So, now that Rise of Flight is on Steam...

[Gusington]

True. The anonymous pilot who killed me was being kind by showing me around. Until things went south.

[Tuna]

hmmmpf.. I was intentionally diving my plane into the ground because I did not want to spawn in the air.. and Gus chooses that moment to hop in back!

Now the other incident.. clouds.. well, nevermind..  :o

We had a few good bombing runs hurting the NME with SDR providing escort..

[Nefaro]

What's the multiplayer like, anyway?  Is it an open battlefield type of thing or pretty strict mission type of thing?

[Gusington]

I've only played a little MP but it depends on the server and how much your friends want to stick to the issued mission.

Tuna I was keeping you anonymous! :)

[Tuna]

What's the multiplayer like, anyway?  Is it an open battlefield type of thing or pretty strict mission type of thing?

Depends on the Server you go on.. New Wings has three different flavors with different expertise (though I haven't bee on in awhile).. but it would have different missions with different objectives.. you could choose what you want to do. Bomb.. Dogfight.. Recon... can be fun with a group of people on TS together..

[Father Ted]

What's the multiplayer like, anyway?  Is it an open battlefield type of thing or pretty strict mission type of thing?

Like Tuna says, it depends on the server.  There are two servers (Fast Food and Flying Circus) which offer a down and dirty dogfight environment.  These are referred to as "airquake" by some - it's basically one huge furball where death and success happen pretty frequently and getting back into the fight after death takes tens of seconds.

The two other most populated servers are "Syndicate" and "New Wings:Wargrounds".  Here you'll find a more leisurely pace, with missions set up for bombing, recon, and so on.  The downer is that you may fly for half an hour and not see anyone else - and you  may well be shot down by someone you didn't see after half an hour of nothing happening.  Then you have to respawn and spend ten minutes climbing to altitude before looking for another scrap.

Although this latter is my preferred MP experience, I can understand that others may well find it boring.

I would also say that it's well worth gaining a bit of SP experience before jumping online.

[Nefaro]

Good God man!  They want $40 for the base ROF game still, even 20% discounted?

For some reason, I thought they had a free-to-play package with a couple aircraft in it.   Bleh.. I should probably just wait until there's a big sale on the non-Steam version anyway.

[JasonPratt]

Good God man!  They want $40 for the base ROF game still, even 20% discounted?

For some reason, I thought they had a free-to-play package with a couple aircraft in it.   Bleh.. I should probably just wait until there's a big sale on the non-Steam version anyway.

Or a big sale on the Steam version. ;)

[Father Ted]

Good God man!  They want $40 for the base ROF game still, even 20% discounted?

For some reason, I thought they had a free-to-play package with a couple aircraft in it.   Bleh.. I should probably just wait until there's a big sale on the non-Steam version anyway.

You can still get the F2P version direct from 777.  The one on Steam comes with the Channel map ($20) and 8 planes (+ the two "free" ones) so it's not that bad a deal

[Toonces]

You guys need to be careful about paying full price for RoF products.  The single player isn't all that great, and with 777 moving on to Battle of Stalingrad, RoF is not going to be moving forward at a rapid pace; a lot of the player base will likely move on in the next year or so.

RoF: ICE edition is routinely on sale for $10 on numerous aviation game websites.  I'd keep your eye open for that, and then cherry pick planes from the 777 store when they go on sale (fairly routinely as well).

RoF has a pretty obnoxious online DRM, so I don't see any advantage to going the Steam route in this case TBH.

[MengJiao]

You guys need to be careful about paying full price for RoF products.  The single player isn't all that great, and with 777 moving on to Battle of Stalingrad, RoF is not going to be moving forward at a rapid pace; a lot of the player base will likely move on in the next year or so.

RoF: ICE edition is routinely on sale for $10 on numerous aviation game websites.  I'd keep your eye open for that, and then cherry pick planes from the 777 store when they go on sale (fairly routinely as well).

RoF has a pretty obnoxious online DRM, so I don't see any advantage to going the Steam route in this case TBH.

  Yep.  I moved on to CLOD and am looking forward to Battle of Stalingrad.  No more RoF for me.

[Staggerwing]

How is CLOD these days? I avoided it because of all the horror stories but I'm starting to hear more positive things.

[Nefaro]

Awww well.  I folded and picked up the Steam version just because it has more for less.  The Iron Cross edition was on sale at Gamersgate.. but still $30.  ??? 

I thought ROF received some semblance of a dynamic single-player campaign?  That's the main reason I picked it up.  Did I just make a mistake?

[Staggerwing]

Not that I know of.

Over Flanders' Fields (built on the bones of MS Combat Sim 3) is supposed to have a great SP campaign but I can't verify that.

[Toonces]

ROF has a "beta career" that is a little bit of fun, but will not sustain you long term.  It's a random mission generator, but because of performance issues the generator is very skimpy on the number of planes it will generate; you might get 4v4 dogfights or something like that.  Also, it's not like OFF in that the enemy planes are spawned when you get close to the mission area.  They aren't doing their own missions all along like Falcon 4 or OFF. 

There is an add-on called Patrick Wilson's Campaign Generator that is better than the included career mode, but I had trouble getting it to work and I haven't tried it in several months.

Over Flanders Fields is a much stronger single player experience. 

I warned you that the RoF single player wasn't a good reason to buy RoF unless it was on a heavy sale, didn't I?   ::)