Oleg, Luthier, you need to give UBI a damn good bollocking.

[drewpee]

The thing I don't understand is the lack of communication from UBI. You can post a question or a suggestion on the IC forum and get an answer directly from the developers . I don't know that there are to many games that are that involved with their customers.
Then theres UBI, I have pm more than one other their pr department employee's and have had no response, Isn't their job to inform the public. If there's a problem the they would be far better of informing us rather than keeping us in the dark. From what I can tell most people playing IL2 are mature aged. We can handle the truth, we can't handle being ignored by the very people wanting to make money of us (and our kids if you are like me).
I say lift your game UBI. When you go to the Australian UBI site COD is not even in the COMING SOON list, you have to look for it.

[Novotny]

Would you communicate with us? I bloody wouldn't.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. . . . . .


HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.......



AHAHAAAAAHHhhhahahahahahahaaaaaa. . . .

Yah Right! You'll be buying it day one! If you are serious about not buying it then there is no reason for you to keep posting on these forums. . . Right?

Don't be silly, you're not fooling anyone.

I think he's serious. I didn't buy RoF for similar reasons. He bought RoF and stopped flying it after a few months. It's his choice and it's not funny, if he's had problems with steam in the past i can perfectly understand his decision. I'm just willing to jump in blind and get CoD because it has an offline mode, but i'm not too happy about the lack of choice in the whole thing.

Finally, people who base their purchase on certain features do in fact leave the game's forums after a while, they just hope that they might get some encouraging information to reevaluate their decision if they first state their reasons for not buying.

To be honest, this is the worst side effect of dividing the community over such issues: losing well known members of the community that had a useful and long term impact over the years and i'm not talking about ElAurens specifically. Old timers are usually strong willed and hard to argue with, but this community wouldn't be half of what it is today without the people who obsessed for years over aircraft performance charts to correct flaws in the game or creating skins and campaigns for the rest of us to enjoy.

Sure, we need new blood but if we lose the core simmers and gain FPS players, who's going to "train" these new guys and ease them into embracing the added difficulty and complexity of it all? It won't be much of a sim community if 95% percent of people fly at 30% difficulty in servers with no historical context and in such a case, it won't even be their fault...it's just that there might not be enough of the old guard around to draw them into the deeper aspects of the hobby. Something like this would definitely ensure the survival of the software companies that make our sims, but at the same time it would transform the community into a sim-light variety.

I've advocated relaxed difficulty settings in the past as a means to get more people interested in flight sims and Steam is obviously also a step in that direction (possibly and hopefully a succesful one), trying to gain exposure to a wider demographic. There's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is potentially chasing away some among the veteran members who held the flight sim banner during the previous years through sheer lack of options.

Something similar happened with RoF, only at a much higher intensity and with a far greater rift within the community, and it totally deprived it of its chance to shine: almost 2 years on since its release, there's more people flying IL2 online on any given day than RoF.

I'd really hate to see the launch of CoD facing similar difficulties, reduced market appeal and the subsequent lack of revenue that delays further development. It's not a for/against argument about Steam, i'm neither a customer nor a shareholder of theirs so i don't really care. It's about providing choices that satisfy the biggest amount of potential customers so that they can become actual customers while at the same time maintaining the scope and purpose of what the software and fan community tries to convey, instead of diluting it into something it's not. For this to happen, we need the new blood just as much as the old timers who'll teach them the ropes.


And since i'm getting gloomy here, let's look at the optimist note in all of it

Originally Posted by Biggs

im very certain that if you want to play the singleplayer campaign of CoD im pretty sure you wont have to be logged onto steam...

Steam is just there for MP purposes... and for installation verification...

bottom line steam is just a software program that (can if you wish to) store your games in a library. and allow you to download tons of games directly to your HD.

its incredibly harmless...

you guys will buy the game an enjoy it when u realize how simple and non-invasive it all is going to be...

im glad they are getting steam involved... it will be much more organized and reliable instead of the ubi server crap. Plus its a great platform to show the game off to a much larger group of customers... and that will help Maddox Games in revenue.

and after all, dont we as a community want to have the fan-base grow... not be this cult-hit-of-a-flight sim?

i sincerely hope it will be just like this. I just don't like last minute surprises, especially if there's no user selectable option provided in the matter.

[Kikuchiyo]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

To be honest, this is the worst side effect of dividing the community over such issues: losing well known members of the community that had a useful and long term impact over the years and i'm not talking about ElAurens specifically. Old timers are usually strong willed and hard to argue with, but this community wouldn't be half of what it is today without the people who obsessed for years over aircraft performance charts to correct flaws in the game or creating skins and campaigns for the rest of us to enjoy.

