I'm a member on a forum with 160,000+ members, and there is an ongoing CLOD thread. The typical discussions are... (in order of most coverage).
1. "What's wrong with the people on the banana forums?"
2. "Did you see what they asked for? Who would even care about that in a flight sim?"
3. What are the Dev's thinking? Do they think the 1C forums represent the majority of fans?
4. When are they going to add some content, make CO-OP creation easier, etc?
5. WHAT!?! Battle of Moscow? Are they ever going to finish Cliffs of Dover (the game content, not the engine).
Every time someone new posts in that thread asking, "Hey, should I pick up CLOD?" They invariable end up getting DSC-A10, or Rise of Flight, or one of the other flight sims out there. I think that Cliffs of Dover is great for the flight sim Genre because so many people either get fed up with it, or are told not to buy it that they end up getting a different game instead.
And it's not like that thread is full of arcade players. There are actual real pilots, people who do vatsim in FSX, and people who can start up the Blackshark or A-10 without having to once refer to any manual. They all agree, CLOD is not fun as is, and it has nothing to do with crashes or FPS.
Then again they're not the kind of people to
"scream like a little girl" when they see the window framss in the new buildings.