Speculation: the limitations of the BoS engine (I am guessing they need to limit the game to a snowy few months to avoid the GPU load of having to draw a non snowy landscape) means they have to limit the time period of the game/campaign to just a few weeks of winter.

And this has a cost, which people are seeing, which is that there are only so many missions possible within such a short span of time (about 70 days!), if you followed a single career/pilot. How many career missions could a pilot realistically have flown, how many promotions or medals could they have won, in just 70 days? They would be very short campaigns, and people would then be complaining about the length of the careers, or the unrealistic nature of promotions.

Opening the campaign up to allow any plane/any airfield, makes the game seem bigger/longer/deeper, but at the cost of career style immersion.



Having accepted the limitations of the engine already (if I am right that it is limited to winter for now, for a technical reason), I am actually OK with this, though it doesn't seem much different to me to the already existing quick mission generator. Sort of a random quick mission generator with different levels you need to qualify for by flying a few successful missions first. A kind of 'evolved' random mission generator.



Actually, unless the FMB is dramatically reworked, the experience of RoF indicates this is not likely to happen, certainly to the extent that user content is created for earlier IL2 series games with a much more user friendly FMB. So, I'm not getting my hopes up over that. Especially because of what is said below!



OK, the community of 5% of people smart enough to use the FMB might create some historical content to be available at launch. Others will have to wait to use the 'too complex' FMB after launch. Bottom line, a lot of barriers for user created or 3rd party created content.

All that aside, I am actually feeling better than I expected about this announcement. I guess it is just a matter of low expectations!

I had already resigned myself to flying a great selection of aircraft, over a small snowy map, for a couple of short wintry months, and this actually seems like a quite logical, even creative way of dealing with those restrictions. With the number and variety of aircraft which will be available at launch, it can still be a compelling game even for offliners.

But I can understand if one had his/her heart set on long immersive careers, there would be disappointment.

H

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Why should a summer/autumn terrain have a significant higher workload on the GPU? It certainly doesn't seem this way in RoF. And the BoS engine seems already very well optimized, providing good performance with stunning visuals. The main reason for only one type of seasonal terrain is much more probably the limited resources of the development team.



I don't really see a big problem with the time period chosen for the campaign. It wasn't unusual for pilots on the Eastern front to fly more than one sortie a day so even with a couple of days of snowstorms that would more or less completely cancel flight operations you could easily have some 50-100 mission campaigns. Which IMO would be more than enough.

I don't see people complaining that the Battle of Britain only lastes ~ 3 months.

@PB

As I said, totally just my speculation, based on having never seen a non winter screenshot of the terrain with a lot of objects/trees/roads/traffic etc on it. And placing a lot more trees, foliage, grass and objects on a map often creates a big GPU hit. The current BoS map avoids all of that by having to model very little in the way of elevation, no moving or dynamic water, and covering all that ground detail in a thick blanket of snow. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a very nice way of prioritising, allowing the dev team to focus on the aircraft and gameplay, rather than redesigning the RoF landscape rendering routines - isn't the RoF engine known to struggle with larger numbers of aircraft/objects?

The aggressive timeline of the project implies to me they would need to prioritise, and extensive development of the existing RoF landscape engine hasn't seemed to be a priority, unless I'm wrong (often am!). And you have to admit, that flat white landscape has to be pretty easy on the GPU.

You are totally right, BoB was only a few months, and it lends itself to great campaigns. I suppose 70 days is OK for a campaign, but I would imagine most people are/were hoping for something like the RoF career mode which covered 700 days, not 70. Though, after all, the game is called Battle of Stalingrad, not Battle of the Eastern Front, so again, it seems people had higher expectations than the reality can bear!

H

Not the case at all.
Remember, BOS is based on the RoF engine.

I also would think they're planning on adding to the basic framework after release, so the campaign/career system we have at launch is not all we'll have 2 years later.

This schedule was compressed, and possible largely because of building on what ROF already had...but remember the restrictions ROF itself must deal with as a result of its initial design being for an always-online MMO-type sim.




