Seriously? How long has CloD been in development and how much longer would those marvellous programmers have needed without the detrimental influence of the bad bad suits?

I am perfectly aware that their european publisher Ubisoft (no clue who marketed it in russia) has a well deserved reputation of throwing unfinished simulations (Silent Hunter III, IV and V) on the market and never fixing their mess, but has there been any relevant improvement in the state of CloD since release? If no, you really think the coders are not part of the problem? If yes, how much longer at the current speed of improvement till the game will meet expectations?

On topic: heck, no.

I agree.

It is a myth that a publisher will ever force a Development-team to release a game prematurely for economic reasons alone. I have never seen it confirmed anywhere in the industry.

At some point Oleg, or another team-leader, has told the publisher that the game is ready for release.

Why he did that, when the game was so clearly not, is anybody's guess. Was it desperation, ignorance, malice or simply "I don't give a #%&*$#, I'm leaving anyway"?

We will prob. never know...

Hmm. Reading carefully between the lines, there seems to be just the slightest hint of pessimism.
Waiting for a demo sounds a damned good idea.
Hope they manage to get it right.

I've just about finished up with this game and would have got there that much sooner if it hadn't been for Heinkills excellent mission packs. It would have to be a complete turnaround to make me think any future game based on the CoD engine could be anything other than more of the same.

I think the ambitions were too high, the resources needed to bring it though development too little and the post release management shambolic. That is not the solid foundations a good sim needs to be built on

Don't think so, too. I'm not just talking about the engine itself (which is a big ? anyway) but more so about the gameplay part. CloD doesn't have any - the campaigns were a sorry joke, the missions that came with the game are ludicrous at best and the small issue with scripting and me not getting along at all keeps me from making my own. Not to mention the lack of working artillery (to make the battlefield lively), the in parts unfinished map (missing bridges anyone?) etc etc.

Now, they have BlackSix and from what I've read he's been a pretty good mission builder in Russia who has released a number of highly successful campaigns, some of which were adopted by 1C as payware. But I don't think he has actually much of a say and I am not sure his input is valued as much as necessary to make the gameplay acceptable (or good). But as it is Maddox Games has never been good at providing decent missions and campaigns, they were always "engineer developers" and totally lacked the eye for what any kind of PC simulation is: a game.

Im waiting for "The last patch for COD is released with the install of BOM"

Guaranteed.

If they did do that, and it actually fixed everything properly I would actually pay for it. To a certain extent Luthier hinted that some things such as the altitude limitations would not be fixed until BOM, so I've kind of being expecting this for a while.

Yes I believe it is possible the coders could fix the problem, as they have accomplished alot that people don't seem to notice, as they only focus on the things that aren't working. Ubisoft has very little influence with COD. IC publishing in Russia is the major investor now. You actually believe IC publishing would still be putting out thousands of dollars a day keeping the development afloat if they didn't see signs of progress. The developers are working out of the IC publishing development studios so they I have first hand information on what exactly is going on, and they know very few people outside of Russia will buy BOM until they know that the game engine has been sorted. That said I believe the developments days are numbered unless they start making significant improvement soon. This latest patch was built to address the CTD, and DX9 issues, which it may or may not have done as COD has always run very well on my system. Atleast until this latest patch where Ive experienced my first Launcher exe problem, which I think is a minor issue as it happens when I exit the sim.

I've never been concerned with the developers missions and campaigns, they have alway been dumbed down to the lowest user systems and/or sim code capabilities. Especially when the sim was released long before it was ready for released. (IF) the game engine snd scripting issues get sorted, users with more knowledge of the Battle of Britain will soon be pumping out very good missions and campaigns.

Back to the point, when you are going to put Willie in the Ostfront?!

Well, I see things a little different here. To me good campaigns and single missions are pretty much the showcase of both the engine and the amount of details and research the developers have put into it. Even without the technical chaos at release campaigns like the ones which came with Clod are simply far from even the absolute minimum of what I expect from a serious developer. I mean Spitgirl? Come on!

Or the "single missions". Wouldn't it have been a lot more sensible to pick a certain operation, research it, use the right units and aircraft and try to recreate what happened back there and put the player right in the middle of it. But what did we get instead? *facepalm*

I agree with you Thor, but I think we're far in the minority on this one. It seems that 1c knows their customer base better than you or I. They're catering to the dogfight crowd, with little concern for being a sim. More and more effort is being brought to make the game more inclusive, by reducing the fine graphics at release, moving to BoM before CoD is finished (for the Russian crowd I'm sure, which is much bigger than the flight sim crowd in the West), and working towards creating a MMO.

