Thoughts about Friday's update

[Force10]

It's a bad day when you compare Codemasters community support to yours and you come up short. Maybe 1C should look into licensing the Ego engine for COD.


Let me answer for you Ace:

Bingo!

[hiro]

hmm . . .


comparisons . . . come on, gotta be little more fair . . .

Codemasters is a top British gaming company with 800 employees, that began in the 80's busting out games for commodores and amigas to today's PC and PS triple era.

Their games range from mmorpg's to action, FPS's, rpg's, sports, those restaurant style games etc . . . they have experience in making their sounds and music . . .

That's a hell of a resume

F1 series started in 09' and they've been improving it this year. They got the license when Sony didn't renew it . . . (remember Sony has its hand in Gran Turismo series another excellent driving sim)

F1 has had alot of history and there are more games on this series than plane types in all WW 2 sims in history.

F1 has a rich history and lots of features, codes to draw from. Also F1 from 2009, the data for the cars and racers, and everything is up to date. F1 2012 is rated 9's by IGN, and it its a simulation with a steep learning curve.

Plus as others said its a solid game engine. Plus F1 doesn't have to model as many physics properties as a WW2 sim ( such as damage from various sources, atmospheric weather, 3D planes etc).

With 800 ninjas coding, you can be sure of a solid game release. To put things into perspective, Blizzard has 4500 employees, while Infinity Ward (call of duty) has 100 . . .


Now compare this our situation. No 800 employees. An impressive gaming resume to be sure, but you have to remember flight sims are very complicated compared to other games. At least a good one that models almost every aspect of combat flying.

Like the F1 series, they had IL-2 1946 to draw from. That's impressive also.

But remember the heart and mind (Oleg) was taken out, and the soul (Luthier and his team) is left.

For some reason, the working game engine of the Oleg era Storm of War wasn't used or had to be modified for some reason and a broke one was put in place.

And then there was a major OS change for the PC (XP, then to vista / win 7). Codemasters has experience in entire hardware / software / os systems, not just an OS change.

They have much more to deal with than the world of F1. They have WW 2. Also the information they have to chase is 50+ years old, and not recent like the 2009 F1 and history of F1. There is much more complicated things in a flight sim than a racing sim.

they don't have tons of games to draw from, like popular F1 series.

And the game engine they are using is damaged goods. Codemasters has a working engine.


let's be fair, that isn't even a good comparison. First off the games are wildly different. Second, the companies have different philosophy, and history. 3rd, to the Clod devs after the set back they've been handed to them . . .we're lucky (and blessed) they've even came out with a game on the caliber as CLoD. 4th, the number of manpower is vastly different.

Look at the Football Americano team, the Saints. They were an impressive team last season. This season their head coach was taken out by the NFL, and they are the worst team . . . Even after a few games, they can't get their act together. This dev team had their head coach leave, and they aren't the worst. They've had a bad set back, but they know what they need to improve.





As for the trust issue . . . everyone falls on this. Remember Toyota had gained the trust of the world, but blew it when they tried to ol' coverup with the sticky gas pedal, and it was even more of a blow up when the domestic toyotas of the same model, year, type were found to be error free, but only their exports had the issue, and had to admit the practice that some Japanese companies favor domestic markets and make the best, while having a lesser model go out (but still quality) to the rest of the world.

Also lots of assumptions . .. usually lack of information causes the masses to fill in the blanks, shoot everyone likes a good speculation, heck sewing circles and rumors. There is even an entertainment industry based off of speculation on stars and popular people.

the devs maybe laughing at the craziness, but who knows if they are laughing at us.

I wouldn't be surprised thought. I dated a medical intern who worked in the ER, they'd joke about the patients, or the dying, and the dead. The families and those close would be aghast. But the medical personnel did that to keep sane. They saw and experience lots of things that would make the average person go nuts. The humor helped break up the tension, ease the stress.


the dev's don't have a passion for this. well maybe a possibility, call it later . . . but their dedication to getting the series back to its old days of glory even though its tanked from the start . . . its hard not to stick to something like without a slight belief or passion in what you are doing. Especially after several months.

the devs aren't ignoring bug posts, its been stated (several times) they have ways for us to let them know about bugs and issues . . .

granted though the devs are slow at answering questions or getting back to us. many people think its easy to answer questions. But remember companies that do get back to the fans / community often have a full time employee(S) dedicated to running the blogs, forums, twitter etc. And this is delicate, because answering a question will certainly be read the wrong way.

