difficulty-level? That's #%&*$# game design right there that turns more people off than it turns on. Meanwhile sims around 90-95 did all these little things right. Always focus on fun, immersion and atmosphere. I can't recall a single early 90's sim that gave me the same sterile feeling as Il-2, DCS or Dangerous Waters.

Its a mystery to me that there now seems to be a widespread and firmly held belief that to be a 'serious' sim it should be accepted that the gameplay aspects will be lacking. I think too many people are taking these software products far too seriously, at the end of the day these are toys that can be played with by adults. On the one occasion I spoke to a professional pilot (ex RAF, now commercial) about PC flight sims and asked him if he thought they were a realistic representation of flying he laughed. That about told me all I needed to know.

With the sims that came out of the heyday of the genre, (mid '90's- mid '00's for me) I think espscially earlier on the developers had to take into account the higher percentage of offline players, if the game didn't have enough to occupy them it wasn't going anywhere. Today it is too easy to say 'well, most people will be plying online anyway, whats the point in pouring resources into a niche within a niche ?'.

Back OT, I just cannot see how anything based on the Clod engine is going anywhere fast, and as to cries of 'patience, patience' that comes from seeing tangible proof that the game is moving forward. Frankly, all I'm seeing is dodgy timescales and waffy promises. That just doesn't cut it for me any more.

This. Very much this. Unfortunately there is a bite reflex within a lot of simmers whenever the word "gameplay" is being used. It is as if they automatically equate gameplay with "dumbing down" or "arcade". *shakes head*


It's also part of the development towards more and more systems depth. That swallows development time and money that once went to decent campaigns and missions.

Take a high performance prop driven aircraft of today.. throw it all over the sky for 20 mins, come back and after landing, when you are feeling pretty washed out and knackered from the experience, and then ask yourself if 'playing' flight sim games (and they are games) are anything like the real thing, then you will have your answer..
Too many 'simmers' out there, and there are so many armchair commando's who live in a fantasy world, that take themselves and their games far to seriously it's unhealthy.

While a CEM sim is certainly not the real thing, it is very close in the head department. It's all pretty close in that aspect, you need to use your brain in both situations. If you were to enter a real flight someday, you would know when, and what to do.

Wouldn't a dynamic campaign be gameplay?

RPGs are far more of an escape than flight sims. They have a story line, you explore, you are far more involved in it that a flight sim where you create a pilot and just try to stay alive in a campaign. I feel more involved in online wars than I ever have in offline single player.

You don't feel involved in offline singleplayer because the offline singleplayer parts of contemporary sims are complete garbage, that's why. Flight sims used to be all about escape, and they used to combine realism with storylines just fine. Wings proved it could be done. Strike Commander proved it. Jet Fighter 3 proved it. Even the Novalogic sims proved it. Sims used to go to great lengths to give you an experience much greater than the sum of operating an airplane.

There was also a lot less to be coded. The FMs and DMs were very simple compared to todays. As were the maps, etc. They could devote time into making those components because everything else didn't take as long.

I never felt involved in offline singleplayer in AoE, AoTP, PAW, EAW, etc. Wings series was an arcade game that had renditions of plane models.

Painfully aware of being off topic, I am sorry, but Evil Flower's posts are spot on. The fun/frustration ratio of Red Baron 1 and SWotL was so much higher than the one of Rise of Flight (the best sim of the current crop in my opinion). I would love to see if somebody dared to just remake one of those games with current level graphics.

Disclaimer: Yes, I do sound terribly nostalgic. Yes, I have ripped into Codemasters for lack of realism in their F1 games, making me sound quite hypoctite here. Yes, I do know online audiences for simulations are dominated by the vocal hardcore, generating bad vibes for any game where a propellor screw is 5 mm off its correct position.

I doubt off line single player campaigns will ever be able to compare to the immersion of an online war. It will be years before the AI can be developed in any sim to match the skill and cunning of real pilots and the ability to communicate with them realistically. That said if the development can improve the AI, and aspects of the use of Triggers, campaign builders should be able to make some very interesting missions in the not too distant future. All is not lost yet, just because the developer mentions that they will make an MMO with the new IL-2 engine doesn't mean they have stopped work on the single player uses for the game engine. Do some MMO's use AI units or are they all human players? Not knowing if your confronting an AI or human opponent can introduce some element of apprehension of which strategy of attack one would use.

