oleg, you better hurry, RoF is releasing a ww-2 sim next

[Chivas]

Unfortunately the things we all want can't be created over night. There may be more than a few people putting the game on the backburner, until the first major patch/addon/content.

I must confess I haven't flown the game enough to know the full extent of the existing contant, but what I have flown was entertaining. We just have to get our heads around the fact, that ROF is a WIP, amd most of our concerns will be dealt with if possible over time.

I understand that many don't want to pay even a minimul sum for a WIP, but I would rather do that than have no sim to support.

[ElAurens]

The following screen captures illustrate the problem with the DM of RoF.

This SPAD lawn darted straight into the ground at a speed high enough to tear it's wings off.



This is it bouncing on impact.



And here it is after coming to rest. Not even a dent in the cowling. This aircraft should be a smoking hole in the ground. Note also that there is no hole in the ground, or fire for that matter.

[Robert]

Originally Posted by Chivas

Unfortunately the things we all want can't be created over night. There may be more than a few people putting the game on the backburner, until the first major patch/addon/content.

I must confess I haven't flown the game enough to know the full extent of the existing contant, but what I have flown was entertaining. We just have to get our heads around the fact, that ROF is a WIP, amd most of our concerns will be dealt with if possible over time.

I understand that many don't want to pay even a minimul sum for a WIP, but I would rather do that than have no sim to support.

I can appreciate that sentiment. I've said in a previous post I'd pay $100.00 for SoW. If ROF was similarly finished (based on our expectations and Oleg's notes) I'd pay the same. I hope they can succeed.

TBH. With me, because of health issues and how it's affected my ability to work, $39.00 is a lot to shell out for something like this. I can't afford the risk they may not be around 8 months from now, and I end up with a game with limited appeal.

I'll feel the same way should SoW be released in a like state as RoF.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Robert

I can't afford the risk they may not be around 8 months from now, and I end up with a game with limited appeal.

Actually you would be left with a game that doesn't work at all, thanks to the magnificent online-only DRM scheme

I too want this to succeed, but i won't help make it a success in its current unfinished state and set a bad precedent for what a company can get away with. If Oleg, Eagle Dynamics or any other sim developer released something in that state they would be torn to shreds. The only two reasons people support them is that

a) the dedicated WWI jockey hasn't had a sim with a dedicated, up to date engine for years and they are willing to settle for the bare basics and

b) Neoqb is a small company that clearly stated in their letter to the community "sorry, we ran out of money and it was a choice between releasing an unfinished game or scraping everything"

To give credit where its due, Neoqb has the foundations more or less set right, they appear to be trying hard and recently they also made some effort to keep the community in the loop as far as further development goes, despite being awfully hurt by the language barrier and the lack of an effective PR effort early on.

It's not them i'm worried about, it's the willingness of such a large part of the community to lower their standards and unconditionally support an unfinished product.
It's all fine and dandy for people to like it, it's a matter of personal taste. What's not fine is having a bunch of people telling you your reasons for not liking it are rubbish, the changes you are waiting for before you buy are not going to happen so take it or leave it, you don't have the game so you shouldn't talk about it, and so on. It's just an attitude that culminates to a very simple conclusion "Buy it now or shut up and get out".

It's even got to the point where people like ElAurens who actually bought the game are getting shouted down on the slightest mention of a thing being wrong.

The usual argument behind such tactics is that they support the genre and how they are serious simmers and the rest of us are not as "hardcore" as them. What they fail to see is that what could be a justifiable situation because of Neoqb being a small company, is something that would not be cool at all coming from an established software house. However, the big boys are watching and if an upstart company with a niche-within-a-niche product can get away with that much, they will surely be able to get away with more. Everyone talks about how RoF has a lot of potential. Not enough see a different kind of potential though, the potential to harm the genre in the long run because of setting the bar too low. Setting a precedent on what's acceptable by the masses in terms of content, quality and price is always a dangerous thing. Asking too much and the developers will never be able to satisfy the public, asking too little and the public will never get another worthy product. I would go as far as to say that for me personally, the survival of the flight sim genre as a whole is much more important in the long run than the survival of a single development house. It's not like they'll disappear if they fold, they could work on other projects in a different studio, for example making a WWI add-on on the SoW engine

It's not them that have to disappear, it's the notion that you can sell an open beta for full market price and place a bunch of restrictive design elements on top of it all.

The way i see it, i can keep flying IL2 with the community/unofficial add ons for a couple more years. I certainly won't be bored until Christmas, at which point Neoqb might release a gold version. Imagine that, working MP, a good offline campaign, more AI and flyable aircraft and a different copy protection method for $50. Now we're talking business.

[Al Schlageter]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Actually you would be left with a game that doesn't work at all, thanks to the magnificent online-only DRM scheme

Didn't they say that the DRM would be removed if the company failed?

[Feuerfalke]

I don't know if they really said it, but it has been that way with MANY other games, too, even if the company was still there. After a few years most DRMs are lifted. Some do it earlier (The Unreal-series removed their complete copy protection at max after the 3rd or 4th patch) and some later, but if you get the game for 10 bucks at the value-price, there is not much sense to cause them trouble with DRMs. And let's face it, most DRMs hit the honest customer, not the pirates.

