A few ideas on why this game is dead online

[miatar]

people who love combat flight sim and have a console will stay. The learning curve is a bitch but thats the challenge

[Yossarian]

Originally Posted by miatar

people who love combat flight sim and have a console will stay. The learning curve is a bitch but thats the challenge

I've played and love flight sims since the early 80's, I've played nearly every flight sim released and had at one point 4 different HOTAS controllers. I completed IL BOP on sim. So I can assure you that it was not 'the learning curve' that made me stop playing and trade in the game.

Firstly they split the community far too much for a niche game, 3 difficulty levels and 4 game types = hardly anyone in any of the modes. It became impossible to find a game on realistic or sim unless it was with friends. Arcade = a waste of time, go play Heroes over somewhere if you like that crap.


It was the fundamentally broken online that killed this game stone dead on arrival and made me get rid of this game. Not being awarded kills unless the enemy exploded or crashed within 5 seconds of you hitting it, which is not likely at 8,000ft. The absolutely impossible unlocks, like destroying 50 ground targets with fighters and stuff. The stupid message users received when searching for games if none could be found, which led people to believe that the IL BOP servers were down. Destroyed this game for most players.


The bullshit about prompt updates to fix all of the above and add German cockpits, which turned into vapourware. The game came out in September, we were told the update would arrive soon after, the last I hear the 360 update has not even gone into publisher QA let alone MS cert, so you'll be lucky to get that before next Feb at the earliest, 6 months after the game shipped. It's not on for these sorts of issues to not be fixed in 6 months I think.


I put at least 30 people from these forums in my friends list, over the course of 3 weeks they all except for a couple (House MD and LawnmowerDan) stopped playing in frustration with the issues I raised above.


I liked the game for all it's faults, but the SP was weak the AI was utter rubbish, there was no 'dog-fighting' and most mission could be completed without ever shooting a single plane down yourself. MP I've already talked about.


And don't forget the ripoff DLC, 800msp for content on the disc, go feck yourself. Especially since it was only 2 aircraft, Battlestations Pacific did a DLC pack with 2 aircraft, 2 BB's and 2 CA's for 160msp, it made the IL BOP DLC seem like what is was, greed.


I don't really blame the dev's it's the publishers that have to approve/pay for everything and 505games are a tiny company without much resources, so I don't really blame them either.


I'll may buy a sequel if they make one, but they've had their chance, if it has the same sort of problems as IL BOP then I will probably will not buy it.

Originally Posted by miatar

people who love combat flight sim and have a console will stay. The learning curve is a bitch but thats the challenge

[Zatoichi_Sanjuro]

Fundamentally it's the multiplayer backend structure that is the problem.

You can't see any games that are in progress and you can't join anytime you like. There might be people in the middle of 20min matches, but the place would look empty unless you sat in the lobby hitting search every five minutes.

Then there's the realistic/sim divide which didn't really warrant the split given the cockpit view isn't locked.

Hopefully, they both learned from their mistakes with the mp, and profited enough to make a sequel.

[fritzwendel]

I think the DLC is most upsetting; I bought it @ 400 MS points, but I was under the impression that I was getting the long awaited cockpit for the 109.

I already had the P-47/Ta-152, and don't care for the extra missions, so needless to say I didn't get my moneys' worth.

On the bright side, at least I didn't fork out 10 bucks for it! LOL.

On MW2: that is the biggest example because EVERYONE and their brother are playing it. Still, there's Borderlands, OPFPR, Forza 3, Uncharted 2, Assassins Creed II, Dragon Age...... just a boat load of games competing with flight time right now.

I won't send my copy of IL-2 to Siberia yet; the title update(and a bf109 cockpit) will go a long way to bringing back some pilots. I hope the next DLC is JUST PLANES. P-38, P-39, P-40 Anyone???

@ devs: PLEASE take a page out of Ubisoft's book and add in some of the online features that HAWX used for the IL-2 sequel. Having a sense of progress is an integral part of keeping players in the skies.