Anyone else OD'd on Op Flashpoint?

[Toad]

Originally posted by Spitboy:
And the air units are - well - pretty laughable as far as realism goes.

I hate sounding like a cheerleader - but seeing OFP makes me really appreciate the attention to realism in WW2OL, even if it's rougher than a cheese grater at the moment.

Just d/l'd the OFP demo but haven't played yet.

Tell me more about OFP FM's please. Are they lacking the ability to fly continuous 5g - 90 degree bank circle fights? Does pushing the rudder all the way to the floor result in about 1 degree of yaw and no loss of airspeed? Can you fly 10 hours on one tank of gas? Are they missing the belly-button view of the instrument panel which is all but unreadable in other views?

Yeah, something is laughable here. You figure out what it is.  

[DB603]

S!

 Also bought OFP.I like it.Forests,bushes,houses to hide in...You name it.FM of aircraft/helos wasn't even intended to be hard core realistic.Emphasis is on troops and co-operation.OFP fills that slot well.Gunnery is nicely modeled with recoil etc.No Quake "I shoot Ya while I run"-style ;)Overall impression was good.Tested MP,worked fine and was fun.To the US release version there will be more MP options and better MP code too.These enhancements will be as FREE upgrade(download) for us Euros later

[Spitboy]

Well, toad, you get in the helo, or A10, and you just hold down the forward arrow to move forward. Use the mouse to turn left or right. For helos, q and z for up/down. That's about the complexity of it in a nutshell. No blackouts, no Gs, no instruments per se. Point-and-click flying.

The Apache couldn't get above 140 meters in alt, since that's the limit of the graphics engine apparently, and the terrain is shoeboxed in. Same with the A10.

Tell ya what. You go fly in OFP. Then you come back here and tell me if you still honestly feel WW2OL is more laughable as a flight sim than OFP.

Go ahead. I dare ya.

If you'll note, I SAID the game was fun. It's not gonna give me a realism fix in anything but possibly infantry fighting, where it does excel.

I look at the WW2OL FM as a work in progress, built around a completely new type of flight modelling. Sure it's got problems. The Rats admit it. However, instead of slapping on a fix, they want to find out where their model is in error and fix the root cause of the problem. I respect that. You, however, look at the WW2OL FM and laugh.

That's fine, though I kind of expected a little more from you, toad, since I've seen you post over the years and have a lot of respect for what you say.

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Spitboy ]

[fscott]

Something tells me that if WW2OL never had an "air combat" element, then the WW2OL haters on this board would actually like it, or in the least they would be less harsh to it.  I have the suspicion that WW2OL is almost a threat to their beloved AH.  So they feel the need to bash it.  Of course, it could be because WW2OL touted itself as being the definitive everything including air combat sim.  Which it isn't by any means.  It could also be the ties to Dale and team, you know they all came from the same bag of apples.

So I think whenever someone bashes WW2OL, there's more to it tahn just a raw unfinished game.  It makes it even sweeter to bash them because it's Dale's old team, and WW2OL touted itself as being the end all of sims.
So I agree, and encourage the bashers to continue to bash. I understand where they are coming from.

Personally I like to take an objective approach to evaluating a game, even tho sometimes I may get too excited, but those parts that got me excited, still do.  The difference now is that after you play a game for some time, you begin to get annoyed by it's shortcomings.  Go to the ww2ol boards and look for my posts.  I defend WW2OL, and I bash it as well.  And I bash it hard when it comes to realism fixes that need to be implemented.  

And the same will hold true for OFP.  I will *probably* get OFP before it ever releases to the USA simply because I never hold off on any game regardless of what I say.  I cannot hold myself back from buying anything military oriented.  If/when I do buy OFP before September, the first thing I will look at is the multiplayer aspect of it.  If that has major shortcomings, as some people are saying, then it will sit on the shelf until Codemeisters fix it with a patch.  The mp is the only part I care about.

[Toad]

No, you missed it.

Perhaps that's my fault. I'll try to explain.

Specifically, I found this statement of yours equally laughable to the OFP FM: (which I still have not flown. It wants DX8 and I've decided to wait a bit longer till I attempt to totally pork my present system with that.     So, it may be a while.)

Spitboy: but seeing OFP makes me really appreciate the attention to realism in WW2OL..

Sorry, Spitboy. That made me laugh out loud.

I am not condemning the CR's. I am not condemning WW2OL or writing it off. (I bought more RAM. I keep checking in.     ) Clearly there is potential. I have said many times I'm strongly in suport of ANYONE attempting to do WW2 ACM on a PC.

You've seen my posts in "that other forum" in support of the CR's (AND their FM, even as it is at present) I assume?

