Now see what moding does for a game and company!
 

Quote :
"There's no doubt that the thrilling Day Z mod currently drives Arma 2 Combined Operations sales on Steam", he says with a touch of understatement. "Sales have increased almost fivefold from how they were before Day Z's Alpha release!"


http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=16786

I still clearly remember numerous "It was fun while it lasted" comments back when it broke out that IL-2 had been "hacked" years ago.

I would say "can do", not "does".

I haven't have same kind of fun anymore since then - at least online. My squad died slowly from the confusion and dissapointments.

And that Zombie mod doesn't look like much fun too. Just feeding the kiddies.

the DayZ mod is more social survivalist. No Run and gun in this one.

I agree with this, and had the same experience. Ubi shut their chat and all, it didnt seem the same thing. I think "can do" is more accurate, because it depends on the game, modding can destroy it or make it live for a long time (i.e. Neverwinter nights or the Elder Scrolls video games or Counter Strike). I dont think it's the case for a flight sim.

Modding never destroys a game, ever. Blaming modding for lack of interest in a game is like blaming car enthusiasts for declining interest in their particular make and model over time. If it weren't for the mods, I would have shelved IL-2 a long time ago. It has everything to do with how you enjoy your games, which should always be how you want, not how others tell you.

It destroys certain aspects of it, every time. The offline community is the one who profited the most from mods. Online community in return, got decimated. Period.

What? There are lots and lots of people in spits v 109's mid depending on time.
You could even make the argument that those who want stay with the inaccurate, anemic and obsolete version of the game are the destroyers, refusing to move on with the rest of the community.
More choice for the end user is always a good thing.

I would've shelved IL2:1946 a long time ago as well without the mods. Still fly it with my friends all the time... even over CoD.

And games are not forever. When they die in sales and multiplayer, mods can bring them back to life for a time-but I promise it makes games last longer than they would without the mods.

The best part is mods are one major part of gaming that beats console games to a bloody pulp. You force a game to only run stock then you're appeasing the type of people who are controlled by games not the other way around.

So the real question is about you: are you a do as your told, never use aftermarket parts on your car, don't want to think for yourself kind of person?

Or do you like to play with vanilla and think, " Ya know what would go great with this..." kind of person?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

And in reply to who mentioned they don't think modding works for flightsim.... take a look at the A2A forums and the accusim guys. Amazing things are going on over there because of the ability to change the game to create!

I would agree it requires some extra braincells. And that can deter the large community to make it work for online play... which is best to keep simple for the majority of gamers who just don't want to think while relaxing. (completely understandable) But this still boils down to what kind of person you are and what gets your jollies off. Limo? Or modify-able racecar?

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2

Sorry, no. Period. Modding never destroys games, it only enhances them. There's far too many reasons that argument is old and busted.

European Air War ... Panzer Elite ... for me modding killed sims already. If I had been into online flying in 1946 at the end it would have done the same. It does fracture the community into groups, sometimes these groups get along fine, sometimes it degenerates into ego-driven flamewars. IMO modding is less about enhancing the gaming experience for the end user but about fiddling, experimenting and ultimately receiving internet adulation.

Well as an online user via Hyperlobby I can say only what I see.

Mods definitely affected the online aspect of IL2 1946 for the worse.

From an average @ 1000 users to 350 the decline was obvious what they had done.

Mod users will say that natural decay of user interest will be the reason, but after 10 years watching IL2 build its online community that just isn't the case,
there was a exodus due to the mods from squads and individuals across the board.

v4.11.1 has seen a rise in Hyperlobby activity with the most popular Dogfight servers split approximately 50/50 between stock and various mods.

CooP pilots are flying stock v4.11.1 more than before.

As a mod user myself in the past I appreciate there's been some good work done, but also at present there's some bad things that have been done especially the mod that allows users to force thier way into CRT=2 stock versions.
This is the base of the mistrust between the community when mod creators allow back door hacks into the stock version of the game.

v4.11.1 has no protection from the mod hacks so once again stock users are at the mercy of pilots bringing altered aircraft into a stock version, this also creates problems for the stock users that low level bomb as they instantly explode as soon as thier bombs are dropped, this then leaves the v4.11.1 user confused as he flying stock and cant get his bombs to arm correctly.
The modded users are causing this problem possibly due to the new synchronization of the bomb effects between clients.

The confused stock user then install a mod pack to get around the bomb problem compounding the problem further for stock users, as the mods are the cause of the problem in the first place.