Also have to remember the east west thing, customer service may not be the best thing and they are learning. After all, remember when they didn't even have a rep or any updates about the game. At least now they get back to us every several weeks . . . that was better than before.

Take a look at here. Luthier and B6 have posted. Then not even a page later, someone posts information as gospel truth that is opposite of what the official original post is.

A strategical method is go for the end win. The devs know that if Bom is a working game, that will checkmate all the negative and bad blood of Clod and this botched first release of the new IL-2 series.

Rather than waste time dealing with us here and getting caught in speculation, they maybe just putting all resources into development. Luthier's post generated more questions than he answered. He's the lead guy, and I'd rather have him doing his work than taking 10+ minutes out of his day to answer questions that a year after a successful BOM release, no one won't really care to recall and won't really matter in the long run.

Because in the end, if they do turn this series around, most will forgive them.

[Storm of When]

^^^

Excellent post hiro, right in so many ways but to take RoF as an example they have an excellent way of disseminating information to the community, a similar small team (I`d guess) ,a similar audience, and they started with a heavily flawed project. So if they can approach us the purchaser with that approach why can`t these guys??. I actually think the game isn`t that bad, you can see it`ll get there given time and effort, but they really need to have a more amiable public face. A lot of the aggro on here isn`t so much down to the game it`s down to the communication, good communication is free bad communication cost money.

[Viking]

Originally Posted by hiro

hmm . . .


comparisons . . . come on, gotta be little more fair . . .

Codemasters is a top British gaming company with 800 employees, that began in the 80's busting out games for commodores and amigas to today's PC and PS triple era.

Their games range from mmorpg's to action, FPS's, rpg's, sports, those restaurant style games etc . . . they have experience in making their sounds and music . . .

That's a hell of a resume

F1 series started in 09' and they've been improving it this year. They got the license when Sony didn't renew it . . . (remember Sony has its hand in Gran Turismo series another excellent driving sim)

F1 has had alot of history and there are more games on this series than plane types in all WW 2 sims in history.

F1 has a rich history and lots of features, codes to draw from. Also F1 from 2009, the data for the cars and racers, and everything is up to date. F1 2012 is rated 9's by IGN, and it its a simulation with a steep learning curve.

Plus as others said its a solid game engine. Plus F1 doesn't have to model as many physics properties as a WW2 sim ( such as damage from various sources, atmospheric weather, 3D planes etc).

With 800 ninjas coding, you can be sure of a solid game release. To put things into perspective, Blizzard has 4500 employees, while Infinity Ward (call of duty) has 100 . . .


Now compare this our situation. No 800 employees. An impressive gaming resume to be sure, but you have to remember flight sims are very complicated compared to other games. At least a good one that models almost every aspect of combat flying.

Like the F1 series, they had IL-2 1946 to draw from. That's impressive also.

But remember the heart and mind (Oleg) was taken out, and the soul (Luthier and his team) is left.

For some reason, the working game engine of the Oleg era Storm of War wasn't used or had to be modified for some reason and a broke one was put in place.

And then there was a major OS change for the PC (XP, then to vista / win 7). Codemasters has experience in entire hardware / software / os systems, not just an OS change.

They have much more to deal with than the world of F1. They have WW 2. Also the information they have to chase is 50+ years old, and not recent like the 2009 F1 and history of F1. There is much more complicated things in a flight sim than a racing sim.

they don't have tons of games to draw from, like popular F1 series.

