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Mission design under valued by ED?


FubarBundy

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Hi all,

This is, in some part, a reaction to FlightControl's decision to stop work on the wonderful Moose project and, in some part, a rant that's been a long time coming.

 

I have been running a server, (CoffinDodger) for some time now but it is presently down. Initially this was due to a hardware failure but it has stayed down because of the time it takes to find workarounds and fixes for long known bugs and problems within the scripting engine.

 

I have posted along these lines before but will state it again... DCS, no matter how fantastic the flight models and no matter how beautiful the aircraft models etc.. would be pretty much meaningless without the scenarios created by the mission making community.

 

I am no programmer but, thanks the the likes of FlightControl, Grimes, Ciribob et al and the frameworks and scripts they have created, even I have been able to produce some pretty decent missions which, (connection issues aside), have proved to be quite popular at times.

 

In truth, FlightControl's decision to leave the Moose project involves personal reasons but there is also a deep frustration with the way ED interacts with the mission building community.

 

This is not surprising as the interaction is little to none!. There are mission editor bugs which have been around for months, (if not years) and these cause all mission builders to tear their hair out regularly trying to find workarounds and fixes for things that just don't work as they should in the first place.

 

We all understand that any piece of software as big in scope as DCS will always have bugs and problems but it is the lack of communication, feedback and assistance from ED which is the problem.

 

I find this bizarre as I see mission design as fully 50% of DCS and, from where I'm standing, this 50% of DCS seems to be woefully under supported and under valued by ED.

 

Every week we get a newsletter telling us about the latest bundle offer or modules in development etc.. (not knocking that because its a good thing), but could ED not also put up news regarding features and plans for the scripting engine?.

Could ED staff and or 3rd party developers not post their own tips and pointers regarding how to get the most out of the mission editor or even have somebody respond to queries and maybe even give out little snippets of code in response to feature requests?

 

Please understand, I am not knocking DCS or ED but I am puzzled as to why the mission builders and server hosts get so little support and attention. I strongly believe this should change because DCS has the potential to be something truly amazing.

 

People like FlightCcontrol are an asset of untold value and should be recognised as such, not driven away by frustration.

 

Anyway, rant over. Hope somebody from ED reads this and understands what I'm getting at.

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I for one totally agree with you, ED should look at the way Bohemia Interactive works with it's customers. It's even in their name. Come on ED pls less weekend sales and more getting it right. thanks.

I must admit that I am getting a tad frustrated with all the niggling bugs that seem to be ignored.

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I am a mission builder to my squadron and ocassionally I made some scripts. I feel the same way as you mentioned.

 

I love DCS and I have been flying it since Flanker 1.0, and I still will fly it loooong time . But, we need some care with the Mission building.

 

The day you ED get that, you will get much more fans from other Simualtion Games. Dont need to mention what I am talking about.

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Yeah couldn't agree more.

 

Such a shame this seems to be a non priority thing to ED. Its all well and good stuffing more and more air frames into the sim, but without the content to use these, whats the point...

 

Surely ED could dedicate one staff member to at least explore the option of creating something, in many way similar to MOOSE. Just a developer backed attempt to at least give us the tools to create something.

 

A good solid framework for a dynamic system which can be implemented across maps and the modularity to plug any DCS module into it. Is as important to the future of this sim as the two other major areas i feel are neglected. Namely dedicated servers & the scaling / visibilty of aircraft.

 

I cant help but see the potential, but i fear this potential isn't going to be realised for a long long time.


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As FC was told when he brought up issues, they have been reported and will be fixed when they can, but ED's priorities are 2.5 and the merging of all these versions we have right now. We all have things we would like fixed or added, but that doesnt mean ED can stop what they are doing and do what we want.

 

Mission design is FAR from under valued by ED, obviously they know how important it is, but they are currently hard at moving the sim forward with the new graphics engine and new terrains and such.

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No right answer here, is there?

 

The OP is spot on. And yet Sith is correct as well.

