Are Unlocks Now Permanent?

[sturmkraehe]

So after all we are nonetheless nothing but testers it seems.

 

@ParaB: We founders and pre-orderers provided budget to the devs even before beta-release. There had been times where games were developed and put on the market before the developers saw one cent. 

Edited October 5, 2014 by sturmkraehe

[dburne]

So after all we are nonetheless nothing but testers it seems.

 

 

Pretty sure we are early access players, we have been reminded on several occasions we are not testers, but if we want to share things we find then we can. They have their own closed group of beta testers.

 

But what do I know...

[III/JG11_Tiger]

While I like the syndicate  and have flown on many missions and many maps, I liked the idea of where the SE guys were going with the dynamic on line stuff.  Both the SYN or SE servers are and or were great. I will have to spend a little more time in the SYN server,but stock load outs because I cant find kid around my house to grind for weapons yet!   Oh come on, its a joke guys. sort of.

You've just given me an idea my 7 year old daughter loves too play the games I play, maybe now is the time to cut her loose on BOS.

[Gort]

Come on Il2 team cant we be like the German pilots who flew in Spain before the war??? No one took their kills away when Hitler released the full version of the war.......lol

Ha! That's pretty good!

[Zak]

Sorry if this has been asked/answered before... but there is still some conflicting opinion on this.

Can we please get an official confirmation on whether or not this will be reset on release?

There's a chance that all progress may be wiped before release. I can't say a firm yes or no yet, but the development needs ,ay require this to be done.

[Trooper117]

Come on Il2 team cant we be like the German pilots who flew in Spain before the war??? No one took their kills away when Hitler released the full version of the war.......lol

 

Brilliant... I'm still holding my sides here!

[BigDally]

Haven't played a beta/early access game yet wherein any progress made pre-release wasn't wiped.  Only makes sense.  Think of it this way, now is the time to get all of those dumb @$$ed mistakes out of the way so that after release, your "real" pilot can have a much better record.

[[TWB]80hd]

There's a chance that all progress may be wiped before release. I can't say a firm yes or no yet, but the development needs ,ay require this to be done.

 

Thank you, Zak!

[312_Ofce]

I am still wondering about a reason why would be wise/necessary to remove the unlocks, that customers who sent their money in advance earned during early access?

I think I understand there is a reason that the game will have some system to unlock planes for newcomers, but why would backers suffer to grain unlocks twice?

Edited October 6, 2014 by 312_Ofce

[Trooper117]

We are the serfs, the slaves, we do as the masters command.... obey... obey... hehehehe! 

[BSS_Mudcat]

Haven't played a beta/early access game yet wherein any progress made pre-release wasn't wiped.  Only makes sense.  Think of it this way, now is the time to get all of those dumb @$$ed mistakes out of the way so that after release, your "real" pilot can have a much better record.

 

I've had the opposite experience as of the past few years, haven't been in a "beta"/early access where things have been wiped at "launch"  in quite some time.  

[Uufflakke]

There's a chance that all progress may be wiped before release. I can't say a firm yes or no yet, but the development needs ,ay require this to be done.

 

On the (translated) Russian forum B6 was quite clear on this:

 

uploading images

[M4rgaux]

Keep in mind that google translate is still a bot and that Russian and English are worlds apart, Therefore the translation might be wrong.

[FZG_Merlin]

The standard operating procedure for games has been (in the past) to wipe any accrued progress made prior to release AT release (or at certain intervals along the way).

This is done for several reasons, but the main reasons are:

 

1.  As balance changes and achievement criteria change, it is generally unfair to allow those who obtained tangible and useful power via earlier easier means (either through bugs, unfinished features, or simply too easy difficulty settings) to play in the same realm as those who must grind or otherwise achieve those same objects/powers under more difficult conditions. 

 

2.  In the case of closed beta tests, it would be unfair to allow those who were fortunate enough to "make the cut" or be acquainted with someone who gave them access to said closed beta to retain items earned to use against those on opening day, etc.