Nonetheless, the FM, especially, was released to soon. The attention of which you speak wasn't lavished on it like it should have been. That FM is a far cry yet from realism... and several other aspects of the "air" part of the game as well. Better to have held it back like the Naval aspects than to show it like this with its figurative trousers around its figurative ankles IMO.

I think you know this to be true. I certainly believe it.

Anyway..

For you to come in and say that the OFP FM (however bad it may be) lacks the "attention to realism" found in WW2OL indeed made me laugh out loud.

What we have here is two games, one in free Demo, the other in unintentional free Beta. Neither FM is ready for "prime time".

We had a saying in the AF "Obvious to even the most casual observer". It was used whenever someone overlooked an undeniable, unmistakeable truth.

We both know the WW2OL FM isn't realistic (yet). What I see is you denying that obvious truth here.    

That's what made me laugh.

Hope this explains it.

Note: Once again, I am not trashing WW2OL or the CR's. I'm simply stating the obvious. I think they'll get it worked out. Rome wasn't built in a day (or two years) either.

If you have the horsepower to run it, you can have fun playing. And that's what games are for, aren't they?

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]

[Spitboy]

For you to come in and say that the OFP FM (however bad it may be) lacks the "attention to realism" found in WW2OL indeed made me laugh out loud.

I simply cannot believe, toad, that a rational guy like you cannot distinguish between an honest attempt at realism and an arcade game. I honestly fail to see why my comment is so funny to you. Maybe it's because you're talking about a sim you have yet to play (OFP).

See honest attempt at realism in that paragraph. It's the key point. Yes, there is a problem with e-retention in WW2OL, and probably one with drag as well. This is known. This is admitted by the Rats. This is being worked on. Aside from that acknowledged issue, and aside from aesthetic things that are not to your personal liking like the gauge view, what exactly is so laughable about WW2OL's air arm? Once the e-retention/drag issue is fixed, do you really feel the WW2OL flight model will be that unrealistic compared to AH and WB? Honestly? I may not have 100s of hours in type, but to me they don't feel all that different, even now, aside from the E issue.

 

What we have here is two games, one in free Demo, the other in unintentional free Beta. Neither FM is ready for "prime time".

OFP is on the shelves in boxed format, released June 22 (not in US yet, but you can order it). It's missing some features, but nowhere did I see Codemasters say the flight model is still in progress. What you see is what you get.

And that's FINE, keep in mind. It's a ground combat sim, and a fun one. The air arm is there only to provide a diversion and for fun.

 

We both know the WW2OL FM isn't realistic (yet). What I see is you denying that obvious truth here.

I'm denying nothing, for cryin' out loud.   I never claimed WW2OL's air arm was the be-all, end-all. I admit it has faults, here and elsewhere.

My POINT was seeing how arcade-like a flight model can be made me appreciate the effort the Rats put into their unfinished FM. They could have gone the same route as OFP, and made a flight model so dumbed down and simple even a toddler could fly it (and it really is that simple!). The smart money would have encouraged them to do so, since they are shooting for mass market appeal. Why make it hard to turn away all those casual gamers? But they didn't - they tried for realism. That earns my respect.

Let me ask you out of curiosity - how much time do you have in planes in WW2OL?

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: Spitboy ]

[Nash]

Nah, you wont see the OFP FM develop into anything more than it is...

It aint trying to be a flight sim... Those vehicles are there only to give you a certain degree of control over your movement - that's all. Kinda like WWIIOnline is a tank sim that just happens to have infantry and planes  

And Spitboy - yer cheerleeding *harsh*, dude   ... wait till they fix the game and *then* tout all of its many wonderful features. As it is, we all know about it already - it's broken.

I'd love to get info and updates from y'all regarding patches, what they've done to speed the game up, implementation of new features, resources, ranks, mission creation et al. But there's been none to speak of so far, and the rest of this stuff just isn't news to anybody.

Potential? Yeah... perhaps. Same can be said for a lottery ticket. But as it stands today, WWIIOL is a pretty shallow and lacking game and from my perspective there aint a whole lot more that can be said about it.

[Nash]

This just caught my eye:

 

Once the e-retention/drag issue is fixed, do you really feel the WW2OL flight model will be that unrealistic compared to AH and WB? Honestly?

They might also wanna look at the fact that planes are using their landing gear to flip tanks. I'm no expert but I gotta hunch this is wrong.  

[Spitboy]

And Spitboy - yer cheerleeding *harsh*, dude  

See, that's the thing Nash. I really don't think I'm cheerleading at all. Criminy, I bet the Rats wish I would shut up on lots of things - I'm constantly hammering them for their rough release, for their bad PR, their mishandling of cheats/abusers, questioning if they'll survive, etc., etc.