I think those that are interested in the real history of WWII, vs the glossed over, flag-waving, History channel cliffs-notes most people are fed, have become a dying group. That and the amount of time that has passed, successive generations aren't raised on the tales from that period anymore, are combining to work more towards call-of-duty'ing this genre.

You can even see it in RoF, which was never a serious study of WWI, but IMO completely fantasy now with the weapon mods. Heck, it might as well be World of Tanks, WWI-airwar. You see it in the only really populated full switch server in 1946, with it's over-aggressive policy of balance and "chivalry", and same with the only really populated server in CoD.

I'm almost more interested in the new DCS combined arms, if I just didn't hate the modern reliance on technical superiority, and computers.

Me too!
Some proper campaigns and a pilot's log have always been the core of a good flight-sim. To leave it up to the customer's to create content in a game, but still charge full price, is both wrong and lazy!

I only bought CoD after Desastersoft had created content for the game in their add-on, and because CoD is now 10$,- a more fitting price for this unfinished game.

BTW, I don't think CoD will ever be much better than what we have now. The team has been re-arranging the deck-chairs on this Titanic for a long time now, and this is as good as it gets!

If you want radical changes, you will have to either change the game-engine, or change the development-team (or both).This is not likely, so you better get used to the unfinished features and stutter, or move on...

Cheers,

Exactly.

Well, for the first time in a few years, it looks like I'm going to have some serious time off with nothing planned this summer do I maay actually he able to start it properly.
The 'prologue' missions have largely been done for years now.
He's off to Romani,a for a start at least.

Again, the "bean counters" of 2011 were incompetent enough to let a completely unfinished game go gold, but those of 2012 are competent enough to judge arguably slow progress and rate it as good enough to warrant further funding? I don't see it, but you may be absolutely right.

Given luthier's track record - Pacific Fighters, Korea - no.

RedToo.

You know, I've been thinking about the financials and release timing of the game, and I don't believe it was the bean-counters that forced it, regardless of what we've been told.

Think on this:

Oleg was pulling out, but the MG name and properties have always been his control. Now, if you pull out of a company, or abandon it, but you are still invested with years of your work, and name, you want compensation right? So, for Luthier and Co, do you want to work on the project, maybe re-doing the whole thing, and let Oleg still take credit for it? And if you're Oleg, do you want the promise of some future, random amount of $$ or do you want your money right when you leave? The timing of his quitting the day after release, makes me think that Oleg forced a release and payment for his IP. Luthier and Co basically bought him out, by releasing whatever he had worked on, giving him a cut of the release sales, and then decided they'll make their bucks off future iterations of the engine. I don't think this was an accouting issue, as much as an Oleg issue, and probably whichever investors that were pulling out the same time, as they had their dealings with Oleg.

Certainly, if Oleg was staying on, they would not have released in this state, and it would not have remained in this state for such a long time.

Interesting speculation cheesehawk. While there may be no way of knowing without someone on the inside to confirm/deny - it is an interesting thought exercise nonetheless.

I really hope they can pull it together, but somehow I doubt it.

Releasing an incomplete game isn't "incompetent". Its more like giving the development a stay in execution. It serves everyone. If there are enough sales it shows the investors there is enough interest to continue pouring millions into the project. The development team keep their jobs for another period of time, and most importantly there is a chance for the community to have COD and future addons completed instead of just another canceled flight sim, with very little investment from us. The investors won't be getting a return on their dollar for sometime, the only reason this development is still alive is the potential sales of a number of addons, MMO's, etc built from the same game engine. The game engine is key.

People are worried about game play, and the developer being lazy about providing these features. Again this is all about the capabilities of the game engine. Its very hard to work on the game play issues until they know exactly what the game engine is capable of providing. To say the developers are lazy is entirely wrong in this situation, as they are working very hard trying to finish the game engine which should eventually make it possible for many of the features we all want. It doesn't matter to me if its a combination of the devs and modders fine tuning the game play, its whether or not the game engine can provide these features, and is capable of providing new features as computers become more powerful. This was the developers long range plan and like most long range plans there are alot of ups and downs, unfortunately the developer has had more than their share of downs. I don't know if the developer has what it takes to get this done, but they are doing their best, and the investors have been more than generous. We can sit back and throw stones at a situation, we are only guessing about, and in the end that does more harm than good.