So some stuff good some bad, mostly bad in my opinion as it is at the moment.






.

I m a mod user, I really like some of them, I hate others. And of course them disgregate the comunity. What Caspar and Alpha said it s true. Offline activity maybe increased, who knows...but the hiperlobby it s a desert now. And it is not only about a 10 years old game, disgregation, confusion, made the comunity smaller. The only shelter are squads, the ones big enought to still be attractive to coop or FoF players.

Mods could kill the community, yes, but cheats have been going on in il2 far before the modding started.

There are bad attitude modders, and there are well intentioned ones.

Some MODS are absolutely fantastic, some are just crap. But anyway, it shows at least many things that were called not possible as a reality.

I have witnessed cheats with MODS, but I also witnessed that long before they were released. Some squads were well known for their cheating capacity, well before the MODS become open.

So, there is a large confusion about MODS, but hardcore people are still on it, with better missions than before.

And also the tendency to join squads and play private campaigns was there far before the MODS appeared. It was the only safe haven from cheaters online.

The only damage MODS could really be blamed, is the different versions available, and the risk of destroying your own il2 install with singular MODS.

The last patch from TD, have got many people back to official patch release, instead of modded ones. Mainly because of their better management of planes and AI behavior. Those are the things that really makes a difference in this game, not one more variant of a 109 or a spit.

Now, make the ships engage evasive maneuvers, better their wrecks, and the same for moving ground objects, and it will be a better move than adding any more planes into the sim.

This sims, needs better playability, not more objects to play with.

Agreed. But some selected objects/planes/maps, better sounds and visual effects wouldn't hurt either, provided they are of high quality. Now the problem is that TD goes one way (e.g. AI -- that's good), while the modding community goes another (more effects, more this and that -- and that's not bad either). Both approaches have produced some really excellent stuff, but they hardly overlap: it's better to fly the stock game, while it's better to look at, and to listen to, the mod games.

There should be a compromise IMHO, on TD's side as well. The mod community should accept that TD is serving as a 'quality filter', while TD should implement much, much more from the high quality part of mods. Sounds and some visual effects are likely candidates IMHO, as well as retextured stock objects and some new ones. And I simply can't understand why we couldn't have at least a fraction of the new maps made by modders. I don't beleive they are all just crap...

One of the main reasons for people wanting mods was for the sound.

Now I have a good knowledge of the history of IL2's sound engine the reasons for it and the way its was compromised some time ago.

Now not to dwell on the fact that for me the sound engines been ok due to the fact I never used onboard sound devices but high end sound cards/speakers/headphones.

Security has been the ideology whilst flying online back in Olegs day, and IL2 did a good job of it, all the Aces from other sims suddenly disappeared when IL2 came out as all files were secure and the sound engine was locked down.

Some thing that might be able to be done is to have a switch in the GUI for the Host/Server to allow modded sounds out side of the games sound generator.

So if I want to host a CooP that allows mods sounds I can select a switch to allow users to fly with stock version with modded sounds.

And if I want a totally locked down CooP mission select the switch to default sound.

This would probably be a great improvement for a lot of users and not require them to have to use mod packs just for the game sounds.

.

Read up on intelectual property law to know why everything produced by the Mod community is unusable by TD. What the moders rarely seem to understand is that they are actually operating outside of the law! These issues will not go away as there are too many parties and vested interests involved to ever make it legal. What we have is the best of what we'll ever get.

You do realize that the Solomons map, which is now oficially incorporated, was made by a MOD team?

Cloyd

The sanctimonious arrogance of the “I hate IL-2 Mods” mafia makes me want to both laugh and cry at the same time!

If they “don't use Mods in IL-2”, they can only be using 4.09m or earlier versions.
However, it appears they are happy to use later versions that include, and are the result of, the work done by the spawns of the Devil that are the “IL-2 Hackers”.

M'Lud …. I call my first witness … Mr. Zuti :)

Most worrying to me is the refusal of the official modders to discuss their source data or to even justify such obvious errors in consistency as removing the Fw190 bar whilst keeping the P-47 razorback gunsight obstruction, despite the factual evidence presented to them.

Apparently “refraction” only reached the USA after 1945!

This is one of the many reasons that the number of IL-2 players online is reducing.

As for modding not being good for flightsims? Falcon 4 is 13 years old and going strong thanks to modders ;)

Zuti was TD member when some parts of MDS were integrated into the code, he left for his own reasons after a while.

