Open letter to Developers

[BM357_TinMan]

I am an enthusiast and would love to spend all kinds of ridiculous amounts of time playing this sim.  However, even though I have bought and plan to buy all the expansions as long as they are being developed, this sim sits and collects dust most of the time.

I understand that, to keep money flowing in so that the project doesn't sink, new content must be created for sale.  However, even with the continuing improvement of the sim as time goes by and the introduction of the much improved campaign system, simple game play enjoyment is mitigated by myriad little things that are just aggravations or disappointments every time I try to get back into the game.  And I feel are off-putting to would be new inductees into IL2 GB communities.

These "aggravations/disappointments" have nothing to do with “not having my favorite plane” or “not having my favorite map” and have to do with, mostly, how the player interacts with the game.

Things like (only examples, not even close to comprehensive; there are tons of examples in the suggestions thread that are as good or better):

·         Way too limited QMB

o   With the FMB being, understandably, crazy hard to use and learn, a more robust QMB to allow for simple and infinitely variable quick missions to be generated and saved for future SP and MP use is a must

·         GUI.  Holy crap.  This NEEDS to be address.  Please, fix it so that we can move, resize, modify, customize all the onscreen GUI (tech chat, mp chat, HUD, Subtitles, etc)

·         Communicating with AI in SP.  Man, does this ever need some love.

o   I understand that programming AI is daunting and I appreciate that technical aspects of the AI have been improving (like them crashing into one another, the ground, etc) but, not being able to communicate with them in even a small way really ruins SP missions

Multiple monitor support.  Let us configure our screens so that we can easily implement any number and position of our monitors natively within IL2 and not have to rely on the crap NVidia surround

 

I guess what I'm saying is, after the release of the next three (TC, FC, and BoBp) big releases, it might be a good idea to put off for a few months the next "big release", sit down and sift through the suggestions, play the game a bit, make a list of the biggest "little things" that could be addressed to make game play better and focus on fixing/implementing a few and just polishing up the entire game in general.

There are tons of good suggestions relating to this. 

If I WANT to like and play this and DO support this because I want it to succeed and my copy mostly gathers dust due to things that need to be addressed, how do we expect those with no interest or even passing interested to get it hooked into playing and supporting it?

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

4 minutes ago, BM357_TinMan said:

it might be a good idea to put off for a few months the next "big release", sit down and sift through the suggestions, play the game a bit, make a list of the biggest "little things" that could be addressed to make game play better and focus on fixing/implementing a few and just polishing up the entire game in general.

 

Game development does not work like that, not least because you can't have half of your team idling while the programmer writes tons of code. 

 

Of course, I'm not denying that there are a several notable aspects that could be improved.

[Chief_Mouser]

1 hour ago, BM357_TinMan said:

Way too limited QMB

 

o   With the FMB being, understandably, crazy hard to use and learn, a more robust QMB to allow for simple and infinitely variable quick missions to be generated and saved for future SP and MP use is a must

 

·         GUI.  Holy crap.  This NEEDS to be address.  Please, fix it so that we can move, resize, modify, customize all the onscreen GUI (tech chat, mp chat, HUD, Subtitles, etc)

 

·         Communicating with AI in SP. 

 

Agree with these up to a point, but making simple i.e. QMB-style missions in The Mission Editor isn't hard, just time-consuming and annoying.

The GUI I can see your point but it isn't a problem for me. The chat/kill notification in MP and wireless drivel/kill notification in SP is fine where it is out of the way and I never use the tech chat, HUD compass etc preferring to read the instruments - even the bloody Spitfire compass. Grrr.

Communicating with AI - this is a biggie. I would rather have nothing than what we have now. I would like to issue my OWN requests/commands rather than see it done for me, and I do not want to hear stuff from flights that are nowhere near me, and as for gunners calling out bandits... 1st, he's firing... what on earth is that supposed to be?

 

However, none of these, for me, justify leaving the sim on the shelf. It is WAY TOO GOOD for that.

