Well now it may be about 2 hours. and no no IL2 gunner. I have only flown the Lag. It's no secret. I hate campaigns always have and I said so on many forums including BoS which is my main gripe with being forced to fly one to get content that ImO should have been available with the purchase. Nowhere did you ever hear or read a statement of mine saying that that was a good thing. I have flown more offline than anything else in BoS. Never said anything different. Why should my stats matter to you?

Well, because a Stalongrad sim probably ought to have a tail gunner on an IL2 and you've maintained .... And I believe you by the way....you were having great fun (which is good for you) with the sim. It's pretty hard to have fun in MP with handicapped planes and empty servers or in SP of the "historic" campaign with this nonsense, So, I figured you had time or other means unavailable to the public to get it it to where you coild enjoy it...as the dev said, which if I wrote this sentence on their boards id be banned..."if the grind is irritating just put it on Ap and let it play out." Unfortunately that doesn't work unless you've got about oh....the free time of an unemployed, uninterested in social life school arts or athletics teenager...or maybe are retired or an umemployed Russian game dev.

I think its human nature to warn folks about the train wreck just around the bend, so those of us who are very disappointed that BoS didn't turn out like a traditional combat flight sim will always be around to commiserate and warn others about what to expect from BoS as long as its on the market. Kinda like talking about a car you bought that turned out to be a lemon.

BoS was big news, and its bizarre "end design" is also big news. For me right now, something in the graphic presets (and something I was able to turn off when Custom Graphics Settings were available) killed my relatively strong gaming rig and brought it to its knees with a frame rate around 2 to 4 fps near the ground. So you bet I want to warn people about what might happen to them also.

I've sent two support tickets to 1CGS about it but never got a reply (just like many customers have stated here on SimHQ). 1CGS doesn't care about me, so I don't care about 1CGS and their "well."

but that's the thing... a few of us were quite clear in the very early days, that the new and upcoming continuation of the series, would not be a flight sim - you would be getting the equivalent of a penny arcade "game"... eg the one which had the targeting being just off, and off enough but close enough to, to keep the player putting more coins in the slot, and the introduction of "1C/777 bucks won't be that far off, nor will base raiding for resources, to fund the "war effort".

oh, and by the way... who broke Bearcat earlier?

Anyone else get a feeling that the game is going to be chopped as soon as the mission editor and skins viewer is out?

The saving grace for many flight sims that have fell short of the mark has been mods. BOS will never have the type of mod support that has been done in the past. They might support some sort of very low level type mods that don't alter the game too much...but I doubt it will be enough. We certainly won't see anything in the way of theaters or plane sets from modders as that would cut into their DLC milk machine they are envisioning.

They are keeping such a stranglehold on how their customers must play, it's choking the life and any future out of the sim. Even if someone found a way to mod and remove the annoying text or similar...with the mandatory online deal...they could strip it out.

I'm starting to think of the dev's as an octopus...just when I think they couldn't shoot themselves in the foot again...a 6th, 7th and 8th one pops out and they start blasting.

Their customers will vote with their feet, ahem I mean the wallet, sorry bout that.

Cheers
Walt

@ Force 10...

That's exactly what it is shaping up to be... a milking machine

Any supplier must accept and deal with criticism.
This is especially true when your product is faulty or fails to live up to your customer's expectations.

Faced with a barrage of criticism, what do you do?
To paraphrase; you "SUCK IT UP".
Because that's the professional way of handling criticism.

If you say to your customers "it's OK to criticise, as long as you keep it civil" then that's what you must stick to.

You can't arbitrarily set a "you're only allowed to post X number of complaints before we ban you" limit unless you want to be seen to be contradicting yourself.

Of course, if your complainant threatens to burn your house down or kill your dog, or calls another forum member a %#£&@"* %&#! then a rule has been broken and a ban is in order.

However, as soon as you ban someone, that has remained civil, but your reason is that they have complained too frequently then you've lost all credibility.

Because of the Founders Early Access program, the developers must have banked a few hundred thousand dollars based on goodwill alone.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks, they seem to have flushed a lot of that goodwill down the toilet.

The biggest issue now is not so much the:

• Unlocks
• Lack of custom graphics
• Awful implementation of SSAO
• Inability to compress time greater than x2
• No free camera
• Poor SP campaign
• Missing FMB
• Missing DServer
• No custom difficulty in campaign
• "Sound bubble" hitsounds
• ...

The worst issue is the attitude of the developers to their fans and customers.

