That was the post I was looking at.. that I quoted part of. I knew I could count on you to post it.

Anyway.. I interpreted that as the way stated it. The if in there ... in my opinion anyway.
In any case.. it is moot because BoS is still here and expanding..



I believe it was in 4.11 and 4.12.. but they are very good now..

ROTFLMAO, you sir are just too much...

Good on you Revvin, glad to see someone had the foresight to grab a shot of that before it - well - disappeared into the nethers. Which it did pretty rapidly.

That post by Zak, communicating Loft's attitude/thoughts, says it all.

Matter of fact, the attitude of those guys is why I no longer support ROF either.

Ok so in keeping with the tune of this thread title, I find the above somewhat interesting.

1: We know, that they ( the developers), stated early on - that the Early Access Pre-Order sales of BOS, the funds from those, were for the next expansion of the game. They already had the funds in place for the first release of the product. They made that very clear, on more than one occasion.
Ok so we know BOS was in the plan, and paid for. Funds from all the pre-orders sales, would go toward funding the next expansion/chapter/whatever you want to call it.


2: December came, all was quiet. Not much heard out of 1CGS. Then they somewhat surprisingly released an unexpected nice update to ROF.
Then came DD #88, on Feb 13th of this year.
Which included the announcement for BOM.

<<< Meanwhile, we keep rolling with big news about IL-2 Sturmovik’s future. Starting with the fact that the series is actually going to have a future. Last December, for instance, nobody including us was certain about what would happen next. But good fortune has blessed our hard work and we now know what we will do next.

We are proud to announce that the 1CGS team has started to work on the next title in the the series - IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Moscow.>>>

Notice the part I highlited with bold text. Keep in mind, funds were in place from the pre-orders from BOS, or at least some of the funds. But there was a time there , they did not even know there would be another in the series... interesting.

Now what is the next in the series? 10 new planes and a new map. Same campaign, same SP system, as far as we know same MP capabilities. Jason has made pretty clear, there will not be any change to the campaign structure, unless some third party comes along like Pat Wilson did for ROF, and do a separate program to build campaigns. Currently, I don't think even the BOS ME has that ability ( and ROF's does, go figure).

I think it is safe to say, after the initial excitement of the next in the series of the IL-2 Franchise with BOS, the next release - BOM - being the same as BOS, will probably not fare as well as BOS did. Well I say safe to say, conjecture on my part really. I would be very surprised if it did, and they don't share numbers like that anyways.

Perhaps Loft really knows what he is doing with his vision and game design , and it will continue down the same path and be a huge success.
But personally, my opinion, he has pushed away the long term hard core flight simmers, the community that would stick around for years upon years , in hopes of capturing part of the War Thunder market, as it is very successful.

I think he may well be missing the boat, on both of the above...

Heck, just look at the following that 1946 still has, the following that Cliffs still has. Like them or not, they have an incredibly large and strong loyal following. 1CGS is really missing the boat, on capturing that part of the market. I think they wanted that part of the market to support their beginnings, but kind of kicked them to the curb after all was said and done.

All of the above of course, just my humble opinion as a serious combat flight sim enthusiast, that has been doing this for more years than I care to try to remember.

And to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite movie characters:
" And that, is about all I have to say about that".
- Forrest Gump

Sure. But actual customer feedback has to come from a legitimate source. Focus groups, random surveys etc. Internet review sites and forums aren't really good sources for this. I'm sure they have their methods for determining what customers want and balancing that with what they can realistically deliver.
I worry they've relied too much on this usage data from the game with regard to more engaging campaigns in SP. But it's sounds like at least Jason gets the message.

Maybe I am missing something here, actual customer feedback has to come from somewhere else? Somewhere other than the actual customer?
The actual customers, do not count? Are they illegitimate customers??

My goodness, I work for a company that serves a broad range of customers - and have been for many, many years - and I will tell you, we listen to all of our customers. And we are very successful.
Let's say we start a new policy, change the way we do a certain thing, and we get negative feedback from a large number of those same customers. Well, we make adjustments - rapidly. Thankfully we have not done too much of that, largely in part to our ability to listen to what our customers want.
Big key in that last comment - the ability to listen, and adapt.

Lots of companies that enjoyed good success early on lost sight of that, and paid the price. Many are no longer around.

Any company selling a product, better be listening to their customers, not relying on focus groups, random surveys, company CEO's, professional advisers, - but the actual customers. At the end of the day, they ( customer) pay the bills.

