Devs - what about a dynamic online MP campaign?

[Pharoah]

Lets face it, the SP campaign is on the low end of the scale when it comes to quality compared to older titles (IL2, hell even Aces over Europe!!) and, unless they re-write the whole thing, I don't see it becoming a proper immersive personal experience that these type of SP campaigns are (ie. starting from trainer or lowest pilot rank with the ability to get promoted to element, flight, then squadron lead, etc).

 

So.....why don't the Devs consider creating a dynamic online MP campaign instead? What I'm talking about is:

 

- a game mode that's developed and managed by the 1C dev team with all major movements, battles, wins, losses, stats, scores, etc recorded and managed by the 1C database somewhere;

- an always-on MP campaign mode with moving front lines

- a 'living/breathing' dynamic war zone based on the BOS map starting from summer (beginning of the battle) and possibly ending in winter

- day/night with 24 hours simulated over say 4 hours so that if I logged on at the same time everyday it would either be day or night (not constant)

- multiple online missions required to fuel the war eg. ferrying a/c, cargo delivery, armed recce, photo recce, etc combined with large battles, pushes, skirmishes, etc

- an economy of sorts with reinforcements coming from 'off map' but needing to be moved to the front lines....get to a predisposed amount (eg. 500 tonnes of fuel, ammo, provisions, etc) will start an offensive (leading to other missions)

- tactical objectives such as bridges, roads, etc that will impact the above

- something that anyone anywhere in the world can contribute to

- make it so that no one player can impact the outcome themselves

- populating the map so that there are lots of targets (as it would be IRL...not just one train but several....not just one convoy, but several, etc)

- 1C could potentially recreate the whole SP ranking system in MP (including impact on those silly unlocks)

 

Yeah I know dreams are free but there's got to be some sort of differentiation with BOS/BOM to make players want to join servers. I'd prefer this be managed by 1C so that server owners are more inclined to adopt it.

 

Would this work?

[ShamrockOneFive]

I think the basic concept sounds like a great idea. I'm hoping that more effort goes into some sort of campaign system later on... and maybe even its retroactively introduced to BoS/BoM. Again, a little bit of blue sky but I'd love some sort of semi-dynamic, multiplayer capable campaign system.

 

Thumbs up from me!

[ACG_pezman]

I'm onboard, sounds like a cool idea.

[coconut]

You are basically describing TAW. Have you tried it?

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

Players ask for sth like this for over a year now. Unfortunately I dont see sth ilke this coming soon since the devs focus is more towards

pumping out content and fixing bugs rather than managing MP and improving game mechanics.

 

Also, from devs perspective the SP campaign is fine so its unlikely they find it nessecary to provide an alternative.

Edited May 17, 2016 by 6./ZG26_5tuka

[BlitzPig_Bill_Kelso]

Have you tried IL2 Career Generator and Patrick Wilson's Generator?

 

Both are excellent replacements for the single player aspect of Il2.

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/62-3rd-party-apps-utilities-tools-and-other-content/

 

 

 

 

          

Edited May 17, 2016 by JG27_Targ

[Pharoah]

You are basically describing TAW. Have you tried it?

 

that's what started me off - I posted this on that thread as well but after doing so I pondered whether it could work or not. The key thing in all this is its RUN by the devs. Things that are official tend to have more shelf life than things that aren't when it comes to stats, etc...esp something this big.

[Pharoah]

Have you tried IL2 Career Generator and Patrick Wilson's Generator?

 

Both are excellent replacements for the single player aspect of Il2.

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/62-3rd-party-apps-utilities-tools-and-other-content/

 

yeah I have...its pretty good. However I'm more into this as part of the MP experience. What I'm describing is basically the SEOW mode for IL2 1946. Like I said, you want your sortie (and/or death!!) to actually contribute to something rather than some useless points that get wiped on restart...or some stats page that doesn't mean anything.

[Blakhart]

We are working on MP online campaign.

Here you can check current stage of the project.

