Il2 Battle of Stalingrad on Steam

[Nefaro]

Also...why were these beta testers getting material favors from the President of 777? Throttles? trips? Free server? Etc.??? Talk about unethical...

In Russia, developers develop YOU!

[RyanE]

Also...why were these beta testers getting material favors from the President of 777? Throttles? trips? Free server? Etc.??? Talk about unethical...

This!  I see it all the time now.  There is almost no division between beta testers and internal quality control any more.  That is exactly why so many games come out in a sorry state.  It goes straight from a programmers hands to a beta test.  Beta testers act like one of the company's employees.  They moderate forums, provide tech support, build scenarios, etc.  In this, they have gone from beta testers to unpaid employees.  Beta testers should be regular customers get  an advanced copy of the software and are used for real-world field testing.  The only comp they should get is free or low-cost software.  And they usually have no training or experience in testing and quality control.  How many times on game forums do we hear someone ask..."how did this get by beta testing, its so obvious".  Because these guys are real QA testers.

It leads to abuse of customers by so-called beta testers who think they are employees.  It also leads to abuse by the SW companies towards the testers.  You see this at BFC where once someone becomes a beta tester, all criticism goes away and they start talking on the forums like the are employees.  At companies like BFC, beta testers run the forums, with only occasional input from developers.  I know several companies that have specifically recruited their most effective critics as beta testers in order to silence them.  And its worked. SES was well known for it.

[MengJiao]

Also...why were these beta testers getting material favors from the President of 777? Throttles? trips? Free server? Etc.??? Talk about unethical...

This!  I see it all the time now.

  It's a fight to the monetary exhaustion of sim-builders versus people who are very grumpy.  Not really all that interesting.  A similar thing happened with Rome II: a fight to exhaustion of Rome II builders versus people who are very grumpy.  I thought it was novel at the time and now I realize it happens all the time.

[sandman2575]

This!  I see it all the time now.  There is almost no division between beta testers and internal quality control any more.  That is exactly why so many games come out in a sorry state.  It goes straight from a programmers hands to a beta test.

And increasingly, it feels like the "beta" phase is being skipped in favor of Early Access (see JH's posts about Gal Civ III). From the dev/publisher standpoint, the genius of EA is that customers essentially pay to be beta testers.

[RyanE]

Yeah, but EA state of a game is usually barely Alpha state, if anything.  You are asking your customers to be the QA department.  Its not even beta.  beta is supposed to be fully functional.  Alpha is supposed to be fully featured.  What we are getting in EA is ususally not even fully featured.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

There's got to be something more going on behind the scenes.  Early on in the pre-access cycle, players had the ability to customize their graphics settings.  This was yanked in favour of 4 pre-set options.  At the time, the developers stated the reason was the tech support team was getting too many complaints about poor performance from people trying to push their cards too hard.  One of the less diplomatic of the devs even came out and basically said most users are too stupid to properly understand their PCs and we don't want to waste time dealing with them. 

Well, a Russian player has been archiving each version of the game release as it updates and he figured out a way to pull some files from an archived version and allow the players to go in and customize graphics options.  He posted the files needed as well as a how-to guide and was nearly universally praised on the forums for his efforts by other players. 

As the lack of gfx customization is one of the more common complaints, it would be natural enough to assume the devs would adopt the changes.  Natural enough were this any other dev team than the BOS group.  They immediately clamped down and re-wrote a few things so the fix would no longer work. 

They really do want total, centralized control over all aspects of this game.  I shudder to think what happens when (if) they finally release the full mission builder.  I can only guess at the restrictions that'll be in place on that beast.

A user called Desode posted this over at SimHQ.  Makes for some interesting reading.  I knew that 1C had screwed over Gaijin, but I didn't realize just how much.

There is More to this then you know,, When 1C Screwed over Gaijin with Il2 BOP ,,that's where this all started and where its coming from and where its going.
There was a Big falling out between the two because as I said before in other threads,,Gaijin wanted to support their fan base with changes and fixes but Since 1C owns the Il2 license they would not pay for Gaijin to make Updates to support what the Sim Oriented Base wanted changed.