Well, you are obviously NOT in tune with Mother Russia Marketing 101.

Step one:

Make a bare bones product off an existing engine and models.

Step two:

Use a brand name you know people like.

Step three:

Throw a hissy fit if anyone says its not up to par. Pay people to say your product is great.

Step four:

Tell your customers what they like.

Step five:

Blame customers when your product sinks.

Congrats. You have successfully completed Mother Russia Marketing 101.

You know much of the "customer feedback" they get, especially the stuff that's the gripe in those Metacritic attacks are just wild raving unsupported rants about flight models. There's no rational way for the developer to respond to or accommodate those. If they "listened" to all their customers that way they'd waste all their time changing flight models back and forth to satisfy whoever yells the loudest. It's a no win situation for them.

Perhaps.. we shall surely see. I remember making a similar post on Gaijin's website when they were still talking about an update to WoP with an ME and all that.. and eventually what they did was WT.. Who knows.. I think that a lot of the changes most folks want to see will be forthcoming.. because they are necessary. You can't base your marketing plan for a WWII sim on a WWI sim and I have to think that somebody at 1CGS has to know that they are sitting on a potential gold mine .. and all they have to do is just tap it wit the right content.. meaning not just maps and planes but features as well..

Tru dat.

SD

It sounds lately like their thinking is along the lines of "features cost money" not "features sell games" They might learn yet.

I think the key to Albert's marketing plans, and the reason older players don't like BoS is in the line above "tell the new younger pilots." As it is put together now, BoS is designed for kids. I got that vibe the moment I saw the final version. From the campaign to the Fisher Price approach to graphics settings, BoS is made for the 10 to 12 year old crowd. That's all well and good, but I'm angry that Albert Zhiltsov let us think otherwise all the way through early access. That wasn't just a design change, that was a complete market repositioning and a con the way it was pulled off with no prior announcement or offers of refunds. I haven't played "Chutes and Ladders" since I was about 8 years old, and that's also why I don't play BoS.

Well I wouldn't go that far.

You can operate complex military equipment in most armed forces around the world at the age of 18. BoS is definitely aimed below that age bracket.

I didn't notice... Who's the woman in the red cage back there? How is she in the same room as a sim cockpit? If the kid is so enthralled with BoS that's a good statement about the game because he's not even looking at her! BoS is that good!

Maybe the woman in the cage is the kids mother and he has to look interested to free her.

But nah seriously, women in cages is an everyday thing in Russia, after a while you don't notice.

Russia sounds like a party.

You posted it like it was fact, you said:



Note the text you chose to put in bold, you said that you were looking right at the text as if that made it more legitimate because everyone else to that point was posting on what they recalled and just to reinforce that idea you slapped in a bit of bold text. You took a small section of his words and posted them as proof to your version of events and discarded the rest of the sentence and the rest of the post that really puts the developers threat into context which is laughable when you squeal about other members taking your comments out of context. I think your post was disingenuous at best. If it was so clear what the developer was saying and it wasn't a threat then why hide it away? if its was so easily explained then why hide it away? if it was so clear that anyone seeing it as a threat must have some kind of agenda why hide it away?

This is the kind of thing I believe Bongodriver was talking about in the other thread where hidden threads were discussed and why they were hidden and not just deleted so as perhaps to be used as evidence later. Above is a good example of why we should be concerned about the hidden posts and threads when a moderator from the official forum comes here and posts a skewed version of what was actually said stating he was looking at the post as if to make his view more valid than those who could not see the post. It's a sad state of affairs when you have to resort to taking screenshots of posts on the official forum just to prove their existence because the moderation is so poor and overbearing.

Nobody smiles.

Well you have to look at why that was posted, it WAS a poorly worded rant, but as a direct result of the very 'one sided' situation taking place at Metacritic, as a certain individual was conducting a very widespread unjust campaign all over the internet.

And if I recall Bongo gave it a 1 or a 0 at THAT time not the 5 he later gave.

The post was also a direct google translate from what was posted on the Russian forum, if you took that quote and google translated you got what ZaK posted pretty much verbatim.

It is interesting that this quote is always 'reported ' and the campaign to harm 1CGS/BoS is rarely mentioned by the 'critics' and was never condemned but usually actively supported with glee, personally if a campaign to discredit my project was mounted in a similar manner I would have had a lot more to have said about it....

That situation is old history now and deserves to be buried, however some will just not let go

Cheers Dakpilot

Yes, I gave it the score it deserved for such an underhand request.