Plane unlocks in single player - now more relevant than ever

[Axe99]

Originally Posted by Cwl

COD2 didnt have any online achievments and it was fun to play.

It did, but the CoD's aren't heavily biased against less experienced players - there's no "B-17" strength CoD perk or unlockable weapon, whereas the B-17 in strike is unstoppable, if the other side doesn't have one as well, assuming equal skill and loadouts elsewhere.

And Ancient Seraph, _Fully_ agree - I'd love to have to complete mission/chapter X on difficulty y (sim ) to unlock Plane Z - deffo not asking for all of the planes on a plate, just making them available at all. I'd much rather a good challenge for it - I'm just looking for a challenge that's practical.

For example, here's some basic maths on the time it'll take to get some of the IL-2 unlocks given the current state of online - estimated time of a game is 15 minutes (about the average, games are split roughly 50/50 at 10 and 20 minutes), and estimating that people will win 50% of them (which, on average the will), and that the time taken in a game that is completed is roughly the same as the time taken in lobbies and in games where the other side quits/there is a DC (so total time is gametime x2, which is around what it's been for me):
B-17 - 100 games at 15 minutes x 2 = 50 hours
He-111H-3 - 20 games at 15 minutes x 2 = 5 hours
IL-4 - 20 games at 15 minutes x 2 = 5 hours
Ju - 87D3 - counts towards B-17, so already counted
Spitfire XVI - Say you average 3 kills a game (probably a little optimistic for most - we're talking about what it takes for the average player to get these unlocks, not Black Death ) - so around 17 games, or 8.5 hours
Bf-109G10 - 40 games at 15 minutes x 2 = 20 hours
Fw-190F-8 - 20 games at 15 minutes x 2 = 10 hours
Bf-109K-4 - As per Spitfire XVI, 8.5 hours

So to unlock the planes, assuming average luck and that you can get on enough while there's still a good body of people playing online, you're looking at around 77 hours of play and lobby time.

Then you go onto the loadouts - I won't detail these, but the loadout requirements are far more online-game intensive than the planes. Which gives you a time requirement of probably 200+ hours for planes and loadouts. This is a _huge_ ask, and one of the most time-intensive unlocking processes I have _ever_ seen in a game - most MMOs don't take that long to reach the top level and max out your character. I actually wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that around half of that will be time spent sitting and waiting in lobbies, or playing games that end half-way with the other side quitting out - if the online ran you from game to game quickly, and there were appropriate benefits for not quitting/penalties for quitting, you could cut this time in half, but as it stands now (and assuming there's no drop-off in player numbers over time, which is optimistic), unlocking every plane and loadout is a pretty tough ask, and one that is greatly disproportionate to any unlockables set I'm familiar with, particularly given the amount of non-game time that needs to be put in (the game time itself is very, very good ).