Single Player/Career mode.....clarification

[SharpeXB]

Really good AI is probably an impossible goal on a desktop PC (not to mention doing it at a reasonable cost).

The day we develop AI that good is the day we all become extinct. ;-)

[SharpeXB]

Some things have a value that's not reflected in usage statistics. If usage was the sole decider of what gets developed and what does not, why is there multiplayer? It's usage rate is so low it won't show up as a rounding error. For example, of the 200k people who probably own RoF mayne 11 of them are online at any one time. Yet I don't think anyone would advocate not having multiplayer.

Even if the RoF career is not well attended it's participation must still be 1,000x what MP is.

A player might have only one day a week they can spend in a long immersive career type SP mission and spend most of their other time in QMB but that's not to say the Career doesn't have a great appeal, just because it gets used less often. I hope 1CGS considers this when they just look at stats. There's more to this than numbers.

Edited April 8, 2015 by SharpeXB

[BraveSirRobin]

Even if the RoF career is not well attended it's participation must still be 1,000x what MP is.

 

The problem with the campaign is cost.  MP is relatively cheap.  They probably would have been better off putting their resources into making better tools for the community to make campaigns.

[Feathered_IV]

What really needs to happen is the devs need to make the campaign config and mission templates open to the community. That way players can scale aircraft numbers and skill to exactly suit their requirements. Other players can provide mission templates groaning under the weight of object and event triggers. Everything from aircraft spawning near and far, to refuel and rearm.

[AndyHill]

I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a really important point to make that there doesn't have to be any kind of division between SP and MP content. Campaigns, single missions etc. can all be both SP and MP. At least that's how it was with for example Forgotten Battles, the difference between SP and MP was minimal. For some reason I don't fully understand, Lock on / DCS, RoF and now BoS seem to be taking another approach entirely. BoS has single missions and a campaign purely for the SP pilots and MP people only get dogfights. In '46 I would always run multiplayer campaigns (DCG) so that friends could hop in as they appeared on teamspeak. The only thing I lost compared to the single player mode when playing by myself was the ability to accelerate time, which I never ever did anyway.

 

To me it would only make sense to design the campaigns and missions for n players (well I guess you can also dogfight alone, but that's usually rather dull) so that there's no need to split in development effort between two different groups of players.

Edited April 8, 2015 by AndyHill

[SharpeXB]

The problem with the campaign is cost. MP is relatively cheap. They probably would have been better off putting their resources into making better tools for the community to make campaigns.

Sure I guess there's little cost involved in supporting mp. But since statistically the number of mp participants = 0 then it follows the $ spent on mp would = 0 as well. Ok it's not zero. It's .00003% But effectively zero :-( Edited April 9, 2015 by SharpeXB

[6./ZG26_Gielow]

To pause the game ??!?! To fly drunk ??! I tought we were talking about immersion lol

 

Anyway, I would like to see a SP campaign like Red Baron 2 game. That was awesome 

 

However it is not going to happen until 2017 and maybe...

[Sokol1]

One of the things that I see in BOS AI is you can shoot one of them up pretty darn good....and he still won't break away.  That's not realistic at all.....An enemy aircraft with black smoke wafting behind it.....should not be heavily engaged in a dogfight....

 

Well this behavior that you describe is like human players in online servers, like AI no care for his virtual life.

[SharpeXB]

To pause the game ??!?! To fly drunk ??! I tought we were talking about immersion lol

Well you've gotta pause the game so you can go get another beer.

[Pharoah]

The SP 'campaign' in BoS is really disappointing. I expected more out of it. Even in my IL2 '46 days, I spent about 50/50 of my time in campaigns (DCG, etc) and online. I've tried the BoS campaign and I realised its just the same crap over and over again with no immersion, nothing. Hell, even '1946 had the Operation Barbarossa campaigns for the Luftwaffe where you started in an 109F2 I think and worked your way up (if you survived). It was pretty good. 

 

Unfortunately whilst I really want this game do well, I've been disappointed with what I got - a SP version that is just a collection of basic quick missions (which you have to endure to 'unlock' upgrades) or playing on MP with the same map and usually empty servers with no AI a/c. (no offense to MP server operators - they're doing an excellent job with what they have)

 

Disappointed. 

[itsmecamille]

I don't consider what we currently have in BoS a "campaign". Without something like the beta career, or much better, like the PCWG that we had in ROF, I won't buy BOM (I've haven't flown BOS in a long while), simple as that.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Maybe this is worthy of a separate thread but I've wondered about putting our heads together and making some very specific suggestions on what we'd like to see in a more fully developed campaign. I'm worried that it would open the floodgates to all kinds of unrealistic suggestions but at the same time I'd be interested in what we came up with.

