Realism rant...

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
At some point, we stop dealing with facts, and start dealing with opinions and beliefs, and those discussions always go downhill quickly.

I believe you are wrong, and in my opinion, you should be shot.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[CHECKERS]

MA is fun !
 TOD should make FR guys happy .... I just wish they would save all this FR BS for the TOD  threads, where the HTC crew consider their requests, instead of trying to convert the MA. .......

   HT is dead -on target with comments, on War Birds arenas..... they are Full Realisum and gameplay and fun is an absolute pos compared to AH  MA !

  Regards....

 CHECKERS

[USHilDvl]

I'm a big, big fan of realism...but I think the real response to this is covered by HT and a few others;

Unless you are a player who enjoys single missions which will, quite literally, last hours...you really don't want that kind of realism.  Most of us are not properly trained combat pilots, so we have to learn as we go.  How much fun would a new customer have (remember, HTC has to have a reliable, recurring revenue stream or our nice little pretend world goes poof!) if he/she had to spend way too much time getting to a fight (gotta move those bases WAY far apart to be 'realistic'), then micro-managing the engine(s) throughout the fight, etc...maybe I'm wrong, but that begins to sound amazingly dull and frustrating, even for someone who wants a simlulator vs. an arcade game.

We have to keep in mind that 'perfect' realism would simply NOT be as attractive as some might think.  It's even possible that if all these detailed changes were implemented, that even the advocates might not get what they thought they wanted.

Gameplay, and the gaming experience, is far more important in the context of a business.  This is NOT a scientific or academic environment where absolute realism is mandatory.  HTC needs to construct a world that a) is worth experiencing, b) satisfies repeat, paying customers, c) effectively attracts new paying customers, d) can run well on a crazy spectrum of equipment and budgets, e) is maintainable and f) remains scalable.  Oh, yeah...and it has to be FUN.

I'm always glad to see new additions and enhancements to the environment, but I don't have any trouble understanding that compromise has been, and must always be, a significant part of designing a game play system.

Look at it this way...If I have only 2 hours to play...I want the bullets/shells/bombs flying in pretty short order.  That's what I'm really paying for.  If it took me 15 minutes to checklist and start up, no radar to find a fight, no icons to keep from wasting time chasing the wrong contact, no fuel consumption data so I keep dropping out of the sky, etc...I don't think I'd stick around.  Oh, yeah...and a base change would take days/weeks, right?

I'm not saying anyone is 'wrong'...I just personally think that we sometimes start splitting some really impractical hairs on this subject...  Not that there aren't some good suggestions put forth, just that some others of them bear reconsidering.

Only, with respect, my opinion.

[zarkov]

Realism is a double-edged sword.

If you want realism, you'd have a game that was 99% boredom and 1% stark terror.  The stark terror bit might make for some entertaining game play but I think only the extreme realism fanatic would put up with the 99% boredom - and I suspect having a client base made up of such fanatics wouldn't sustain a company since, eventually, most of them would probably be carted away in strait jackets by concerned relatives due to their insisting on wearing Luftwaffe uniforms everywhere they went, stalking WWII air veterans and making threatening phone calls to air combat historians whose opinions differ from that of the fanatics.

[eilif]

You can have amazing realism, you dont have to have the boardom, its about pacing, droping you in for the most entertaining part of a historical event, spawn points help you get to the area of interest, disengage circles cut down on the flight time home, warp points get you all over the map fast, which are becoming populare in mogs now and i hear ah will be picking it up for TOD.  

Its like a historical movie, or historical fiction, it stays within the bounderies of realism yet you can be creative there, and historical movies can be really cool when done right, same idea with pacing a game in terms of the basic concept of showing what needs to be shown to entertain and inform, while keeping the "boaring" stuff out. Tho its highly subjective as to what is boaring. When sims start talking about chess pieces or colors for countries thats a big turn off for me, and FFA plane sets, just doesnt do it for me anymore, tho i admit a few years ago it was fine and dandy, but after a while its just mental masterbation.

  If thats all you want fine! Some of us want some historical content and more gadgests to play with, why we come to a sim for that? well thats our problem     im not an Ah sell out, im a TOD pusher and have been since i learned of the idea, i think it will really expand the horizon for the future of AH and my 14.99 a month.

[zarkov]

It's a bit difficult to drop someone in the midst of an exciting historical event in an on-line persistent world.  That's only fairly easy to do in a solitaire campaign in an off-line sim because you can "fast forward" through all the boring stuff.  When you have a few hundred people on-line, it's somewhat non-trivial.

[eilif]

Well thats what TOD has stated it will do, so lets hope it works.  Who knows how these warp points will fit in.

[zarkov]

Originally posted by eilif
Well thats what TOD has stated it will do, so lets hope it works.  Who knows how these warp points will fit in.

I realize that but that is probably the Holy Grail of massively on-line military simulations...to have a realistic persistent world that is also fun to play in.

I suppose it's possible - it's also possible that six super-models show up at my door in ten minutes and demand some good ol' zarkov loving but it's not probable.

[Shane]

Originally posted by zarkov
I suppose it's possible - it's also possible that six super-models show up at my door in ten minutes and demand some good ol' zarkov loving but it's not probable.

I'll send them over after I'm done with them.

[MOIL]

The ol' realisic vs game-mode discussion always brings good points to the table.

Of course, myself, I prefer more "realism" over "gamey" type play but that's me.
It's a tall order to come up with the balance between realism and Air-Quake.

My honest belief is that HTC could make the game so realistic it would  knock your socks off, however the MA would just simply adjust thier gameplay to compensate for said factors, like they do now.

