Is this an official statement?

BoS is one project that needs some feature creep...and feature restoration. Out of those 15,000 + ? sales let's take a look at the behavior of the Steam segment:



That blue line is BoS. It is trending down. For a newly released game that is not what 1CGS wants to see. "As sales increase, fewer people are playing BoS" is counterintuitive and cannot be explained outside of a poorly received product. And whether here, or the BoS forum, Reddit, Steam forums, wherever, there doesn't appear to be a huge percentage of folks loving this game. Are those complaining the vocal minority as you hint at in your post above?

In fact, those complaining are probably the vocal majority. In any case, things are not alright with Steam customers, and the above graph is also likely indicative of players who purchased BoS outside of Steam. 1CGS will not reach their goal of a minimum of 200,000 units sold with the BoS player behavior you see in this graph.

When all surveys, polls and samples are explained away as representing a minority opinion you have to question those interpreting the data. You can obfuscate complaints and polls on a forum. You can't obfuscate information as is contained in the above graph.

Note: Cliffs of Dover is the green line, and IL-2 1946 is the orange line.

P.S. I don't like Steam and won't do business with them due to the intrusive nature of their business model, but the raw game data Steam displays to its customers has got to get the attention of developers. It tells the customer what's hot and what's not, and can help a new game build sales momentum fast or bury it in a hurry. 1CGS has got to turn this downward trend around, and fast. Word of mouth can work for you or against you, and you can bet your bottom dollar these Steam players are telling their friends why they are playing BoS less and not more.

Making major game design changes late in the day is generally a recipe for trouble and understandable. However not changing some game aspects in the face of a serious outburst by the community when they're really easy to change is pretty dumb though. Seriously - they could easily have removed unlocks for full price members (at the very least in MP) and added back in the graphic options that were there originally in EA and sidestepped a lot of the trouble. There would still have been trouble about the lifeless "campaign", lack of FMB at launch, etc. but the general atmosphere would have been far less poisoned. The initial reception and perception of a game is very important and the devs didn't help themselves here - in fact pretty much the opposite.

Well, to my surprise and dismay, Jason has emphatically stated all these head-shakingly bewildering decisions were indeed his.
He still has failed to give any indications as to why he made them, or what he thinks is good about them, which of course casts doubts.

Personally, if I'd made what I thought was a correct decision and people called me on it, I would explain WHY I thought it was correct. I wouldn't stay silent and only say "No, I DID decide that!" if someone said they didn't believe I had actually made that decision but then refrain from giving my reasons for them, or even just say "no, this was the right way to go."

Whatever the truth of the matter, there can be no doubt Jason wants us to believe he made these bone-headed calls without any outside interference from above, it's all him. Likewise he refuses to offer what inspired these decisions, perhaps a bad trip or a fever dream. I'm almost unwilling to believe it based on what I knew of him from years of ROF. I'm very sad to be wrong about what I thought he knew of us. It's like on your 10th birthday your big present from your parents is a bicycle when you thought you were getting an Xbox, especially after you talked with them all year about how great it was, how much you wanted one, and how the weather is usually too awful for riding bikes.


One size NEVER fits all, and a free-to-play grind fest for the Russian market and a premium-priced hardcore sim for the Western one should never have been considered for the same project. It boggles the mind.

Thanks for the bike, Jason.




The Jedi Master

I would be curious where he got that 15K + in sales number from, all indications I have seen the developers stay tight lipped on data such as this.

Regarding Steam, all it takes is a few glances at the BOS forum on Steam to see BOS is pretty much dying on Steam.

Nice I always aim to entertain

Well , I can't say it in another way, many of the critiques are correct, just beaten to death by old age. My main reason for flying BOS is lack of time for DCS and the fact that I am fed up with COD. If there had been another WW2 sim around, I probably would not played BOS.
And earlier it was a gentleman saying we who played BOS needed to examined our head.
Almost 100% of the people flying BOS active are in no way 100% satisfied with the product. I personally got huge problems with airplanes not remotely live up to its supposed potential. And other reach even mythical proportions.
Take the IL 2, before patch 1008 it was unplayable, now it is almost 50% more playable. But still its fragile DM make it a easy kill.

I hope my explanation about my mentioning of cod is satisfactory, and sorry for my bad English. By the way, I hope my interest for cod one day will be restored, being fed up with it, does not mean it is bad

Yes I find this frustrating as well. Though I do not recall this particular post and am not referring to it. I just don't like the 'if you like this game, you are a dummy' mentality

I think the official line in that case would be suck it up and learn to pedal or be gone!

Whoa,
Anyone else happen to see that thread on the official BOS forum that just disappeared? It was posted just a few minutes ago by a user, who purchased a digital copy through Steam, and apparently was mistankenly sent a " press key " rather than a regular key, being asked when he would be posting his reviews.. both he and a buddy purchase and same thing happened to both of them...

Maybe nothing there, just found it interesting that thread just completely disappeared after just a few minutes of being posted...

Yep, I saw it too. Didn't take them long to clean house.

Cloyd

Sooner or later the rug will need to be lifted to clean all the stuff they keep sweeping under it.

What was the gist of the thread?

Jason/devs asking him when he would be posting reviews?

And generally press keys have everything unlocked. I wonder if he got to see anything new too.

Edit: this thread?

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/14271-1c-and-customer-support/#entry225498

Does it surprise you? The official BoS forums are the only forum I know where users regularly take screenshots of posts just to prove their existence before the moderators or dev team get to them but hey remember it's all sunshine and rainbows over there so we are led to believe. If you look at the Steam reviews though something stinks, you can't review games on Steam unless you own them on Steam and yet there are ardent fans posting glowing reviews but those same people bought it when it released on the official web store and you can't transfer your key to Steam so who gave them the Steam key to post reviews?

Yep the thread is now back LOL...
Probably someone hid it till Jason had a chance to read and respond to it if I had to guess.

I really need to take a break from some of these forums for while.

Since I knew as soon as I saw it that someone over here would add that to their list of accusatory rhetoric to further undermine BoS and it's developers, forum and moderators I locked and hid that thread and then I promptly PMd the OP and Jason to get the issue resolved ASAP because I did not want the type of speculative BS that is in this very thread getting too out of hand.. Jason has done as he should have and unhid and responded... Everything is not some friggin conspiracy to deceive, bribe, browbeat or perpetration of some other nefarious goal that some folks seem to love to inflame.

Reap what you sow

Your right, not everything, just some things....that have been posted many times shows.

Once you got that rep, its hard to shake it off.

Indeed... In this case I think what is being reaped is a satisfied customer who just wanted to get his issue resolved. Which is being done as we speak.

He didn't sound to satisfied when he posted but in typical fashion the response from the moderators was "oh noes, negative post, quick, hide, hide, hide" When the developers have behaved as underhand, devious and downright dishonest as they have then then they certainly reap what they sow when people see things like this.

A customer who FINALLY gets the owed support, to be correct.

To conclude from there to satisfaction might be a bit overly optimistic.