 

I can tell you this -- I would like to 'develop' for DCS as a content creator but I need a stable platform. So I play with it from time to time, until I realize that I cannot do the things that I really want to do, or until what I created gets broken by the next iteration of DCS. Now some will say 'oh who the hell are you' to think that I have something of value to offer - and to that I will say, maybe I don't, but if there are 99 others out there just like me, then pretty soon the talented ones will begin to emerge, and ED and the whole community benefits. It is a bit frustrating when you look at what we have and imagine what it could be. Just not sure it has to be that way.

 

I found MOOSE to be very interesting, in what it can do now and what it can potentially do. I still think its time is coming yet. I hope we'll see more of this in the future.

 

Anyway..... I suppose opinions are like 'you know what' (everybody has one).

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Hi Sithspawn,

well at least that is some feedback so thank you.

Like I said though, in and of themselves, the bugs aren't so much the issue... its the, (at least as it seems to me), lack of support and guidance for people working with the mission editor.

And yes, we all do have things we want fixing but surely the mission editor is a priority for the sim as a whole and should be prioritised.. at least in terms of giving info about what does and doesn't work and any workarounds known to the ED team themselves?

Please understand that none of this is being said out of animosity... actually quite the reverse. We are all huge DCS fans who just want to make our flying environment as good as we can.

Again though, thanks for the feedback.

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Im kind of in the same camp as Ripcord. I made over 20 .miz over at [DoW] that we hosted on our server and just finally burnt out. The time and frustration to keep multiplayer missions running smoothly became too much of a factor so I stepped away for a much needed vacation from the ME. That editor and the subsequent behavior of AI really is the only place in DCS that i do not enjoy at the moment... truth be told, I have been enjoying my mission making hiatus immensely by re-kindling my love affair with old and new modules on other servers. (f5-E = awesome sauce)

 

I'll return to mission making but for the time being I'm exhausted from the fiddling about. MOOSE looks fantastic but unfortunately still requires some significant investments to maintain release candidates and I wasn't surprised to see FC step away... it reminded me of the insane amount of work SNAFU/Stonehouse/Lukrop put into the Dynamic CAP/GCI scripts - so much potential but ultimately it was fractured and suffered a slippery slope of QA testing and fiddling.

 

TL;DR I'm also looking forward to changes with the ME and AI behaviour.

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I can't really relate to MP as I've never created an MP mission, but as far as SP missions go, I've created a fair few and have always been grateful for ED providing free hosting for them. In many ways the DCS "user files" section is the equivalent of "steam works" for DCS World.

 

Having tighter and perhaps more automated integration between the user files area of the site and the actual game would be nice (in-game mod browser with the ability to automate download & installation of mods would be perfect) but I don't think that user content is under valued as such.

 

Hopefully once 2.5 has been released we might see some attention given to long-standing minor issues.

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As a very amateur mission builder for my squad, I am just waiting for the ability to place static objects on the map in 3D! This was a feature that was supposed to have come out with 2.0. It is the most time consuming and frustrating things about the ME (keeping in mind my amateur status, not even dealing with scripts yet). For a sim with such beautiful static objects and scenery to place them in, I find it very hard to understand how this has been overlooked for so long. As with IL-2, the mission building is more than 50% of the enjoyment for me with this sim and without it, there would be very little for everyone to do outside of canned missions that come with the different modules.

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While I impatiently wait for 2.5, Hornet etc. I'm still worried that I'm not going to enjoy them to their full potential as scripting engine and other gameplay affecting bugs are still in the game ruining the fun. Nice graphics and other "chrome" is important for luring in new people but if the gameplay is shallow and self repeating (ie. AI and missions) or even bugged you will quickly get bored or frustrated. Not fixing gameplay killing bugs for over a year because something is under development isn't explanation as something is always being developed.