And about the Solomons maps, yes they are great and were easy to implement because they 99% used stock textures and objects. Still, some rework was necessary... so extrapolate to other modded maps.

Guys, please, think twice before you write something...

Official 1C map tools were given away to chosen 3rd party individuals to produce more maps long before the game was hacked - so 3rd party maps have quite a tradition meanwhile.
There is no problem for us to still accept 3rd party maps - but the main problem with many of them is the use of non-stock objects (and the ammount of reworking it to use stock objects would be too much for us).
And additionally... those non-stock objects are in 99% of cases in a bad shape (no LoDs, Collisions, Shadow etc.), that we could not implement them without finalisation, even if we would get the source 3DSmax models from the modders, which seems to be impossible to most of them as well (because they do it in Blender or Maya or Notepad or whatever).
New, unique textures - no problem at all. Quality and look maybe (Google Earth shows not the world of WW2!), but thats probably fixable.

We still have a few 3rd party maps in line. Time will come.

TD has announced its way of working from the very beginning. We did not discourage external contribution to IL-2, but wanted to keep it structured, with clear technical standards, relevant content, free of copyright stuff, etc.

You can read it here. Interview from 2009:
http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_420c.html

It's up to you to judge, if TD has fulfilled it within last 3 years.

So do I .. quite well.. and while I still think that the potential disaster that so many expected (myself included initially if any of you remember the details), was indeed a very real possibility based on historical experience in this genre across several platforms.. In the end they proved unfounded. Yes the mods did change the sim, and for a while there it was pretty bad, but even then it was not the "badness" that so many of us anticipated. I never saw a substantial rise in cheats... nothing on the order of what was seen in other sims, and while the compatibility, or should I say incompatibility issues did and still do a lot to deter some from fully enjoying the sim IMO it has settled down quite a bit and if you want to have fun in this sim you can... stock or modded. People who left the community and have not come back either got other interests or do not fully understand what we now have.

IMO if this sim had not been hacked it would be farther along the road to retirement than it is now. Let's face it .. for a 10+ year old product .. it is still getting new users almost daily if some of the forum posts on this and other boards are to be believed. This is IMO a direct result of mods and the whole dynamic that that fact brought to the sim. Would there even be a TD if not for mods? Would Oleg stll be here isf the sim had not gotten hacked? We don't know.. From what we were told 5 or so years ago.. the plan was to stop support for IL2 and concentrate on BoB.. so if the sim had not been modded where would it be now? Consider the stock sounds, textures.. maps and most importantly options from the circa 2005-2006 period and what we were told by Oleg about his plans and consider what we'd have now if it had not been for mods.

Yes .. some are crap.. but IMO TD is doing a great job of incorporating much from mods into the sim... and 4.11.1 would not be what it is if not for mods. I also think that for better or worse ... for those of us who are still here, we are still here not so much because mods are good or bad but because the sim is still enjoyable.. That whole I can't find a server because of mods nonsense is nonsense.. and if many of the folks who feel that way came back EVEN IF THEY CHOSE TO FLY STOCK ONLY .. It would be a good thing for the sim. I like having more options.. but as I always say.. I like to have my options tailored to as close to what the stock sim is doing as possible and the quickest way to loose me as far as mods go is to say that you are "branching out on your own" ..

I agree with much of this but some of it just will not happen.. does anyone remembe the great reconciliation? Remember before the compressor or whatever it was .. that let modders compress their sfs files was made abvailable? This was around the time that the whole UP/SAS/AAA/HSFX unification thing was being talked about.. before that it would take as long as 3.5 minutes for the sim to just load because of the mods.. imagine trying to join a coop where everyone took that long five or take a minute in either direction to load.. it was a nightmare.. but that "unification" never happened.. the closest thing to it was when two mod groups sort of merged.. and that entity is now more... compliant .. for lack of a better term to the standards set down by the "official" modders ... but the one world kumbaya modland never emerged.. and it won't ever.. as long as some people think that they know "the correct XXXXX" for any part of the sim. I have my choices.. but for me the latest TD version is and will always be the ultimate determination of what mods use.

Bearcat, +10!!!

Good post!

The only thing that would be nice is to merge the SEOW interface on the TD pack. Not the flying characteristics, but the online war interface.

Thank you Gitano. You confirmed my point perfectly :)

Zuti was "an evil hacker" when he first made MDS.
Then his work became part of TD and he was one of the good guys!

I am guessing your patronising last line was due to English not being your primary language?