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/21029-tactical-air-war/page-1

Edited May 17, 2016 by =LG=Blakhart

[216th_Jordan]

There's some pretty disturbing evidence showing people hacking/cheating multiplayer. The idea in the OP is good, but what happens when someone brings their immune/unlimited-ammo aircraft into something like this? It would just wreck it.

True that but then again there could easily be a public ban list and a decent anti cheat software. It shouldn't be all that hard to at least disable most of the hacking.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

You are basically describing TAW. Have you tried it?

We are working on MP online campaign.

 

Here you can check current stage of the project.

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/21029-tactical-air-war/page-1

 

Give this ago, Pharoah.

 

You could try and get the Eastern Asia/Oceania community to fly here, it's a blast.

[Pharoah]

yeah thanks guys, I will give TAW a go tonight if I can (under the weather at the moment). The reason for my post was really to see if it could work. Given IL2 is up against other big budget titles and publishers/devs (EA, Ubisoft, Eagle Dynamics, etc) constantly they should try and go for something different rather than just 'same ole same ole' ie. differentiate. Again my reason for hoping 1C could do it is popularity ie. if its developed/supported by the devs, you'd tend to see lots of servers running it instead of just 1 or 2. Online flying isn't much fun when you're the only one on the server doing it

[ACG_pezman]

Pharaoh, you need a wingman or a squad. The game gets exponentially better the more squad mates that fly with you. It's not uncommon to see four bombers flying in formation with two escorts above.

[PatrickAWlson]

Thinking out loud here, but it seems like something could be done that effectively creates a dynamic, persistent  coop campaign.  

 

The human players would be registered in the campaign.  They would choose and service to fly for just as in PWCG.

When people are ready to fly a mission the participants would be noted during the mission generation process.  The participants could be all or a subset of players registered in the campaign.

A mission would be generated with each participating human players each getting a spot.  

The rest would be AI.

Fly the mission.

Parse the logs when it is over.

Advance the campaign just as in PWCG.  If you didn't fly then you miss out.

 

it would be very similar to what I have in PWCG but with the added complexity of more than one human participant.  Because time advances whether you are there  or not, it would definitely work best as something that is done among a group of friends who can coordinate schedules.

[Urra]

Thinking out loud here, but it seems like something could be done that effectively creates a dynamic, persistent coop campaign.

 

The human players would be registered in the campaign. They would choose and service to fly for just as in PWCG.

When people are ready to fly a mission the participants would be noted during the mission generation process. The participants could be all or a subset of players registered in the campaign.

A mission would be generated with each participating human players each getting a spot.

The rest would be AI.

Fly the mission.

Parse the logs when it is over.

Advance the campaign just as in PWCG. If you didn't fly then you miss out.

 

it would be very similar to what I have in PWCG but with the added complexity of more than one human participant. Because time advances whether you are there or not, it would definitely work best as something that is done among a group of friends who can coordinate schedules.

This sounds great but from my gut feeling it would only work as intended after dserver application gets to use 2 cores on its end, it struggles with the ai in the mp missions as they taxi and land. Looking forward to whenever its implemented.

[1Sascha]

What this game needs (and what CoD needed *badly*) is a truly dynamic campaign à la Falcon 4.0. An ongoing, "real-time" war with a "fluid" front-line where stuff happens constantly that doesn't necessarily involve the player. Like computer-generated/flown missions, attacks by ground troops, etc. The player should be able to either be "a small cog" in a big machine, flying missions as they are generated by the campaign or to be able to "grab" any mission that is generated anywhere within the theater of operations. And mission-generation should happen according to the current state of the front, of the conflict and of both sides' supply situation.

 

It would go something like this:

 

Red faction started an armor-push towards town XY -> system generates a Stuka-/bomber-mission to support blue troops trying to halt the push -> system then generates an escort mission for those Stukas/bombers (all this only if blue side has the necessary ground-units and planes available at the time). If player is playing a fighter-pilot character he can get assigned to or "grab" the escort mission. If he's on a bomber-career, he gets to fly a Stuka/He-111/Ju-88.

