Why such negativity? Do you have actual figures?

No, game sales are top secret always and ROF is a world wide game. I base the "fear" on the fact that it takes a very expensive PC to run ROF on good settings (limits the players), it is WWI (some like WWII or jets), and the number of people who voted (vote post) on this forum and the ROF forum (New plane payment method vote).

It is just a fear/worry/guess. I really want ROF to stay in business as I do each fight sim developer as we have too few these days.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was to keep the community from fighting over MP and SP priority. We need both for the community.

Having read the interview and seeing the actions that Neoqb has taking..

RoF for me is just (and will always be I fear) a civilian flight sim that has deadly weapons. It was fun to go fly around maybe engage a few targets, but at the end of the day there is no sense of accomplishment outside of learning your airplane. I will buy the add-on aircraft that I have always adored, Dr. 1, Camel, Alb D3, and Sp Triplane, but I am buying them because I just want to fly them, not really for combat.

I think it's interesting that there still are two really distinct sides to the RoF community. I personally don't see too much of a future for RoF outside of new planes and MP sessions. If you are a MP person this is almost perfect for you. Who cares about content when you don't play it to begin with? You have your human opponents to kill. However, without a strong single player aspect some people might not even try MP because they don't want to be cannon fodder, so in the end there might very well be less MP players.

I just wish Neoqb would get their #%&*$# together and start to look like a professional company. Being a professional in any field starts with proper communication. If you can't even hire a good translator to write forum posts or respond to interviews with proper grammar, what does that say about the company? If you are going to market anything outside your native country you best know how to use basic and proper grammar for whatever language your customer base is speaking.

Things are improving Counterman, neocube are finding people to translate Russian into Russian-English and Russian-English into English-English

You may not know Russian and you may not be a small company but I think you know that the developers are Russian, and as I do not know one word of Russian I tend to cut Russian developers lots of slack if they create a sim like Rise of Flight for me. And for you

Ming

Yes Ming, I need much slack cut for me. You are such a fantastic guy for doing that! -I say that sarcastically to the quote, but really you work wonders with missions editors.

I totally understand where you are coming from about the language barrier. However, if I wanted to go market my photos in Russia or Brazil, I wouldn't expect people to tolerate my poor language skills. It's business. If you are going to commit to doing business in another country, do it right or not at all. Please!

Are you as to not understand that that is EXACTLY what I am advocating for on line play and your silly claims of "majority" etc etc are just puffery.

As for my reference to WOW it was just to show that people WILL pay to play if the game is good enough (and I think this one is good enough to make it in that venue).

Your claims are all couched in boxed at home games which become shelfware in short order most of the time. Frankly at this point I am VERY close to calling it a day which will drop one more full time supporter of this game ( I have bought everything they have offered to date ) if they don't soon fix the MP part of it.

I just wish they had made the campaign like Red Baron 2, that had a fantastic campaign mode..that I played over and over again

I believe for flight sims offline and online are as important and the exclusion of/or relegation of either to 2nd place is suicide.

With RB23D I was 85% offline and 15% online and with IL2 I am 100% an offline player... when I can be bothered to fire it up.

The thing about IL2 it is so damn boring and has no immersion factor. As such I fire it up every so often have about an hour of play and remember why I do not play it often. I then reminisce about the career mode in RB23D and sigh in frustration that I am unable to play it any longer.

I often wonder how many more sales IL2 would have got had it had a career mode and not a series of canned missions with a gamy refly option. I know I would have bought the Pacific expansion for one.

Anyway back to the IL2 and 100% offline. I love to jump in and have a a out and out dogfight, that will be the times I play online, the rest of the time will be in career mode. But without a great career mode to be immersed in I do not have the inclination to play online because it is more of the same.

With no offline campaign to speak of, and I would not consider the canned mission style campaign of IL2, I cannot fathom how they expect to sell a lot of planes in the long term. Aside from those who idolise a particular plane, who is going to invest in the outclassed planes so they can have their ass handed to them in the dogfight arena?

I wonder if the RoF we have is the RoF we deserve? I am amazed at how forgiving the majority is and at how willing they are to open their wallets for just a plane when the online is so poorly implemented and the career mode is an insult.

I will also say that I am somewhat disappointed in the reviews. I do want RoF to succeed, but the review scores do not accurately represent what has been delivered. A review score should not be based upon a games potential.

Why video game reviews suck: part one
Why video game reviews suck: part two

It is hard to fathom how Neoqb could ignore what made RB2 and European Air War such a classics that lasted well beyond its expiry date.

Darn right. Couldn't have said it better myself.