For the record please let me say, many of the mods developed by TD are excellent such as the G limits.

All of the modders, TD, UP, HSFX etc. are all doing great work. However only one of them is overly secretive imho.

Despite the personal abuse I get in PMs. As a P-47 fan I will continue to campaign for the Razorback bar to be removed by TD in the same way the Fw190 one was :confused:

It's the modded maps and sounds that keep me flying il2, without them I would have dropped out long ago.
The maps are a mission builders dream.
Cheers,
Ibis.

My point is that there is no prejudice about new content from anyone. What you see as anti-mod mafia is just people complaining about the fragmentation of the online community, which is not questionable.

No

LOL, if I tell you what I'm working on, I'll have to kill you...

We are trying to make more frequent updateds. Apart that, there is not much more to say. I have no idea where you see all this secrecy...

P-47 cockpit rework may come in future, as already stated in another thread, but there is no timeline, and no need for conspiration theories.

cheers

That sums it up nicely. The mods do enhance the game, it is fun up to a point where installing and updating them becomes a part time job. The real allure is long gone, for me at least. Thank Heavens we have modpacks or else I would have given up on this sim years ago. That and if it wasn't for all the great guys I've met flying online (someone mentioned fragmentation?).

What the stock game had was integrity and ease of use, i.e. you could join any server and hop into any plane that was available.

If I could choose between the enhanced sounds, more planes/maps etc. and the stock game with the undivided community as it was back in the day - I would choose the latter in a blink of an eye. In the end, the greatest sims are more into quality than eye candy if we're to be honest.

There is a big difference between hacks and mods, hacks ruin a game, the thought that people are cheating online by hacking a game just kills the server and ultimatly kills the game online.

Mods however help the long term viability of a game by adding extra content and taking a game in directions the developers never explored or envisioned,and very often these mods are taken up and used in later patches by the devs.

Arma2 is a good example, moders gave us things that were ultimatly patched into later versions of the official game and now the latest mod dayz has led to new copies of arma2 being sold, this just before the release of arma3 ! This must be a nice little earner for Bohemia and totally unexpected.

Other games to are staying popular long after they have passed there sell by date simply because people want to play the modded versions ie Rome total war.

Going back to Arma2, this is heavily modded but thanks to modders making tools like sixupdater its easy to manage the various mods available and to be honest I have seen very few cheaters, although I play mostly coop and cheating in coop generally doesnt happen.

I think modding is the core of pc gaming it keeps games fresh and players involved for a very long time.
If you want to play vanilla games thats fine but you probably would be happier sticking to an xbox or playstation.

I have sent sent detailed information to TD 3 times showing blueprints and photographic proof that the P-47 razorback gunsight mount was the same as the bubble top. I have never even had a reply!

The Fw190 bar was removed by TD based on what evidence? Refraction? :)

It's a funny old business isn't it? :confused:

At least you got no negative answer. We don't need any evidence to know, that many cockpits in game has their mistakes and flaws - including the P-47. We cannot care for everything at once. Have some patience!

Sorry for not answering specificly your emails - we have far over an half thousand emails in our inbox - most of them we just can recognise, read and use for references. Its not for chatting.

Yes, Fw190 rework was based on refraction. The bar was not removed. It was moved a few inches down, so that it didn't obscure the gunsight anymore.

Just to clarify something.. When I mention mods incorporated into the stock sim by TD I mean mod features.. because I dont know what is what when it comes to the code... All I know is that there are a lot of features that were suggested/requested by myself and others over the years that appeared first in ORR .. and then in the GD .. to no avail. Later many of these things began showing up in mods.. from bi directional radiator on an axis, to bi directional map zoom, 6DoF, multi axis support, a more detailed QMB, more slots in the QMB etc.. and now many of these features are in the stock sim. Which to me is great.. and I'd like to see more of that where possible.. I'd like to see some way of addressing default skins implemented in the stock sim.. I'd like to see a few more maps and AC implemented into the stock sim.... I do not know, nor do I care for that matter how many former mods were taken into the sim.. or whether or not the code was reworked totally by TD and just the features were added or if they used the same code .. As far as I am concerned no modder has a "right" to "their" mod anyway.. or to put it another way .. they have just as much right to "their" mod as far as intellectual property goes, as they have given to 1C in terms of using and altering the code... If someone takes my car and hot rods it without my permission .. it is still my car and should I chose to have someone else drive it and hot rod it .. for me that is my prerogative ... this is what 1C has done with TD from my perspective.. I am in no position to cast moral aspersions or claims of legality on modders in this issue .. I just know what I like and I like what TD is doing and I hope that they continue to try to find ways to incorporate many more features that were revealed first as mods into the stock sim. WE IL2 simmers have been asking for some of this stuff since day one.. if ORR were still here you could go back and see literally dozens of things .. heck even FB & PF and everything after it started out as requests in ORR.. Anybody remember all the requests for Cats and Zekes and Mustangs and carriers in ORR back in 2002 and before?