I think that Aiobhill and Evil Flower are making a lot of great points, not to suggest that the other posts are not useful, but, for instance, the fun/ frustration issue has not really been so directly addressed, as with these two authors. Frustration and fun are real key words and at the heart of the matter, when dealing with issues of getting people involved in flight simulation. Frustration is a real barrier to sustainable growth in flight sim participation, particularly when frustration is not matched by sufficient amounts of perceived fun, as a payoff. While I do not have numbers in front of me, I do have years of flight sim experience and I can suggest that frustration, that is not rewarded by sufficient fun, as a payoff, as amorphous a measurement as I can imagine, is a key to new players dropping out of flight sim gameplay. Developers, many of them math nerds and engineers, think that they can steam roll these matters with lectures about flight sim physics and what not, but frustration and fun are qualitative concepts flight sim developers need to wrestle with, if they want to grow, thrive and survive.

Note: While I have decided to only pc games sims that deliver, high quality, finished products,made by companies that support careers in my home market, as a part of their Global approach to business, the trigger for my leaving Rise of Flight, DCS and CLOD, was that I was not having fun. I left these flight sims and companies as a result of being frustrated by a lack of improvement in areas of product design, such as flight models, as in the case of ROF and playability, as in the case of CLOD. I also left because of a lack of sufficient amounts of perceived fun, as a payoff, from my participation in these games. I also left because of the general passive aggressive and out right hostile attitude of flight sim forum moderators, toward players making suggestions and because of my general inability to attract the kinds of meaningful interpersonal /interaction relationships I can obtain from pc games, geared toward persons I have high levels of commonality with or high levels of complementariness with, alternatively, generally so.

If game design isn't fun anymore, if Skinner box design falls through, a social animal will fall back on social interaction. When the social interaction is frustrating, be it with the development team or the way that players interact, where the payoff for social interaction then falls off, players walk out the door. Flight sims could be not so fun, if the social interaction was spectacular, but flight sims are increasingly perceived as not so fun and flght sim communities are perceived as hostile to outsiders, new ideas and out of the box thinking. RPGSs reward outsiders for finding a way into the inner circle, for thinking differently, for adding to what might otherwise be an endless parade of Skinner box antics. Flight sims do not seem to pay off socially, to the same extent, as an RPG MMO, for instance, IMHO. Flight sims need to be generally perceived, by Global gamers, as more fun and less frustrating, in terms of gameplay and social interactivity; to grow, thrive and survive.

I would say just the opposite, it will take years of practice for a single multiplayer campaign or online war to come close to being immersive or historical. People will not create/fly scenarios that doesn't give them the advantage, and when people are grouped together, they become even more stubborn in their resistance. (take for example, both sets of the Multi-squad campaigns in CoD, I was confronted by my own squad who was running it for providing Radar intel to the RAF, in lieu of the broken radar we had in game, or the RAF's refusal to sign up currently, since their IIa's are no longer uber-weapons.) You cannot achieve any historical accuracy (immersion) with online numbers, where will you find 36 Ju-88 pilots and accompanying crewmembers? All you have are human-to-human dogfights, which is not immersive. People also tend to gravitate towards the best current tactics, disregarding what was done in RL or at the time.

Also, it's easier to get closer to historical/immersive in a co-op setting than a persistent online server.

I disagree, my experience with years of flying Warclouds missions with forty plus human players concentrating on the targets and covering those hitting the targets says otherwise. There is always a group of freelance flyers meeting at the borders for just dogfight purposes, but we just considered them part of the fog of war. Your suggestion that all online wars end up being just clusterfacks is wrong. Many of flyers on Warclouds were considered some of the best flying online and I'm not suggesting I was one of them.

