SimHQ Review...

[mort]

Then they have made a terrible mistake, you can't out war thunder war thunder by making a flight sim a bit gamey, the crowd they hope to attract will get bored pretty quick once they have unlocked everything and find themselves playing a flight sim.

 

Except you don't actually know that, do you? Many here like to state wild conjecture as fact. I'm still flying the planes I have the unlocks for. I am not bored with them.

 

What is a huge turn off about the game is the unending stream of posts harping about the same few things usually in some caustic or deriding tone. But I'm fairly certain it's a staple of every game community so I'm not really holding it against this one.

[mort]

The unlocks award players for using expert difficulty, taking off and landing. So I consider that a good thing. It might help multiplayer from becoming arcade air shooter. One reason I don't play mp much is that so much of it is "Normal". In RoF the Expert mp is completely dead. If players get adapted to Expert to win unlocks in sp maybe they'll be encouraged to play Expert online.

Games like Wings of Prey encourage the arcade style play because otherwise the missions which are designed around that style would be too difficult. I like the BoS direction for the SP game vs a storyline.

 

Except it's pretty easy to unlock everything without using expert or even doing full missions. I don't think the grind is going to make buckle down and learn CEM. And really, I would hope you only learned things like that because you wanted to not so you can grind faster.

[unreasonable]

I think what the team should have done was distinguished between skins and load out options which were historically the norm, and exotic options which were either used later, not at all or only experimentally during the battle period.

 

The historic options should be there for everyone at the start. MP expert lot happy, server restriction on exotics, SP campaign playable with historic skins/load outs from the beginning.

 

The exotic skins and load outs could then be won through the xp system, which would motivate those who like such things, and can be used on MP servers at admins' choice, while not annoying those who do not because they are not getting in the way of functionality they do want and have got used to having.

 

Understand the shiny badges thing, if you sell on steam you have to have achievements, but no reason to take away the normal medals progression which the experts in motivating young men have been using for centuries!

 

Even if you believe that the unlock system will lead to greater sales (and I am very skeptical) it is hard to argue that the implementation the team has imposed on BoS has been well chosen.

[SharpeXB]

But even more pressing is this; what does industry revenue have to do with this graphics turning point that you single out?

 

Better sales better product better graphics Is a rising tide for all. When you can figure a single game can make more money than all other entertainment products combined, it's going to get some very nice graphics work.

[mort]

I think what the team should have done was distinguished between skins and load out options which were historically the norm, and exotic options which were either used later, not at all or only experimentally during the battle period.

 

The historic options should be there for everyone at the start. MP expert lot happy, server restriction on exotics, SP campaign playable with historic skins/load outs from the beginning.

 

The exotic skins and load outs could then be won through the xp system, which would motivate those who like such things, and can be used on MP servers at admins' choice, while not annoying those who do not because they are not getting in the way of functionality they do want and have got used to having.

 

Understand the shiny badges thing, if you sell on steam you have to have achievements, but no reason to take away the normal medals progression which the experts in motivating young men have been using for centuries!

 

Even if you believe that the unlock system will lead to greater sales (and I am very skeptical) it is hard to argue that the implementation the team has imposed on BoS has been well chosen.

 

I completely agree with you all points. FWIW, I'm skeptical the unlocks will have a positive impact on sales as the game is currently sold anyway. Their scope seems so small that it hard to tell what the intention was with adding them. And the only in SP which has to be unique among games is a head scratcher as well.

Whether or not you like them is irrelevant.  Most of us hate them.  They knew most of us hated them from the start.  That really leaves only 1 reason to include them.  They think unlockables will attract more new players than the number of current players that they drive away.  

 

In a discussion about new and seasoned player attraction and retention with regard to the unlock system, whether or not a member of one of those groups actually liked having a progression system, is irrelevant? Regardless, the example of myself was just to give you a concrete counter point, my main objective was pointing out your straw man argument that the unlocks were supposed to make those who hate flying, like the game.

 

I would happily give up the progression system to not have to hear about it in every damn thread, though. I would have loved an in depth career oriented SP with more historical context, but I have fun with the AQMB too.

 

Anyway, that all said, I don't care enough about this to waste potential flying time when we clearly are not going to change the other's mind.

Edited November 14, 2014 by mort

[LizLemon]

Better sales better product better graphics Is a rising tide for all. When you can figure a single game can make more money than all other entertainment products combined, it's going to get some very nice graphics work.

Nice job missing the point of the question and giving a vapid response.