 

I seem to remember there was a Battle of Britain sim in the late 90s or early 2000s that also had a dynamic campaign like this (forgot the name of the game), plus Falcon 4.0 did this sort of thing in the friggin' 90s. Why nobody ever tried to do anything with this concept afterwards is beyond me. It probably involves a lot of work, yes, but just stringing a few random missions together and calling it a campaign is just so, well, uninspired..

 

 

S.

[Pharoah]

this is exactly what my OP was trying to get out. The beauty of this is that its not timezone dependent and you 'feel' like you're part of something bigger than just yourself. AI could be a mixture of hard/elite players interspersed with novice pilots (like it was IRL). 

[Dakpilot]

plus Falcon 4.0 did this sort of thing in the friggin' 90s. Why nobody ever tried to do anything with this concept afterwards is beyond me. It probably involves a lot of work, yes, but just stringing a few random missions together and calling it a campaign is just so, well, uninspired..

 

 

S.

 

It basically bankrupted the Dev's, and only worked properly after years of extra development, few Dev's would/have been prepared to take a similar risk

 

RoF Career was very well received, but actual use did not warrant development cost/time, all these things are just unfortunate economic reality

 

DCG and Dgen in IL-2 were 3rd party, not Dev made, and probably did also not reflect in development cost realities

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[PatrickAWlson]

Since I started in 2009, I have probably put 2000 hours into PWCG to bring it to where it is today.  The things being talked about here, especially the fully dynamic online campaign, are a good deal more complicated than PWCG.  You are probably approaching $500K and a couple of years of development to fully realize them.  

[Sokol1]

What this game needs (and what CoD needed *badly*) is a truly dynamic campaign 

 

 

BTW - Halcones Rojos guys did this for CLoD, but don't see much popular... 

 

http://www.halconesrojos.com/

Edited May 25, 2016 by Sokol1

[Pharoah]

Since I started in 2009, I have probably put 2000 hours into PWCG to bring it to where it is today.  The things being talked about here, especially the fully dynamic online campaign, are a good deal more complicated than PWCG.  You are probably approaching $500K and a couple of years of development to fully realize them.  

 

True. The problem is, IL2 as it is now (whilst beautiful, etc) loses its appeal after a while when you're doing the same things over and over (grinding). My point re some sort of dynamic campaign is to use this as some sort of competitive advantage or something that would draw players TO IL2. Yeah I know its easy to suggest without knowing the full cost and complexity of developing something like this but there's two sides to every coin.

 

Or.....maybe you could give it a try  I've played your campaign generator which is a heck of a lot of fun and more akin to realism than what 1C have thrown together.

[Gambit21]

Thinking out loud here, but it seems like something could be done that effectively creates a dynamic, persistent  coop campaign.  

 

The human players would be registered in the campaign.  They would choose and service to fly for just as in PWCG.

When people are ready to fly a mission the participants would be noted during the mission generation process.  The participants could be all or a subset of players registered in the campaign.

A mission would be generated with each participating human players each getting a spot.  

The rest would be AI.

Fly the mission.

Parse the logs when it is over.

Advance the campaign just as in PWCG.  If you didn't fly then you miss out.

 

it would be very similar to what I have in PWCG but with the added complexity of more than one human participant.  Because time advances whether you are there  or not, it would definitely work best as something that is done among a group of friends who can coordinate schedules.

 

Or maybe there's an East Coast Server, a West Coast server, etc.

Missions are generated every hour or so, with the prior mission ending before the next is generated.

 

That way I could plan on flying say the 7:00 pm mission, and coordinate with others.

More often, life being what it is, I'd be deciding to fly on a whim, and after deciding I wanted to fly for a bit that night, would only have to wait a short time before logging in to

the next mission launch.

 

Oh and once the mission launches, that's it. Everyone takes off at the same time, nobody else joins.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Gambit21