Idea to help MP community flourish

[=VARP=Cygann]

First off, I must admit I have not dig into BOS MP yet for many real life reasons. However I very much plan doing it soon. 

But regardless of the fact I am not online yet, I follow very closely how things develop around my favorite part of any game, and by looks of it, things are not shining at this time.

 

We all know HyperLobby will not happen with BOS. Ok fine, no real need since ad hoc hosting without dedicated machine is not possible.

 

But I believe we can all agree there is a need for social connection between players. Some lobby to hang on and chat until critical numbers are met and people in lobby agree to hop onto some server. This is much better then waiting on server as you can do other stuff behind PC and keep an eye on chat and finally join.

 

Now most of Facebook generation have no idea what mIRC is. But somewhat older population that revolve around flight sims might. It was very popular Internet Relay Chat clinet back in the day used by gamers before XFire, Steam and alike. It is very light weight and as such can run in background 24/7 without bothering players that need every atom of their CPU power.

 

I suggest that 777 make official IRC channels with admins to uphold manners (I bet some active people will offer to take the job to moderate if already existing forum moderators would not do it). It could be made even that only people that own the game account can join in but that is up to you to decide.

And last step is to make a link to mIRC utility and someone can make a tutorial for client use (it's no more complicated then any other for of group instant messenger but some folk would still need installation and setup guides).

 

With this done, MP players get a lobby to hang in that is far better then basic group chat HL offered. IRC clients were made for large number of chat participants and mIRC was the best of the best!

 

And before someone says we got official TS3, it is not the same. Some people join only their squad TS, others don't even like voice comms or don't own headset. But everyone that plays MP knows how to type and they like group chats. If they were not social in nature they would not play MP either.

 

Here is a link to mIRC for those that have not had a chance to use it in their youth, nothing special but very powerful group chat that can be configured in such details that one could think it's Linux distribution of a kind  -> http://www.mirc.com/

 

And here is a screen shoot from web just to illustrate how it could look like for lazy ones

 

Edited May 10, 2015 by EAF19_Cyclops

[[KWN]T-oddball]

A. the dev's could redo the in game browser to function like hyperlobby

 

B. there is this but i am not sure how many people are using it  http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/12832-bos-launcher/

 

you are spot on, a social hub like HL is very much needed.

[=VARP=Cygann]

Steam users don't have launcher. And wasting time to make proper group chat when all you need is set up server might be waste of time and money. But I would not complain as long as some solution is there that can be properly used even with more then hundred participants (something we could see in future if it's officially supported).

[6./ZG26_Custard]

Steam users don't have launcher. And wasting time to make proper group chat when all you need is set up server might be waste of time and money. But I would not complain as long as some solution is there that can be properly used even with more then hundred participants (something we could see in future if it's officially supported).

.

 

B. there is this but i am not sure how many people are using it http://forum.il2stur...2-bos-launcher/

 

If you use the Steam version  you can use the chat interface and the server browser but can't launch the game another than via steam. It's no biggie for me because you still have the ability to chat in a form of lobby and check out who is on what server etc.

[Bearcat]

A. the dev's could redo the in game browser to function like hyperlobby

 

B. there is this but i am not sure how many people are using it  http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/12832-bos-launcher/

 

you are spot on, a social hub like HL is very much needed.

 

 

Absolutely............. HL was key in the growth of IL2 because the UBI servers were not up to par if my memory serves me correctly.. I was only on there a handful of times..

[Y-29.Silky]

(Hexchat ftw), they can expand on "online.il2forever.com" and put an IRC channel on that domain? People always forget that not everyone has the Steam version.

 

Chat clients aren't too hard to develop either.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

A. the dev's could redo the in game browser to function like hyperlobby

 

B. there is this but i am not sure how many people are using it  http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/12832-bos-launcher/

 

you are spot on, a social hub like HL is very much needed.

 

A simple chat and pager system would be enough in the MP server select room. This would mean you could advertise a coop (run in DF mode like we did tonight) and be able to privately send them a password for a server. I would love HL and coop mode but I am sure my suggestion would be enough for us to do pseudo coops. This would give us close to what we want and just requires some change to the interface, then we could do the rest.

 

In the absence of that people really should use the BOS launcher as a chat, it is very light and can be left running behind the game but no one does. I am on it all the time and I see people log in and then log out straight away.

 

We need away to find opponents on the fly and not have to organise stuff days in advance.

 

Again I would dearly love the devs to just talk to us about this stuff and whether we are going to see some game play improvements in the future. I think at the same time if they did talk to us (like the adults we are) we should also behave the same way back and try to understand the difficulties they might have giving us exactly what we want.

 

Unfortunately I feel the foot stamping has done some damage to the sim and that could mean lower revenues which means we are even less likely to get what we want!

[=VARP=Cygann]

Any kind of solution that is light (mans it will run unobtrusive without any unwanted popups, sounds or adds) and offer something as illustrated in picture of my original post would do. There are many solutions but Steam and launcher don't fit in as community is already divided between the two.

 

Making or using some middle ground is a must if we want to jump start this games MP. Hope enough people realize this and voice out so Devs actually do something. 

 

If not we could as well, but things are somehow better when officially supported.