 

I LIKE the current system for my ability to jump in. But it'd be interesting to merge that experience with something more.

 

Aircraft logistics (lose all of your YAK-1s and be forced to use the LaGG-3 at that airbase for example) or specific squadrons at certain bases with custom skins for that unit (red noses and squadron emblems, etc.). More variety of generated missions and more types of missions. Bomber intercept is different than recon flight interdiction. Fighter sweep is random encounters only rather than a prescribed battle space. Tactical recon takes the free hunt idea and runs with it further.

 

Just ideas off the top of my head. They aren't radical redesigns... Just more depth surface and some extra depth to what already exists.

[unreasonable]

There were plenty of suggestions in the "suggestions to developers" thread, but it is unclear whether they made an impact.

 

Personally I would like to see a DCG for BoS/BoM/Bo#: flexible - can be used on any map, scalable - numbers, aircraft type, AI level, and requires the campaign designer to do the historic (or fictional work (thus defusing the objection that 1CGS cannot afford a full time historian etc).

 

The details are just that - details. If the overall structure of the campaign is not right, it will not satisfy.

[CheeseGromit]

A single player career is the reason I pre-purchased BoS, plain and simple. At the time it was still listed as a 'feature', if only in relation to the online system requirements.

 

The current BoS campaign makes for a pretty decent QMB, IMO better in some respects than whats labelled in game as the QMB, whch is more like a free flight mode.

 

 

In terms of AI since I saw it mentioned as I skimmed the topic. I've read some interesting developer discussions primarily in the strategy game domain relating to the role of the AI and whether it should be trying to 'win' the game or just be there to enhance the player experience. Where you sit on the topic will depend of why you play and what sort of experience you're looking for. As someone that plays purely for entertainment (not challenge, not immersion) I don't need the AI to be good, just good enough. YMMV.

[312_Tygr]

I fly mostly online, but I love a well thought out and designed campaign/career mode. I like variety in weather, time of day, number of opponents, mission type - you get all that in a good campaign, not really on online servers. Therefore, a good campaign is a big plus - the current BoS campaign is rather like a "serial QMB" - not really what the doctor ordered. A historical campaign would be my personal first choice, something that would recreate an experience of a pilot from a real unit, that really flew around Stalingrad at the time the game covers at the moment. You don't really need a historian for that, I suppose it would take some time to create, though. 

[Comes]

I don't consider what we currently have in BoS a "campaign". Without something like the beta career, or much better, like the PCWG that we had in ROF, I won't buy BOM (I've haven't flown BOS in a long while), simple as that.

 

Yes, a decent single player campaign and BoM would be an Instant Buy for me. For now, I will wait and see how it develops. 

Also spend hundreds of hours in the RoF Career. 

[Primus_71]

Really good AI is probably an impossible goal on a desktop PC (not to mention doing it at a reasonable cost).  

 

 

BoB II AI is pretty impessive. You'd be surprised. If only that sim was not so outdated, graphics wise :/

[jeanba]

Yes, a decent single player campaign and BoM would be an Instant Buy for me. For now, I will wait and see how it develops. 

Also spend hundreds of hours in the RoF Career. 

Same here, spent a lot of time on RoF career and PWCG.

I did not pre-order, and do not consider to buy BoM yet, because of the lack of decent SP campaign

Edited April 9, 2015 by jeanba

[=VARP=Cygann]

For an air combat sim to be successful in these times we need both a strong multiplayer and single player system, and we, the players need to put aside our differences with those that don't

play the way that we personally do and suppport each others needs and wants.

 

This is like reading my mind.

 

And then again, is there better way to merge then to provide coop missions where you have both, human and AI. 

 

To reference to 777 older product - ROF, I used PWCG to generate missions and then played them with friends in coop. It is simply great for those times when MP servers are not populated enough. But unlike IL2:46, ROF or Clod even, BOS don't let us adhoc hosting coops without dedicated servers even if we had mission generator. This makes it really hard to blend SP and MP players

 

Those that follow on space sims as well, even Elite developers realized potential of this and added private groups along with SP and open MP play, those private groups kind of simulate coops as you can only encounter human players that belong to the group, everything else is AI. That was just a brilliant idea to make peace between SP and MP extremes.

Edited April 9, 2015 by EAF19_Cyclops

[BlitzPig_EL]

Exactly ChiefWH, there is no one correct way to enjoy this, or any, sim.

