Fair point.... but how long has DCS been "out of the box" by now? Surely that excuse has run its course.



What? Me? Helping out a new DCS player? No!!! That can't be true!
*shut up, bones! I got a reputation to maintain!!*



Very nice for just flying about or making nice screenshots.

I enjoy the DCS modules and I play them frequently in both singleplayer and multiplayer.


Occasionally I'll visit the DCS forum here and glance at a few threads but I hardly ever post there. I honestly just don't have much to say in that forum!

I keep track of the DCS forum - I read most of the threads.

I am right now spending most of my time with Il-2 and P3D v4 , that leaves free time for Arma3 and the occasional game - doing that left out DCS , which is a pity, but that is the way it is.

Gave up on ED products after LOMAC. Loved Flanker 2.0, but realized with LOMAC that the ED formula was not for me.

Occasionally read the forum.

Rarely post there.

Often wonder why people put themselves through it.

Pleased to not have given them money for the past 15 years.

If you look at this objectively and from a business perspective, it really is a huge miracle that DCS is still involved in the PC flight sim business. First of all, the customer base for hardcore flight sims is ultra-tiny compared to the total market and we've even seen here on SimHQ how many flight simmers have ditched DCS as well.

I've previously said we're not ED's real customers and this shows there must be something true in that assumption, all weird delays for us is IMO due to extra efforts they put in B2B contracts.

I dont play dcs , because play only simulators with dynamic campaign.
dcs forum here for me is dead.because one man who on every others forums got a ban destroyed this forum, and destroys further.

My understanding is that the great majority of their revenue comes from the government contracts so to be honest, I don't know why they even bother with the retail market.

Opposing views are valuable, I don't want to miss a detail because someone is not allowed to say it in one forum. But at a certain threshold the noise becomes too much. Nowadays I get my DCS forum fix from Hoggit.

That darn FA-18C is looking really good.

I never expect the level of response received. I just thought people would jump in tick a couple of boxes, check the results and go in search of something more interesting to read, so thank you all for the responses posted. Seeing these made me realise a couple of things, so thought I’d add some clarifications and comments.

I wasn’t looking for help to a specific question; more that there appears less activity of questions being asked and knowledge sharing than in the past. I appreciate this may be due to current software state and fewer people are taking up our hobby. However, I question if the climate, I like ADorante’s description of “noise”, discourages participation. (FWIW, I directed a colleague’s 15 year old son just starting out with sims to the forum recently and when asking what he thought, he described it as “Pretty toxic”, which I find quite sad).

I admit I failed to consider the case cited in my original post may be response to a troll. I wouldn’t know as I have neither time nor inclination to check each and every poster’s history. I took at face value what I saw as someone being judged on a quantitative rather than a qualitative issue. This made me consider how it looks to someone visiting for the first time, i.e. the 15yo noted above. Also not a great way of dealing with a troll if that is truly what was happening.

I am grateful that SimHQ provides a platform that allows the free discussion and people to express differing views without the censorship exhibited elsewhere.

I empathise with those that feel misled by ED or not received the product for which they have paid. It is purely happenstance that I am not one of them. I do not agree with a lot of what ED has and continues to do, and not bought into the notion of early access. My last purchase was FC3 in 2013, prior to that I purchased A10C and BS. The latter purely to support ED at a time I feared the demise of many developers would mark the end of my hobby. I am older and wiser now and choose not to make further purchases until I am satisfied ED has delivered something worthy of my money. I would likely purchase most of the modules, especially those jet related. Do I believe ED know or care that they have missed revenue from me or that my comments will hold any sway over them? No

I make no pretence to understand ED business model. I run my own successful consultation practice and pretty sure my business would not survive adopting a similar strategy. I am inclined to believe ED simply underestimates the task they set themselves. I have context for that too. I cannot recall the exact year, possibly 1999. It was the UK Flight Sim Convention held in Birmingham and I was chatting with Mark Bush and James Hallows, (respectively Frugal and Foxy fame), when I noticed this gent that everyone seemed to be ignoring. Actually, I felt quite sorry for him and after finishing up with MB and JH went over to have a chat. The gent was promoting an updated SU27 sim. It wasn’t the original Flanker; I already had that, so guessing it was Flanker 2.0 if I’ve got my dates right. We talked about the sim and what the company planned for the future. I remember thinking at the time - Really? He was extremely pleasant and I enjoyed our conversation, but I had an appreciation of how long it took to develop software for a combat aircraft flying in the real world. The idea it could be done any quicker whilst also simulating the world, at the fidelity levels and within the timescale predicted I just couldn’t believe possible. In case you haven’t already guessed; his name, Matt Wagner.

DCSW definitely takes a back seat in my life too, but I have not abandoned it entirely and live in hope that ED one day delivers the experience that the 10yo me dreamed 40+ years ago. I still fly EF2000 via DOSBox on a W10 machine. I haven’t managed to get the Glide emulation to work, but just hearing the music at start-up brings a lot of memories of times and people past. I can get TAW to run on my W7 laptop, but cannot get it to run on the W10 box. I am nostalgic for DI Tornado and tried to get that to run via DOSBox - should revisit that. I miss the Janes titles too, although do not recall owning Longbow. No idea why I didn’t buy it back in the day as I bought pretty much everything else. Yep, even Back to Bagdad at full price!

I have not visited the ED forum in a very long time after a couple of run-ins with a certain moderator. I’ll have to check out Reddit.

Thanks again,

B

If anyone were to judge the DCS forums based on what threads are active, it will come as no surprise that the environment is toxic. Quite sad as I think the community is still there; we're just talking about the wrong things. That's why I encouraged you to ask any questions or look for help and you'll discover the other side of the community that's just in the background waiting to come out again. As Force10 said, the forums has evolved as ED has evolved. Unfortunately, due to the censorship in the ED forum, this is what we end up with. Nice to see you're familiar with the ED forum moderation as well Are they really better? When you read about a positive review of a module, is it really truly positive? This is the value I put in the SimHQ DCS forums.



I guess if you stay in the forums long enough, you'll get an idea of who's who. If not, it only takes a couple of clicks to bring up a poster's history and that will confirm whether he is there for discussion or just trolling.



You are in the same boat as a good number of us. We want to buy the modules, but we want to get what we pay for. This doesn't seem to click in the minds of ED's powers-that-be, for some weird reason. I have LOMAC, FC2, FC3, DCS A10C because I was enjoying the A-10A in FC3, and then BS2 was purchased more as support for ED. When they came out with CA after that, I was starting to get confused and held off any more purchases to see what direction ED would go in.... and never spent a penny after that.



A sentiment echoed over and over again in the forums. As to underestimating themselves, they've proudly announced they've been in the business for 27 year (if memory serves).... they still can't estimate development times properly? Their recent release of 2.5 reinforced this. They quoted a 1-2 week gap between Beta and Release, they released Beta at the end of January and no Release to date. They seem to never learn.



It's an entertaining read every now and again

I tapped out years ago when every other thread became a flame-war, and being derailed because of their "love\hate" reasons

A shame really because it would be nice to get a good community to fly with, but it seems most ppl who post there just like to stir the pot