However, because I like to think of myself as a fair and objective person (it's the journalist in me I guess), I also try to focus on some of the positives, of which I think WW2OL has a few, not the least of which is potential to be a great game if CRS can survive this release. I do the exact same thing when posting my thoughts about AH, or AW.

And I did the exact same thing when I posted my thoughts here on OFP after trying it out. You yourself agree the FM is arcade-like. My point was, I appreciate the fact that the Rats did not dumb things down for mass-market appeal in thier flight model. Then I got into a nice debate with Toad over the difference between dumbing things down and unfinished flight model, which I think is an important distinction.

Simple as that. If you wanna call that a cheerlead, go ahead. I honestly think you're inferring a lot into my post that's simply not there. Look back through it and tell me where I "tout WW2OL's wonderful features." It just ain't there, Nash.

Spitboy -SW-

[Nash]

I appreciate and agree with you that the difference between the OFP and WWIIO FM is one of either:

a) Going after a certain level of realism and failing.

b) Not going after that level of realism in the fist place.

Either way, what are we left with?

As far as the cheerleading bit goes, hehe sorry, you just *are*.  

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: Nash ]

[Spitboy]

Originally posted by Nash:
I appreciate and agree with you that the difference between the OFP and WWIIO FM is one of either:

a) Going after a certain level of realism and failing.

b) Not going after that level of realism in the fist place.

Either way, what are we left with?

As far as the cheerleading bit goes, hehe sorry, you just *are*.    

We're left with difference of opinion on point a. You look at WW2OL version 1.0 and shrug it off as a failure. I don't consider CRS' efforts a failure - yet. Just a decent first attempt that needs more work. Just like OFP, AH, WB, anything, it's a work in progress from v 1.0.

Your definition of cheerleading must revolve around finding anything remotely positive about a sim. Sorry, but I disagree, and take some offense. Note I didn't start this thread - nor have I started ANY threads. I simply responded to it with an opinion, and then defended my statements. Call it what you want - I won't be able to convince you otherwise. It perturbs me when people attribute meaning to my posts that isn't there  

[Toad]

Spitboy,

I guess I still did a poor job explaining.

I'm not bashing WW2OL's FM despite its "not ready for prime time" status.

It was your readiness to hammer OFP for a lack of attention to detail while rah-rahing WW2OL for incredible attention to detail that made me LOL. The juxtaposition of those two ideas, I guess.

Yes, like Nash, I'm visualizing you with pom-poms.    

To me, attention to detail means NOT releasing the FM... well, the ENTIRE game... in such a half-baked state.

What I see is a condescending comment about OFP's decision not to build a complex flight model while praising CR's "good intentions". Last time I checked, the road to h*ll was said to be paved with "good intentions."

Now, my time in WW2OL's FM is probably up in the 20-25 hour range, online and offline. I did my standard testing profiles offline on the planes so I may actually have a bit more offline time than on. In fact I'm certain I do, since as it got near release the FPS became totally unplayable until I recently bought 512MB.

You probably have WAY more time in WW2OL aircraft than I do. You find it "realistic" I assume. Now let me ask you a question. What do you base that on? Are you a licensed pilot? Ratings? Time? Aerobatic instruction or just straight and level? Any time in WW2 aircraft of any sort?

I'm guessing I have WAY more time in those areas than you. So I'm fairly comfortable with my assessments after I run my profiles.

I am not going into a discussion with you here on this board about what I feel the shortcomings of the "air arm" are. I will say that I feel they go beyond drag, E-retention (related to drag no doubt) and "asthetics".

This is simply not the place. I will accomodate you, if you're really interested, via E-Mail, however.

As I said, I'm not trying to bash WW2OL or CRS. So, I'm certainly not going to air my personal "laundry list" about the game on the AH boards.

I hope they make it. Competition is good.

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]

[Nifty]

Aww, I want to see the "laundry list!!!"  

[Vulcan]

If you try OFP you'll see why there is a lack of attention to the flight model. Yes it is dumbed down. Yes there is a reason. The only thing that pisses me off is the lack of joystick support.

[StSanta]

Dudes, I tell you this: do not tangle with Toad.

Unless you know your watermelon very well, he's gonna chew yer bellybutton off and hand it to ya on a plate.

I mean, he's a republican I actually like.

Oooh quit the booing, there are others too  


Abpout the game: it fediddleing ROCKS!

Haven't flown AH the last few days because of it  

[ 06-27-2001: Message edited by: StSanta ]