The Jedi Master

I would like to believe this BUT this is not a strictly 777 Studio project.
We all have to remember that and 1C can be a Horrible publisher at times.
They have the license for Il2 and they will have the final say on a LOT that happens in the future of this title.

With that said we can't compare BOS to ROF in the aspect that 777 has full reign over the project and it's future.
SADLY,, they don't !

This is a huge concern of mine with BOS,, I can't go and say 777 is completely in charge like I could say with ROF.

For me personally,,777 studio's reputation speaks for itself, but that is when they have full control over their project and they don't have that this time around.

1C Only cares about Money and nothing else, that is the name of the game for them.
Beyond the original Il2, I have not seen any true care from them for a gaming community,, they are a "Publisher" who sadly owns the rights to the name Il2.

Desode

3 months??? I've been fighting that battle in various sims for 14 years...and I haven't done England proud..

Keep at 'em Piper ! They are down to the last fifty Messerschmitts

It wouldn't worry me too much if we had a good COOP system, my all time best online flying was in VEF flying medium sized COOP's.

With everyone knowing a large part of the success of IL2 was player made COOP's run through HL, i still don't know why it wasn't very high on the list of must have's for BOS.

I miss the IL2, Hyperlobby CoOp days.
I hosted a lot of missions in those days.

Yeah, I've done plenty of coop missions in the original IL2, too.

I have very little interest in "air quake" style dogfight servers.

2014 and can't even get a decent campaign.

I've heard all the excuses. They may even be valid. But it still sucks.

I hadn't bought BOS yet precisely because I expected this.

Agreed completely, the online wars were by a MILE the most enjoyable sim flying I've ever done. Hoping there's enough interest to get that kind of setup working with BoS.

Actually, I'd say the odds of getting an excellent campaign in an initial release are lower today than ever before, and will continue to get lower as time goes on.

The only hope is the product is popular enough and makes money long enough to warrant them devoting the resources to developing a bigger campaign.

To expect cutting-edge graphics (and from the comments I've seen here, people do), top-end flight and damage modeling, reliable network comms for MP, good AI for SP/MP, multiple theaters/maps (ONLY winter??!?), numerous flyable aircraft, a user-friendly mission builder, templates for skin making, AND comprehensive campaigns on release for even $100??

Would you like a copy of Windows with that?



The Jedi Master

Yeah, but honestly I've found this news disheartening too... This sort of campaign, for me, is a definitive dealbreaker.

I'm happy others find themselves fine. It shows they got at least part of the users right.
I've been happy enough with a copy-pasta (so to speak) of the RoF campaign, but like this...

Still the work they did with the rest of the sim is nothing short of breathtaking.

I think too many people are confusing "on release" with "all that will ever be."

ROF didn't have that campaign on release. It didn't have anything but the Western Front as a map on release. It had TWO flyable planes on release. Look where it is now.

I can't discount the concerns over 1C's involvement, that is valid, but I suspect 777 didn't walk into this without some contractual assurances that should mitigate some of that.



The Jedi Master

It's your decision, your money, so nobody can tell you what you should do.
However, IMO this is throwing the baby out the with bathwater. The sim is already in excellent shape,
and will only get better with time.

I want the excellent single player campaign as well.

Jedi, I have my Fingers Crossed,, and I want to and DO believe that Jason and 777 studios have their rear ends covered on this one as best they could do.

Reguardless of anything that happens, Jason and 777 have my support.
I would just HATE to see them get some sort of blame from 1C pulling some underhanded stuff with BOS.

Gaijin took a beating in their dealings with 1C and I was there from the beginning on that "Il2 " project on console.
I'll tell you this 1C hung Gaijin and the fans out to Dry ! It was Very Ugly !
A credit to Gaijin was that they actually paid for what updates they could afford out of their OWN pocket , simply out of love for the community.

FINGERS CROSSED for 777 on this one.


MOST Sincerely , Desode

Very true.