1C was Against red outs and Black outs and FM tweaks !
Gaijin wanted to update all these things for the fan base and release the fixes on Console for IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey.
Since this was a licensed 1C il2 game , 1C refused.

Gaijin said fine then, we will pay for at least a update to the ps3 version out of our own pockets !
So all the Dev team chipped in their own individual money to pay for that update. A update which added in Fm Changes and Red Outs and Black outs, PC Flight Stick Support and other things that the Full Sim game Mode Community wanted.

Then 1C got even more upset,,,but gaijin was smart enough to know their contract.
Lucky for Gaijin they had in the contract that it was still their work and that they could take the work and use it under another published name and leave 1C with their work intact..

That became WOP on the PC,,, But the Current game engine ( Dagor Engine ver 1 ? ) had reached it's limitations and they couldn't create a FMB under that build.
The PC crowd got upset over that and Gaijin went and moved on to WT with the Same Core build which had close to 100 FMs from the 1C Original Il2 1946 planes set.
I can Only Imagine How STEAMING Mad 1C was !!! because in all honesty Gaijin came out of it better off.


Hence,, I don't believe for a minute that Jason and 777 studios had any clue what was going on when they got involved in this mess ! they had a working relationship with 1C when they joined to further publish ROF,, but at that point in time ROF had been pretty Much completely created already.
So you see, 1C did basically the Exact Same thing they did to Gaijin with 777 on the BOS venture !
Difference is that 1C had Developers in the Mix during the creation of BOS and they also held the Il2 License over 777's heads !


That's what this is all about ! I would bet everything on that too.

1C is the Most Greedy and Backhanded publishing company in the PC arena.
They don't give a Damn about who they hurt or what their fan base wants.
They will step on anyone's throat to make a Buck !

So there is some background on that, and when you add that into the mix you then start to see why BOS is what it is and why it is going where it is going !

It's HONESTLY time to let the Il2 name Go !
Let's be honest here,, it's just a franchise name, and we need a Developer that can make what the Sim crowd wants and needs but just under another name.
Let 1C go down in flames to where they deserve to be, which is a Fiery Pit of Ruin !
How many times will we let them use the Il2 Franchise name to rip us all off and screw everyone over ???



Most gamers will never hear this story and they will never know what kind company 1C is,, but for those of you that do read this,, remember it and take it to heart.

1C does not deserve another dime from any of us EVER AGAIN..
They just keep dangling the Il2 franchise name in front of us and take our money and then Screw over everyone that was involved in that current Il2 title all the way down to the consumers.

[Jarhead0331]

I don't know if I buy all that...from reading that email exchange posted between Jason of 777 and two "beta testers", Jason didn't come across as an innocent well-meaning developer being taken advantage of by the big bad publisher.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I don't think he's innocent but I do suspect he's now realizing what a corner he's painted into.  I think he may just be doing whatever he can (no matter how unethical) to recoup his investment costs.

[Nefaro]

Has anyone actually been playing this in Multi-Player?  Or has the grind pretty much eliminated that for the moment?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I played it for a bit on the Syndicate "full-real" server but I quit because the stupid "normal" or "expert" realism presets means it's anything but "full-real".

As of now, it's impossible for the server to globally set options beyond what's allowed in the pre-sets.  Even under expert settings, players can turn on GPS settings in the map.  This shows the player exactly where they are on the map and also shows all enemy positions within about a 1km radius around the player.  Playing as a ground-pounder is kind of boring because people just turn on the map assist and instantly find ground targets.  The fighters turn it on so they can find ground pounders trying to fly low and slow to stay hidden, then they just vulch. 

If you're into Air-quake, I guess it's all right and there are a reasonable number of people playing.  It's not my thing though.

[Nefaro]

I played it for a bit on the Syndicate "full-real" server but I quit because the stupid "normal" or "expert" realism presets means it's anything but "full-real".