I also got to agree with Chivas in some points.

1st - I agree that their online-gameplay is somewhat limited. But IMHO it would be much better to have at least one or two dedicated servers running, to assist improving the online gameplay and solcing network-issues the same time they provide 24/7 servers for online players. It would also make it more obvious for customers to see neobq is working on improving gameplay and online-features. But maybe they're doing this via their beta-tests, so who knows?
2nd - I agree that supporting them is the best way to ensure they improve. But I'd also like to see some progress in the right direction. It's not like the game has just been released or so, but over quite long periods, there are no news or updates whatsoever. While I still think this is okay for a game that has not officially announced yet, it's a bit different for a game that people already bought and which has to make a name on the market.

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

@ElAurens, you say "But after seeing aircraft after aircraft crash in to the earth from thousands of feet and bounce or just crumple a bit, I'm becoming less enthusiastic about the DM. Oleg had this pegged in his comments on it. It looks to me like they just applied FPS "rag doll" physics to the crash DM."

I actually said this well before Oleg on this very same thread, asked for peoples opinions on it, and not a single person replied. Few days later, Oleg says the same and all his little soldiers are in agreement lmao I am apparently not important enough lol.........Oh well must accept it

That said, there are aspects of the DM that are superb and have never been done before, in any sim. Its not all doom and gloom, even last night I noticed something new......After taking damage from AAA fire, I noticed that sun rays where shining through the holes that had been made onto the lower wing, looks unbelievably cool

Why don't you wait till the first large scale patch before condemning it? All the things you say about Multi-player are true, the campaign sucks as well....But have patience, Padwan

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

Page 2 on this thread. 22nd June.

"Now I'm no Physics "Major", but as impressive as some of the effects look, some of them do not look quite right to me. A plane diving at a collosal speed regardless of its weight is going to build up a lot of mass and energy, right? It just seems sometimes that they just crumple like the paper aeroplanes I used to throw at my maths teacher as a kid, when they were'nt looking Maybe I am wrong about this, but I would expect for example them to be impaled into the ground in this scenario, if coming down at speed at a 90 degree angle. Like I say, maybe due to their relatively light weight this would be correct, someone please correct me if this is so."

Hmph.

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by RCAF_FB_Orville

@ElAurens, you say "But after seeing aircraft after aircraft crash in to the earth from thousands of feet and bounce or just crumple a bit, I'm becoming less enthusiastic about the DM. Oleg had this pegged in his comments on it. It looks to me like they just applied FPS "rag doll" physics to the crash DM."

I actually said this well before Oleg on this very same thread, asked for peoples opinions on it, and not a single person replied. Few days later, Oleg says the same and all his little soldiers are in agreement lmao I am apparently not important enough lol.........Oh well must accept it

I'm sorry to hear this is your personal view on this community, but this complete statement completely disregards some important facts:

Oleg had the chance to play the game before or shortly after it was released in Russia in May. Mid-June US-customers could get a limited number of copies, but sales reached their high not before the last week in June. European customers will get their chance end of July in an English version and End of August the earliest in the localized versions.

So if even more people will give their reviews in August, that is not because these "little soldiers are in agreement" then, but because most of us will take that long to take a personal look at the game and not make a judgment based on second hand information.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by RCAF_FB_Orville

Why don't you wait till the first large scale patch before condemning it?

they have already released some patches since it was 1e released, going by the gradual minor fixes included, this is going to take a very long time and there is no indication that the real main issues will ever be addressed satisfactorally (easy to join online servers for coop missions, dogfight and campaigns, a firm promise to remove the DRM if the game flops so people wont have wasted their money, free mission building, object making and campaign management tools so the comunity can take the ball and run with it to buid on what basic content there is now, etc..)

Originally Posted by RCAF_FB_Orville

All the things you say about Multi-player are true, the campaign sucks as well.

and what you are forgetting to mention, there are some further major issues with what should be the best core components of this game to, like takeoff distances for aircraft are 4x to long, placing doubt on their environmental physics modeling, odd damge models with aircraft striking the earth at full speed, static weather patters without terrain masking for AI (magic vision seeing through mountains and clouds) etc...

i think the red barron crowd whom have for a long time been waiting for a new replacement game, they keep hanging on to the glimpses of quality RoF shows and it must be frustrating for them to see the botched product they were landed with right now. for them i hope eventally RoF will be patched to fix it (err for free of course, rather than the pay as you go carrot dangeling they are using now)

for the rest of the flightsim community RoF as a "new product type" (perpetual console type addon sales), its beta status at release time, the fact the product wont play at all if RoF flops, major elements missing in the game, etc.. means that this is the worst possible type of new flightsim. If it succeeds it is bad for us because it sets a new lower standard for all future products, and if it fails it is bad for us to because it will be used as a reason for other investors not to enter the market in the future and make new products. the only glimmer of hope is that RoF could rapidly address the major issues with decent free patches and open up the game to community input, which i seriously doubt will ever happen before they run out of money and have to close their doors, at which point you will be left with nothing, zip, de nada, rien ! personally ifyou are going to do an act of charity i prefer to give my 50$ to a homeless out of work person so he can buy himself some food for a couple of days.