the quality of this forum...

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by furbs

Blackdog, i like you.

But you do know that Luthier hasnt logged in here, or at the Russian forum since the 1st of July right?

The guy isn't listening to us at all.

Whats the point of posting a bug thread if the guys not reading it.

I've been reading various forums without logging on for years, especially if i'm on a shared/public PC.

Even so, posting a bug thread is infinitely more useful than just plain out venting and bringing everyone down with me.

If i like to suffer so much it's my right, but i should have the decency to exercise my masochism in silence and privately so as not to bring down all the nice people who are working in their own free time to improve my gameplay experience, that's all i'm saying

Recent examples, the workarounds for sound bugs and stutters. People know that turning off trees can help with the sound bug online and reducing texture size can help with stutters, but instead of taking things in stride and going "cool, i'll just play the game for now until they fix some more things" they expect to run everything maxed out and have it working flawlessly. Just look at that texture size poll to see how many people are running with original sized textures when it's common knowledge that it's the setting with the highest impact on FPS.

It's not a question of whether they should be able to on their monster rig, or whose fault is the state of the sim and that's why i put quote marks around the "whiner" tag that gets tossed around so much, i don't classify people as such. For me it's a question of what's possible and how it can be further improved. In other words, it's not a case of "whiners" and "fanboys" but a case of those willing to accept certain realities that have been imposed on this sim and those who like living in a bubble and pretend that repeating things will magically fix everything or turn everyone around to their opinion.

You go ahead and tell people how they can actually have some fun with this sim and the next thing that comes out their mouth (or fingers in this case) is "but i shouldn't have to disable feature XYZ in 2011 on my monster PC", they keep running what they think they should be able to (instead of what is actually feasible) and keep repeating it doesn't work, then epic facepalm ensues for wasting your time helping them out...over and over and over again.

I don't know what Oleg or Luthier owes that group, but they personally owe me a few dozens of gameplay hours that i've wasted trying to help others out with little to no effect. Kinda puts things into perspective doesn't it?

That's why these shenanigans are so counter-productive, they are based on the stubborn tendency of some to be detached from the realities surrounding this sim in contrast to compromising, not with the developer or their expectations as paying customers, but with they fact that some of what they want is not possible at the current stage in time, dropping a couple of settings a notch or two and having a jolly good time actually flying.

Tough poop i know, but why should i have to play forum therapist for them on top of spending so much of my free time guiding people over obstacles, when i could just as easily keep whatever useful knowledge i've accumulated from other helpful members and my own testing for myself, ignore their problems and maximize my enjoyment of the sim? Is their time more valuable than mine? In retrospect i'd say that it isn't, especially in light of the generally ungrateful prevailing attitudes and their unwillingness to follow helpful advice.

There's one simple reason really that i'm still active here, i initially had a feeling that if some of us made an effort to sacrifice some of our short-term enjoyment of the sim for the benefit of others we might some day reach a point where a good percentage of people would be able to see what's under the hood here and get familiarized with what works while we wait for the fixes to the stuff that doesn't yet, so that one day we'll have a knowledgeable user base and get a head start on creating all the cool things we had in IL2:1946 like community created skins, campaigns, online wars and the like, all without having to wait the same amount of years that we had to with IL2 while the community content picked up in quality and quantity. In short, the silly notion that we have some kind of community spirit and i could contribute to that.

Alas, some people are so averse to actually scratching the surface of the sim that all efforts are wasted on them. It's not lack of updates by Luthier that's diminishing my enjoyment of the sim and my willingness to be involved with the community here, it's their self-inflicted, masochistic blindness and the zealotry with which they seek converts to it, "whiners" and "fanboys" alike.

Originally Posted by bw_wolverine

I've kept very quiet about the whole developer posts issue mostly because I think my opinion is the one most unpopular with the majority of people who find the time to be big posters on this forum.

I remember when I bought games and I either had a good time with them or didn't and there wasn't even the thought in my head that I could ask the people who made the game anything about it.

I'm either going to take a bad experience away from buying a game that isn't working or a good one for enjoying what I can get out of it and feeling I got my money's worth. Hearing this that or the other from the developer is gravy and should be treated as such. When I was playing Aces over Europe I never once considered trying to contact them to tell them that they had their Spitfire wrong. It was a foreign concept. Anyway. It's great that the internet allows everyone such instant access to everything, but I don't think anyone can argue that it's raised the overall maturity of discourse on, well, anything.

I certainly wouldn't respond to the majority of the posts made on the forums here if I were them. But they did. And did. And now they don't. I think a lot of people arguing for dev comments are the same people that slam them for days and days and days and then say a little 'Thanks for the update!' after getting something out the devs and think that erases all the vitriol that's been plastering the forums previously. Then the cycle begins again.

Like I said earlier, I've kept mostly quiet about this stuff after watching it day after day. Anyone who seems to even suggest this kind of attitude gets attacked for it. So honestly, why would I even post about the topic? I suspect that there are a lot of other people who feel the same. Hardly anyone is going to take the time to write a 'I think things are going fine' post. The fact that we've had so many of THOSE (the "I hate whiners" type posts) is an indication of how polarized the community is getting here.

Bleh. Anyway, my two cents on the subject. I really hope the forums would be more about making skins for planes, or talking about cool dogfights, or posting pictures from airshows, etc., than the constant stuff appearing now.

I honestly wonder if another company made a better flight sim that was everything everyone wanted, would the people who are posting the mean spirited stuff here disappear to their forums and post happy posts about how great the game is or would they stay here to post even more mean spirited stuff about how that other game is better than your game and why didn't you do it like that?

Cause THAT'd be productive.

Massively good post, especially the last paragraph.