So won't the real IL-2: 1946 successor please stand up, please stand up?

[JacksonsGhost]

So won't the real IL-2: 1946 successor please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?

Come on developers! I’m talking a true successor, that simply gives us all the basics that have made 1946 great, but with a modern game engine and the following must-haves:

• No silly marketing bull$#!% (that means no up-sell, no rip-off premium plane purchase mentality – just give us a good game up front as a single purchase and then add expansion packs like Oleg did!)
• The Pacific! We absolutely must have the essential maps and planes for the Pacific!
• A true, accessible mission-builder, and the ability to share such missions on the net,
• Quality AI, and offline single-player support, and with a range of difficulty options that clearly cater for all types of player to maximise popularity and sales.

And ideally I’d love to see an initial purchase that at least includes the following as flyables:

• Hellcat
• Spitfire
• Kittyhawk
• Fw 190
• Airacobra
• Wildcat

I’d pay a 3 digit US$ price for that!

(Oh ... and the repeated "please stand up" is intended to be a humorous play on an Eminem song, just in case you didn't get it and think I've gone completely nuts)

[taly001]

I think the future for realistic flight sim games is (bi-?)YEARLY subscription, I know many people don't like the idea but I can't see any other way developers can make the (relatively) niche games like il2 and to keep supporting it.

People who like sims will pay ~50usd each year, people who don't will play it one year then go like they always do.

[JacksonsGhost]

I've been a WWII flight sim fan since Aces of the Pacific came out in 1992, and my observation is that the most successful sims have two things in common. They all received great reviews from reviewers like PC Gamer at some point, and had a certain amount of mass appeal. I believe these are two of the secrets to gaining the wider following and commercial success that these games enjoyed.

The sims I'm referring to are Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator in 1998, and IL-2 Sturmovik in 2001. Both of these sims featured in PC Gamer's Top 100, and I personally purchased both on the basis of this recommendation (though I didn't buy into IL-2 until Pacific Fighters came out in 2004). I don't think any WWII flight sim has achieved such a high recommendation since. I don't know what the devs did to achieve this (sweet talk, bribe, salesmanship or just design brilliance), but I think any aspiring devs these days need to get those reviewers on side somehow. This would ideally include having a polished product on initial release which is too good for reviewers to ignore, including an easy arcade-style entry point to appeal to casual gamers while still being a fairly hardcore sim for the serious flyers, and not doing silly things to annoy the player.

Or if the devs of an existing sim that has been refined over the years, like Great Battles, think their sim is now genuinely better than "1946", "DCS" or "War Thunder", it's probably never too late to actively seek some fresh reviewer recognition and promotion of it.

As for subscription, that might work for the lemming types who don't seem to think too much about the cost as long as they're playing the latest fad game, and it might work for hardcore cashed up fans, but I think most combat sim fans of the type that bought into those previously successful titles are more discerning than that.

[Jumoschwanz]

I remember in the early 2000s there was a group trying to develop a freeware WWII flight sim, in the way that the linux community gets together and makes complete operating systems and some of the best software on the planet. I installed and flew it and it was not that good, but of course it was in it's early stages. I gave it negative reviews compared to the IL2 sim, which I should not have done as it was a good idea, an early effort, and it should have been applauded no matter what it's quality.

If there were enough people interested in a new WWII flight sim it would have happened or it would be happening now.

I would be happy if everyone would just go back to flying the official patches of IL2 46' on Hyperlobby, as was done in the early 2000s when it was amazingly popular.

It was all the hacks and mods for IL246 that destroyed the wwii flight sim community that had been built up to that point, as everyone started flying different versions of IL246 that they would build themselves to suit their personal tastes, the community was fragmented and broke up into smaller pieces, and it became confusing to new enthusiasts to install the sim. It was hard enough for newcomers to install IL246 and learn how to fly it and patch it up to date with official patches, but on top of that the "mods and hacks" put the burden on them to choose which of those to install and run and who to fly with specifically.

At the peak of IL2 '46, when everyone was flying the official patches only, I have it documented that in the year 2005 over 4000 different virtual pilots alone were flying on ONE server on Hyperlobby each month, and that server was Spits vs. 109s. I was not a fan of those who ran Spits vs. 109s, nor of the allied fanboys that ran almost all popular IL2 servers on Hyperlobby, but the fact is that if you have that much interest in a flight sim, then you could have a lot of financial power and other kinds of power to do something very positive and keep something going. But the same people who mismanaged Spits vs. 109s and other popular servers pissed it all away by first alienating those who flew the non-allied aircraft, then the mods came and instead of one flight sim the community was divided into groups flying all the different versions of it.

If stand-up people had managed the servers fairly for both red and blue sides, and if they had kept the hackers out, the history of IL2 would be very different and stronger.

I know some newer versions of IL2 came out such as Cliffs of Dover etc. that were promising, but because the IL2 '46 community was already destroyed and fragmented by that time, they did not have the community to support them anymore, everyone had left to raise families or enjoy old age.

I started flying IL2 when it came out in 2001 and spent thousands of hours flying it online for six or seven years when it was in it's golden age, and had a healthy large community, and I watched it all be destroyed in just a few years by the selfish petty administrators of popular servers and the hackers putting out the non-official mods.

So I say just start the community back up flying one of the later patches of IL246, 4.13.4M is the last version I will fly because it will still work with my older equipment and Windows XP or Linux well. After that the patches forced players to upgrade equipment and OS software etc..

I was always just interested in flying combat, honing combat skills, and in using historical tactics to fly missions. I never gave a hoot about having fancy looking skins or cockpit interiors or obscure aircraft that were never hardly flown at the height of WWII in 1943 or earlier. The best online servers used maps from the earlier war years and stayed away from 1945, I would not suggest any maps after 1943, and preferably none after 1942, it keeps the aircraft performance for both sides very even if the missions are from 1942 or '43 no matter what the theater.

I would go on Hyperlobby today if I could find a hard settings server with no outside views or icons flying 4.14.4m or older official patch. I never was interested in flying easier settings, none of the really good IL2 pilots ever were.