Well, like everything else in life, people have different priorities, expectations and amount of leeway given when a flight sim is concerned.
I expected somewhat improved graphics, a next generation DM, some form of aircraft systems management and the hooks in the engine to let people in the community contribute in ways that were not possible up till now.
Check the dynamic and scripted campaigns some of the forum members have been releasing to see what i mean: there's a new campaign posted that features aircraft replacement tracking on a squadron level, custom-made scoring system, awards and promotions and clearing the scoreboard if your pilot is killed to simulate flying with a new pilot without having the player choose between restarting it or hitting "refly" until they succeed.
In return for those ambitious leaps forward and considering the size of and funding available to the development team, i also expected to get release troubles, bugs, poorly documented features that are not working 100% correctly, performance, stability and optimization issues and cutting corners in terms of stuff that can be added later without a major rerwite of the entire engine, because somewhere, something's always got to give.
What i certainly didn't expect, didn't want and even opposed with a passion during the development phase was for them to keep strictly to an old formula just because it worked in the past. That would be a lack of ambition and desire to move forward.
IL2 worked, but i didn't want CoD to simply be IL2 with a facelift, like an old girlfriend with a new lipstick.
I wanted cool new stuff and features built for longevity under the hood, even at the cost of having to learn how to use them from scratch and having features that were considered standard not being up to spec for the short term, because i'm sure that if something is considered standard for them based on what they previously delivered, they can do it again at a later date.
What they wouldn't be able to do would be to plug a new CEM module and the entire coding interface that lets users create complex campaigns with their own interface and custom made conditions to an engine that wasn't built from scratch to support these things, at least not without a major recoding effort.
And i got exactly what i expected
If anything, the main thing the development team would be most guilty of would be biting off more than they could comfortably chew with their given manpower and resources. Well, i admire that because it's the people with a crazy vision that take things forward most of the time, not the armies of drones who rehash someone else's or even their own successful past recipes ad infinitum.
If people have different preferences to mine and would prefer a rehash of the old recipe that's just fine, it's a matter of opinion after all. However, if they can't even see what's good about the new recipe, it's simply because they are too bored to look under the wrapping, lack the imagination to see what the new features bring to the table in the long run or just plain being spiteful that they didn't get their way.
That is something i can't help them with and i don't care to change their minds. I just can't allow myself to be convinced that the sim is no good at all, no less by people who can only perceive a fraction of what others and myself have seen: if a colorblind person comes up to me and starts lecturing me on the colours of the rainbow i won't chase him off kicking and swearing, but i'm not going to let him harp on ad nauseum about how he's right, i'm wrong and i should start seeing things his way, something which is practically impossible after all because he's colorblind and i'm not