the "limiting" it does to you by not constantly buying the updates is removing the level playing field. instead of dealing with various aircraft historical performance limitations, you have simply made it so that the one who spends the most money has the advantage (since newer planes will be better performing)


right now what has happened in marketing terms with RoF is the old "bait and switch" conmen trick. you pretend you will sell one item (going by the previous information provided in tha last 2 years which got people excited about an interesting new sim), and at the last minute you switch it to something else, which is what many of us have just realized in the last few weeks.

right now all you get, err the russian customers got, is 2 planes and ONE scenery pack. since making new scenery and seasonal variations will take development time from the small team they have, i'd speculate it will also be a payware addon.

They started with the later part of the war. Most added planes will be worse.

that would be good news, the early ww-1 planes are the most interesting. it would be good fun to try and keep one of these in the air while observing ground troop movements for ex while riflemen and machine gunners near the front line keep taking shots at you




so how do they plan to cope on one server with planes ranging from 1914 to 1918 ?

let me guess, right now we pay to fly on a 1917 server, and we have to pay again later to fly the older more rickety planes on a 1914 server ?

Don't blame me blame Oscar Wilde

Ming

Don't confuse the validation/copy protection/registration server with the servers that will host multiplayer scenarios. These could be two completely separate things. We don't know yet, but i doubt it will be impossible to allow people to establish their own dedicated servers a la IL2. It might not work with Hypperloby and only work through a Neoqb interface, but i don't think the only arenas to play on will be games hosted on servers owned by Neoqb. We'll just have to wait and see.

It's called "Devils Advocate". Like I said before, no one here needs to be convinced that RoF is at it's core a great sim and a large evolutionary step in the right direction.

But we here do not represent the majority of the market. The majority of the market stands at Walmart in front of the game shelf and wonders what flight sim to buy for their kid/teenager's birthday. And to them (and other "not inside" buyers like that everywhere) it might well make a difference what amount of content they can get for 40 bucks, unless they are totally set on WW1 - but even then, if they are online and informed, they will know about OFF3 too.

For that crowd and others too, I see no wrong in promoting the sim, because I have convinced myself that it is well worth it. Plan to write an article about it for the biggest Danish aviation magazine (as well as BS, which is now out in general distribution). I won't hide the flaws of these sims, but the positives FAR outweigh the negatives in my mind, and I'll say that as well.

I think playing devil's advocate can be fine enough, but sometimes you also have to see where the chips fall and act accordingly, helping out rather than just standing on the sidelines. These sims won't prosper or even survive without good sales, and I want those sales to happen on the huge merits they have shown. Playing the devil's advocate and constantly criticising can hide the main message, namely that these are sims that will provide great fun and even knowledge to propheads and amateurs alike.

Instead of helping out by promoting more sales, I'd rather help out by getting NeoQB to react to constructive criticism. I do not want RoF to fail (despite the fact that I hate their DRM and think THAT should fail) but I want NeoQB to play a honest game with the customer, not a sales model that is based on "if you don't support it in it's early stage, it's never going to be really good later".

Good man, he's climbed aboard the wagon again.

These threads here are all starting to sound the same, again.
Carry on Gentlemen!

My thoughts exactly. Black Shark is out for 29.90 Euros, the only reason i am holding out on it is because i want to see what ships with the international version of RoF. Sure, Black Shark has only one flyable, but it has a steep learning curve with a host of training missions to help you out, 3 single player campaigns and a lot of AI aircraft and ground objects to use when making your own missions. I don't make missions myself, but others do and if they have so much material to work i can get a steady influx of content for free. Hearing from people who do have it, they say that it could take a casual simmer the better part of a month to be comfortable in the helicopter and a total of 3-4 months to get through all the single player campaigns.