 

Oh, and which single game has made more money then every other entertainment product combined?

[Bearcat]

There is a confusion going on.

 

A Mainstream gamer will never pickup BoS, never with a large stone of salt mind you.

 

A mainstream gamer will normally won't touch anything that requires anything else that a mouse, a keyboard or a console type controller. That is why we see very little of them in simulations.

 

EVEN with hotas setups costing less than a gaming mouse they won't invest time, therefore money, into a long learning curve.

For example, ArmA with all its virtues and defect does indeed attract and sell way more than a flight simulator but also will never reach near mainstream gaming. Simply because it is not immediate results. Like ArmA I could say mechwarrior online for example. The mainstreamers don't flock there simply because it has a cockpit only !!! Obviously they all went to Hawken. Eventually many players will migrate to more challenging sims from war thunder or world of warplanes, but they will never leave en masse, more like a wild guess of 1 in 3k.

 

If you look to the history of PC games, simulators only had their place in the top 10 before the internet BOOM. After that it all became e-competition and e-sports, where fast paced games where arenas of 10 minutes are the norm. It is not about the simulation for them. It is about the immediate results. Unlocks are not a reward nor a mainstream mechanic - they require time and learning, not combo and pwned maneuvers! There is a difference in unlocks here and unlocks in a battlefield or medal of honor game type.

 

So if most of the reviews point this single aspect as the most "alien" choice for a game of the genre there must be something being aligned that either really requires them, or simply dwells in business model for different editions worldwide, we do not know.

 

A e-pilot finds his fun in the challenge, the learning, the investigating, the discovery. The mainstream gamer find his fun in ladders, stats, and immediate mastery of controls. Whatever the case the ambition for a sim to get mainstream is long gone, unless some studio finds a most imaginative way to entice a simple gamer to want to learn and spend time in a virtual cockpit.

 

This is an excellent post and IMO spot on. There were 47 sims released in the 90s.. give or take a few...19 in the 2000s so far around 9 give or take in the 2010s... but I think the internet issue is in a state of flux as the internet becomes more crucial to every aspect of everyday life. The internet is where all gaming is going with the offline element as a necessary option. This is partly because of piracy and partly because socializing in cyberspace is becoming more and more normal.

 

Just look at how much they are complained about here, among enthusiasts, compared to how they are mentioned by a mainstream review. To them it's just a common feature nearly every game has. Not so earth shaking. That's how the average buyer will see it and probably that they're fun. BoS can't be successful just selling to the enthusiast crowd because for the most part they've probably already bought it. There has to be some sort of progress or progression to keep players interested and reward them. Heinkill makes some good points about why the campaign is the way it is. Most SP games reward you with more storyline but that type of campaign in flight sims doesn't work so well.

 

While I agree with parts of the the sentiments expressed I still firmly and resolutely believe that options are and will always be the operative word in flight sims. The wider the swath of users it can appeal to from day one the better it will be and IMO it seems to get lost in the mix that BoS in it's current state can appeal to the arcade gamer as well as the hardcore simmer... however it is still a WIP and IMO those who are willing to toss the baby out with the bathwater.. under the notion that .. they are "simmers" and they "paid for a sim not a game" and other such rhetoric are missing the point and in this case the point is that BoS is a WIP.. and newly born WIP at that, so to come to any hard and fast conclusions about it either way is questionable but based on the track record of the team during the entire development cycle.. for me..  to err on the positive side as opposed to the negative side with other teams on other products flys in the face of the facts as they seem to appear to me based on the last 24 months.

 

Trouble is that segment is about 3% of the buyers. Hey I was online the other day and there was a huge group of 11 players on! I hope BOS has sold more that 11 copies of this sim...

 

The reason why online players are so few at the moment, for now, is because many are turned off by some of the features in BoS .. and more importantly the Dservers are not available yet. There is also a misconception going around that because the unlocks apply to MP as well that somehow MP is neutered.. which is one reason why I think it is such a mistake to have the unlocks even associated with anything in MP in the first place. I agree that the unseen offline community is larger than we know.. but this is 2014... gaming in cyberspace is not what it was a decade ago.

 

I'm a pretty experienced gamer, I've played a number of different games throughout the years, studied game stuff etc. so I'm not just a simmer even though they are my favorite genre. I don't dislike unlocks as a game mechanic per se (<- that is Finnish for "ar se" btw. and thus quite funny to post on a forum), but there are a number of reasons why I don't think they are a well thought out thing in this game.