And the game engine they are using is damaged goods. Codemasters has a working engine.


let's be fair, that isn't even a good comparison. First off the games are wildly different. Second, the companies have different philosophy, and history. 3rd, to the Clod devs after the set back they've been handed to them . . .we're lucky (and blessed) they've even came out with a game on the caliber as CLoD. 4th, the number of manpower is vastly different.

Look at the Football Americano team, the Saints. They were an impressive team last season. This season their head coach was taken out by the NFL, and they are the worst team . . . Even after a few games, they can't get their act together. This dev team had their head coach leave, and they aren't the worst. They've had a bad set back, but they know what they need to improve.





As for the trust issue . . . everyone falls on this. Remember Toyota had gained the trust of the world, but blew it when they tried to ol' coverup with the sticky gas pedal, and it was even more of a blow up when the domestic toyotas of the same model, year, type were found to be error free, but only their exports had the issue, and had to admit the practice that some Japanese companies favor domestic markets and make the best, while having a lesser model go out (but still quality) to the rest of the world.

Also lots of assumptions . .. usually lack of information causes the masses to fill in the blanks, shoot everyone likes a good speculation, heck sewing circles and rumors. There is even an entertainment industry based off of speculation on stars and popular people.

the devs maybe laughing at the craziness, but who knows if they are laughing at us.

I wouldn't be surprised thought. I dated a medical intern who worked in the ER, they'd joke about the patients, or the dying, and the dead. The families and those close would be aghast. But the medical personnel did that to keep sane. They saw and experience lots of things that would make the average person go nuts. The humor helped break up the tension, ease the stress.


the dev's don't have a passion for this. well maybe a possibility, call it later . . . but their dedication to getting the series back to its old days of glory even though its tanked from the start . . . its hard not to stick to something like without a slight belief or passion in what you are doing. Especially after several months.

the devs aren't ignoring bug posts, its been stated (several times) they have ways for us to let them know about bugs and issues . . .

granted though the devs are slow at answering questions or getting back to us. many people think its easy to answer questions. But remember companies that do get back to the fans / community often have a full time employee(S) dedicated to running the blogs, forums, twitter etc. And this is delicate, because answering a question will certainly be read the wrong way.

Also have to remember the east west thing, customer service may not be the best thing and they are learning. After all, remember when they didn't even have a rep or any updates about the game. At least now they get back to us every several weeks . . . that was better than before.

Take a look at here. Luthier and B6 have posted. Then not even a page later, someone posts information as gospel truth that is opposite of what the official original post is.

A strategical method is go for the end win. The devs know that if Bom is a working game, that will checkmate all the negative and bad blood of Clod and this botched first release of the new IL-2 series.

Rather than waste time dealing with us here and getting caught in speculation, they maybe just putting all resources into development. Luthier's post generated more questions than he answered. He's the lead guy, and I'd rather have him doing his work than taking 10+ minutes out of his day to answer questions that a year after a successful BOM release, no one won't really care to recall and won't really matter in the long run.

Because in the end, if they do turn this series around, most will forgive them.

"As for the trust issue . . . everyone falls on this. Remember Toyota had gained the trust of the world, but blew it when they tried to ol' coverup with the sticky gas pedal, and it was even more of a blow up when the domestic toyotas of the same model, year, type were found to be error free, but only their exports had the issue, and had to admit the practice that some Japanese companies favor domestic markets and make the best, while having a lesser model go out (but still quality) to the rest of the world. "

That is not correct! The whole made up story about malfunctioning Toyotas was nothing less than a coup of the US auto industries delivered by the biased , owned!, US government. Toyota paid the fines but never admitted to the accusations simply because they were false. There never was anything wrong with Toyota!

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/...ota-study.html

[Stublerone]

Just a short not @ hero:

GT5, F1, DIRT or any other of these games, also available for consiles are nice to play but nowhere near simulation. They call themselves racing sim, but they aren't. They are fun to drive and they could also be difficult and the speed in F1 is quite nice, but it simply isn't a real simulation.

I do not want to make these games look bad with this comment, because sometimes it could be better to go a bit more arcade to get an immersive game for everyone. And the fact, that these games also need training and learning is the best development, you can get. I like these racers, because they really need training, although they are a bit arcade. You find other genres, that you can simply play without a need of learning.

