Quote:
Originally Posted by klem
A number of interesting and competing points here and I'd just like to pick up on a couple.
To those that don't think MMO has much to offer I'd say, as an ex Air Warrior and Aces High player, that to take part in a properly organised scenario with say 400 others, assigned to units, planned on a historical scale, briefed, comm'd and organised etc in a historical action like BoB, Pearl Harbour or Big Week creates a level of immersion you just don't get in IL-2 1946 or CoD. Whilst the latter may (will?) have FMs, graphics etc down pat they don't offer that immersion and the feeling of (almost) "being there". Unless you taken part in one of those scenarios and felt the hairs stand up on the back of your neck you may not understand. But that is what many of the more serious WWII simmers want, something to take them deeper into that era and experience. All we get in CoD is a shallow world of a few small time combats and a few small formation intercepts. In IL-2'46 you may also have more objective based maps and some DGEN campaigns but no real scale to them. Just a few squadrons before hitting the 128 limit or more likely about 80. Stop and think. CoD can never really deliver even one typical day in the BoB because it can't support even 400+ aircraft at one time. CoD doesn't deliver the BoB. It needs to be taken to another level or it remains just a few aircraft dogfighting or bombing or the occasional small scale raid scenario. Before someone shouts 'MMO? ping, packets, bandwidth, impossible' that's for the devs to work out and the broadband companies to deliver on as many of them are now. And the next cry, 'we can't get more than 1Mb BB, I can't afford a PC to run it', I'm sorry but you can't expect to run this stuff at that level without the kit and yes that's another squeeze on the market which is why the mass market, arcade, low data bandwidth is important to make what we want on the side viable. What was that? That kind of technology split isn't viable? Look at that i-phone in your hand. Think back ten years.
Regarding 'the kids'. You either want realism and the commitment to learning it demands or you want arcade. Take a look around at the guys you know playing IL-2 '46 and CoD. I bet most of them aren't kids but they were 10 or 15 years ago when they didn't have the patience for sims like IL-2 and played Mario instead. Only a percentage of them even now have the patience for IL-2/CoD which is why 'realism' is a niche market. So what do 1C do to survive? They have to offer to the mass market, the kids, hopefully to be able to support the niche realism market (which is probably where their hearts as aviation sim developers lie). So bring on a MMO with both arcade and full switch settings, different bandwidth demands and servers to support them (Aces High has - had? - different realism levels on their servers).
Pay a monthly subscription? If it captures the arcade market too it should be cheap enough for what you get back. £10/$15 a month? Thats a couple of Big Macs, Fries and a drink and lasts 30 days instead of 15 minutes. Of course the run of the mill play will be set by the server managers but the opportunity for the community to have access to the server and plan and organise large scale special events will give those planners a new world to work with.
Considering MMO business models:
Free DLC? OK if its 'earned' by some kind of server tracked 'career' points.
Paid DLC to 'Buy what you've earned'? Perhaps if its not expensive.
Buy to Win? Absolutely not in the 'realistic' model. Of course in the Arcade model.
But can 1C regularly deliver 'new' content for the arcade players and keep the cash coming in?
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That sounds all fine and dandy klem, but if this is supposed to be built off the Clod engine, then they have some serious work cut out for them. We have the best server hardware on the planet dual cpu 6 cores a piece / 10gbps connection and the game can barely handle 50 players at the moment without an absolute slide show. I just can't see some other host spending the money on hardware like that or the software to somehow be able to support anything near that. I'd love to be proved wrong, but the only way I see that sort of stuff happening is if everything is entirely dumbed down.
My main concerns as I stated earlier with MMO stuff is it usually takes away from the users ability to manage things. Currently we don't even have real dedicated server files, and have to deal with things like steam disconnecting and so on. Now just imagine we have to connect to steam and then a browser ran by 1C. I just see an even bigger potential for failure that way. Look at ROF and their master browser. Servers shut down at 50 players, stats disappear, servers crash, all from it being overloaded/terrible coding. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong, but you have a constant online connection that now has to rely on not only steam but also another browser, I just see the recipe for an epic failure.
My only hope is that this is a completely standalone thing from the new SOW/BOB/CLOD series we have now, and that BoM is the next installment. I can deal with steam, and waiting on things to get fixed. But saying this engine is capable of MMO style stuff will be believable when I see it. If they can't fix what we have now, how can they even think about announcing an MMO based off the same engine? It just boggles the mind.