The new game engine when fixed will allow one human bomber pilot lead a group of AI bombers which should go along way in introducing more historic Battle of Britain type scenarios. That way you could have only five human bomber pilots leading five or more AI bombers each. Along with the fine tuning of triggers, the COD campaigns should be quite immersive. Most adults can do those missions and like I said you will always have an element of people doing there own thing, but in most cases that won't find and interrupt the mission on a large map and if they do its just the fog of war. Even when they do find the mission the covering pilots will often find them easy meat, that would hardly effect the overall mission. Once and awhile a team killer will try to disrupt the mission but its easy to kill him or boot him.

I flew on warclouds while learning to go full-real, and my experience is because its a small group of guys (especially us blues, i miss flying with CIA_Luth and CIA_Jet) that do work to beat a map, there is teamwork. But there is no sense of immersion with ID tags being on (even though I loved the way they implemented them), and small groups of flyers (typically was 6-8 of us JaBo'ing a target). That's in no way even close to putting you into what the BoB experience was. ATAG does a better job than that, and it still pales in comparison to WvD addon.

Again with the implementation of one human player controlling five or more bombers will go along way in introducing BOB type scenarios online. It would be almost impossible to organize a hundred human bomber pilots, but easy to organize 10 human bomber pilots with around 10 AI bombers following each human pilots lead. That along with experienced flyers from CIA, JG27, and more than a few other squadrons will be able to make a series of very historical missions. The only thing stopping this now is the incomplete unstable game engine. It appears the development is still committed to the game engine with the pending annoucement of a MMO to be released a few years from now.

This. Online is - and has always been, despite some serious bomber types in 1946 - a fighter and fighter-bomber centristic clusterf*ck which makes some people think they're something special just because they play vs other people and which bears absolutely no relation to real aerial warfare in the 1940s. Ever seen a Gruppe of player-manned Stukas attacking a fortified position? Ever seen more than a handful of player-manned bombers? A swarm of single-seat Il-2s? I haven't. Instead I had more than my fair share of planeset whines just because someone didn't get the fighter he wanted. I've come to accept that the overwhelming majority of the players thinks this is realistic (which it isn't). When one tries to move towards realism they have their counter-arguments down - it's usually "fairness", "playability" or other such smokescreen words which really only hide that they don't want realism but preserve their little own world.


You really think this will matter? I don't. We will have lone-wolfing as opposed to coordinated squadron-sized operations, we will see more fighter-bombers than ever produced/modified in 1940 because players detest having to fly the real strike aircraft of the Luftwaffe at that time (the Stuka), we will still have people hovering over enemy bases hoping for an easy kill, we will still have RAF fighters roaming over France (which in real life they weren't allowed to) and we won't see the kind of scrambles that were the daily bread of the RAF Fighter Command in the BoB. And you know why? Because people having fun and the kind of environment the BoB brought on don't mix well. In an offline campaign such experiences can be tailor-made for the player, the historical planeset can be observed without a need to "adapt" it to sooth some player's ruffled feathers.

Oh Lordy, the new game engine was supposed to be the fix !

Months were spent waiting for the patch that would set CloD on its feet, any criticism during that time was met with fierce retorts about being patient, the graphics re-write will sort this out, 'read the updates' etc. What did we get ? better optimised trees with(in hushed tones) a collision model ?, better clouds ?, better AA ?, less stutter ?,shadows that don't appear to be having some sort of seizure ?.

No, we didn't.

Now its back to 'a few days for this, a few days for that, testing will commence the third Tuesday after Peoples holiday no 724 etc, etc'.

What we have is still the promise of what could have been, past performance does tend to suggest that the ability to make good on that promise is questionable in the extreme. I would like to see one (just one) obvious flaw in this game tackled and fettled, that would at least show me that they can do it, for real, rather than more lame excuses or promises of the sun coming out tomorrow.

