If people spent as much energy in the sim as they do in the forums
1) we would have a deeper knowledge of how things work in the sim, making it easier to see exactly why something else doesn't work
2) we would have compiled our own comprehensive, prioritised bug list and submitted it to 1c, making it much faster to correct them.
3) we would have workarounds for most of the things that don't work
4) armed with all the above, we would have tons of missions to enjoy (online and offline) because people would be able to work around the problems
You know, like Wolf does in his channel command mission that is hosted on ATAG. Or like some of us did in trying to give a proper battle of Britain feel to this sim, first by trying to make bombers workable and then by advocating certain priorities in specific gameplay fixes. Highly unpopular gameplay fixes but negligible in terms of work hours required (especially compared to some of the more popular features), which however have a tremendous effect on gameplay. You know, stuff like the LW bombers being able to aim their bombs in a sim about a battle where LW was bombing the UK. Or getting someone to copy-paste the working code from the He-111's gyrocompass to the non-working Ju88's gyrocompass. We've had to wait 18 months for that last one, not because the devs didn't know about it, but because too many people thought the tracers were not squiggly enough, or the grass was too green, or whatever else "highly important" feature that was shouted from the rooftops at various points in time and had to be appeased by taking full priority in the dev team's schedule
Well, people like Wolf want things to work in the game and he made them work. Now he's got the developer's ear and is in direct communication with them about bug hunting and testing, because he sees things that the majority of users don't: FMB bugs, scripting issues, netcode problems, etc. Important stuff. In a similar fashion, in the "news from sukhoi.ru" thread i saw that they are fixing the bombsights too.
The sim will start feeling like battle of Britain instead of battle of the Dover-Calais strait, compared to that a delay of a few days or even a week or two is inconsequential to me. If they told me "we'll fix all known bugs in all aircraft systems but release the patch two weeks later" i'd say "sure, go for it", because:
- It's easier and totally unambiguous to get right, as opposed to the endless FM/DM debates. A switch is a switch and does a specific thing.
- It ups the realism and authenticity, giving us more to play with until everything else is ironed out.
- Even if the FMs are a bit dodgy still, it gives us aircraft that can function in their intended role.
Overall, the funny thing is that a few people in the community who just wanted the sim to work for themselves and did something to achieve it, will result in the sim getting fixed faster for everyone, including those who think we're wasting our time. Well, in a sense we are all wasting our time here, it's a hobby.
The difference is how much you (impersonal "you", in general) make the hobby work for you, because that's what differentiates between the "good" and "bad" kinds of wasted time. You put some time in, you get some knowledge out of it that helps you enjoy it more. Or you can just tell everybody else to hurry up in the forums, report the bugs for you, find the workarounds for you, host the servers for you, build the missions for you, etc etc. Well, if they thought like you, none of that would ever get done and your $50 would surely have been wasted. So either join them in their efforts or let them do their job for you in peace.
You might have paid money to maddox games, but you haven't paid any to all the community members that are helping the developer team fix your game, have you now? Well, we don't want money, we just want to be left to work in peace for a while
08-01-2012, 11:33 AM
Linear Mode
