You're on, Furbs

Was hoping to come back to some good news, then read Luthier's update. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Ben

Most people have already voted with their feet by the looks of it anyway.Can you ever remember the EAW or IL2 forum this dead only 7 or so months after release? Man those places were thriving with action, on and offline.As much as i wanted the game to succeed i think it has already clearly dudded, which is a real bummer. Like has been said before , they reached very high and somewhere someone dropped the ball or forgot to pass, whatever the reason it doesnt even matter anymore as it is what it is.

One thing i am definitely not worried about is any more planes or ground models for CloD , ships was the obvious one ..but they missed the boat too..sorry AI fix is the obvious big one.

BoM is a real second seater for me but obviously necessary for CloD's future ( on my rig ) so i will grab it and see how she pans out.Thing is , how many will not grab BoM because of CloD? Not at the full price anyway.How does the team survive with the millions spent on the game and no way they would have recouped what was spent?

And yes , their communication is very scattery at best..the supposed pr guy would have been a great cool.Good or bad news , if it was someone who was a straightshooter and was fluent in Russian and English , could have been a feather in their cap.

Lots of basic missed oppurtunities.

And the community wonders why the developers avoid posting as much as possible. LMFAO

They need thicker skin Thats why they have a pr guy.Dont get involved in the bickering, just state what is happening, screenshots, ideas that have been thrown about..updates.

Savage Forum Member : Why is there no dynamic weather and the terrain is cartoony ?

PRdoodthickskiN1 : Well guys we fudged up and couldnt fix it (the weather) in time so we are chucking it out the window until we can include it in an addon.We know it was a big draw but we just cannot do it at the expense of the AI recoding which we think is the most important fix needed in a flight sim.The terrain is being worked on and will be out in a beta version of the patch in three weeks.

Pretty easy , you arent there to be anyone's friend or answer every inane question.

Look at how the 'lite ' sims promote themselves , no wonder they have a far bigger group of people , fair enough they are are also easier to dive into and play out differently, power ups etc..BUT still, they promote themselves a thousand times better than 1c ever has.

If 1c would have had a good pr guy , even in the last year of development, regardless of the rushing out the door or whatever the debacle was , they would have assured a lot more sales , which in turn would have led to more money = quicker patches/fixes.The pr guy would have kept updates going fairly constantly too keep the savages at bay and to try and keep people interested in the game and assured that it would be fixed..which of course with a lot more sales (meaning they could possibly pull in more people to fix the game quicker) i doubt we would be were it stands now, maybe Obviously thats all conjecture on my part.

Its all a pipe dream but there is no downside to a good pr guy who shoots from the hip.

"Well guys we fudged up and couldnt fix it (the weather) in time so we are chucking it out the window until we can include it in an addon.We know it was a big draw but we just cannot do it at the expense of the AI recoding which we think is the most important fix needed in a flight sim.The terrain is being worked on and will be out in a beta version of the patch in three weeks."

The developer has stated that the weather is still a work in progress, and Luthier has apologised for the unfinished release of the sim. Its impossible to give a release date as there is no perfect "check list with time frame" for adding new code and bug fixing. What more can they say other than they are working on COD and the sequel.

I've never seen any concentrated PR work for any combat flight sims because the cost of advertising isn't worth the pay back on this small genre. Although I did see a television commercial for CFS3 from Microsoft once which is the only developer who could afford it.

Maddox Games used to communicate as much or more than most developers, but have obviously run into more than their fair share of problems in the last few years. I'm not so sure they could say anything more than "they are still working on the project", because even they can't say for certain which way its going to go. This is all common sense but a waste of breath if people believe that the developer is only out to screw them over.

Yep the weather is a work in progress. It's just a work in progress for BoM.

Well this is generally a bit silly...

CoD's current weather system is better than many other sims (both the standard weather that is on by default, and the machine crippling unoptimised advanced weather model that was kindly provided for us to experiment with inside of the FMB).

Still, people complain about the weather - but:
Well before release we had been publicly notified on the Banana forums that the code needed to be rewritten from scratch and probably wouldn't be ready until the sequel was released (ie. CoD would never have the new weather, only its
sequel). This was known long before release (and never advertised as a guaranteed feature).

I think of plenty of things to complain about, but this one is... well... interestingly out of blue.

They actually made a huge mistake by announcing a sequel at this stage. That was too much info that the community wasn't ready to hear. All the announcement did was divide the community further. Imagine if they hadn't told us that, we would all assume that they were diligently working on the patch. Then they could release the patch that fixed some stuff and quieted some folks down, and announce a sequel afterwards.

I think the "sequel" is just another excuse for why CloD will never be finished. Remember the nonsense about the epilepsy filter and how that was the main reason why the game ran so badly on release? What cobblers! The game ran badly because it was a badly coded and terribly engineered piece of software. Trying to blame everything on the epilepsy filter was a deeply untruthful excuse.

Sorry fellas. My money says BOM will never see the light of day.

OK how about that missing Su 26? Got an answer for that? Or is it just silly to worry about something that was removed 2 days before release with no word as to why?

I'm still curious as to what that "secret feature" that nobody has seen before in a flight sim is. With the way our expectations are being talked down, I'm thinking working radio comms?

Not true. Originally you had to run the sim with the epilepsy filter ON, which was a total drag on sim performance. Then the developer was allowed to make the epilepy filter an option, which considerably helped sim performance. Everyone know there is still alot of optimizing to do which they are trying to do as we speak.