So I cannot say anything about the race genre, as all sorts of racers have its fun factor and difficulty levels. So it is a good history, but this is nearly the only genre, where all players like it near to reality. This genre is a healthy ones and you can see it in the quantity of playable games and also the quantity of new real sims in the horizon like project cars, rfactor2, gtr3, etc (although project cars could turn out to be not as reastic as they perhaps intended, it could chance to a better gt5, because of the low quantity of real racesim fans, taking part in this project; but we will see).

To optimize f1 with a functioning engine and with this amount of experts in coding games is realistic. But il2 is much more sim and the team is smaller and the mechanics behind it makes it difficult. You cannot say, that they are without faults. I think they also know it, but lets see the future. Another small sim developer shows, that a working engine is essential. As soon as they have it, we could really see, how fast they can react on community and how fast they can implement new features or new content. We will see!

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by kristorf

Amazing isn't it, Codemasters released F1 2012 last week and there were complaints about certain things, amazingly they have released their second patch in three days.

Extract from something called a 'read me' (never heard of those, have you??)

''We are working on other issues you have reported via the forums, Facebook and Twitter and are working to fix them as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please note that we are still collecting feedback via our Technical Assistance forums and do encourage you to post your issues there being sure to include as much information as possible. ''


How's that for customer service??

one obvious difference, the f1 2012 game (and the previous products in that line) were console games for xbox, playstation etc.. as well, and the pc version of that game brings in a relatively minor revenue element of the overall product being designed (but the overall funding is across all platforms). many of those console games can have 60 to 80 programers working on them, as compared to the 10 or 12 working with luthier/oleg's project. the revenue and budgets for those console games are huge, tens of millions of dollars more then for pc games. additionally, the il2 flightsim series and SoW/CoD/BoM series is a niche product in the pc market itself, so serves an even smaller customer base (compared to mainstream pc shoot'emup and driving games)

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by hiro

hmm . . .


comparisons . . . come on, gotta be little more fair . . . .

we might need an index and some headings, with subcategories, for your posts to make it readable

[kristorf]

Regardless of the game type/company or platform (although it's on PC with all the problems of spec and compatability) my post was more
to show that Codemasters listened to identified problems and have done several things quickely that 1C fail to do on a regular basis.
They listened to what was being posted on forums
They answered and informed the most important aspect of the whole thing (the paying customer) of what was happening and
They addressed the issues by releasing the required patches (even if they may be interim) without going down the
road of claiming to have fixed/improved things by simply switching them off or dumbing down.
They also have not made countless promises that they have either no intention of answering or fixing.

1C/MG could look at this model and learn, or carry on with the Ostrich mentality of bury the head in the sand and hope all goes well.

[NLS61]

Originally Posted by kristorf

Regardless of the game type/company or platform (although it's on PC with all the problems of spec and compatability) my post was more
to show that Codemasters listened to identified problems and have done several things quickely that 1C fail to do on a regular basis.
They listened to what was being posted on forums
They answered and informed the most important aspect of the whole thing (the paying customer) of what was happening and
They addressed the issues by releasing the required patches (even if they may be interim) without going down the
road of claiming to have fixed/improved things by simply switching them off or dumbing down.
They also have not made countless promises that they have either no intention of answering or fixing

1C/MG could look at this model and learn, or carry on with the Ostrich mentality of bury the head in the sand and hope all goes well.

Sorry but Codemaster had a seriously flawed product with the first F1 sim.
And they did not do much to rectify that.
I rember one patch and that was i, f1 2010 was a beta also just like cod now.

[raaaid]

Originally Posted by NLS61

Sorry but Codemaster had a seriously flawed product with the first F1 sim.
And they did not do much to rectify that.
I rember one patch and that was i, f1 2010 was a beta also just like cod now.

totally agreed one of the worse arcade games i ever bought

at least i KNOW BY EXPERIENCE maddox will give me in the future a working game

codemasters did one patch for f1 and forgot about us