This is the reason I have always tried to stress game variety and teamwork. There is a couple factors that (IMO) will always make people in the MA do the things they do.

First, the game is based on "points" {rank,perks,score,name-in-lights) this in my opinion will always cause or contribute to the Air-Quake game play we seem to complain about.

2. I will the destroy the enemy with every means avail. If said plane is faster, I will just grab a faster one. If your coming to said base in a GV and I missed with my rocket or 20mm's I will just up Lancs with umteen many bombs and drop  ALL of them on your head.

3. If there is a chance your country may be moving forward to capture territory {bases} I will simply just fly in and kill your barracks. I know I may encounter some resistance, but for the most part I know I can just dive in with a fast fighter do what I need to do. The field AA will be somewhat of a nuisance but will rarely shoot me down before I complete my mission.

4. Because I can: dive bomb with planes that were never designed for such duties. Attack targets that would normally be a very bad idea without proper planning and forces.

I don't want this to turn into a "play my way" thread, that's been done a million times on these boards. I don't care how people play, it's thier $14.95 a month and they can play how they like. It just makes no sense to me for people to still complain or gripe about what the MA has become.

[zarkov]

Originally posted by MOIL
My honest belief is that HTC could make the game so realistic it would  knock your socks off, however the MA would just simply adjust thier gameplay to compensate for said factors, like they do now.

That's not necessarily a bad thing - that's what people do in real life.  They adjust so as to gain the maximum advantage at something, especially if lives are on the line.  I doubt the RAF switched to night bombing because they felt it might be amusing; they did it to prevent getting shot down by the Luftwaffe.  The Luftwaffe didn't call them a bunch of "dweebish gaming-the-game gotta-wins" (well, maybe they did), but they adjusted and sent night fighters out after them.  And so forth.  This sort of one-ups-manship happens all the time in war.

The trick is to create a "world" such that when such one-ups-manship occurs, the result is something historical OR something which COULD have been reasonable possiblity in real life.  THAT'S the real trick and it's non-trivial.  You have to have pig-headed play-testers who'll try everything to "break" the world you create.

[Hajo]

Agree with many points of Kirins post.  But I also realize that a balance between the Sim fanatic and one who plays for fun is delicate.

Anyway......I don't think the Pilot who dives on a field through 30 AAA guns to vulch a few on the runway and runs away or HO's when cornered gives a hoot.  Gameplay at least in my mind is the important issue.  I'd love to manage my flight and engine controls carefully but why do that when some dweeb is gonna fly throttle to the wall to dive, HO and run away? He burns his engine out is of no importance to that type of player.

[Kweassa]

He burns his engine out is of no importance to that type of player.

 Ah, but with pseudo-realistic engine managements in the game, if he burns his engine out you get to gloat about it. Besides, the 'vets' have more stuff to thump their chests about!

-> "You foo' ! Ain' no green dweeb HO sissy know how to actually manage flyin' planez!"

[bozon]

I have to say I disagree with most of the original post points.

IL2 has a ton of features I would not like to see in AH. The ONLY superior feature in IL2 comparing with AH is the damage model, which is AH's weakest point at the moment. The rest I don't think is better than AH and IL2 view system killed it completly for me. I can't stress it enough how bad it is after I got used to AH.

* No rudder trim? When did pilots had to hold their stick twisted for 30 min in WWII? I don't have pedals.

* Plane ID? all countries use the same plane set, how are you going to tell them apart. In a CT or senarios that might work and I'd like to see that. In MA it's pointless. Also, players with weaker machines that can't run 1600x1200 will suffer greatly.

* engine management - AH have RPM and throttle control. What more do you need? Manually pressing a button at alt X to switch charger gear? I don't mind but I find it completly uninteresting.

* Historical cockpits/gauges - IL2 gauges are useless. I can't read them on my screen and I was forced to use the numbers at the corner of the screen. I find it less immersive then the new AH2 cockpits. Also, having your units in meters and km/h while others in your coutry speak in feet and mph is annoying. You may fly a german plane but Rook is not Germany or Britain.

* inflight radar - here we agree. The bar dar is enough data to simulate controler information and is needed in order to find the fight. Dot dar is a little too much. This, I believe, can be set by areana parameters (giving us only bar dar).

The difference between us is that you like flight simulators and I like air combat simulators. I prefere having the ability to fight as close to real given the restrictions, while others prefere the technical actions of "flying" to be as close to real. I just don't get the sense of flying, while sitting on a chair infront of a desktop computer, fiddling with a plastic joystick, staring at a 17" 2D screen and pulling 6G while drinking beer. No amount of implemented switches in the cockpit will change that, so I give it up.

Both approachs are good and valid. I like the fact that HT took the game down my path. IL2 is good for making movies.

Bozon

[lazs2]

many of the engines in questions were run on stands for hours at a time at full military power plus a little extra boost with no adverse effects.  If the parts were available then crews would go through motors that had been run at full military power in combat but mostly... they just ran em again...

planes made it home with no oil or cylinders shot off in radial motors...  Nothing we do in the MA would kill a good aircraft engine of the era... liquid cooled motors would of course be much more vulnerable and...

fuel injected motors should be more prone to fire from engine hits than they are... other than that... I don't really see any big deal in the 5 minute flights we make.

There are two types of people that grab the fastest planes with the biggest guns....

The guys who are greifers and like every gamey advantage they can get and...

the guys who are griefers and like every gamey advantage they can get but like to pretend they are fans of that plane or "realistic warriors"

lazs
Public Relations Officer for the BK's