 

This is an issue that increasingly has me worried about the future of our little corner of the computer gaming world.

 

Over the years, the hardest of the hard core players have slowly come to dominate on the official forums, not only here but any of the other remaining titles.

They constantly push their agenda, that full hard core "total immersion" role playing is the only way to play combat flight sims, and anyone that plays a different style should just "go play War Thunder", so their little playground

isn't soiled by people that think differently than they do.

 

Yet, they wonder where all the players have disappeared to, and why combat flight sim development has practically stopped.

 

Look in the mirror people.   There are not enough of you to make any one sim profitable, and no publisher can survive if they don't make a profit.

Edited April 9, 2015 by BlitzPig_EL

[Original_Uwe]

Well put.

I always shied away from the arcade servers, but they attracted a LOT of people. And a lot of those people eventually migrated to the total immersion side of the spectrum.

[SYN_Mike77]

I think that developing a career like the one everyone wants is much more expensive and difficult than we are giving credit to.

In WWI sims the company developed career that is the gold standard is Red Baron 3d. That company went under right after the game

came out and I have read the developers said it was the time, energy and money developing that campaign that did them in. I have

also read about some jet sim (I hate jet sims and can't recall which one it was -Falcon 4?I don't know) that everyone raves about the

career and that company promptly went under and again, blamed the resource pit that was the campaign for the failure. Now some will

say what about WoFF or even RoF Beta. Well, sure, WoFF is great but how many guys are involved in that project? If you had to pay

them all a living wage and provide benifits for all of them there would be no WoFF! The RoF Beta career took over two years to develop

and 777 was selling planes one at a time to pay for creation of the campaign. As has been pointed out, the idea of individual plane

sales was met with open hostility here as nothing more than a pay to win scheme and is a nonstarter. ( I think this is grossly mistaken btw

and would bet that most of those saying this have no experience with RoF. Case in point, I am sure that no one bought a Dh2 to win!)

 

 

I really think the way to get a career like the one desired is to go the route that Jason is taking, help the community to develop

the thing.

[Dakpilot]

And after all the effort in creating the beta career, a third party one arrived that every one (most) used instead 

 

Look at the original IL-2 campaigns..they are mediocre at best, not talking about Dgen and DCG they were 3rd party as well, and the decent campaigns that came with later add-ons well yep you guessed it  it took 2 years to make the campaign for RoF...why would anyone expect it to take any less time for BoS?

 

Am sure BoS could have launched with a perfectly reasonable SP campaign, but we would still be waiting for it, and not have had the benefit of all the experience and updates that have come in the last 6 months to the 'core game engine'

 

Too much is expected/demanded from a small company in a small niche, with more instant whining, than thought in what it takes to bring a sim/game like this to market

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[BraveSirRobin]

I think that developing a career like the one everyone wants is much more expensive and difficult than we are giving credit to.

 

The expectations of many people are completely unrealistic.

[I/JG27_Rollo]

 

 

why would anyone expect it to take any less time for BoS?

I'd imagine because there are already 2 years worth of work in the RoF career.

Of course it's far from being a simple copy&paste as a lot of stuff would have to be adapted to the new maps, new mission structure, new environment, new lotsofthings but surely there must be some foundations laid within the RoF career that could be reused. All those mechanics like the flight roster, the scoreboard, how replacement pilots and machines come in, how you can see what missions are planned for the day, how the weather affects whether missions can be flown on a day would essentially work the same.

If you cut back on things like detailed squadron descriptions and newspaper reports and concentrate on those core career mechanics, would it really be totally unreasonable to expect it to take less time provided the will and resources to do it would be present?

[Dakpilot]

So add another year instead of two......would have still been long enough of a wait to cripple the company with no revenue just like the two other mentioned ones.....

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[I/JG27_Rollo]

Yes, I'm with you there.

For initial release it would have been too much but having it some time in the future is still my dream.

 

I didn't expect it to be part of BoS. (it was a dream though.)

I hope for it to be in BoM (probably still a dream)

I wish for it to be in whatever we'll get after BoM (maybe by then, we can actually hope)

[BraveSirRobin]

I'd imagine because there are already 2 years worth of work in the RoF career.

Of course it's far from being a simple copy&paste as a lot of stuff would have to be adapted to the new maps, new mission structure, new environment, new lotsofthings but surely there must be some foundations laid within the RoF career that could be reused. All those mechanics like the flight roster, the scoreboard, how replacement pilots and machines come in, how you can see what missions are planned for the day, how the weather affects whether missions can be flown on a day would essentially work the same.