 

 

Neither of these apply to BoS, however, because:

 

1.  EVERYONE must grind offline.  You will enter Multi-Player with whatever you have unlocked, it is 100% dependent upon you, the player.

 

2.  EVERYONE has had the exact same opportunity to pre-order the game for the last year+.  If you are an avid and active simmer, you've known about BoS for quite some time now.  There is no secret club you had to be in to gain early access.

 

The only logical reason to wipe our progress (as far as I can discern, and I AM after all a legend in my own mind) would be if 777 determines that the rate of exp gain/unlocks is too fast, and/or the method of obtaining said exp/unlocks is too simple (i.e., missions too easy, exploits discovered and then closed, etc)... in that case, the argument could be made that in order to protect the integrity of the game, the rate of exp gain must be reduced and/or the exploits used to advance too easily must be closed.  After doing that, it becomes clear that you must also reset everyone who benefited from the aforementioned discrepancies in the game's integrity.

 

 

That being said, my plea is thus:

 

Devs, community managers, etc:  Some of us are HOT on this game right now.  We are REALLY enjoying it... we are creating a community, growing our squads (August 2013 TWB had *2* pre-orders... we now have 10 members with the game installed, I am sure many other squads have similar stories to tell).  I have been advertising this game on other game forums (diplomatically, for me at least) and have tried to help with pushing the Metacritic reviews (it went from 6.6 to 8.6 after I began my guerrilla marketing campaign *bows*).  Because I WANT this game to succeed.  WE want this game to succeed.  

 

The problem is this:  We, as a community, were making progress.  Growing the base by adding players was one aspect simply based on word of mouth, but servers like Syndicate and Eagle's Nest were instrumental in this by creating meaningful missions as simple dogfighting had become stale.  The videos we've used to entice our friends were based off of gameplay on those two servers.   Things were going GREAT.

 

Then last week happened.  You locked all the unlocks.  No one could take off, and no one knew why.  Even after the word was passed to "Reset to Mission Defaults" went out, missions were still broken... why?  Because of something as simple as HE-111s Mission Defaults included things that needed to be unlocked (20mm cannons).  Why?  Because mission planners realized that players would much rather fly supply missions if their chance of success was as high as possible.  So, the server admins scrambled to re-do all of these missions.  Then Friday night happened... now, I for one was very much impressed by the campaign.  I think it's an absolutely amazing way for new players to cut their teeth before they jump in against this community of seasoned veterans.  But I am in the minority for two reasons:  I am just now (in the past two weeks or so) really getting into BoS, and secondly, I'm not that good.  This stuff is exciting for me because I haven't already shot down 500+ real players over the last year of testing.  I'm not already able to surgically remove the wing of an opponent in a vertical rolling scissors.  As far as the current community of early access goes, I am in the minority.

 

First you de-funded AND de-authorized the Sea Eagles over some comments made while emotions were riding high that night.  I get it.  You were WELL within your rights to do so, but at what cost?  You IMMEDIATELY destroyed the mainstay U.S. server.  You forced the entire player base onto Syndicate's server, which is now over capacity.  We could always count on at least one of those two servers to be up and operational.  If we're being dead honest, the majority of the player base was lashing out at you for one reason or another, and you took it out on who you could.  Again, totally within your rights, but also absolutely shooting yourselves in the foot.

 

On top of that, we are now in this "unlock limbo"... I'm your best case scenario as far as early access players go... I've paid my money, AND I enjoy the campaign... however, I am not going to do it twice.  If you can't assure me that my progress is an investment in the future, I will simply wait until that assurance exists before I invest any more time into unlocks.  I can't speak for the design/architecture of the game... I'm no developer, and I am certainly not aware of all the things that the BoS dev team is aware of, but I know for a fact that assuring early-access players that work they put in right now (and trust me, for some of these veterans, performing these single player missions is indeed WORK) is safe and permanent would re-ignite the player base.