I agree that we might never see BOM because the development is in a crucial stage. If the graphic engine rewrite doesn't free up much needed resources, and the AI, and Commands not improved soon they might as well shut the development down.

I doubt you will see dynamic weather even make the sequel, if the sim isn't dramatically optimized.

v5 rocket...with radio comms for ground contact ...so you can control it, because of course it will have a suicide pilot

I was just using the weather as an example i know you guys are tough nutz but come on Maybe i should have said radio comms or backwards working instruments or broken campaigns or..im sure you get the picture. Main point being, a good PR dude could have helped , a lot.

Well like i stated in another post. Do we want a combat flight simulator or a weather simulator. Seems to me it could take a super computer

and a major software development in itself for truly "dynamic" weather. I'd settle for just variable weather typical of the theatre and

season where the operations are taking place. Is that too much to ask ?

I don't think CloD and DCS series are comparable in any respect. Although I was not utterly happy with how ED handled the patches/addons with BS2, there is no questioning of the QUALITY of their products. With CloD? Well, they are rewriting the fecking code I've had all of ED products from the days of Flanker (I even went ahead and purchased both BS2 and A10 recently although I was pissed at the time with the whole thing. I may not like some aspects of ED business approaches, but their products are top quality and not buying them would be punishing myself), and I have never felt I did not get the worth of my money. Comparing DCS/ED to CloD/MG is just ridiculous and unfair to ED.

I like this acronym game, lol. How about this one.....

Blenheim Oscillating Laughably Ludicrously On Certifiably Krap Scenery.

BOLLOCKS.

I believe you've missed the point. The first 'apology' was, according to my memory, a casual admission that things needed improving and fixing, and were not up to scratch. It's also my memory that these 'apologies', if you can call them that' were generally a long-time coming, embedded in other updates, and glancing. I.e. they were buried and belated. Therefore you question, quite naturally, how much is seincere, and how much is damage-limitation. Same with the fans - any admissions that things weren't up to scratch tended to be way down the line, often glancing, and generally a bit silly because they dont tally with the reality. That is either untruthful, or annoying, or both, depending on your outlook. It doesn;t have to be a conspiracy to be any of those things.



What they've been working on, and what the estimated time-frame is. Simples. It would help re-build a bit of trust.



Is anyone realistically expecting a concerted advertising campaign? And would it have any lasting effect? It's a small, specialised genre, and relies to some extent on good relations and goodwill? So why not work on that and save the dollars spent on blurbifying it?



I dont think people are that thick. IMO people were annoyed by the pre-release watering-down, and the way it was handled, the botched release, and the way it was handled, and the subsequent patching and new directions, and the way they are being handled now.

The annoyance is at the substance, not the style of how it appears - though that doesn't help.

There is stil a lot of residual goodwill built up over a long period. But they seem to insist on taking that goodwill to the firing range and pinning it to a target at every opportunity.

It's baffling, from broken releases to banjos and back. There is a case-study in there somewhere.

Ben

Remember this lot?...

FM reworked
DM fixed
Radio coms working
Radar
Ground control
British ships
2d clouds
Sli fixed
Exe crashes fixed
Community manager
Ground handling
Something great but i cant say...
SDK coming very soon!
FMB docs
Server files
IL2 CO-OP GUI just needs more work...(though now Luthier says CO-OP is not needed)

All this was just round the corner or in the "next" patch.

I'd also like to go on record as saying that in my edited post I did not call anyone any names or insult anyone whatsoever, and no offence to the editor concerned (Avinimus?) but I feel what I wrote was fair comment, Chief? I can understand Furbs quote and my (joking) agreement with it being removed, but I'm not sure what was 'wrong' other than that? Is it OK in order to avoid the 'personal' thing if I refer to a certain party as 'a certain party' in future? I'd just like some clarification please if that's ok.

I said a certain party had displayed 'audacity' with a recent post, because IMHO, they had. The British idiom 'Brass neck' meaning 'stunning cheek' in reference to a certain party was also fair comment IMHO, and not an insult but a statement of fact. Falstaffs pocket book translation is bang on the money, and echoes my sentiments entirely. Not to mention the fact that people were continually led to believe pre release that certain features were in development for CoD, which now appears not to be the case. Now they have to pay for a new release in order to get these features mooted for CoD in a merged install, whether they care about the Battle for Moscow, or not. Otherwise, 'tough luck'. Nice.


We are trying to pull off a very difficult balancing act with developing a new game and supporting an old one at the same time. Pretty much no one does that.

You've got to be frikkin kidding me, man. Supporting an old one? For that read 'supporting a half baked catastrophe', which I would contend is in fact an obligation and moral duty to paying customers. Yes, I understand and always have done that they intend to continue patching CoD (and rightly so)....but no longer believe or take a single word a certain party says seriously now.....and they have only themselves to blame for that. We all know Aesops fable about the boy who cried wolf. People have been more than patient, and their ire is perfectly understandable.

Serious PR blunder by a certain party. The thing that got peoples backs up is the implication that we should somehow be eternally grateful for them fixing a product which by a certain parties own admission was 'half finished' on release, and 9 months later is not a great deal better. A certain party perhaps should have took a bit more care on how they worded their response, which in my opinion was insulting to paying customers intelligence, and frankly risible. Again, I think this is fair comment.

Right, whinge over. I'm not 'raging' btw......more in the 'acceptance' stage now lol. Not the end of the world, but very disappointing all the same. Truth be told, and with all that said.....I will most likely buy the next release. Yes, I am also an idiot, and an absolute MUG......did I mention that? What can you do.

Peace and goodwill to all.