 

Having bugs in DCS due to new developments is understandable but having it broken most of the time isn't. What's the point of developing new stuff if it's going to work only for a short time anyway if at all. CA is one of the biggest blunders of ED so far. You can't use it in single player as AI will shoot you through trees but in MP it will cause server crashes and massive lag making it mostly unplayable in any form. Waste of development resources and selling empty promises if I may say. Screwing up mission designers is bad move for everyone as people who essentially work for free to make DCS more appealing get their hard work destroyed because of some new feature who knows when it's coming leaving everyone wondering what to make of the situation.

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Having bugs in DCS due to new developments is understandable but having it broken most of the time isn't. What's the point of developing new stuff if it's going to work only for a short time anyway if at all. CA is one of the biggest blunders of ED so far. You can't use it in single player as AI will shoot you through trees but in MP it will cause server crashes and massive lag making it mostly unplayable in any form. Waste of development resources and selling empty promises if I may say. Screwing up mission designers is bad move for everyone as people who essentially work for free to make DCS more appealing get their hard work destroyed because of some new feature who knows when it's coming leaving everyone wondering what to make of the situation.

 

Wow, not sure where to really start with this one... Your points on CA seem a little harsh, we have been told that they are working on the issue of AI and LOS. Not to mention we are getting tree collisions with the new maps. For MP, it was also stated that netcode would be completely re-written... probably that would help dont you think? Calling CA a blunder is confusing to me, it wasnt meant to be a tank Sim, but a tool to make missions more interesting and add another level to them. Anything expanded from there is a bonus. The CA product hasnt made any promises it hasnt kept, i think people are just expecting more out of it than they should have.

 

As far as claiming missions are being screwed up, like its being done on purpose or without care of it happing is also a little off. As I stated, priorities are were they are right now because you need a solid core. Sure they could stop everything and work on other smaller bugs, and they could all come back again when they go back to working on the core again... you want to hang your curtains up before the walls are in place...

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While I impatiently wait for 2.5, Hornet etc. I'm still worried that I'm not going to enjoy them to their full potential as scripting engine and other game play affecting bugs are still in the game ruining the fun.

 

I can totally relate to that. I've said to myself, I'm not getting any new air frames until I know I can enjoy them. Maybe I have a lot in hindsight and it's just around a corner but I feel real need that ED rolls out a stable platform as said in this discussion.

 

I'm saying that from flying experience but also as mission maker that gets Heebie-jeebies when I think of Friday and new update. It's just tears me apart :cry: when I find out that event that I have scheduled with the squadron and mission we were supposed to fly is in some part "broken" and I have to fix it in rush. This makes running our communities hard... and I think we're doing proxy work for ED by maintaining communities. New members often start off with 25T and then they go and buy new models as they see that within a community they can do much more then just 1 aircraft... and this is where mission making is quite important.

 

Also I understand ED. They have to live out of something. DCS is free and if they don't roll our all the nice and shiny new air-frames, how to finance development that are main priority, not to say something that may be marginal importance at this point, and it well could be AI, or mission editor, or what not... (and something will always be marginal)

 

Maybe a good crowd funding campaign would help develop things that are considered marginal by ED atm, but important by members. :huh:

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As far as claiming missions are being screwed up, like its being done on purpose or without care of it happing is also a little off. As I stated, priorities are were they are right now because you need a solid core. Sure they could stop everything and work on other smaller bugs, and they could all come back again when they go back to working on the core again... you want to hang your curtains up before the walls are in place...

 

Keeping things in working order could also be called finishing the features that are being developed before starting new ones. Granted it would take more time to do new stuff but at least people can enjoy the sim in the mean time. Unintentionally frustrating your clients is still frustrating your clients, they might just be less angry about it if it's accident but knowledge of that still doesn't help them not get frustrated. If the fixes are intentionally not made might then again make them more angry.

 

Besides I'm not demanding every little bug to be fixed before doing something new. But fixing bugs with major impact as they are found would be good. Keeping missions and existing features working should be a priority for ED simply from a reputation stand point as it has big impact on how people experience DCS in the long run.

