No, Jekyll, not correct at all.
I went there trying to have an open mind. I flew for a while, ignoring things I saw. One thing that did improve to some extent was the community. As HC himself has alluded, the board itself on the original release was an intolerable, continuous flame war. This was the source of my first remark upon retrying it, and was one of the reasons I decided to give the game another go. New version, different atmosphere with the inhabitants.
As for the flight model, read the thread here. I still don't have a problem with that, I feel things are relative correct there- that is, the planes perform historically correct relative to one another. Whether or not they are the most accurate as compared to other sims is not even a concern to me.
The pilot quality there is terrible, period. Sorry if that offends you, but truth is truth.
The key things that pushed me out were:
1. The staleness of the game- it'd been a year, and basically the same weapons (in air) day in and day out.
2. The inequality of the relative air forces was ahistorically balanced too far to one side, making neither side particularly fun to play. It was far too easy to be an Axis flyer, far too difficult to be an Allied flyer. This was mainly due to...
3. A damage model that was incomplete or broken. Rifle caliber weapons on the Allied side did too little damage to one particular plane- the 109. Tests proved the 109 could absorb tons of ammo and continue to fly. You see, the way the damage model works is thus; if the first round to strike doesn't have the energy to penetrate a surface, it's as though the round never happened. So, if 1,000 rounds hits the same spot, one after another, it's as if nothing hit the plane. See? No cumulative damage. Couple superior performance with what is in effect a bullet-proof covering, and you have an unbalancing abomination running loose in the game.
4. Complete and total lack of hope that CRS would do anything about it any day soon. Once it became clear that A) CRS didn't think this was a problem and B) CRS didn't have a plane being designed (at that moment) that at least carried cannon (D.520 or Ms.406), I knew the game would continue to be a one-plane sim.
5. Throw in the FB issue. FBs, a key component to the game, were made destroyable by the air. Guess which plane does this better? The Stuka, of course, as it should be for pinpoint targets. The Blenheim could do it, but it required far more skill than the average pilot possessed and was far more vulnerable to enemy fighters. A Blen IV caught by enemy fighters, even if escorted, was dead. Even this isn't bad, or even ahistorical, except... FBs were a figment of the CRS imagination to begin with, a game concession. It occurs to me that if you are going to make a game concession you do so with both sides of the game in mind, not heavily weighted in favor of only one side. This type of decision, played over and over by CRS, is just poor game design.
So Jekyll... which of these issues did I mistake? Which is untrue? Which of these invalidates any private conversation that we had? Why is it not possible a person can change his mind based on these observations? And... did you not read any of the BBS there, and any of my discussion on these points? I was pretty blunt there, not trying to "ingratiate" myself as you accuse. It was a crappy situation and I said so, and as you might guess I was not very popular, particularly with the Pro-LW crowd (who BTW are very pleased with the current situation).
One thing hasn't changed with CRS, and perhaps I can paint it this way- they can't seem to grasp what good gameplay is. This is my opinion. If you have a game where the map is reset over and over, and the score is something like 15/2 in resets, it ought to be an indication something is a bit askew. You can't keep asking a group of people to take it up the butt over and over, and you certainly don't start making comments (as CRS has) that perhaps the losing side just didn't have smart enough players playing. That's a pretty insulting indictment, and one made more than once by Killer and Docdoom.