This^

I don't see turning off certain features/effects and then turning them on again as fixing things. I genuinely laughed when I read the "few days for this, few days for that" comment, comedy gold but also an insult to peoples intellect, well most of them anyway. I haven't even bothered installing the latest(?) hot-fix for the -lol- "alpha-patch" yet. With regards to the topic though, they are making an MMO....and they can't even make a proper GUI. I'm not going to gloat about it though, good luck playing catch up with the competitors which will, most likely, have their air combat MMO's ready for launch before the end of this year. These competitors that some people joke and laugh about over at banana have more experience in making games than MG will ever have. I have a feeling a lot of people will have to swallow their laughter within a year or so.

I said some months ago that this bunch have dropped the ball badly, and that another firm will wait in the wings to pick it up and take their crown.. The sad thing is though that I want this to be everything they said it was going to be.. not sure if they will ever pull it off..

CoD is dead.

There are 4x as many people on SH5 thread at SUBSIMS forum than CoD! Both UbiFlops.

If CoD is the name of your horse Icarus, and you are beating it with a stick, then yes CoD could well be dead.

As far as the flight sim goes I'll wait for the official statement

You wait for that statement. It will come about the same time CoD is a success. LOL

he he perhaps

I have stayed quiet prior to this but this acutally infurates me. How dare they release a half finished product then tell me months later that they are releasing a MMO. I will not spend another cent on this franchise.

I am starting to think the same thing. I bought a broken, unfinished game called CoD over a year ago.

I keep waiting for the patch that will make the game good, Then the devs say they are making a sequel called

Battle over Moscow, and now a MMO ? So they are making two sequels and have not fixed the first one?

WAKE UP CoD Horse! WAKE UP!! I think he's dead.

He's not dead...He's resting...

They said the MMO will be released in 2013, which to me means BOM is the MMO.

Looks dead to me

It does point that way

The MMO could use the BOM maps, COD maps, and any other sequels map.

Or, it could be pining for the fjords...

Its the only way it will work as you will never organize a hundered bomber pilots or more on one server. The same with the Stuka's you would only need two Stuka human pilots to lead two squadrons of AI Stukas. You can have servers with passwords to only allow squads that want to play by any rules they dictate. Lone wolves could be just classed a the fog of war, or if they camp bases boot their sorryass, your choice. Why couldn't you have scrambles, it would be relatively easy to build a mission online or offline with a hundered AI bombers or more already on the way to targets about the distance away a historic scramble might start. I think eventually you will see full 24/7 wars with AI run historic day by day Battle of Britain missions where human pilots can take over any AI aircraft at any point in the Battle. Either waiting to scramble or inflight.

I am quite aware that the system doesn't allow for that many human players - if one could find that many to begin with. My argument was against the - IMO - false statement that only online can lead to immersion. In my case it's the opposite as I detest how players are using history as a smokescreen to hide their "sportive contest" clusterf*ck menthality.


I was merely argueing against the misconception that online has anything to do with historical realism beyond setting and perhaps planesets. Many people have a limited amount of time to play so they can't (and in many cases won't) bother with coordination, which can involve a certain amount of waiting, leading to the everlasting gangbang between the two closest airfields (or above them).

I actually scrolled back to page 13 when I clicked on this thread because I saw BOM and was hopeful that it stood for "Battle Of Midway".

Battle Of Moscow? No thanks.

Have you ever played an organized online war? Or even just an organized online event?

Yes, I have. I've been flying Il-2 from the beginning on, participated in wars such as IOW 1 + 2 etc. Before that I was flying the old Warbirds 2.01 on the german server and was one of the scenario CMs there so I know a bit about designing scenarios and players' reactions to them.

Bottom line of all those experiences (and a large number of forum discussions) is: 99% of the players are fighter and/or fighter-bomber centristic people who like the same old, same old settings and woe betide you if you try to reduce the amount of fighters or fighter-bombers in favor of the historical types (such as Stuka, single-seat Il-2s, bombers etc). IOW, VEF and VOW missions were all designed with this "target audience" in mind so they were essentially fighter clashes with a bit of historical background thrown in. It grew stale for me pretty fast and ultimately I went back to offline playing since there I can actually design missions which reflect a certain historical situation without the need to stroke peoples' egos by making "playability or fairness adjustments".

