IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad Discussion

[IronX]

So the 1.05 update has arrived.

Most notable are the addition of the Bf-110E2(to purchasers of Battle of Moscow EA), crewable tanks, and the support for flying with mouse control.

Crewable tanks already? That's kind of surprising. Not sure what to make of this in a flight sim. Hopefully it works well.

I do love those twin engine aircraft. Looking forward to seeing how the Ju-88 looks when it's completed.

[Skoop]

Just spent the past hour playing it, the tanks are surprisingly well done.  Only the PzIII and T34 are playable, but they have interiors and decent physics.  You can drive and gun which is great for playability, I hate when you have to have an AI drive in arma and then they just lumber around when you give them commands.  The environment actually looks nice down low, and even the trees block line of sight, unlike combined arms for dcs.  It should make for some interesting scenarios.

The 110 is pretty nice, probably the best version I've seen modeled to date.  You can select additional armor, a 1000kg bomb, or 2 500kg bombs with 4 50kg bombs for load outs.  I was hoping for the additional gunpods with the 37mm, but that's a later version of the 110 that will come with another installment down the road.

[IronX]

Nice. As I've not played since the new summer map update, I'll definitely have to check it out now.

[RyanE]

I was very pee-ed off over how the release was handled and the attitude of the devs.  Bordered on shameful for promises made and not delivered.  But I have to say the sim is pretty good.  The devs have put a lot of effort into it when I thought for sure it would be abandoned.  I give them credit for that. 

I do think they still want it to be a War Thunder-type game.  It reminds me of Jutland and Storm Eagle Studios and its attempt to go after Steam.  I think putting any effort into tanks and mouse control wastes effort that should be used to stay with its core market.  Trying to take a hard core-type sim and put features in that might draw the WT crowd in will just push their core hardcore players away, while not really drawing in a new crowd.

[Nefaro]

Some of the War Thunder crowd have slowly begun inching into proper flight sim territory, looking for better representations, without the need for them to dumb it down too much.

You can tell they are getting new blood this way by the regular forum posts asking about joysticks (people never having owned any before) for the sim in question.  They also often mention playing stuff like WT or other arcade ones being their introduction.

Maybe the devs are just attempting to make it look a bit more familiar to the new customers who came from more casual flight sims, I dunno.  But they shouldn't try to compete with the Arcade market.. just stick with what they already do and improve upon that.

[Skoop]

I actually like the inclusion of tanks and mouse control.  It allows me to take part in some of the scheduled MP coop events from my work laptop when I'm stuck at work and don't have my full set up.  With my laptop I can atleast man a tank or drop a bomb from a stuka, don't get me wrong, I'd much rather fly from home with my hotas and pedals....It bridges a gap for me.  But you guys are correct, the devs have been trying to tap into the WT crowd.

I wouldn't worry about it, the most common server settings in mp are full real, the sim scales to both beginner and expert settings like dcs.  There's no preference to beginner or expert crowds, just making it more marketable to a larger audience.

The engine does full real flight so well, it's probably the main redeeming quality that allowed it to weather the storm of a rocky release.  I hope they do one more eastern front installment for all the late war stuff then go pacific or MED.  I wouldn't be surprised if they go West, pacific, or med next because it's been a goal to make the sim more appealing to US / western Europeans.

I'd love to see a p-47 jug or a corsair with this engine.

[Skoop]

Oh and I just noticed that BOS is in the steam sale for half off.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/307960/

[Father Ted]

Some of the War Thunder crowd have slowly begun inching into proper flight sim territory, looking for better representations, without the need for them to dumb it down too much.

You can tell they are getting new blood this way by the regular forum posts asking about joysticks (people never having owned any before) for the sim in question.  They also often mention playing stuff like WT or other arcade ones being their introduction.

Maybe the devs are just attempting to make it look a bit more familiar to the new customers who came from more casual flight sims, I dunno.  But they shouldn't try to compete with the Arcade market.. just stick with what they already do and improve upon that.

Must be a difficult balancing act for them, though.  The market for a bollock-hard, you-need-a-HOTAS-and-TIR combat flight sim must be pretty small.  So if they aim just for that they have to charge a huge amount per unit to make a living.  I can see that they would want to try to broaden the appeal, and shift more units at a lower cost - especially as the realistic cost for a hard-core sim might put off the hard-core simmers.

And as you said, there are signs that people are "upgrading" from WT.

Plus - TANKS!  But is it really T34s v PzIIIs?  Seems to be a slight Russian bias there...

[RyanE]

Or a German bias...The East Front is where most of the large armor battles were fought.

[Father Ted]

Well I'd rather be sitting inside a (virtual) T34.

[Nefaro]

I'm generally alright with them easing the less experienced flight sim noobs into it by including features to do so.  Hell.. I think some flight sims have been focusing way too much on clickable cockpit buttons and letting other areas wither.

I'm all for having the mode with automated engine management & visual tags enabled.  Not only is it easier on noobs, I have to spend less familiarization time before getting to the real reason I play the things - blowing shit up while tossing a plane around the sky.

[Nefaro]

Hrmm.. after seeing Magz' vid on the new stuff, I think it's probably a good idea to expand the flexibility if they want to grow the sim.  Huge ground & air combined arms server maps, running constantly, could be pretty damn fun even for the most casual settings & definitely draw more players.

[RyanE]

But isn't War Thunder already doing...and doing relatively well.  WoT seems to be heading there also.  Again, if they were the first ones to do this, I can see the uniqueness in doing it.  But others are already getting the investments and establishing themselves.  A slow crawl to the business model will fail.  And they only start repairing major damage to their core audience.

[Skoop]

The main thing it has over WT is that it does full real a hell of a lot better.  So it's like a graduation from the arcade stuff. 

It has created more activity on the servers, the 2 official servers hosting capture the flag missions with moving frontlines have been a blast.  It's so much more rewarding lining up your stuka with gunpods and plinking a tank with a human driving it especially when he's got a bead on a friendly PzIII. 

The 110 has been great too, I love lobbing the 1000kg bomb right onto the top of T34s.  I actually got a Yak kill in it.  Great for taking on IL2s, the 110's cannons will shred anything unfortunate enough to fly in front of your nose.

[Nefaro]

But isn't War Thunder already doing...and doing relatively well.  WoT seems to be heading there also.  Again, if they were the first ones to do this, I can see the uniqueness in doing it.  But others are already getting the investments and establishing themselves.  A slow crawl to the business model will fail.  And they only start repairing major damage to their core audience.

WT and the like catch a lot of hell from customers, for numerous things.  One being the problems with their 12v12 style one-off matches, and the ensuing problems with the matchmaking balance itself.  Another is their free-to-play model which forces players to grind through types they sometimes don't want to bother with and tend to nickle & dime them for the later era stuff.

In other words, it has a completely different marketing model and multi-player matches.  Plus the FM & DM are much better in IL-2. 

While I occasionally enjoy flying stuff in WT for it's ease and getting into multi-player very quickly, some of the aforementioned down sides to it can be quite glaring.  I see players complain about them constantly.