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I'd have gone for some of this is there wasn't so many little things wrong in the SSE for so many years. There are literally carry-overs from older versions of 1.2 that remain untouched. But the reasoning is that fixing these makes no money for ED. Wags stated publically top priority issues were the visual bugs, at least back around 1.5 release. The screenshots and videos sell the products. It's gives ED little incentive to get things like multiplayer tuned up and especially the under the hood mechanics like dedicated server, netcode, multiplayer tools, the SSE etc. Right or wrong, makes no difference, it's a business.

 

I'd like to think that virtual squadrons, die hard fans, server administrators and virtual content makers meant more to Eagle Dynamics than they do in comparison to other software developers, after all, look how much the community has propped up the core products. As was mentioned, the community aspect of BIS is particularly well tended and quoted by themselves as being fundamental to their development process and mindset. Here, 3rd parties, community scripters, texture artists, modellers have no luxuries. If they are lucky they may be invited to test, which ultimately means being gagged by an NDA and are too fearful to speak out. If they are not, well, if they dont get a thread stickied there is always the DCS files repository or attach their gift in a post. Underwhelming? It's just business, or their way of doing business to be more precise.

 

We can all talk about priority orders as if it makes logical sense. But then in the same breath things are simply untouched for these priorities, so that doesn't quite cut it to say that we have to merge two application streams first before we can move on, because DCS has been in constant development since we ever started with 1.0.0.1 and before that even.

 

What has been missed are these peoples contributions to the core game. The content that they have made that people experience in single and multiplayer. I can't remmeber the last time I played something without a script or a mod that hadn't taken one or more people days of their lives to create. At that lowest level you have folks slogging their hearts out, even learning programming languages. They pass their experiences up to the community where virtual squadrons develop their campaigns/missions./content and play structured gaming in. Those people and players play in large groups and attract more players and that enthusiasm is felt by many and makes them buy the next module and keep their interest.

 

Or people quit and play other things, as is also the case.

 

Whilst the actual percentage of DCS fliers that create content is much lower than the total (please bear with that assumption, its reasonable) the effect they have on everyone in the community is huge and far reaching. For me personally, game changing.

 

ED might love and hate this demanding community, but ignore it at their peril, its the customer it is and it at least some of the product that is sold.

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Keeping things in working order could also be called finishing the features that are being developed before starting new ones. Granted it would take more time to do new stuff but at least people can enjoy the sim in the mean time. Unintentionally frustrating your clients is still frustrating your clients, they might just be less angry about it if it's accident but knowledge of that still doesn't help them not get frustrated. If the fixes are intentionally not made might then again make them more angry.

 

Besides I'm not demanding every little bug to be fixed before doing something new. But fixing bugs with major impact as they are found would be good. Keeping missions and existing features working should be a priority for ED simply from a reputation stand point as it has big impact on how people experience DCS in the long run.

 

But its not just one guy doing one thing, the guys working on the core, and the core would be netcode, gui, EDGE, the scripting engine, etc, are most likely the guys busy hammering DCS into shape to get it into 2.5 shape. They are most likely not the same guys that model FMs and Aircraft systems, and therefore wouldn't get in each others way. So stating they should stop working on new items would somehow speed up core fixes isnt correct.

 

Have you ever lived or worked anywhere going through renovations? That is what we are experiencing now. The goal is to get to 2.5, current and older bugs may get put off to the side while that happens, you just have to accept that for now. A very extensive campaign was just released today, so you can do some incredible stuff with this supposedly super broken sim.

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I don't consider payware campaigns incredible stuff knowing the state of the engine and constant problems appearing in it. I might be wrong but that's the impression I have got playing DCS since 2009 and I'm not paying money to see what they offer until ED does something visible to it's habit of not paying attention to mission creators and keeping bugs from breaking old missions. I'm pretty sure payware missions are more polished and maintained than the free stuff but I doubt they can be somehow immune to bugs and broken features in the sim engine. So in the meantime I'm sticking with PvP. And I really hope CA would be made functional in PvP so A2G planes would have more meaningful work to do. Reputation is worth money even if only indirectly.