If you cut back on things like detailed squadron descriptions and newspaper reports and concentrate on those core career mechanics, would it really be totally unreasonable to expect it to take less time provided the will and resources to do it would be present?

 

All for nothing, since they have data that indicates that hardly anyone uses the RoF career.

[I/JG27_Rollo]

But why is that?

 

Is it that the entire idea of this career system is unappealing to most people apart from me and some other few?

In that case yes, it's all for nought and never gonna happen.

 

Or is it because of issues like @@Feathered_IV has mentioned above?

These things could maybe be tweaked, added and improved on to make it a more engaging experience for a greater number of players.

[Dakpilot]

If we get a  PWCG style career option in another year, helped by third party then I will be happy, (but that's just me) Jason has said he is actively pursuing this, and other Devs from the team have shown interest in more developed type of SP

 

To want things quicker is fine, to demand or expect it is a bit naïve

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[I/JG27_Rollo]

Well I'm not demanding or expecting anything.

I don't even want to have it quicker - I just wish to eventually have it at all.

Then I'll be happy too.

It's good news, that some in the team are thinking along the same lines. I must have missed those posts.

[jeanba]

To pause the game ??!?! To fly drunk ??! I tought we were talking about immersion lol

 

 

I suppose you are kidding, but I heard this kind of remark from fanatic online player who were not kidding so often, that I stopped MP

Edited April 9, 2015 by jeanba

[Dakpilot]

My "demanding expecting" comment was very much a generalised one  sorry

 

There were posts on the Russian language forum by dev's supporting a more 'traditional' SP campaign and Jason has posted very recently about his desires on this subject

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[BraveSirRobin]

But why is that?

 

For the purposes of this discussion that is basically irrelevant.  You're saying they should put the RoF campaign structure into BoS.  If no one uses the RoF campaign, that is a waste of their resources.  They decided to try something else.  Unfortunately for them, it didn't really matter what they did (within a realistic budget), it was going to be greeted with lots of complaining.

[I/JG27_Rollo]

No problem. I must have misread it.

And thanks for the info. I'll go look for Jason's posts about it...

[I/JG27_Rollo]

For the purposes of this discussion that is basically irrelevant. You're saying they should put the RoF campaign structure into BoS. If no one uses the RoF campaign, that is a waste of their resources.

I don't think it is. I'm saying that I would greatly enjoy the RoF career structure in BoS/M. (Whether it is put in by the devs or the community.)

Someone said (somewhere in this one or another thread) that WWII is likely to have more people interested in it than WWI. Therefore, if the system gets improved in some regards - maybe the portion of players who enjoy that mode would increase (as would their total number) to make it worthwhile.

Edited April 9, 2015 by I/JG27_Rollo

[BraveSirRobin]

I don't think it is. I'm saying that I would greatly enjoy the RoF career structure in BoS/M. (Whether it is put in by the devs or the community.)

Someone said (somewhere in this one or another thread) that WWII is likely to have more people interested in it than WWI. Therefore, if the system gets improved in some regards - maybe the portion of players who enjoy that mode would increase (as would their total number) to make it worthwhile.

 

Whether or not you personally would enjoy it is not the issue.  The problem for them is that hardly anyone uses it in RoF.  They have limited resources, and using those resources on something they believe that very few people will use is not a good idea.  I'm pretty sure this is not their first rodeo.  They probably have a pretty good idea how people actually use the game.

[Dakpilot]

I may be wrong, but I think it has been said that the data referring to not many people using beta career was partially due to PWCG being preferred by many. There was a clear statement from Dev's early in DD's that it had cost them a lot of time/resources in RoF and they would not make the same mistake twice

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[BraveSirRobin]

I may be wrong, but I think it has been said that the data referring to not many people using beta career was partially due to PWCG being preferred by many. There was a clear statement from Dev's early in DD's that it had cost them a lot of time/resources in RoF and they would not make the same mistake twice

 

Cheers Dakpilot

 

I don't recall exactly how Jason worded it, but I you're probably right about PWCG being preferred over the standard campaign.  However, I think there are also many other SP people who don't play any form of campaign.  

[I/JG27_Rollo]

They probably have a pretty good idea how people actually use the game.

They probably have.

That's why I hope that at least something PWCGy will come our way.

(I'm referring so much to the dev-developed ß-career because I only played that one. I never actually tried PWCG and can't really say anything about the latter.)

Edited April 9, 2015 by I/JG27_Rollo