So Rock on TD... I have said this often.. but it bears repeating.. IMO it is a testament to this community and the robust nature of Oleg's code that this sim is still here thriving today over a decade after it's initial launch and has not gone the route of so many other products where competition, ego and skill or the lack thereof all congeal to make a recipie for disaster and the demise of an otherwise decent product.

Agree 100% Bearcat, if it's possible for TD to improve the sim by implimenting some of the mod effects then why not? It can only be a positive for the game.
cheers,
Ibis.

coincidence versus consequence

Il-2 online was slowly dying... after gazilion of Bellum War clones people were slowly getting bored with the limited/old style online life IL-2 had.

Coincidentally, Il-2 got hacked... and people got new content... debatable quality wise but new. Quality meant nothing at first... like wen you play a game and you find out about a little "easter egg" in it and although the easter egg does not even compare with the full game in content and quality you play it and over play it sometimes just for the novelty it has.

Coincidentally, Il-2 creators didn't see too far into this "modding possibilities"... or got scared of the downsides of it and freaked out in non sense arguments... the cheating fest and precious illusive rights and lefts.

Then... as a consequence of modding becoming rampant... quality emerged... order out of chaos.
Big, heavy mods started to appear. I won't name any cause I don't want to be biased but is clear I am not referring to "franken-planes of the first moding era" or "this sounds better on my PC mods" or here's my "2048x2048 oil temperature gauge texture mod".

Then... parties started to emerge... AAA, SAS, UP, HSX, TD...

What really can destroy Il-2 eventually for good is this parties evolving towards complete opposition and against each other working. And not even this alone... This and another game... not... BoB SoW CloD fiasco.

This is for me the saddest part and what made me stop playing IL-2 in the little time free I had for it. Wanting content from SAS, UP, HSX, TD but having to watch how "official modders" eat their livers with the "unofficial modders" (more or less in the open) and working against each other.

Too much pride... That killed it for me. (As it killed it for Oleg, imho)

P.S. This post is just a point of view... could be good or bad or nothing... don't grow a head ache over it.

@Norulz, while you have summarized the history of IL-2 evolution pretty well, I believe you fail to understand the way TD works and its limitations. It has nothing to do with pride or fighting against anyone. We have agreed to respect some legal, technical, content limitations which 1C was requiring. It has been stated by TD from the very beginning and repeated many times since then. On the other hand, IL-2 modding community will never accept any "boundries". They will do whatever they want and however they want to do it. And it is then impossible to find a common language under such circumstances.

Well, they don't have to accept boundaries, and can do whatever they want. Doesn't mean it's always done like that. The fact that the last patches also included 3rd party work kind of shows that some common ground can be found, so it's not all bad.

well more than mods, whats killign it is modpack wars. i siriusly just lost the patience to keep the maintenence on the 2 or 3 modpacks that exist. before formating i had 250 gigabites of data in my pc 120 were in il2 -.-

not anymore. only have my 4.11 now.

I agree that my point of view could be (a lot) less informed than yours mkubani thus I may fail to understand the inner works inside TD team but... The part of your post I preserve in my quote could be a reason of why it seems things between those two parties are going in opposite directions.

Imagine one task of the two sides would be to mandatory find a common language no matter the limitations. At first glance you may have bad feelings about the idea... but what if?

What if some of the delay in releasing official patches or modpacks would be motivated with:

"we still have problems in finding a common ground with the other side in some/this aspect"

?

I'm sure at first it will look as the job will never be done... IMHO this happens because everybody is thinking at using the easy "maneuver" of closing the door and forget about it. Thus a solution to this "task" seems impossible because it's hard, but not really impossible.

So... what would such a task would imply for the two sides? What everyone would have to give in? What could be changed in the initial positions? what has been changed till now?

Sorry for a bit long post.

