What is your view on Gameplay and its impact on the success of a release?
To elaborate: Many flight sims released in the last decade or so showed the tendency of the developers to curtail the amount of work they put into gameplay questions (such as training missions, single missions and campaigns for offline and online players) and focus instead on technical fidelity, details and other things related to "crude matter"
. Operational procedures and increased technical systems modelling have increased the realism (and frustration factor since often enough the customer was left alone with inadequate documentation and without guidance to using said systems properly) which received applause from many within the simmers communities, but at the same time the key factor to the success of the classic flight sims (such as Aces over Europe, F19 Stealth Fighter, European Air War or even Strike Commander) - the offline campaign and gameplay at large - got reduced to second-rate importance (if any at all). That received applause from certain elements within the communites as well, but generally it added another hurdle to success with more casual gamers because the releases tended towards sterility of the GUI and mission environment.
IMO a decent offline campaign system, with several well researched and designed campaigns, a collection of equally well designed offline missions and an FMB which lets the
average user create missions of his own are one of the major pillars of a successful flight sim. It can provide a showcase for the performance of the engine, the dedication of the developers and the amount of research that went into making these missions/campaigns.
