probad

i think there are more fundamental reasons why people play a game than the game product being technically well executed. there are many products in the world that are finely made, but nobody wants them, because they don't see how the product's value relates to their own condition. a few people are those who are genuinely interested in the aircraft as an aircraft. but a lot of other sim players are roleplayers, and for them its often about consummating a fantasy. the source of this fantasy is oftentimes a story they grew up on -- a documentary, a movie like top gun, or novel, or a story passed down from a relative. a story can be a specific notable event, like the f-15e that bombed a helicopter, but it can also just be a relationship that is relevant to the audience, like being their national air force's aircraft. stronger stories will tend to have a bigger following. unfortunately for the jf-17, it doesn't have a story that is meaningful to the american audience. there isn't a story about the jf-17 that reaches a wide audience in the west to fire its imagination. it does hold a lot of meaning to the pakistanis, and perhaps a little less to the chinese. maybe the pakistanis can work harder to promote the jf-17's role in the last border clash. however, the reality may be that since the indo-pakistani conflict has almost no effect on americans it remains unlikely to capture their attention at large. anyways i think if you want to promote it it definitely helps to give people an appealing story to give them a reason to desire it at all in the first place. yes, it's marketing. it's not unfair that products with stronger marketing are more successful -- the only answer is to come up with marketing of your own.

im not suggesting the way to cater to more engagement is to do airstarts because the people who signed up for dcs already have the expectation of it being this whole sequence of taking off and stuff. i have casual friends who dont even like hotstarts because it wasnt what they feel like they signed up for. the nature of the game is not a problem to be solved, but it is a consideration to design around. so for example, maybe servers can encourage more engagement by making seeding more rewarding, like giving vip slots to players willing to spend time seeding. we are asking for players to spend precious time, so there should be some value exchanged at least. more attention can certainly be paid to even having some kind of seeding state for a server. scripts or native support to freeze ground asset destruction may make low pop servers less liable to that-one-sead-player-that-destroys-the-map-unopposed and kills the match before it starts. someone else had pointed out in a different thread that dcs is a great simulator but a poor game. that is pretty true i think, the game lacks actual structures that mate the simulation part into a bigger game with a start and end. right now the phenomenon we see of everyone squeezing into a few max populated servers i think is the result -- we're getting around the lack of a game start phase by simply avoiding it. so to change that we'll need to think about what kind of structures we need to actually bridge the gap from an empty server to a pvp experience. so no its not about the actual simulation, that part is fine.

its not about the startup, its about the entire gameplay loop like raisuli observed. whats the % of shooty tooty action to all the logistical actions? i dont care if you do hot start cold start or autostart, they're actually about the same in the end of the day in that the entire sequence of strapping in, taxiing out, flying to the ao consumes like 90% of the time spent. if you add in mechanisms that encourage players to bring the airplane back, that ratio gets even more lopsided in favor of all the 'backend' tasks. this is what "gaming time is precious" really means. the majority of players flying public mp are in it for that 5% moment of shooting the missile. people want it so bad they'll eat the cost of friendly fire penalties, that's how scarce and precious it is. if we want to drive behavior in a different direction, you need to make it worth all that time they're being denied their golden seconds of shoot time. idk why i bother writing this though because you guys are incredibly myopic like any topic will always get bogged down in the most inane minutae probably because that's the best way to avoid actually figuring out whats going on

one of the problem with mp sim games is the act of populating a server -- everyone wants to play in a server with people to fight, nobody wants to spend possibly hours waiting to build up the population. its exacerbated by the nature of dcs where each flight is relatively costly compared to, say, an fps. there's a reason why casual (and regardless of whether or not you think its prestigious enough for your tastes, more popular) multiplayer games all find it desirous to minimize downtime between action. seeding is particularly unattractive for a lot of players who look at server population as a form of blind matchmaking, where they believe at least there is a good chance of attaining an advantage through incidentally encountering less skilled players or profiting from the distraction of another friendly player. the greater focus on individual performance can create a perception of unfairness during the seeding phase which often results in the seeding attempt failing as the server hemorrhages players as fast as it gains them. in the end most gamers would rather wait 1 hour in a queue to a popular server than spend 1 hour seeding an empty server because the former bears the more secure outcome

get a load of this guy he thinks we have enough airplanes

furthermore, the crew contract needs to be able to be set outside of the mission in the module settings page.

my experience with this is -on takeoff its usually brought on by excessively aggressive collective input -on landing its usually brought on by lateral velocity rolling landings have been much safer for me, even if its only 2kts of forward speed. while its not prescribed, using a hud mode that displays the flight path indicator has been useful to ensure im not translating as im touching down

wasnt the gwot experience against rpgs that they didnt fly all that straight past 100m or so?

dude weed haha 420 blaze it im so high woooow dude weeeeed look im so funny my personality is literally weed dude lmao nobody talks like jester dude his lines are like a constant barrage of internet memes.

the dcs you enjoy today was built on the backs of abominations like the mig-21 module. you wouldnt even have cold war servers if you wanted to be so anal. you would do well to remember that we are still just playing pretend here at the end of the day.

i wish i could make you do the work and have you come back and tell me if its not much difference

conversely a poor pilot will always be on the losing end for all sorts of reasons, almost always not the aircraft's fault. gs is guilty of constant overshoots the consequences to which he ascribes to issues of turn performance if he isn't droning on about some one circle two circles red circles blue circles. is it the aircraft that's killing him? i think its mostly him killing himself because he doesn't understand pursuit geometry. instead i would rather just focus on the crux of the matter as relevant to this thread which is: i think you are right on this point; rate just isn't as native as angles because the idea of giving slack to the enemy doesn't sell well to the lizard brain.

subs is truly the most powerful poster on the forum. zealot after zealot of the scientific priesthood emerge from the woodwork to proselytize him for they know if left unchecked, sub's reality will overwhelm the world and the sky will shiver into a million pieces and fall to the ground. HAIL SUBS

top scorers dont use flaps

it should just be whatever accent is natural to them thats it. we dont need this to be another homage to someone's childhood idea of what russians ought to sound like

you know what id rather go back to just plain wishlist threads instead of this sort of intellectual bargaining disguise

make sure to follow up with a thread taking offense at the accent

"provided they don't attack through the ardennes..."

shouldnt even matter the problem is with forum warriors who are such absolute simpering weenies that they have to find every handicap they can get. if the f-16 didnt exist these people would be grasping for fc3 precedents as to why they should be allowed their handicaps. you notice not a single one of them ever asks for downgrades in the name of realism only upgrades that they think will hand them wins they're scared they can't pull out their own wins in this forum theres already easily 3 threads circulating at any one time revolving around this fear and its even more hilarious in the apache forum because god forbid their hero helicopter can't shoot down the entire covenant armada by itself you guys dont give a rats ass about realism just admit it already you just invoke it whenever its convenient for your gamer score

real life is not consistent you wouldnt get the choice if you were assigned to a 'nice' unit or the 'crappy' old unit so learn to deal with it if youre so interested in the military mindset

wow unethical um devs? this needs to be patched out

or just save your preset loadout profiles in the mission editor before you go airquaking

what heady days those are some real front row seats

so you dont really know whats wrong with your computer but you're confident enough to tell us how our computers will die

engine nacelles just keep doing it your times are only going to go up