Why is a common ground mandatory? As it is there is no cohesion or overt cooperation between the various mod-groups beyond cross-incorporation of some individual mods. And, unless I'm getting senile, any kind of "unification movement" was dead within days of its announcement. Simply put: There is simply no will to unite the various mod groups within the modding scene itself, mostly because different people have different ideas about what to mod and how and of course because people prefer diversity, so there is little to no common ground in that area already. And then come the limitations TD has agreed to observe ... limitations most mod users would surely refuse to accept. Diversity, remember? ;)

The division into a modding camp and a stock camp is a fact of 1946 which cannot be discussed away nor can it be overcome. That genie has been out of its bottle for so long that it simply refuses to go back in ... ;)

Diversity is good .. or atleast not bad. I for one, have gone with the flow. I have all the mods installed. Or at least all the ones I need. UP for flying on the dogfight servers, HSFX for SEOWs... etc. And about every clean official version of the game as backup.

I really don't understand the "mods kill/divide the community" accusation. People have always been divided across X number of servers (having different difficulty settings etc. attracting certain people and making others go to other servers). Now that the X number of servers use Y number of mods(again, attracting certain people and making others go to other servers) the people are still divided across X number of servers. Those that don't want to use mods, can still find plenty of non-modded servers. I visit them myself from time to time.

As for OP's first post: Have been trying to make time to test DayZ. Sounds like a great mod :)

"Why is a common ground mandatory?" It is not, but it would be reasonable to find one. In the present situation the average user (like me) profits less from the improvements than he/she could if we take into consideration the total time and work invested in the game by the various groups and individuals. So it should not be a matter of pride, it should be a matter of work economy to have some sort of 'common sense' development strategy. The various parties would not even be required to actively cooperate, only to reflect upon their strengths and weaknesses. I have something like this in mind:

That, already, would be cooperation. And - if I may say so - I think many modders would fight teeth and nails against any kind of "common development plan" as it would simply take away their total freedom to decide what they want to do.
As for TD we do not see our role in being at the beck and call of the modding community - meaning that we're not just there to incorporate features modders would like to have to make their life easier. Not everyone wishes or has the time to download and install mods and these people are our target audience. So we don't roll out the red carpet for the modders but we don't actively and intentionally interfere with their work and we do incorporate external developments if the makers get in touch with us, if their stuff meets the technical requirements and does not go against the content limitations we agreed to when signing the contract with 1C.

Being a noob, I find the sheer number of planes in the stock version of the game daunting as it is: so many A/C to learn how to fly.

Add mods on top of that: all two or three of the A/C you sort of know fly differently! And their opponents fly differently as well!

I just stay away from mods just because it is really adding frustration to an already very steep learning curve...

Speaking for myself only, here, of course.

~S~

I know that human nature and the "mod mentality" cannot be changed. And I'm fine with TD not wishing to be "at the beck and call of the modding community". But as exactly as one of the people you described as TD's target audience, I find that some mod contents would be great to have also in the vanilla game, and all the more so as they are only exchanging old skins for better new skins, old textures for better new textures, and the like. There might be some technical limitations involved, as I hear, but, errr, I'm a bit sceptical about this so far as I see one and the same mission loading faster and running smoother in UP+DBW than in the vanilla game...

To sum it up, I would encourage TD to incorporate external developments not only on the initiative of the maker, but to approach all those whose "stuff meets the technical requirements and does not go against the content limitations we agreed to when signing the contract with 1C".

TD is actively approaching certain people with certain projects.

absolutely agree with Mastiff. The mods have kept IL2 afloat for well beyond it's natural life.

Good!

I want TD to absolutely retain their position the as the "official" custodians of the IL-2 code base. They have done a fantastic job so far and have my full confidence that they will continue in the future. 100% trust can not be bought.

DO NOT under any circumstance cheapen the TD brand!

I believe that TD has become that common ground.. and as they add more features of it will become more so.


Exactly how I feel. If a mod pack goes at odds with what the stock sim is doing I will not use it ...

What does modding do for a game and company ?

Well, I just looked on my arma2 server list
300 servers (mostly 50 slots)
mostly full
All just playing the DayZ mod.
This mod is in "alpha" state, played on a "Beta" version of Arma2
Yet I have played it for 30hrs in the last 4 days
Yesterday for 10hrs solid, no crashes freezes stutters or any problem at all.
Just solid online multiplayer fun.
Arma2 is just about to be replaced by Arma3
Yet Arma2 is at the top of the steam selling lists.
Just because ppl want to play this mod.

Thats what a good mod does for a game.

C'mon ... its 'stupid' shooter. Very different customer type.