Sure, we need new blood but if we lose the core simmers and gain FPS players, who's going to "train" these new guys and ease them into embracing the added difficulty and complexity of it all? It won't be much of a sim community if 95% percent of people fly at 30% difficulty in servers with no historical context and in such a case, it won't even be their fault...it's just that there might not be enough of the old guard around to draw them into the deeper aspects of the hobby. Something like this would definitely ensure the survival of the software companies that make our sims, but at the same time it would transform the community into a sim-light variety.

Good thing there are people outside this community that bring people in to flight siming. I for one am part of another community that trains and introduces new people to flight sims. Just because we are younger and also enjoy FPSes doesn't mean we don't know anything about or aren't passionate about flight sims. Just because some one is older doesn't make them more valuable either. Everyone must move forward, and Steam WILL introduce flight sims to a whole new audience. Some of them will come for the graphics some will come because they see people on their friends list playing, and some will come because they (like I did) have that youth love of aviation and the magic of it.

I actually got into FPSes because of flight sims, and not vice versa. It's a genre that up until recently has been dieing because of the very insular nature of the flight sim community at large. We often discount new people's views and opinions and information, and quite frankly run off new blood. Perhaps, I hope I am incorrect here, losing some old timers might actually be good for the community. If we can't get past being willful and xenophobic the genre will die. Steam may put a new face on flight sims and open it up to a younger crowd without having to deal with some of the messiness that comes with trying to integrate into a very clique group that many of us flight simmers are part of.

My community of flight simmers put a fun and inviting face on il-2:1946, and with all the recent buzz for Cliffs of Dover we've brought in quite a decent number of new blood to the genre, and they are learning fast and enjoying it. They tell their friends and get them in so on and so forth. Just because it isn't the way we as simmer like to play doesn't make it wrong, and just because making it fun doesn't teach the historical aspect doesn't mean it won't evolve into that.

[Novotny]

Mmm good points. I used to help run the largest fps community in the UK. I still love them. I am also something of an avid history buff and really enjoy flight sims and historical turn-based strategy games.

Madness, I know. Imagine having diverse-but-still-connected interests?

As I said elsewhere, I love a lot of things, with the exception of watching TV (or voyeurism in general), sports fans, and tories.

[Bowtome]

I don't understand the hate for steam.

They have updates weekly for any issues. I have loads of games on Steam with no issues.

It is an online community/digital distribution.

If you want COD and it's on Steam, buy it, if you don't really want it, don't buy it.

I would choose Steam first above anything else, don't need the CD in, if I lose my PC, I download all my games again on steam, in fact I just have to login and it will download for me.

Steam is good, better than buggy GFWL

[White Owl]

Somebody at Ubi just answered my question about the Steam account requirement. link

I posted:

Originally Posted by Owl

I think you probably meant that a Steam account will be required to play online. Is that right? If I only play offline, single-player missions do I still need a Steam account?

They replied:

Originally Posted by admin

Yes, you will need a Steam account even if your play offline.

[Bowtome]

But what that means with steam is, you activate the game through steam, once activated, you can play offline without logging into steam. If there is no internet connection you can still play offline.

[GnigruH]

Why steam is bad? Someone make a list of its flaws, cos' atm it's like: it is bad cos' I know it is bad.
I see most ppl, who hate steam, have used it only once or haven't at all.

[alberto1960]

Originally Posted by Dano

I'm sorry but they are doing nothing to help sell your sim, in fact I'd go as far to say that they are actively damaging your sales with their complete incompetence regarding information and release.

You have a contract with them one would assume and we all know contracts work both ways so please, get on the phone and tell UBI to get a grib and sort it out.

We are two and a half weeks from release and we are still getting conflicting information in all areas and it looks ridiculous.

DRM, first it was TAGES, then it was Solidshield, now with added Steam. Which is it?

How about some positive information on release? Colectors editions in countries other than the UK? Normal boxed copies? Steam release schedules? Availability of boxed copies from sources other than UBI?

If the March 25th release is genuine as we have been told then why on earth is this information not forthcoming from UBI? Are they your publisher in the west or not?

If I was about to launch the results of a 5 or 6 year project that I wanted to be a success I'd be utterly livid with UBI's lacklustre and frankly pathetic handling of the situation.

Somebody over at UBI needs a damn good kick up the backside or are they just regurgitaing what they've been told and it's all down to your department? Something I find difficult to believe given your confirmed worldwide release in 18 days.

I totally agree with you. I cannot accept a download for such high level product. I wish a CD and if possible a collector edition. Non a good job from UBI.