 

My main problem isn't just the bugs itself but that new bugs keep constantly appearing and if the bug is not immediately obvious to casual user it could be ignored for years despite core users periodically making noise of it. Now I don't think the actual reason behind it is "DCS being under development" as it is just a lame excuse (or ED needs better project management). I don't care reasons for this anyways but actual solutions. Why do we have a lofting algo in AIM-120 that only causes reduction in its range? It's obviously unfinished but left in the game despite that causing more unrealistic reduction in the capabilities than not having working lofting at all. Or the recent network data extrapolation algo that shows negative AoA in turn for planes causing serious gameplay issues. Why put something like that in the game in the first place until it's working? And even worst leaving some of the problems like these in the sim for years just because something else needs to be done in the meantime. Something is wrong with how ED develops DCS. It's not like every software suffers from the same problems, even more complicated ones than DCS. Bugs occur in every software but they usually get fixed in a reasonable time instead of being neglected. DCS gets it's bugs fixed but some of them linger on as ED doesn't consider them as issues like the users do.

 

Renovation is a bad example for software development. We can easily use the old working version until the new one is finished and working instead of having to suffer through things being taken apart and being non-functional. Some squadrons do this internally but for me who plays with the general online community deciding for a common version for everybody isn't a realistic option but something that ED needs to do. And if you want to use some new module you need to update anyway despite some broken features coming with it.

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Renovation is a bad example for software development. We can easily use the old working version until the new one is finished and working instead of having to suffer through things being taken apart and being non-functional. Some squadrons do this internally but for me who plays with the general online community deciding for a common version for everybody isn't a realistic option but something that ED needs to do. And if you want to use some new module you need to update anyway despite some broken features coming with it.

 

Renovation the perfect example, because they could have left you in the old version and worked on a new one, no new stuff for the old version, no real fixes or updates for the old one. And when the new one was ready, charged you for everything all over again. Instead they are working on improving the old one while you are living in it.

 

No matter what ED works on, there is always ways some one unhappy. They are doing their best to push the sim forward. This is what we have to work with right now. It's not ideal for everyone, but when I still see new content, new updates, new community vids and live feeds, I have to argue that you are simple projecting your disappointment on everyone else. Others are finding enjoyment in the sim, if right now you cant, then maybe its better to take a break and wait for 2.5 or other fixes you want. Its no fun being so unhappy with something. If I couldnt find enjoyment or happiness here, I wouldnt stay.

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... CA is one of the biggest blunders of ED so far. You can't use it in single player as AI will shoot you through trees ...

 

Hey Bushmanni,

 

Here's a post of mine from late last year (based on another thread I found via searching) that helps deal with the AI CA units seeing through blocks of trees (e.g. a chunk of forest) and structures/buildings:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2611464&postcount=5

 

Try this and it should help make CA more fun offline. As mentioned, remember to update these values again after each update as these boolean variables are reset to false again.

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Giving commands to AI units causes random server crashes, on average about once in a hour. If this would not happen, CA would be actually usable in this way livening up missions quite a bit. But now it can be only used for missions that are restarted soon after start (training) so that those crashes don't matter much. This is the main problem in CA. I have Steel Beasts for offline tank simming but the tip could provide some fun in MP coop though. Thanks.

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Familiar with that issue Busmanni, i reported the stack traces a few times, its one of many sat at the bottom of the pile that prevent server admins having a server up, unattended, with interesting complexities for ED's customers. It's a fantastic example of a tiny thing that blocks progress like all the niggles in the 'Grimes SSE bug list thread', almost impossible to reproduce on demand but completely fatal to multiplayer server admins.

 

For (one) example, I have a fantastic mission where we used AI in CTLD to ferry troops via helicopter and truck to the centre of a city and deliver under fire toa contested area. A script counted who was in sector control and printed out the owner of the sector to screen. Players can join a side and tip the balance one way or another and being involved in a complex mini conflict. Everything works, its a 'vanilla no mod' server and performance is fine but it just crashes due to troops movements (or something) around every half hour so I can't make it public after much sadness.