So, here i am, fresh out of my military conscription duties, looking for a job and i recently dropped 1200 Euros into a new PC case with assorted goodies. If the content/pricing ratio is something i consider steep when the international version is released, then i find it very reasonable to wait until i can get a multi-addon discount pack for some added value before i invest in RoF. At that point i will spend the equivalent of a few beers on a night out and get a sim that's finished and has enough content to keep me occupied for 4 months, maybe more if you take into account that i will be playing other games along the way as well.

Now this is just me, but there are a lot who think like me. I and many others can't support a sim series on the off chance that the devs will give us a reason to do so, albeit a couple of years down the road, when i can invest now in the continued growth and prosperity of my hobby by backing up proven and robust competing products. Sure, we need to give the new guy on the block a chance, but he should give us a chance to give him a chance first

And it's not that i'm so strapped for cash that i can't afford to spend 100 Euros on Rof plus addons, i just can't do it on a matter of principle alone due to a number of reasons not directly pertaining to the quality of the few things that are in fact included in the sim. I have certain expectations, if these are not met then i'm not buying, it's as simple as that. It's just a waiting game to see if these expactations will be met in the next month or two, otherwise i'm simply going to wait some more until they get their act straight.

As i've said countless time in the past, i will eventually get RoF, i'm sure about it. I just don't know how many more people will follow the same route as i do and as a result of that, if the company will still be around by the time i decide to do it.

The conversions are very heartening indeed.

I'm sure Neoqb will appreciate your support!

(Wolfar throws some popcorn in his mouth watching intently.)

I agree we will have to see what they ship here in probably less than 20 days.

Where else can you go to have this much fun.

Just makes the waiting that much easier!

At which point the sole requirement for purchase will be the box artwork.



It will all come down to content. The IL-2 series is rightfully a Landmark Simulation because of content. Not all of it was perfect - not by a long shot - but the really, really good outweighed the perplexing (the Lerch) and the bad (navigation lights and the AI).

Who'd of thunk a WWII Eastern Front flight sim would've been as successful as the original IL-2?

I reckon that RoF will see a pretty good squirt of sales initially from the rabid WWI fans like me and then a steady drumbeat of sales as more content is developed. I also expect a lot of whining when the ten planes bought for roughly fifty bucks show up in a bundle for new players for fifteen around Christmas time.

The precident is there - anybody else remember the "why am I having to pay for content I already have?" moaning with every iteration of the IL-2 series, up to and including 1946?

As to planesets, I am very much looking forward to the Eindecker/Bullet/Halberstat/DH2 planeset. I'll most likely pass on the Pfalz DIII, the DR.I, and the D.Va. That may mean that I can only fly Entente on some servers, but whatever - it just means that the normal AI planes I would've flown against are flown by humans.

Truth be told, I'm not concerned about some joker taking on my Neuport 11 with his Fokker DVII, as by my server (unrealistic matchups) and plane choice it's obvious that I don't really care about scores. In fact, it wouldn't bother me to be ranked dead bottom in Neoqb's server logs - I'd wear it as a badge of honor and call anyone who made fun of me an arcade player or a points hound.

That's the attitude!


...that will get you killed..

Oh, and yes, I agree dart, if it is about Walmart buyers then it is of course the box artwork that will sell the sim. And if that is the case ("case", hehe) then I think that Rise of Flight has a winner, the box is outstanding and very classy.

It appears that ROF doesn't have enough content for some, but I would rather fly and support the sim now than wait a year or two. For those that find the content to weak for their enjoyment then they can wait a few years for it to be fleshed out. You will probably get more bang for your buck, but in our small market, run the risk that poor sales will kill the sim.

The developer and publishers are the only one's risking their own money. If I spend 50 dollars now and the developer crashes and burns in a year, I've still had a year of very cheap entertainment. If they stay aflout, and I decide to spend 50 bucks every year or so on content, its still incredibly cheap entertainment.

its still incredibly cheap entertainment

Amen to that Chivas we're still flying Il-2 after all this time and no sign of war-weariness. And Il-2 was a stopgap on the way to 1917. Or 1940 yes

Ming