+1

No immersion at all.
Empty ground, empty skies, no story.

Things will get much better when the FMB is released, hang in there guys!

I hope you are right.

The campaign feels really generic, it's like u fly the same mission over and over again if u choose the same mission type which imho is really sad. I was hoping dynamic campaign like in falcon bms but well ... Also feels really lifeless I would love to see more action in ground and air now it seems way too quiet.

Only thing left is to hope that things get better after the release of FMB.

I'm not very happy with SP. When I made up my mind it was worth it to pay $90 or whatever for the pre-release version, at the time I assumed that the worst case scenario was that it would turn out to be just like ROF but with WW2 aircraft. While not ideal, that would have been at least okay.

I expect that is what potential customers might be thinking now: that it will have the (not great, but pretty good all things considered) SP implementation found in ROF, which it doesn't.


I'm not fundamentally opposed to things like XP and unlocking as gameplay mechanics, but the other reason I justified the high price tag to myself was that it was harder to produce sim for the smallish hardcore audience, and because of that, I'm not unwilling to pay more for such a sim than I would have in the past. That's why the XP and unlocks are disappointing. Despite the extra cost, it's still arcadified.

So, in summary, I wouldn't go so far as to say the SP is worthless, but I could definitely not devote hours a week to it like I hoped I would be able to and can in other sims. The way it is, at best I see myself loading it up every few weeks or so, and flying one mission.

edit: I'm wondering, and maybe nobody knows for sure, but perhaps the "career mode" code was not part of the deal they made for BOS. Even if you strip out all the player tracking and such, the missions generated in BOS don't seem as alive as those in ROF, leading me to believe perhaps they had to develop their own random mission generation code.

(This may be borderline 'extended' so I apologize, but it's intended to be informative despite its tone)

I'm probably echoing sentiments expressed elsewhere, and I apologize if so, but I've come the the conclusion, hopefully not final, that if 1C/777 had simply included a slider that let you adjust the number of AI units in the campaign (particularly air units), that would go a long way toward making me enjoy it. Presumably it's a performance thing, so if they had to bury it in an "advanced" menu somewhere or something, or even put it in an INI file, that would be okay. Their insistence on locking things down and preventing the community from improving it really isn't helping their cause in any way.

I have to believe my PC can handle more than two HE-111's and two 109 escorts (seems to be the typical intercept mission). I understand the FMB will address this to an extent, but samey as they are, I like the random nature of the campaign missions. In the Enlightened Florist's campaign for CLOD I've set the active AI aircraft as high as 400 without noticing a hitch (granted, the CLOD AI aren't the brightest bulbs). When in proximity to actual formations, while not realistic Battle of Britain scale air raids, there were still enough to convey a sense of a large war.

Anyways, I hope this is an area they're working on. One of my stated worries way back when was that the ROF engine wouldn't scale to WW2 air war sizes, and that appears to be the case. I hope it can be fixed though. Bombers can have extremely simplified physics; AI fighters not engaging a player can have mid 90's-era physics and AI--it just has to *look* convincing. Battle of Britain pulled this off wonderfully over 10 years ago.

Anyways, I figure they're going to have to focus on pretty heavily on single player if they want to stay relevant, because this 8 on 8 multiplayer stuff is never going to compete with CLOD or WT.

***

Anyways, away from the ranting extended stuff and back to more practical matters. If you're looking for an IL-2 (the plane itself) single player sim, the close support and ground attack missions in the campaign are actually fairly decent ignoring the receptiveness. If you could buy the planes one at a time like with ROF, I'd wholeheartedly recommend paying $10 or $15 for just the IL-2 or maybe the Stuka. There are plenty of ground units to fight in the missions, and even though the land battle is static, it does at least seem to be of a reasonable enough scale. The AAA and ground fire seems oddly light and inaccurate, but it's better than the Phalanx like accuracy we had some months ago, so I think that may end up balanced in the future.

It's just not much fun. I could forgive all of the other drama and silliness if not for that.

Cloyd