I couldn't have put it better myself. I fly mostly offline but Rise of Flight is so boring and utterly atrocious offline that I simply can't be bothered to load it up anymore. I honestly never would have thought anyone could release a sim with a worse SP campaign that IL2s, yet Neoqb managed it. With the MP aspect there are only a handful of servers, most of which are password protected, the rest are mostly empty. The few servers that are good have that god awful coop mode where you could have to wait up to 10+ minutes just to fly.

Anyone else have this scenario happen often? You think "I will play some Rise of Flight", the mouse pointer hovers over the RoF icon on your start menu/desktop. You don't click the icon because you just realised "what's the point, it is boring and has nothing fun going for it". Right now Rise of Flight has nothing going for it but potential, and potential is not the same as greatness. The FM and DM might be stunning but this alone is not enough to make me want to play it. I want to like Rise of Flight and want to support it by buying all the aircraft they release for it. Unfortunately I have reached the stage where I ultimately realise that buying planes for such a dead lifeless sim is going to be a waste of money, and this interview doesn't allay those fears even slightly.

Damn, you crack me up. 2005AD is totally right with what he says. YOU don't get the point, man. Pay to play multiplayer only games will always have a number of members, otherwise they would cease to exist. But that doesn't say anything about the ratio of people walking into a store, taking a sim off the shelf, never to go online with it against those who buy it JUST for flying online.
Oh, 400 ppl in Hyperlobby flying IL2? Everyone must be flying online these days! LOL. Quadruple this number, or take it times 5 even - so only 2000 people bought IL2? Bye bye, Oleg!

MMPOG flightsims like Aces High are the EPITOME of a niche product! They are not the future in any way, shape or form - they are merely co-existing with offline games / free multiplayer games in that niche which they have settled themselves into. And that niche once was a very competitive market, with several providers fighting for the VERY FEW people who are actually willing to pay a monthly fee. Where is Air Warrior today? How many players are actively flying Warbirds?
How many people in real life do you really know / meet who are playing Aces High vs how many who ever took a flightsim off the shelf? How many who play WOW vs how many who ever took an RPG off the shelf?
If what you are saying is that RoF should go down this same route - good luck is all I can say. Compete with Aces High and WWIIOL after those two have pretty much eaten up everybody else - and with a WWI scenario? GOOD LUCK lol.

Damn, you must be pretty damn new to this genre when you really believe the things you say or have never heard people praising RedBaron 3D for its dynamic offline campaign! Let me guess, you were only talking about this "DOS game" [sic] with your squadron buddies who had flown it online? Are you drawing all your conclusions in life from such severely limited perspectives?

I've been flying flightsims since around '96 and went online in '99. From then on, I was flying online ONLY, *for years* - mostly Warbirds. Until I've seen it all. Including the demise of good online flightsims - Aces High is so successful because it offers a Main Arena where there is no Rolling Plane Set and all sides can fly all planes at all times. Spits vs Mustangs, La7 vs F4Us, 109s vs 190s - How is that for realism??? Likewise, the dogfight servers in IL2 are little more than Air Quake. If you think what you see there has anything to do with realism you are fooling yourself. Even if you join a squad which flies in a realistic manner, it won't change the Quake-like online gameplay. I was part of two Squadrons where nobody - except the new trainees - had a Kill/Death ratio lower than 5. That doesn't change the lemming and moronic play style of the majority of the other players though - sticking to a buddies / allies' 6 o'clock just to get their single kill of the day, even though they KNOW I will blast them out of the sky a few seconds later if they don't break now. Or those morons who will up for the [n]th time from a field after we blasted them from the sky even though we are still up there, so you run low on ammo and finally one of the morons - who would be DEAD 5 times already if this was real - will get lucky and kill a Jabo you were to escort. Very realistic indeed, all that.

Once you had enough of Air Quake - which is of course still fun once in a while - you will look for a more realistic style of play. Even more so when you are a history buff. The only way to do this online is through realistic COOPs - or better yet, IL2 online wars. But these things need time, commitment and are on a schedule. When you have a real life also, and a job, it can be difficult to come up with enough commitment for little gain. So it is extremely enjoyable when you can just fire up the game if you happen to find the time and indulge in a NICE DYNAMIC OFFLINE CAMPAIGN a la Red Baron 3D vs. Air Quake session number 99999, Mr. "Online is teh Future!!!11!!".

ROF doesn't require a better PC than most other current 3D games, I don't consider my rig to be cutting edge but ROF has out performed my initial expectations. You can't produce a new game to run on 5 year old PC technology. With the addition of a decent 3D card anyone that's bought a new off the shelf PC in the last 2 years should be able to run ROF.

heartc LOL don't hold back tell us what you really think of pay for play online gaming. I suspect that any game that involves human competition is not your cup tea, wonder why?

Most guys that call AH2 and other pay for play online games "air quake" is cause in reality they totally suck at combat vs a "thinking" opponent or just want to bury their competition in meaningless taunts.

