OK. Again, let me say, the people and help I got in the MA were great. That is the main reason I even came here to post my thoughts -- because everyone was so helpful to me, I felt to return the favor by offering a POV from someone new who was/is/might be turned off of the game.
I am not new to flight sims. I have played a 3 or 4 over the past few years. I have researched information on the real planes, and I always read the web sites and manuals (if any) before playing seriously (like going online). I know how to fly these virtual planes, I know ACM and such. I like realism to a point, but I play these games for fun and relaxation -- not to recreate the life of a WWII pilot.
I flew 3 or 4 hours offline before venturing online. I actually was just looking to play H2H, but there were only 2 or 3 servers up when I checked, and no open spaces. So, I just went in the areans.
My comp is Cel400, 128RAM, TNT1, with a MS Sidewinder joystick. I didn't change any keyboard mapping, and I left the joystick settings as they were -- I like the low to high sensitivity curve instead of the straight line anyway.
To start with, the program often locked up my computer. One time while just starting the game, and three times while trying to get online, it crashed and forced me to reboot. That is annoying and not setting a good feeling for a beginning player.
Once in the arena, here are the things that bugged me.
My throttle was either full power or idle. Voices in the radio told me to calibrate my js. I did and it worked. But it "uncalibrated" again later for some reason. Recalibrating fixed it again.
My views kept screwing up. When trying to position my head, my view would slide all the way to the side and back, in every viewing direction. Then sometimes I'd get locked in only forward view. Banging *all* my view keys at once sometimes "snapped" things back to right, and sometimes I had to go into calibration again. I didn't actually have to *do* anything in setup, just go to that window and then click out.
The above was the only software/hardware problems I had. The rest, below was gameplay issues.
The radio is too difficult to use. Hit ESC to bring up clipboard. Click Radio. Click on channel button. Then type in message and ENTER.
Messages would scroll off the buffer before I could see them. Someone told me to hit TAB to expand the buffer box, but TAB did nothing for me.
And why no radio access while in the tower? I had to jump in my plane to be able to talk. Does this count as a sortie, or do you have to roll or takeoff to count a sortie?
And speaking of rolling: when rolling from the hanger, I didn't know where to go to get to a runway. I thought the taxiway was a runway until I got airborn and could see the whole field. I tried looking at the overhead map, but couldn't zoom in close enough to see the field.
I don't mind taxiing, but I'd like some directions for where to go. I got kind of fed up and just starting taking off across the field without worrying about the runway. I feel that's cheesy, but I was lost on the field.
Once in the air, the lack of icons annoyed me. I saw all these dots everywhere, but are they friendlies or enemies? Don't get me wrong here, I fully appreciate the ability to sneak that the lack of icons gives you, but at least let me see friendlies so I don't spend time going over to that group of dots to see there's no action there.
I noticed the inflight map showed appropriatly colored dots, and that helped me. But interestingly, not all planes show up on the map view. half a dozen dots out my right view would look like only 2 dots on my map radar. I'd fly over a field that the map showed with a big red bar (representing a large enemy presence?), but couldn't find anyone.
And how can you tell what ack field (cities/industrial parks/whatever) are friendly? At one point, I had 4 bandits on my butt (2 in immediate firing range) and I tried to drag them through an ack field. The vehicle spawn and the airfield on either side of this ack was friendly, but the ack shot me down. A friendly pilot commented on my not-to-bright tactic, and it was only then I realized the ack had in fact been shooting at *me* and not the bandits on my immediate six o'clock. That was frustrating (and embarrassing :-).
Reading cockpit instruments was difficult. Maybe it's my aging eyes, but it wasn't easy to quickly glance down and note things. I couldn't find the fuel gauge in the 190 till someone explained the panning down trick.
And wow, but these planes burn fuel fast. I didn't fuel up for my first sortie (just took whatever was the default), and ran out after like 5 minutes on the 25% fuel.
I would have thought that engagements would have been at higher altitudes. Every fight I found was below 5k. I climbed to 10-15k each sortie, but had to spiral down to fight.
The tracers look more like rockets -- slow with long smoke trails.
And yes, the head shake thing was annoying. I understand that most get over it after a little time, but I'm wondering this: If everyone gets used to it and then doesn't notice it, why have it. It annoys newbies, and vets don't notice it, so what purpose?
Why can't we check our score while in the arena? I wanted to know how many sorties I had flown, and how many enemies I had shot down, but you have to leave the arena to go find this. BTW: 12 sorties (does entering and leaving a plane without taking off count as a sortie? Did this twice.), 8 kills, 5 deaths, 1 bail (I don't remember ever bailing), 2 ditches (both ditches had nothing to do with combat -- one from out of fuel on first sortie, the other from pranging a wondering taxi).
And after reading about the clouds, I didn't see any clouds at all until my final sortie. Then I found some in a small spot. I was kind of disappointed.
Note I have no complaints about things like being chased by 4 enemies, or being strafed after ditching once, etc. Such is war.
Anyway, these were my "gripes". I don't hate the game, but it was just a little too frustrating and a bit annoying here and there. The problems were not really with the flight sim aspects (flight model, gunnery, and such), but rather the computer game aspects of it -- it *is* a computer game after all.
I just wasn't "turned on" by it. Too many of the little annoyances held back the full fun. You milage may very of course. I may go online again this weekend just because I'll have some time and it is still free for me.
All in all, eh, <hand waffle>.
No offense or flame intended to anyone. The players that helped me last night (even though I don't remember the names) were first rate fine fellows.
Bullgri
