I haven't played for months simply because there are too many and too frequent niggles, large and small, that make this game unfit for purpose to me. I've put down my money for a collectors' edition and a standard copy, and I'll be waiting for the occasion when it's more functional, stable and playable, but until Cliffs of Dover is up to scratch and they have proved they can release a game in a worthy state, it's safe to say I won't be buying any further releases from the company.
IL-2 is still a thousand times more fun to play than this game at the moment. The AI is less retarded (which disappointingly REALLY isn't saying anything at all if you look at one of my posts in the bug thread), the graphics are less glitchy if also marginally (and I mean marginally) less pretty, the aircraft seem to have been reasonably well researched in performance for the theatres that they are intended to depict, the radio works and the multiplayer is not only usable *at all* but also extremely functional. The flight model is more challenging, particularly where landings are concerned. In fact, even the ballistics seem more challenging. .303s in CloD are pretty much lasers. It's hard to miss. There is also an excellent third-party dynamic campaign engine that can be used not only offline but online, making the whole concept of "online offline" that Oleg was pitching for CloD fairly old and unsurprising to be honest. The MDS also offers far better options for dogfight servers. Most of all, Daidalos Team are continuing to support the game with a great deal of success and while introducing some FAR reaching changes and gigantic revisions to the game managed to introduce NO severe bugs at all, and the remaining minor solvable problems on both occasions were fixed in bugfix patches that not only actually fixed the initial problem, as CloD's bugfix patches often failed to do, but ALSO introduced no additional problems.
At the moment there is simply no reason for me to play CloD over IL-2 other than a tiny bit of eye-candy - higher poly models, a scant few shaders and better view distances - and even that has often been tainted by weird glitches. To be honest I have never played through the campaign because the last time I played it you couldn't save your progress, you had to play the whole campaign in a single sitting. There simply hasn't been anything that has kept me playing through a whole mission without any sense of purpose or control or interaction with my wingmen or ground controllers and the impossibility of playing large raids on medium-level specs (at least the last time I played), which is why I purchased this game in the first place, because the Battle of Britain is the very epitome of such an exercise of large-scale teamwork from the perspective of both sides.
The things that attracted me to this game were not the graphical overhaul but the promise of increased depth and functionality which has simply not emerged, except in the case of the extremely flaky complex engine management, which seems extremely temperamental, alternating between bouts of being far too forgiving and bouts of the opposite, and the DM, which is honestly very impressive and clever as you might expect from Il-2's successor. That and being able to click on some switches now and then, which I honestly never really cared about anyway.
Likewise, I don't think my dad (who got me into flightsims when I was a kid) has bothered either for a month or so, silently preferring to stick with BoBII:WoV and its various updates as a Battle of Britain simulation.
The danger for this game is not so much the negative feedback, it's all the people like me that are so disappointed that we don't even feel the need to throw effort after bad money and are gradually ceasing to care about the distant possibility that the game will become as functional as Il-2 was in even 2003, let alone the desire to buy any further products.
In fact the only reason I bothered to visit the forum tonight was to see whether there has been an update released in the past few weeks since my last check that even fixes something so basic as radio commands.
Not to mention the fact that my visits to the forum are now so rare that I probably won't see all of the over-protective indignation that will continue to fill this thread after and perhaps even in response to my post.
Bottom line is, it's just so disappointing. You fire the game up and play and you see this shining promise of brilliance showing through EVERYWHERE, and I mean EVERYWHERE! Look at the detail of the cockpits, the minutely adjustable gunsights, the fantastically detailed engine systems management, the glass reflections, the flapping scraps of canvas, the beautiful models that capture the aircraft so well, from the 109's promise of calculating, patient menace and the steady, solid charm and grit of the Hurricane, even just the way the sky actually looks and the fact that the LOD transitions are less abrupt, and the increasingly promising and stable terrain and ground objects. But then you actually try to play the game for any length of time and it just becomes a chore dealing with all of the bugs and omissions and the fact that when it comes to actually simulating aerial combat the game has only the basic mechanics of controlling the aircraft modelled to any degree and beyond that there really isn't anything else.
That's my take on it anyway, more wistful and disappointed than rage and vitriol, I'm afraid.
07-16-2011, 07:00 AM
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