Answers to Community Questions

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

I don't know. Reading his comments I get the feeling that his creative philosophy is so far from mine that the sequel will be a rather hollow experience and one that is sadly not for me.

Maybe but at least it will be his own 'creative philosophy' rather than someone else's that he has to work with. That's the only point I was trying to make.

[Ploughman]

Thanks for the replies to our questions. I look forward to the sequel and the further, more extensive, improvements to the game engine and the gamer's experience it will bring.

Will you be dropping the Il-2 Sturmovik name from future releases? Any cache Il-2 Sturmovik may've had in terms of product recognition etc., has surely been erased by the CloD debacle.

[adonys]

Originally Posted by luthier

Finally a comment that got to me. Today's a bad day after all.

It goes without saying for me, and that's why it might be hard to gather that from my reply, but it's obviously OUR fault for single-player being what it is and 3rd party support not showing up.

Your general criticism is spot on. We shipped a product that had too many technical issues for us to really focus on finer elements of gameplay. There had never been a point, we're not even there today, where we could sit back, look at the code, and say, hell, what a great foundation, let's build a great game on top of it.

The GUI especially is our Achilles heel. Like I wrote earlier in the thread, somebody somewhere before I ever showed up chose to make it in a horrible clumsy environment called WPF. By the time I showed up it was too late to go back, and going forward proved extremely painful. Each new screen took forever, everything was clunky, tiny changes or bug fixes required insane amounts of effort, and in the end it took a tremendous painful effort to reach the decidedly insufficient GUI that we have today.

It's extremely painful and frustrating for everyone involved. Believe me.

Luthier, for God's sake. please open your eyes and understand: THERE IS NO OFFLINE PLAY ATM. and that not due to lack of 3rd party content, length of official campaign or horrible GUI.

no matter how good is, or it is not, a campaign/mission made (and Desastersoft's seems quite to actually be good), it has ZERO playability value because of:
- broken AI, which won't play along with you. it's like you are not existent for them, invisible. they won't follow, they won't consider you a part of their flight
- porked combat AI (they will pass each other 300m away without noticing each other, strange combat maneuvers, lack of maneuvers when fired at, etc, etc, etc)
- broken Radio Comms - you can not get them do anything.

do you understand that those are system sooo broken they are almost inexistent? and that, without them, there's no damn single player game at all?!!

that's why the number of community made content fall out to zero. because there's no point to make anything based on systems which are not working. We had two very good dynamic persistent battlefield engines on work, and both stopped dead because of exactly this reason.

come on!!!

[Icebear]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

I don't know. Reading his comments I get the feeling that his creative philosophy is so far from mine that the sequel will be a rather hollow experience and one that is sadly not for me.

And that's the point. What do we expect? Many here are looking forward to an arcarde online flight shooter, others prefer a WW2 flight simulation, a successor of the IL2 series. I'm glad that Luthier clarified this point in is own humorous way once and for all and with no doubts. Now we all know where we stand with him and his future products.

Take it or leave it, that's his unmistakable message.

[zander]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

You failed to deliver a complete product, you conned most of us into believing that things would have been fixed, and now you're basically saying "hey this is what it is, so just take it and wait for the next chapter" which most of us don't even care for, since it's a theatre of action that honestly appeals just one market, the Russian one.

Hm?
Honestly, I don't give a flying F about early 109s and Spits anymore - I'm looking forward to 190s and Yaks.

btw: How are they supposed to finance further patching? I'm actually suprised they went this far.

[adonys]

and luthier, what about community sponsored aircrafts? there might be enough volunteers to work/pay for some extra BoB not planned aircrafts, like the wellington.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Would make it easy if devs made a poll on a plane people wanted to be added and give the price for it. Very much like in RoF where you can pre-order a plane. This could appeal to other features as well. Enough paying customers = feature/plane in the game. Sure not liked by all, but..

[Skoshi Tiger]

Personally I think that this sim is a creative work of art that should be left in the hands of the deveopers.

Put in a poll and well end up with a FW-190 Vs P-51 sim, which have been done Ad nauseam over the years.

I'ld rather the devs explored avenues of the sim that they were passionate about rather than bung out content to a formula.

[Fjordmonkey]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Personally I think that this sim is a creative work of art that should be left in the hands of the deveopers.

Put in a poll and well end up with a FW-190 Vs P-51 sim, which have been done Ad nauseam over the years.

I'ld rather the devs explored avenues of the sim that they were passionate about rather than bung out content to a formula.

Agree on this, especially since communities (especially this one) cannot agree on damn near anything.

[Meusli]

Thanks for the answers Luthier. I always imagined that if you turned up to answer some questions the mob mentality of a certain few would be fully unleashed. I am certainly interested in your next sequel and that is why I still visit these forums, I also feel no anger or ill will either to you or your company.

Maybe now that you have drawn a line in the sand,of where you are now and where you hope to go in the future, it will finally make these negative nancy's move on to different pastures and stop the daily crucifixion that your company receives on its own forum. That is what I hope, but I know we are unlikely to get.