You sir, are either miseducated, or a troll :) .. I am a simmer to the bone, and think ArmA2 as the finest land warfare sim to date. DayZ might be "stupid", but it seemed like good fun :)

Ok, forget the misleading part! Very different customer type.

I agree. You can't compare anything to a sim but another sim. It takes an entirely different approach than a FPS.

Well then compare to flight sims then ...

FSX, while it can be modded for free (I think via an SDK), its the paid "mods" that also see FSX still being sold today. Hell I saw MS Flight Sim 2004 on the selves at my local JBHiFi store, I asked the store guy if anyone is still buying it, he said the stock on the shelf right now was just brought in to replace the copies that have been selling over the past year.

X-Plane, sales are still strong. Any there are heaps of mods for it.

And to get back to the OP, both my sons just bought ARMAII off steam just to play that mod. You know from what I've seen from watching my sons play, ARMA II is a FPS sim, there are many aspects to it that set it apart from CoD (Call Of Duty), like getting shot once will kill you or severely wound you. If you're wounded, there are no health packs to pick up, and blood loss becomes an issue.

AFAIK both flightsims, that you named, ship with a very small content by default and have mods as one main game concept. IL-2 was never constructed to be modable.

What about EAW?

Maybe a bit of history...
Oleg resisted any mods for as long as possible as he had a clear concept about IL2. It's main function was a online 'competitive' air combat game, and in this he achieved his aim. He resisted any code/model disclosures to the public for years and this is to his credit - keeping the 'modifications/updates' within a small trusted team.. currently TD.

For all it's short-comings IL2 un-modded was better than any other flight-sim (including extremely modded ones -> FSX) in terms of DM, FM and a lot of other features, over its first 6-8 years. It was a niche market and very successful. Since the cracks and mods have appeared that online popularity has definitely waned.. and Oleg has 'left the building'.

There will not be another sim like this for a long long time... another PERIOD. :grin:

Even as IL-2 was rising the highly moddable CFS was losing customers for two reasons:

1 - IL-2 had more realistic FM especially in the handling/motions.

2 - CFS Frankenplanes ruining the online experience.

Oleg could not open IL-2 without giving away his stock-in-trade, how they achieved the complexity they did on then current and even not so current PC's.

It's funny there were people couldn't understand that who kept demanding that he tell it all "so they could check the accuracy". What a joke!

There was always a way of 'modding' to the stock game. Everyone could deliver their models or stuff to Oleg and if it hit the requirements, it was build in. So some kind of modding with quality control. Whole PF content was made like this.
Cannot imagine a better way.

Very much in agreement.

Very much disagree.
More content from more creators means more choice for the end user, which is never a bad thing.

It depends on the standards of the content, which is what Daidalos is about.
This ain't CFS where anything goes.

Spot on.........


I'm more in line with Caspar on this one.. Consider this.. Had the standards set by 1C been different or had the sim been hacked earlier .. or had the sim been open from the beginning the mods we have would not be what they are. I believe the even modded IL2 is what it is because of what it was.. the fan base.. the way most of us think about the sim... this is because of the way it was.. the fact that for a long time IL2 was the only sim out there that you could get online with and be pretty assured that the only difference between the plane that the pilot A was flying and the same plane that plot be was flying .. was the pilot.. That fact raised not only the expectations of the community to a new level.. one not possible before IL2, but it also, merely by virtue of raising said expectations, raised the standard for what was "acceptable". The way this community has handled mods has evolved over the years but had it not been for the difficulty of the code.. which right off the bat eliminated a lot of potential "kiddie hackers" and the standards set by the community based on the original product, I think we might have seen a lot more cr@p mods.. More than we did.. and there were some.. I think that having TD is the only way to even have a chance at establishing a standard if you will..

That's just it though, I see no need for a standard.
For that matter I have no faith in the people who set the original standard. The bias that the original game came with was so overwhelming, and the way they handled any critique or request for investigation/revision (like it was a personal insult/ban them!) inspired me with little faith. Rocket powered Lavochkins anyone?
That being said TD has done a pretty good job.
Let there be a plethora of choice, and let each player choose what suits him best.
That being said I simply do not give a rats rear end about online play so your whole argument is neither here or there for me.

And that's the rub. You can play pretend airplanes with arms outstretched in your back yard and call it a perfect air combat simulator for all anyone cares or should care. It's a free world after all. But on-line is different. Would anyone even consider playing chess against a human opponent if they did not know their opponent was using the same pieces and following the same rules? Obviously not.