All in all though, refreshing to see someone with a moan about the sim that isn't the awfulness of the AI, the imbalance of sides in MP and the supposed Red bias in modelling.

Your points are valid, but not worth giving up on it for.

Try again TinMan, there's tons of fun to be had in here, both in SP and MP.

 

Cheers.

[SharpeXB]

None of these seem like reasons for the game to sit on the shelf. Jeesh 

[BraveSirRobin]

[=WoVi=cercataa]

I agree with your suggestions.

 

But I don't think those are a reason to have the game collecting dust.

I just started some weeks ago, but I have already a big amount of hours spent in there, mainly in MP, and QMB just for testing/learning the planes. I still didn't touch the career or the Campaigns.

 

Except if you played 1000+ hours ... ?

[Jade_Monkey]

So now it's the devs duty to make multi monitor comfiguration because Nvidia settings are not of OP's taste?

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

On 1/19/2019 at 5:49 AM, Jade_Monkey said:

So now it's the devs duty to make multi monitor comfiguration because Nvidia settings are not of OP's taste?

No, it´s OP´s input, nothing more or less.

There´s no duty at all for the devs to do anything about it.

 

I really don´t get why people tend to think in imperatives and absolutes all the time.

 

[BM357_TinMan]

16 minutes ago, So_ein_Feuerball said:

No, it´s OP´s input, nothing more or less.

There´s no duty at all for the devs to do anything about it.

 

I really don´t get why people tend to think in imperatives and absolutes all the time.

 

Pretty much.  I wasn't posting to demand anything or even, ironically, to criticize.  I was just providing feedback, for whatever that's worth and letting them know the reasons why one of their customers doesn't take advantage of their product...nothing more than that.

[BraveSirRobin]

6 minutes ago, BM357_TinMan said:

I was just providing feedback, for whatever that's worth 

 

It’s worth nothing.  There is absolutely no chance that they’re going to stop producing content which drives revenue in order to clean up a bunch of minor bugs or add some minor features.

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

OP never suggested they stop completely, but in the end, how much you can do with new content is restricted to the basic game itself, which can be limited in some regards.

It may just increase revenue generated by new content if they increased the quality of the game itself.

 

Also, after BoBP has been released, I suggest new content to be added on a faction per faction basis, f.e. add late war Russian planeset (La 7, Yak 3) or Italian (G55, MC205) planeset. This also has the effect that they can release new content more often, thus draw more attention to the product overall.

Edited January 23, 2019 by So_ein_Feuerball

[BraveSirRobin]

4 minutes ago, So_ein_Feuerball said:

OP never suggested they stop completely, but in the end, how much you can do with new content is restricted to the basic game itself, which can be limited in some regards.

It may just increase revenue generated by new content if they increased the quality of the game itself.

 

He suggested stopping “for a few months”.  There is absolutely no chance that they’re going to do that.  

 

also, if you put this game on the shelf because of some sort of  perceived problems, then you’re probably spending too much time looking for problems.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Bug squashing and feature tweaking are evolutionary. This team does an adequate job of addressing both of those with each update.

 

Jason, literally, just had a post where you could address your singular "biggest" gripe for improvement, less than a month ago. I took advantage of the offer as I'm sure many other did as well.

 

Outside of that, the team is well aware of both what the most pressing issues are and where they fall in the grand scheme of things (internal roadmap). They have made that abundantly clear over the course of development and work on them where they can afford to spend design cycles. They also, if you choose to read it as it comes up or between the lines on occasion, communicate all of the above fairly often.

[Gambit21]

Murf said it.

Always another person second guessing the Devs and telling them to stop development (and by extension revenue) and only work on the current issues/bugs for some arbitrary and always completely ridiculous period of time.

 

How about this...sit back and enjoy all of the improvements and enhancements that are CONSTANTLY coming our way with this product with every single mo flicking release.

Let's give that a whirl and see what happens.

[Vig]

Man, it has come to this.