What are you offliners afraid of?? If your arguments are so solid whats to worry if they give us MP guys a reliable DF server where we can join anytime and play?

As bard once said "me thinks you doth protest too much"

Oh and BTW I have been playing these games since 1985 when they all first came out, played AW at 6 bucks an hour, and I have PLENTY of shelfware offline flying games that I don't play anymore. AW died when AOL killed it, WB is dying because "Wild" Bill won't improve it, AHII is going strong has been for quite awhile (since 1999 if you count beta), hell even WWIIOL with it's horrible launch is still going, but I agree with you if 15 bucks a month will break the bank its time to find a nice "freebie" offline game to play.

"What are you offliners afraid of?? If your arguments are so solid whats to worry if they give us MP guys a reliable DF server where we can join anytime and play?"

I think this was answered in the text of his reply - read it carefully and the supporting evidence is all there. Simply, offline play is, for people like heartc - and people like me - a chance to play a game that we enjoy without the vaguaries of people acting in a daft way online, or, alternatively, if that's not convincing enough for you, it enables players to enjoy a campaign experience - as opposed to a one off flight - in a consistent setting provided by the sim, rather than the unpredictable outcome of an online encounter.

Please think a little more carefully before you post. "What are you offliners afraid of??" is a very effective way of fragmenting further a community that most would say is in decline, numbers wise. You do the community no credit in posting thus, even if you find it personally satisfying. Nothing will kill the sales potential of RoF quicker than posts on forums that present a disunited and fractious - and disfunctional - community.

Why would people buy into that, particularly if they have to rely on going online with such people?

"What are you offliners afraid of?"

That's just a really odd thing to say. Does it make sense to you? It doesn't to me.

I will take progress on any front. Something to indicate that Neoqb plans to do good things with this product. MP, SP, a press release, don't care.

The issue is that development time and resources is finite...so resources devoted to development of the MP aspect of a sim inevitably are resources that AREN'T devoted to improving the SP aspect of the Sim...

As overwhelming evidence across all games, genres and platforms points to SP gamers making up the VAST majority of the customer base, is it small wonder that SP gamers feel neglected when valuable development time is devoted to improving on-line multi-play for a tiny (but very vocal) minority of players...

As time and time again it is proven that most product purchases are made by people who will never ever venture online...(and in more traditional delivery models, may never get as far as even downloading game patches) is it really too much to ask for that the product delivers a completed and satisfying single player experience?

Multiplayer dogfight missions are a subset of singleplayer missions not the other way around

Singleplayer missions contain all that is in mp dogfight missions, but mp dogfight missions lack elements found in singleplayer missions

We only tolerate you humans as long as you fly better than us.

Hear this. When we fly as well as you can shooman, your days are numbered

Almost there, we lack a voice yes but sympathetic humans can be found to speak for us

We are Spartacus.

I'll confess that doesn't make much sense to me?!?

But, yes, complete and immersive single play content requires more time and resources to develop than multi-player content...if thats what you were hinting at...

"We only tolerate you humans as long as you fly better than us.

Hear this. When we fly as well as you can shooman, your days are numbered

Almost there, we lack a voice yes but sympathetic humans can be found to speak for us

We are Spartacus."

Heed not the forked tongue of Ming.......FOR I AM SPARTACUS!!! LMAO

Seriously though, what is all the fighting about? Flight sim nuts could start a fight in an empty room, (mostly virtual) I swear. I like multiplayer, but love a good singleplayer campaign too. We have neither in ideal form, so the question seems to be only about priority. I would agree that offliners are definitely the majority, so as much as I prefer mulitplayer (Eye of the Tiger...Its the thrill of the fight lol) my democratic instincts must prevail and say cater to the majority first. "Let them eat cake". Multiplayer would surely take less time to fix up anyway? I hear that dogfight servers are in the pipeline, so maybe that would placate the dissent for a while?

For those who dislike multiplayer for the sole reason of "insults" by kids (and I include some 50+ age group blokes in this nebulous definition too lol) I would respectfully say try to grow a thicker skin. No, its not right or fair.....But then neither is death and taxes, so get on with it . Internecine Squad feuds are the most hilarious, which those who are in one will know. Majority of disputes are solved amicably and without too much faff.

Multiplayer afficionados are not "superior" to offliners. They just think they are. Like I say, I love multiplayer. I get shot down all the time, but I'm not going to cry about it (at least in public). Instead I will cry tears of Vengeance, praying that the Gods of War will grant me dominion over the fallen, barren husks of mine Foes. LMAO....Just a question of mindset yer see. Get the b*stard next time Give it a rest people please. Its a broad church.....Come one come all. Its all good.

Peace.