As of now, it's impossible for the server to globally set options beyond what's allowed in the pre-sets.  Even under expert settings, players can turn on GPS settings in the map.  This shows the player exactly where they are on the map and also shows all enemy positions within about a 1km radius around the player.  Playing as a ground-pounder is kind of boring because people just turn on the map assist and instantly find ground targets.  The fighters turn it on so they can find ground pounders trying to fly low and slow to stay hidden, then they just vulch. 

If you're into Air-quake, I guess it's all right and there are a reasonable number of people playing.  It's not my thing though.

Yeah.   >:(   After investigating, I see that they have no mission editor, no server-specific setting options, etc, etc.  This seems increasingly bare-bones when it comes to such things.

[TacticalWargames]

I noticed Jason had a distinct lack of customer relation skills when he was on the Rise of Flight forum over at Sim HQ. Think I had a little run in with him at one point. Obviously still heavy handed and defends the games way to aggressively.

[Nefaro]

I may have done something stupid in picking up the base package.

But I seem to have finally started playing multi-player ROF at the worst possible time this past week.  The servers have been almost dead other than last Sunday IIRC.  I'm sure many of the MP simmers are doing BOS right now, so I jumped on the bandwagon. 

Not looking forward to grinding some missions out to unlock stuff for MP and the unimaginative "Quake Sim" generic MP missions that devolve into camping out over someone's airfield.  Nor the ridiculous price tag on the two extra aircraft DLC.  WTF is up with that?!  But I feel the need to go where the targets are.

I also recently ordered a CH Fighterstick, throttle, and pedals.  Been wanting a better setup with more of everything so may as well push it to eleven.

[Nefaro]

I played a short Multi-player stint after running through some single-player missions to unlock the planes.  I think you only need to do the first four tutorial missions to unlock your sheeit, but the real grind will be for the extra weapons loadout options.  ::)

IL2:BOS is definitely thin on quality content.  I say quality because it does have that random mission generator.  It seems to be an improved version of the one used in ROF's Beta campaign to create missions.  I've seen the one in ROF give me the exact same mission and route, duplicated within a very few campaign days.  Then there's the insta-spawn enemy squadrons.  At least it has some randomization, I suppose, and hopefully a bit more variety in this version.

The game obviously uses the ROF engine.  Down to the settings menus and hotkeys being the same.  Minus the missing custom difficulty settings and mission editor.  The latter is needed the most right now, for multi-player, because the MP mission is just a pair of airfields set up too close to each other where people will be shooting at you on take-off.  If you manage to survive, the action can be fun if without much purpose other than the aforementioned "Quake" running & gunning.  I did see people in Stukas and Sturmoviks but they seemed to be attacking the airfield spawns as opposed to accomplishing any attacks on ground units.  Not even sure if they get points for doing so.  Either way, I don't think you get any Unlocks for scoring in MP... so you're forced to do the random mission generator if you want to unlock each plane's armaments.

Despite all it's shortcomings regarding content and development decisions, the flight and damage modelling is quite nice as far as I've seen.  And gorgeous.  I watched in awe as my Yak-1 was shot down by a pair of pouncing FW190s.  The tail lost a few pieces, then it popped off a couple seconds later.  I did my best to lessen the impact, being so close to the ground, but when I hit the thing rolled and then skid sideways through a patch of trees along a road.  One of the trees busted another larger chunk out of the back of my fuselage with bits flying, made it spin again, and then there was a small explosion as it finally settled.  A smoke cloud shooting out and up. 

If the developers ever manage to devote similar energy to increasing the content value of the game as they put into the audio, visual, and animation details then it could be pretty awesome.  Right now it's like a relatively short-term sugar buzz.


ps: Flying ze German planes is obviously the popular thing to do on the Multi-player servers, as they have speed and climb advantages over the Russkie aircraft in general and their energy retention in a hard turn isn't much worse.  Also more ammo.  Better overall.  So I started playing the underdog despite my enjoyment of B&Z.

[Yskonyn]

Congrats on the CH gear, Nef! Do you have them already or are they still on their way?

I have been using my CH Pro Pedals for over ten years now and they're still going strong. Quality gear, that.