Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[minvid]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

Luthier, I can't believe what I hear. I feel frankly cheated.

I was right two or three years ago or so when I said on a forum to Oleg that he was being pulled by the "perfection syndrom" regarding the modeling of planes, trucks, tanks etc... But we are not paying for a bunch of technical drawings to build planes, tanks and trucks. We pay for an immersive simulation of certain historical events, that includes, airplanes, pilots, but also tanks, trucks ground objects, artillery, infantry, environment, weather, sounds etc. etc. etc. It is the combination of all this that makes it a big hit, a killer game. There must be an equilibrium between all the actors in the game.
I am not interested in flying one airplane that has been modeled to each bolt, nut and screw, each cable, wire etc.. It has to be visually excellent but there is a limit. I do not care if when hit the airplane explodes in a perfect physical dynamics way with the excact perfect structure and parts damage. Some approximation is perfectly enough. But I care to have all the other things that makes me feeling that I fly in a living dynamic environment.

Shoestring budget. Sorry but this not acceptable. Oleg said five years ago that your ambition was to build the best of the best and other than perfection was not an option. I commented at that time that the budget for such an ambition was a team of 10-15 people and 5-10 or more millions of dollars at minimum. But if you knew you had no budget for such ambition, then I feel cheated to have waited so long.
And five years later you cannot even afford to do sound recording. Or model the various categories of people that should populate and animate your flight sim. You will just dump people in the trucks!!! Com-on!

Luthier, five years of developments. That is enormous, I have the feeling you were alone, the whole team. And I have the feeling that there were many other products developed and financiall probably more interesting and this COD has been kind of sidework. It could have lasted 10 years. Realistic (and not arcade) flight simulation is a niche market in gaming (It is not the market of World of Warcraft, or GTR and similar games, completely uninteresting for me) and I understand that it is not justified to do a large investment for it. But this you should have said. Keeping us with extremely high expectations over such a long period is a terrible risk. A risk that we will feel very very disappointed. It will not become a killer flight simulator but a killed one.

Il2 Sturmovik / Pacific Fighters was a killer flight simulator with all patches and improvements had an incredible long life on my machine, about six years. Why? because it was an incredible surprise, of unexpected quality, playability and immersivity.
I am now afraid that due to extremely high expectations COD will be exactly the opposite.
A year ago it was a sure buy. Now I will wait and buy only according to what will be the experience that will be communicated buy the first fliers.

As Luthier said:

Originally Posted by luthier

Most developers stay completely shut in from the world up until a few months from release. We choose to interact with the community throughout the process because we feel that you are mature enough to understand the concepts of "work in progress" and "subject to change".

So I'm not sure how to react when people latch on to something said 5(!) years ago while ignoring everything that's been said over the past year and a half. I guess we brought this onto ourselves.

Someone who enjoyed Il-2 for many years should be very exited and curious for the new Sim. It will be an awesome start into the future of WWII air combat simulation. We should trust that Oleg´s Team will do the best possible - and improvents will be released time after time.

It is quite unfair to judge ClofDo () without haven´t it played a single time.

So, such massive complaints are really strange. It is obvious, that the update threads like theese not only attract the fans of IL-2, but also the competitors and rivals of Maddox´ games, maybe trying to spoil our fun.

So, we should not be irritated

[kendo65]

Hypernova - have you heard the old saying about the 'best laid plans'?

Perfection probably was the goal, but reality unfortunately decided it would have to be delayed temporarily.

Rest assured that just about everyone with an interest in the game (and certainly, I'm sure, the devs) feels disappointed that it will initially be without some much sought-after features.

There is a commitment though that they will be added in time. So a degree of patience will be required.

Try not to take it so personally. The devs didn't didn't do it deliberately to spite you.