We owe Oleg and 1C a big thank you for enabling the on-line community that existed a few years ago before the game was hacked. TD are now the keepers of that particular faith.

Anytime there is competition .. in anything.. there must be a standard and a baseline for rules otherwise you have no real "competition" .. to say you don't give a rat's ear about online play is like saying I don't give a rat's ear about baseball.. so who cares if guys use steroids.. Your individual preferences really don't add up to a rat's ear in the bigger scheme of things in relation to IL2 simply because ..

and

Regardless to what many have said over the years about online play vs offline play IL2 is where it is today because of online play.. both in terms of overall use and in terms of modded use. Even if many prefer offline to online.. most got their feet wet in the online aspect.. and then decided they preferred offline.. As for rocket powered Lavochkins.. while some of the Russian aircraft may have been modeled more optimistically for lack of a better term .. I still say that in spite of that ... there was still a level of overall fairness.... I knew people who .. if flying their chosen pre modded mount whether a 109, a 190, a P-51 or a Hurri or a Ki-61, one on one, more often than not, the average and certainly the noob was going down in flames.. no matter what they were flying.. There were guys back in the day who were killers in the P-39 of the original IL2.. which was probably the most challenging plane to fly in the original, even against Yaks & Las.. because the nature of the beast was such that there was room in the individual FMs to master just about any AC and overcome it's limitations ... Banning? Totally irrelevant to this discussion ... anything that went on on the UBI boards other than interaction with Oleg is ... and as far as banning goes.. oftentimes the decision to ban or not ban was a moderator on the spot decision that often had less to do with what was said but how it was said.. Not too many people were banned simply for complaining .. otherwise the forum would have been like it is now yeas ago.

In your view by what you 'knew'....

and yet many critiques and requests did get acted upon without a fight.

Just perhaps rude loud demands for what was easily shown to be incorrect, suspect or outright wrong got nowhere?

Notable error on Oleg's part was over the 151/20. But what happened? Again and again it was said the gun wasn't powerful enough and 3 variations on that theme with specifics all WRONG. Time and time again people working on the next patch took time out to dig and check just to have the specific claim prove wrong. By the time Tiger Talon was able to show what the REAL problem was, the mountain of ill will that the rudeness of certain forum members had built up took months to get past. A bunch of us sent emails asking please and explaining clearly why to check this different thing and then the switch was made.
But it was never an easy thing and the rudeness that was directed at Oleg and Maddox Games was constant and heavy. Perhaps a very rude simpleton would say it was obvious and simple but then why didn't the rude simpletons get the right answer right away?
Point at the wrong thing and yell FIX IT! Answer is that if where you point is not broke, it is not fixed. In time the mechanics don't even look at the demands from so many rude, ignorant adolescents and delinquents. If you think they should then I can only wonder how you are treated, either very badly or spoiled rotten.

And a dozen other small perceptions turned into loud whines even when shown wrong again and again.

Facts are not decided by votes.

EDIT: line removed to preserve some folks tender sensibilities

I must agree on Max statements in general, but the qualification of other people is unnecessary.

What all this forums always lacked, was a hard moderation, not on banning people, but just removing insulting posts, or those who clearly are out of the question.

Bashing other people comments is more common than desirable on any proper proactive discussion.

BTW, as an example to Oleg's good will, will be .50s issue.
There was a thread as big as the 190 bar, about the .50s dispersion. Because of this they achieved a solution to avoid dispersion... all .50s will fire synchronized!

Later, this was found to be not satisfactory, and Oleg claimed that changing this will be bad for frame rate... well, never realized if frame rate was affected, but the synchronized effect was lost, still, no one tested the dispersion again from my knowledge. Still, Oleg answered to people requests twice. Good or bad, he used to care.

Right now TD is following Oleg's behavior, but whit far better coding background.

The only thing that keep on and on, is the bashing. And also the counter bashing. Both useless.

In the 90's I saw two good dev teams and a sim -ruined- by the same behavior that finally drove Oleg out of the business. How nice should I be? Those are the guys that put a gun to our hobby, not somebody's little angels. They -never- were the least bit polite about it, that's what killed the good will. And yet hey let's treat them kindly, eat smores and sing kumbahyah to show how good we are up front to hide how we really feel.

And in San Fran they've had parades celebrating suicide bombers....

Kindly not.
But ignoring there bashing, and some aggressive editing of their BS, will made this forums much more readable.

Oleg also answered requests way more than twice, even before FB.