Blaming the community for the poor reception.
Telling the community they're too unintelligent to use the FMB or custom graphics settings.
Blackmailing the community to boost the Metascore.
Telling people to "suck it up" and play the game and stop complaining.
And not explaining to the community why the bad design choice have been made in the first place.

And now censoring people that complain, civilly.

It's a shame.

its a recipe for disaster, in anyones' books... unless they want to kill it off (for whatever reason) - then, they're taking the best road towards that (but what I'm reading mainly, is sheer arrogance on the producers' part - and that seems to be "get rid of the hardcore and attract the casual) To say; "you may not like what we have built, but we have reached our initial goal"... that is someone who has no clue.

Now they open threads closed half a day before to have the last word, then close them again.

I've only seen that once before.

Bwahahaha.

As Extreme_One said. They have much bigger problems than unlocks.
Just because I like flight sims, it doesn't mean I will support developers who don't respect their customers.

yep... its the tail wagging the dog

So, I was right all along. Rhetorical question of course, I knew I was right when I took up the first pitchfork. Instinct born of long experience.

So maybe ya'll will listen now when I tell you you're flogging a dead horse. BoS is dead and it will be dumped very soon. If Williams stated RoF was a failed business model (and he did, you all read it) what makes any of you (Bearcat especially) think BoS is somehow going to do better? There are clues staring you in the face: the tumble-weed official forums; the lack of magazine reviews (in either direction); the Metacritic user score; the lack of a representative industry Metacritic score; the lack of boasting from either 1C or 777 regarding healthy sales.

I suspect BoS has done worse than SH5 and that was dumped very quickly by Ubisoft. 1C may keep BoS staggering along on Russian sales but I don't think the western market will see any benefit from that. $ DLC for the comrades.

And the treatment of paying customers on the official forums...biggest mistake ever. Keep your 'enemies' closer. Don't piss them off with hidden abuse, arrogant provocation and outright disrespect followed by a ban for having the temerity to defend themselves. Oh, but you already did and look at the payout for that.

There could be a 101 master-class on all this: How not to so badly alienate your customers as to trash the chances of even a half decent game, never mind an appallingly bad one.

THIS.

Quick OT. I played SH3 to death modded and unmodded back in the day. I skipped 4, and got 5 a few years back.

I tried 5 stock and it was pretty, but not fun. They did the same thing BoS did. Tried to market to a larger audience and ended up alienating the base, with simplified GUI, odd TDC, odd RPG elements, a linear campaign, and more eye candy than substance.

I picked up the SH "pack" off Gamersgate around Halloween with SH3, SH4 + Uboat exp, and SH5 for 9 bucks. I played SH4 modded and it was ok, but lacked the content and feeling of SH3 and not as pretty as SH5.

Loaded up SH5 and tried different mods, including the Megamod Wolves of Steel. Wow. I did not think SH5 could compare to SH3 beyond graphics but I was wrong. Great stuff there. Best looking water I have ever seen in a game with the Real Enviro mod. With the different UI mods and Open Horizons campaign its close to playing SH3 with modern graphics, awesome dynamic weather, wolfpacks, and great effects. Definitely worth it.

Sorry for OT.

Certain member of 777 studios asking, in plain English, the existing supporters to buy more stuff so development could continue.

Cant name names or i might get banned.

Development of RoF is still ongoing.

SH3 with the dynamic sinking ship mod was pure bliss. Then they kept locking down how much you could mod the game. Kind of like with the TW series where MTW was the last one that you could truely mod.

I hate to see a good series die because penny pinchers think they can get more money from DLC by locking the code down. Same with BoS. Even if it is successful there will never be the true mod support that CloD has and thus it's days are numbered. Same with RoF.

As for BoS being dead... well that has been on the drawing boards since before it even came out. I really wanted the game to be good and supported early (way too early IMO) and paid the price. They should have NEVER let 1c have production control. Worst decision ever. I would have rather seen a 777 studio game without the IL-2 brand. I hope Jason learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes it just doesnt pay to partner up.

That is true with any game. If you cant pull in the numbers you have to stop developing. Look at WWIIOnline. It is still going but has not seen a dev cycle in years. Hell I dont even think they have anyone on staff who still knows how to read the code.

RoF was never a very popular sim to begin with (not for content mind you but because of the time period). I have donated more to RoF over the years than any other game. (including starcitizen!!!) because I believed in the team and loved the game (even with it's many flaws and blatant TE bias). If they came out with more content I would buy it.

^^
I love RoF too, bought all the content available, even the big bombers I never fly - just to support.
If there is anything new in RoF, I will buy it immediatelly.
Not so with BoS unfortunatelly...