Hello Comrades!

I don't know if you've heard about this or not, but I didn't see it posted and figured if some of you are like me, you occasionally give this sub-forum a glance to see if there is any activity with other Aces here at GOG.

Anyway, the story is that on December 11. last year, the 1C Company officially announced that they had partnered with 777 Studios to work on a new IL-2 Sturmovik game.

On their official forums they've been posting an interesting developer's diary, latest entry from last week, which discusses goals and progress, and also answers questions from the forum.

They've also made a YouTube channel with interviews with the game's test pilot, and footage of him flying the planes!

Soooo...

Are you guys excited about this?

I haven't played Cliffs of Dover or Rise of Flight because of hardware limitations(and bad reviews on CoD's part), but this game would be a very good incentive to upgrade my PC.

Any opinions on 777 studios work? Do you think this partnership is a good thing?

Hi,

I am in no way an ace when it comes to flight sims, therefore I won't comment on the flight models, but I own both CoD and RoF. CoD was indeed pretty bad. For me the braindead skirmish ai ruined the experience. RoF looks great though, but was just to complicated for me and I did not like the buisnuiss model. I did play some battles with it though and enjoyed them and still play sometimes, but unlike IL you cant customize your difficulty.
I do think the teamwork is good news though, but I hope they won't use the RoF buisnuiss model.

Interesting they say it will be a hybrid financial system between the IL-2 and RoF business model. I guess we'll find out what that means. Also unfortunately/fortunately they will not be using the CoD engine it sounds like - that means this is not an expansion upon which they might have improved the original game (to Surtur: is it still buggy?).


Thanks for the notice!

Well, I've been reading through the dev diaries(forgot to mention that the first four are questions from the Russian forum, so the wordings are a bit weird in english), and they seem to be very careful about how much content they can put in the release, and indeed intend to use the RoF business model. But I hope they would implement it as expansion packs or theaters(maybe not as big as the ones for the original IL-2 game) rather than lots of micro-transactions.

Also, one interesting thing from the dev diaries:

"13) In the old IL-2 and CloD we would frequently see players breaking rules server (obscene language in the chat, the attack of taking off planes, the deliberate destruction of the players of his team). Punishment of such players was associated with some problems, IP is dynamic, you can change the user name, etc. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? For example, the binding of the game to a permanent account or to a number of purchase.

Yes, that is how it will be done. Each player has a single account through which it comes into play. If a player breaks the rules or interferes with other players to fly, he will be punished by denying access to the game for a certain period of time. However, the experience of previous projects, such cases are rare."

Did RoF also implement this "Account" system? I meant the kind of aces we all are, if playing a flight-sim just makes you feel good :)

I play RoF a lot and even bought some extra planes and campaigns, it is really the best ww1 flightsim I've ever played and even makes the otherwise excellent IL-2 seriously outdated in terms of graphics but also in terms of soundeffects, damagemodeling, AI and aircraft handling, so in that respect it's good that there is a new sim in developement.

I have some critisism though, this is going to be another release set in the Eastern front, I for once would have liked to see one with a western campaign for a change.
Also, developement of flightsims have been focussed on multiplay in recent years and less and less on singleplay.
In the past you had flightsims like Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe or Falcon 3.0 , where you had campaigns that influenced the outcome strategically and you even had to manage the squadron, these are things I hugely miss in current sims and would like that to return, improved upon even.

As for RoF's businessmodel, I find it questionable, on one hand they get more money out of it, which I can understand, but on the other hand it pretty much closes the door for any mods being done on the game, especially extra planes and terrain, which in turn makes new additions to the sim a lot slower.
Because of this I think CloD isn't dead yet.

get ready to shell out the bucks for aircraft then. One will get a basic few like ROF then...BAM!!

777Studio likes their money.

And using the ROF engine to run BOS will take years to complete anyway, two or more I'm guessing.

I fear this merger.........

~S~

And thank God for IL-2 mods. :)

Why would they make a title on the western front? As far as I can tell the entire development team lives in or around Russia. Why would they forsake their own history for some whiny westerners? (no offense.) I actually really like the eastern front. Most of the combat took place down low, so it makes things more of a challenge. :)

Rise of Flight used an 'account system' like you describe Floydinizer.

I also wouldn't mind if only a few aircraft where released at the start, remember, Rise of Flight has a 2-aircraft version of the game FOR FREE TO EVERYONE. You get the Spad-13 and the Albatross D.Va if I remember correctly. Plus, the quality of their planes is VERY high. I've never seen a modder that can match their attention to detail or access to cockpit data like 777/Oleg will have.I'd happily pay for planes if they can keep up the amazing quality. Not to mention that money supports the company, because outside of the hard-core flight simmers, there isn't a community for this sort of game at ALL, that is why there are so few, they just don't sell as well as a AAA game, and they cost alot more to produce. So prepare for micro-transactions to rule all future flight sims. :)

Just let me fly my P-39 and I'll be a happy camper.

That may be changing ... certainly hard-core sims of any type will typically only appeal to those very specifically interested in that sim-type and this goes for any of the sims be they about trains, farming, or flight. Further many of the other hard-core sim genres have been driven by a similar microtransaction system for quite some time.

However, gaming moves in cycles. There was a time when flight sims and space sims off all types from arcade-like games to serious flight/space/combat sims were extremely popular. That era is long since gone, but that doesn't mean it won't ever come back and indeed recent developments in the gaming industry might, *might* denote a shift back to mainstream relevance for the genres.

Another however. :) However, perhaps even more germane point is that microtransactions are even more heavily used in mainstream games these days, so even AAA flight sims and space sims will still probably feature them heavily going forward as most games will and non-microtransaction games will generally be niche. It would still though likely be a different microtransaction system than generally featured by some sim games like ROF (i.e. pay to access technology or aircraft or whatever in single/multi-player sooner than you would by simply leveling up rather than never getting access to something unless you pay for it). Side note: AAA games cost much more to produce than the standard hard-core sim game regardless of fidelity of the sim ... while KOTOR as AAA MMO (with base cost, subscription - now F2P, and microtransactions) is a ridiculously extreme example, its budget was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. :P Again, the return of mainstream, "AAA" space sims and flight sims may be coming.

I have to admit I do not like microtransactions as much as I prefer simply buying the total game + later expansion packs as I don't feel I am being nickel-and-dimed to pay more and don't feel that I am missing out if I don't pay extra as in some microtransaction systems. That said, if one nevers pay extra or is only interested in a few of the items for sale, then paying a la carte can mean that one often spends less than one would've by buying a complete package and can focus on the content one really wants. Further some systems act as a speed-up of what you would get anyway rather access to exclusive content. Still not my ideal, but I see the appeal, or at least the indifference towards the various microtransaction systems. :) There are certain situations where I prefer the a la carte payment system and certain ones where I prefer a bundled payment system. Sadly most of the time, whatever the product or service is, it is usually opposing to what I prefer. Ah well. :) Well there is a lot more to modding that simply creating new planes: new campaigns, scripted missions, graphics, control schemes, etc ... where modding can really shine in a flight sim. I sometimes use mods, most of the time don't, but in general allowing for modding can really open up the amount of content available for a game far beyond what the designers even envisioned. So that, if a player is interested, they can immerse themselves in far more (sometimes quality) content than a single development team, regardless of talent, can deliver.