IL2 and Sound Modding

[wgvette]

Hey All,
I have been enjoying (extreme sarcasm) the debate on this issue from the sideline for the past several weeks. It's hard to go to any forum and not be inundated with threads on this subject. (Four on this site alone).

Why do I bring this up? Well, from the sheer number of posts on the subject and the obvious deep rooted feelings on both sides of the issue this is not a subject that is going away...unfortunately.

So, maybe it's time that we took a few steps back and viewed this from fresh perspectives.

As to if or if not the sound mod was a legal or illegal addition to the game really is a moot point. Whether someone installs the sound mod is also irrelevant.

No the only problem that exists is when someone uses the mod to deliberately change an aspect of his/her aircraft capabilities for online play against unaltered opponents. Then and only then does one become a cheat and that is the crux of the matter. The unfortunate problem with this is we are dealing with human nature. There are those that will cheat just for the sake of doing so, there are some that will cheat because they can, and of course there are a few that will do it just to be malicious and hopefully hurt someone else by doing so.

No matter how hard the community pushes to prevent cheats from entering online play; there will be someone willing to work just as hard to break back in and cheat some more. Again I fall back to Human Nature as the real fight here.

And where does this leave us??

A compromise? Really and truly the only way to fight the problem is to combine efforts to police the servers and expel and deny cheaters when they are caught. Difficult to do I realize, and that is where a compromise is needed as it will take everyone from the modder, the onliner/offliner to the game developer to fight.

While Oleg and his crew have much bigger issues than IL-2 keeping them busy, their part of this fight will be in SOW:BOB and future games.

That my friends leaves us to handle the current and short term issues of fair play and the on going health of the IL-2 community.

So, the short end of this deal is that until all the name calling, finger pointing and schoolyard behavior ends; and a real dialog of communication is opened, then nothing, absolutely nothing will ever change.


WG