 

1) They don't have a very long appeal. Simulators in general are expected to hold one's interest for years, these unlocks are "over" in a few weeks of relatively intensive gaming. They also have zero replay value.

 

2) They break an important campaign mechanic; the availability of planes and equipment needs to arise from the supply situation / time period in the campaign, this is both interesting gameplay with true replay value and historical.

 

3) In combination with pilot levels focusing on unlocks seems to have sidetracked another important feature of the campaign: the difficulty needs to depend on the campaign situation and starting point and more importantly the previous events of a campaign. An abstract pilot level takes away a lot of interesting gameplayby replacing mechanisms that generate it.

 

4) They break multiplayer. Games that rely on grinding stuff are usually massively multiplayer shooters that have a matchmaker for setting up teams of somewhat equal equipment level, in Il-2 everyone is in the same matches. The situation where someone can't participate because he lacks the necessary planes or equipment is not handled well at all and thus it becomes virtually impossible to create certain kind of coop or other mission content. This is actually a game-breaking problem in many ways and absolutely needs to be fixed.

 

Combined together these issues form a serious game design problem that needs to be fixed for the game to thrive. I applaud the effort to design compelling and interesting gameplay, but when the result is not good the devs have to make the right conclusion. But for some reason that has been a problem, there are a number of extremely weird decisions (no graphics settings, no campaign difficulty settings) that drag the game down even though the core seems to be pretty good.

 

I agree... and while I have heard nothing to bolster this belief.. just based on the team.. I think that this will eventually hopefully sooner rather than later change. The casual gamers will come here anyway.. as long as the sim itself is accessible to them.

 

Huh? Janes? MSCFS? Red Baron. Falcon. Really? Limited appeal? I am not sure you are familair with older CFS's.

 

Also, I still think IL21946 is better in a whole than any flight sim today. I still enjoy others, but pound for pound its still great, and its old.

Again, I dont agree. Difficulty should be down to historic time/events, not because you level up.

 

Rewards should be being part of a grand campaign and "living" in the time period as a fighter/bomber/whatever pilot. Not flashy XP points for flying through an "exit way point".

 

I agree.. I have always said that IL2 should be the model that any successful sim developer should follow in terms of scalability and accessibility options . Textbook.

Yeah but that was back when Asteroids was considered a flight sim. Seriously PC games had limited or no appeal to most people back in the pre-historic era. It's a different world today and these flight sims are better than they have ever been.

 

Asteroids was never considered a flight sim by anyone.. If anything Defender was the first flight sim that was not an electro mechanical game like the ones in the 60s and 70s (Jet fighter and Interceptor come to mind IIRC one of them was by a little company called SEGA) with rear projected images and recorded sound tracks.

 

For the record.

 

It is obvious that this thread has morphed and frankly how long can we continue to solely discuss the review..?  It was good.. It was not good. It was fair. It was not fair. Then it is only natural for discussion to flow into why was it considered any of the above.. so folks as long as we can keep the discussion civil and actually engage in dialog this thread will remain open... Let us all be mindful of what we type before we hit send and by now we all know the incendiary landmines that can hinder discussion and turn this thread south.. so let's all be adults and keep it moving. Thank you all for your cooperation up to this point.

[Bearcat]

Nice job missing the point of the question and giving a vapid response.

 

Oh, and which single game has made more money then every other entertainment product combined?

 

 

I could be wrong but I don't think he is talking about a specific single game but the fact that the video game industry itself is on the verge of out selling Hollywood in terms of revenue generation. That is a fact. So big business.. biug money.. more cinematic visuals as technology explodes.

 

Also per my above post.. landmines...please be mindful of what you type before you hit Post.

[BraveSirRobin]

 Regardless, the example of myself was just to give you a concrete counter point

 

There is a poll showing that only a small percentage of people like the unlocks.  Whether or not you like them is irrelevant.  The overwhelming majority do not like them.  Last time I checked, the best way to produce a popular game that lots of people will like is to avoid adding features that most people don't like.

[Bearcat]

There is a poll showing that only a small percentage of people like the unlocks.  Whether or not you like them is irrelevant.  The overwhelming majority do not like them.  Last time I checked, the best way to produce a popular game that lots of people will like is to avoid adding features that most people don't like.

 

This is a fact based on a poll here on this forum. Of 988 participants thus far 92.51% did not like the unlocks as they are currently implemented. There is a place for this... but as it is currently implemented it does more harm than good.