Agree with the comments about the offline campaign being the biggest weakness. But to answer the question about what is wrong with the offline dynamic campaign:
- no atmosphere, each mission briefing is just a matter of 'go here - do that'
- no 'storyline' or drama, just dry technical gameplay.
- often very difficult to guess what the mission objective is, and thus to achieve it. The briefing tells you it's a bomber intercept. But you often have to destroy an unknown (and unrealistic % of a) target formation to succeed. Often to achieve this you have to rely on your wingmen to contribute as there is no way (except with unlimited ammo) you could achieve it on your own.
It is a huge immersion/enjoyment killer to fly a bomber intercept mission, bring down a bomber and maybe a 109 as well, and then be told your mission is a failure! Or to find yourself tangling with two fighter staffel, bring down two 109s, and find you didn't attack the 'target' staffel, so you fail.
- no ability to steer the strategic level of the conflict, you are always just playing at a tactical level and in BOB SOW this would very much limit the joy of experimenting with alternative histories. (BOBII campaign is a nice example of how to model the strategic level of a WWII air war)
Having said that the ability of IL2 MB to allow users to create scripted offline campaigns is fantastic! With all respect to the creators of BOBII I personally don't think anything can match the enjoyment of a well scripted Battle of Britain campaign such as Poymando's Battle over Britain or Cobra427s Hurricane Season/SpitnFire. Yes they both have to use the Gulf of Finland map, but the ability to script the missions, with random elements, makes every mission immersive and challenging.
A big reason these campaigns work however is that while the mission goal is stated in the briefing text, in actual play, the mission is usually deemed 'achieved' by reaching a recon waypoint, meaning the player is free to play every mission with a complete freedom of action. (This is similar to the BOBII campaign in effect, once in the air, you are in control of your own destiny and not punished for making rational choices in the thick of combat).
The mission may be a bomber intercept, but as in real life, if the player gets tangled with Emils and survives or downs a few, the mission is not declared a 'failure' and has to be reflown; the player still lives to fight the next mission. Sure, as the player you know you didn't achieve the objective and stop the bombing raid, but you can make your own judgement about whether you want to refly. Most simmers are grown ups, and this format treats them as such!
This contributes greatly to the enjoyment and I really hope SOW learns from this and gives this kind of freedom to the player in the offline campaign. If you look at the most popular offline campaign downloads you will see they have this free-form format, and there is a lesson in that.
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