 

Secondly, regardless of whatever was said from the =SE= camp regarding the state of the game last Friday night, revoking their dserver privileges right now is counter-productive.  Isn't de-funding sufficient?  You have a team that has proven their willingness to voluntarily put in the elbow grease required to make a successful server happen.  We NEED at least two good servers with missions.  Right now the burden of the entire player base is squarely on Syndicate's shoulders.  You can fix this right now.  

 

Lastly, we need to ALL work together to make this release as strong as possible.  The dev team has put in some insane hours and produced the most beautiful sim yet made.  I get a literal chill when I have my canopy open and my engine is warming up... I am lost in a world long since passed, an immersion so complete that every time I take off I think about the pilots that were not doing this out of choice, but out of duty and necessity.  The player base has persevered through it as well... and we ALL know what a fickle, prima donna bunch sim pilots are!  We're going to bitch about everything from how bright the sun is to what speed the slats come out.

 

Bottom line is this:  It is in ALL our best interests that this game succeeds, and a smashingly successful launch is the very best way to kick that off.

 

This means that we need all of the players to suck it up and stop being little Goldilocks this porridge-is-too-cold bitches about things like unlocks.  

 

This means that we need definitive word from the devs regarding said unlocks... because the fastest way to get people to stop bitching is to assure them that they simply need to shut up and fly, right now, to get those things permanently unlocked.

 

This means that we need EVERYONE to throw some positive reviews out there and encourage their joystick-owning friends to take the plunge.  It doesn't matter what little beef you have with the flight model or the unlocks or the sounds or whatever your personal porridge-temperature requirements may be... if there aren't people to fly with/against, this game is going to be a failure.

 

Finally, this means that we need our rock solid U.S. served back, and the only way that is going to happen is if we can all kiss and make up, put this shit behind us, and let the Sea Eagles host a dserver again, right now.  When people in the Western Hemisphere log in for the first time, click multiplayer, and all they see is a bunch of servers with 1 player, and the Syndicate with 55/55 players and 150 ping, I give you my complete sober assurance that it will be a disaster.

 

Sorry for the book, the coffee was extra strong this morning.

 

Devs,

 

Please listen to this guy

[[TWB]80hd]

I thought this was important enough to make a new topic.

 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

There's a chance that all progress may be wiped before release. I can't say a firm yes or no yet, but the development needs ,ay require this to be done.

That's the most reasonable stance IMO.

 

If the programming requires it be done, then there's nothing else to be done. That's just how it is. But, the premise of "keeping it fair" is kind of silly. This isn't a closed beta and if anyone's interested, they can buy in right now.

[J2_Trupobaw]

There's a chance that all progress may be wiped before release. I can't say a firm yes or no yet, but the development needs ,ay require this to be done.

= if the development takes the campaign code to far from what we have now, it will not be practical to convert old campaign database entries to new format en masse?

 

There is another thing unclear to me - if the campaign will be reset, will founders keep ability to fly all planes we have now, or is it Early Access only feature and we will have to fly LaGGs to unlock IL-2s? If I remember correctly, when I was paying for my copy previous August I was informed the planes that'll need unlock are Yak-1 and Bf-109 G  ...

Edited October 6, 2014 by Trupobaw

[Sokol1]

"Keep in mind that google translate is still a bot and that Russian and English are worlds apart, Therefore the translation might be wrong."

 

Not in this case, the "happiness" of people (in that forum) after B6 response confirm that "bot" did the things right.

 

Although ZAZ give some hope on the matter, still the unbalance that this will create in MP, founders with ubber (OP for WT people) weapons and after release buyers without.

[SYN_Bandy]

I hope people stop quoting the OP's wall of text... Now THAT is annoying...

 

LOL!

[LukeFF]

Devs,

 

Please listen to this guy

 

Please don't quote such a giant wall of text. It isn't necessary.

[=AVG=Zombie]

How much text can one quote?

[Rama]

How much text can one quote?

The lesser is the better.

 

You can link any post, no need for integral quotes.

[FZG_Merlin]

I did it reflexively. Didn't think it would quote everything. (Some forums I used to post in shorten the quote in a spoiler kinda way)

 

Sorry about that.