Belly landings

[Roboslob]

Originally Posted by Sparlan007

Happy Landings Video

I was hoping that at 4:17 he was going to crash into the parked bombers. Oh well, that video filled my explosion/crash quota for the day.

[butterfield]

Originally Posted by Siege777

I hope it was just publisher pressure that led to these decisions and maybe we can see at least an option to turn them on in a future patch or at least a sequel.

(sorry for the long rant)

It is publisher pressure. The way Anton has talk about things that have been removed from the sim you can tell it all stems from the publisher. Anton can't sit here and badmouth them though. Anton even stated that the publisher was going as far as having testing questionaires and census tests involving the game. That's why theyhad to remove blackouts and redouts from the game...it was determined that the general masses of casual gaming sheep thought it was a GLITCH in the game. That's right a glitch...so the publisher forced the removal.

[SR91 Aurora]

Originally Posted by butterfield

it was determined that the general masses of casual gaming sheep thought it was a GLITCH in the game.

I wonder why the people who thought blackouts and redouts were glitches didn't think spontaneous explosions when your plane touches the ground were glitches.

Maybe schools should spend a little more time teaching physics.

[Riccster09]

I actually managed to not explode instantly once while landing. I came down too hard, it broke my wing off, and I skidded down the runway a bit and then exploded.

[Doktorwzzerd]

Originally Posted by Siege777

I really feel like a lot of these issues people are having with BoP's design decisions stem from the misconception that console gamers are somehow less sophisticated and will only buy games with frenetic actionpacked gameplay.

I get this from some of the replies anton has made so far, like the explosions after every crash, whether it's realistic or not, being there for hollywood effect and especially from his response about the reason for unlimited fuel and ammunition in the campaign mode. Basically because the arcade missions are so unrealistic and require you to destroy so many targets that you need the unlimited ammo. And then he said something like Gamers would get confused if there were two seperate campaigns, about which one they'd already completed, etc. That's just plain insulting, imo - Plenty of games keep track of which difficulty level you've beaten campaign missions on and allow you to play the campaign multiple times with different settings/difficulties.

Personally, one of the main reasons I didn't bother getting HAWX or Ace Combat is because you can fire off 100 missiles at enemy planes and they're basically just arcade shooters that happen to take place in the air.

I was never very good at IL-2 on PC, so getting shot down a lot, it's almost like a game in itself trying to crashland your smoking plane safely without your pilot dying. I hope it was just publisher pressure that led to these decisions and maybe we can see at least an option to turn them on in a future patch or at least a sequel.

(sorry for the long rant)

Agreed. I think that BoP is actually giving us a very good sim, esp for consoles, but your observations about publisher's misconceptions on the console market are totally correct. Most console players these days are btw 20-35 yrs old and are looking for more mature, nuanced and challenging games.

In fact if you look at the trends, you can see proof of this, who 3-4 years ago would have predicted Fallout 3, with all of its nerdy stat building, super long game length, ultra big inventories etc would be one of this years biggest games? And yet it is and not only that but the DLC sells like hotcakes.

I've also seen games really hurt by trying to play to misconceptions about console players, the most recent Brothers in Arms being a great example. The original for xbox and PC raised the bar for realistic, tactical squad FPS gameplay and also were very successful. In Hell's Highway GBX tacked on an inartful rip of GoW gameplay, as well as horrible solo run and gun missions, onto what had been a fantastic game in an effort to appease twitch gamers and it was flop city. The used bins at Gamestop are overflowing with heavily marked down copies.

On the positive side, while we haven't gotten every single detail we may have wanted I am extremely pleased that a game that is 95% real sim is coming to the market, frankly I never really believed it would happen, so I can deal with the lack of belly landings. For now