I played scenarios in the old WB (the one that was CK and later ended up becoming AH at the time of the iENT/HTC split), and there were always enough people to fly bombers to fill out the scenario. I did it quite a few times.

With Il-2 those units that no one wanted to use could have been set to AI, actually - they should have been AI if no one took the slot in the join screen.

I know most people want to be an instant ace, but with the ability to use AI units I don't see how that disrupts using historical units for historical scenarios. It'd be no different than an all AI offline mission, except online you'd have the chance of running into a human or multiple humans that will actually try to escape if they get too damaged.

I have now read all 15 pages of this Thread.


a few points

1. I got a business lesson

2. Some of you are deluded and apparently still have faith in a company that not only lied to us. But continue to lie to us.

3. I need more coffee

and on that note

Not only have I played in them, but have help organize and create them, and run the server. That's how I know these things Chivas dreams about are just not going to play out the way he hopes.

Take any mission from the WvD campaigns, play it, then go to ATAG, the only populated server, and tell me which one gives you the better impression of being in the Battle of Britain.

Better yet, take any mission/server from CoD, and then do a direct comparison to BoBII.

I think it could be very different on servers like ATAG, but it would require TS, and checking in to receive your orders...really need a command system.

A scenario is a much different beast than everyday play. But even then we had issues with players acting out of the general plan, going off on their own jaunts "just because they can" and so on. Maybe the bunch on the US server is/was different, but most of the folks I had to deal with didn't give a flying fart about history, immersion or even teamplay.


The use of AI to fill in the Stuka/Bomber/transport/recon slots would be sensible if players wouldn't mistake it for mere targets, if they aren't wrinkling their self-righteous noses about "damned bots". I've already seen that, too, and it shocked me TBH. Why such people fly a historical combat sim at all escapes me totally. They're better off playing these mindless online shooters ...


Like I said - even with heavy use of AI and an intricate system to generate as much historical realism as possible players would (whether intentionally or not is irrelevant) derail this scheme with their "I'm entitled to because I can ..." attitude. I'm a cynic, I admit that, but I have no faith in "the players" not to push any such project towards the same old same old clusterf*ck.


No command system works with people playing games in their freetime. First you would not get everyone to agree with orders - let alone following them - and secondly any attempt to "make" players do something (like flying more bombers, like flying Stukas etc) will generate resistance. "Freedom of choice" was the phrase used ...

quote
and secondly any attempt to "make" players do something (like flying more bombers, like flying Stukas etc) will generate resistance."


No, no plane assignments...orders given is known in the server reputation, only willing people would join

Well I can fly a stuka, but not so much a 111, but hey task me a Heinkill and I'll give it a go. Of course I'd crash at the end of the runway, preventing the rest of my squad from taking off, mission over. There would be wrath!!

Heinkill it is then...goodluck!

Even TS gives you more communication than was possible in the 40s, squadrons might be on the same frequency, but wouldn't have direct communication with other squadrons, and would need any messages relayed through a command, more so on the LW side than the RAF.

Also, if you require AI bombers to fill your numbers, then what's the difference in using AI fighters to fill the numbers, other than the public desire to "shoot down real people"? If you are going to put AI fighters in historical numbers as escorts (LW ratio was 4 fighters per bomber during most parts of the campaign), then eliminating the people who won't fly to orders, won't fly as designated (100m from the bombers for example, or 4 plane flights when they should have been 3 planes, 1 shooter + 2 wingman) gets you far more immersion. Again showing why co-op or SP is far more immersive than online persistent servers. You can add subsidiary action to recreate the fog of war Chivas talks about, nothing in the programming restricts you from having side flights and action.

There is a command system, any Squad worth its salt has one. You could have a number of squads join the server to act out a historical mission, fleshed out with all the AI you required, or just two squad m8's with the rest AI. The idea that all online scenarios turn into clusterf#cks is total BS.

He he that was a fraudian slip, Slip. But thought I'd keep it in. I see why they call you Ball, youi're right on it lol.

Someday you will join my server...Hooah!!

Good to hear...I think a server for the general public with a command system, would be a big hit

There are a couple available now, and predictably, no one plays them.