I personally can't go back to IL2:1946, it's been way too easy to operate the aircraft for a long time and after trying out the new CEM i can't go back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Feathered_IV
I must agree. Remember the "Holy Sh*t" thread that Luthier himself started asking for gameplay elements? Tons of suggestions in there and not one was acted upon. Instead they went for the Spitgirl...
The only people who seemed to benefit from that thread was the Rise of Flight team. I notice that a very great many of the features suggested in that topic are already announced for the new single player dynamic campaign announced for release this month.  |
In all fairness, it took RoF two long years to get there. I think the big surge in regards to CoD content will come with the release of the SDK or at the very least, some scripting documentation.
If we can customize the interface (which they said is possible) to run a campaign generator in-game and track relevant data in the form of mission event logs, parsing them to the generator (which is possible through scripting), then the campaign generator can act on that information and create the next mission in a dynamic campaign.
As for many of your suggestions in that thread (which i really liked a lot), i expect they too will be possible through scripts, after all it's a C type language they are using: it needs some coding experience but it's much more powerful.
I think that whatever the devs do, once the community come to grips with scripting they will always be one step ahead, simply because we are so numerous and ideas keep bouncing around all the time.
Off the top of my head, things i would do if i knew how to work with scripts:
1) Navigator interface: From a simple "i click on the map and you tell me how to get there" to a full fledged SH3 type of deal with markers, rulers and protractors so i can draw up my own flight plans mid-flight, the have the script play "AI navigator" for me and guide me there. It would only work in aircraft that had a navigator crewman, for single seaters it would just give you the mapping tools to work with yourself.
2) Celestial navigation with a sextant for night missions (since the nice sky has accurate positions of constellations).
3) Script calling out contacts when they are in the field of view of AI crewmen.
4) Bombadier guidance script: Jump to the bomb-aimer's station, engage the script and guide the pilot through the bomb run (like level stabilizer but so much better and more realistic).
If i can come up with 3-4 useful ideas in the time span required to post a forum message imagine what the rest of the community can come up with, especially people who can actually code it, dedicated modders, etc. There's no way a developer team of 25 people will be able to compete with a few hundred or even thousand modding community members, so they focus on getting the basics done and providing a framework to do more. Of course, the basics are not there yet and i'm not denying that. I just don't expect the dev team to be able to "race" the community in terms of new features once we are up to speed with scripting, it's not realistic to think so.
I expected CoD to be a sort of "operating system/framework for simulation gaming" type of thing and that's exactly what it is, which is a big reason i maintain mostly positive attitudes about it (that is, it turned out to be what i expected it to be).