From my point of view, it's a balancing act between the conditions that govern flight sim development: costly software with long development cycles and a high research cost, aimed at a minority of the gamer demographic.
I think there's no clear cut right or wrong. RoF went the "pay for add-ons" route and if it's working and keeping the sim alive it's a good thing. Personally, i don't like that business model and it's not about the money. I just think that the way IL2 did it it's better.
Of course, the extra complexity in the CoD engine means we can't have that many free flyable planes at the same amount of time. Don't get me wrong, if there are extra features i don't mind paying extra. I just don't like paying for it piece by piece for a very simple reason: popular planes are the only ones that get made (or the unpopular ones come much later), plus it fragments the online gameplay community.
I prefer to pay for a complete theater add-on, even if the price is somewhat higher, and get maps, ground units and a good selection of flyable and AI aircraft, instead of buying each plane separately. It's purely for gameplay reasons.
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