 

It's not about being upset with the game or anything Sith, I and thousands of others love it in its many states, but the OP is suggesting and I am saying also, that there needs to be a shift away from shiny stuff development to under the hood core stuff that enables the community to produce great MP server offerings and as a result keep the loyal fan base somewhat quieter. If ED need the community to extend the design effectively, they need to give them the nuts and bolts to work with. At my work there are generally two teams that develop, one called sustained engineering that focuses on the existing product that is live and producing fixes and the other that does the development of new features. I can't even begin to work out ED's development cycle it's like nothing I have ever seen, releasing three versions weekly of what are essentially still developmental pushes in different streams for the last 9 months is just ... Unusual. And to me, takes a lot of effort, especially in QA which is a community push and not even that strong, forgive me for saying that, it's not aimed at insulting the hard and thankless work of the testing team, but you will admit, you get little for it for the time when most other dev studios or companies have really stringent testing cycles (that pay their staff engineer wages).

 

I believe the effect of adding development cycles to the items that effect mission design, Multiplayer, and interesting mission development, plays a large part in the loyalty of the customer base through a small number of people that produce content for a large number of others. I believe that effort might seem hidden and small but its impact is far reaching. I understand that these things are being touched and that priorities are in place that may push them further away, but anything that reduces the effort by mission designers and virtual flying group leaders to keep interest in the game is what is really at stake. It's not just about new customers and capturing the market, it's about the existing market being loyal, retained and spreading word on the internet that DCS is now the go-to flying sim for multiplayer action.

 

I've personally seen and discussed with many other virtual organisations about the turmoil this year from the fast paced dev cycle. People are fickle, we know that. But long term players are also wandering off now because the mission designers who are trying to make the same game intersting are struggling to work around all the bizarre issues that are under the hood. And for what it's worth, from this side of the fence, DCS shows a lot of leg, but she doesn't put out. There seems to be placeholders for so many interesting features, but years later, there's nothing tangible to show for it. Of course you can talk about the future and we've all seen WIP development shots, but we should be honest, let's judge it on the delivery, not the promise. Saying 'but just wait, there so much on the horizon' doesn't cut it anymore for some, mission designers influence entire virtual squadrons with the product we have now.

 

Giving commands to AI units causes random server crashes, on average about once in a hour. If this would not happen, CA would be actually usable in this way livening up missions quite a bit. But now it can be only used for missions that are restarted soon after start (training) so that those crashes don't matter much. This is the main problem in CA. I have Steel Beasts for offline tank simming but the tip could provide some fun in MP coop though. Thanks.

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SIMPLE SCENERY SAVING * SIMPLE GROUP SAVING * SIMPLE STATIC SAVING *

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  • 3 months later...

Good points in my view Pikey. I love DCS, always have done but the fact is that the constant bugs in mission design negate any mission depth or continuum - this has however, always been the case.

 

One thing fixed, next you know, something (that wasn't broken before) else breaks. I admit, to us 'norms' who are not programmers or dev's this just reaks of, dare i say it - 'incompetence', but we all know this cannot be farther from the truth.

 

The Devs are certainly not incompetent, I've met a fair few of them - super smart people - so why are we all, where we are? Why can't we have a mission design system that is stable, a constant, that works and is reliable? Simples...............because it is 'all' constantly moving forward, rather than a hub and spoke approach - the Hub was once going to be DCS World, with modules as the spokes but as we see, there are some elements of DCS world which need regular updating and bug fixing.

 

Many players and pilots have left out of sheer frustration - I know, I'm one of them. not only that, but I folded the 74th for what is now over 3 years ago to give the sim time to mature before a re-visit. My missions I spent weeks, months, 1000's of hrs compiling that were very popular, broken after every minor update. It was, in a couple of words, 'soul destroying'.

 

So why are we all here then? Why did I come back and why do many others come back each day?

 

'Faith', 'Belief' and 'Buy-in'. We know ED want the very best and will stop at nothing to deliver. Bugs, warts and awl. Gota give it to 'em for that and, that is why we all come back.

 

Regards

 

'T'

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