Black Shark 2 Released

[LosT_SouL_VL]

SB Pro PE is ONE product. ED offers us THREE products and charged for upgrade of two of them already. See the difference? If DCS would follow SP Pro PE pricing ($100 + $25 for annual upgrade) and features (multiple playable units in one sim and multiplayer compatibility) I would keep my mouth shut and happily pay them.

 

 

Latest SB Pro PE version 2.538 is currently 85$ + coming December 2.620 upgrade 25$

[empeck]

Unfortunately that simple idea quickly breaks down in practice, unless we limit our sales to our own website. Retailers who carry our product have their own ideas and limits regarding price points. These are generally guided by normal costs of other games they carry.

 

Well, it works for Esim and to some point for 777. It depends how big the revenue from retailers is when compared to DCS website. I'm not asking for an answer though. :smilewink:

 

Latest SB Pro PE version 2.538 is currently 85$ + coming December 2.620 upgrade 25$

 

It's time limited sale.

[EvilBivol-1]

By retailers, I mean to include online retailers as well.

 

I hope you understand that I cannot continue a discussion of company or product financial structruring. I hope, though, that it may be useful to provide an example of the kind of thing we mean when we talk about external limitations on our decision-making process.

Edited November 4, 2011 by EvilBivol-1

[Rikus]

Originally Posted by Rikus

You make people who bought BS, to pay again for a BS2?

 

LOL

 

 

You would have had reason to laugh if the two products were at least comparable........They are not and as such your laughter merely compounds your ignorance ;)

 

Hey - you do not have to purchase it: Nobody's forcing your hand here.

 

When ED finish the LOMAC - FC and start DCS, sayd, that every DCS Module will be compatible.

 

BS is not compatible with A10

 

ED will launch BS 2 making it compatible with A10 so, people who bought BS will have to pay again for a BS when ED says that "every DCS module" will be compatible

 

I have to laugh of my friend, who bought BS 1, and wont be able to fly with A10.

 

So if he want to fly with A10, he will have to pay again.

 

Finally all DCS modules will not be compatible as they say at the beginning?

 

Greetings

[159th_Viper]

Can someone tell my what units are new in BS2 ?

 

The very same units that are and were introduced in A-10C engine. But one example:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1311376&postcount=23

 

A thorough search will no doubt lead you to more examples.

[empeck]

By retailers, I mean to include online retailers as well.

 

I know, Steam, D2D, etc.

 

I hope you understand that I cannot continue a discussion of company or product financial structruring. I hope, thought, that it may be useful to provide an example of the kind of thing we mean when we talk about external limitations on our decision-making process.

 

Of course. That's why I'm not asking for an answer. I hope you guys understand that I'm not ED hater. I'm a big flight simulations fan, and I'm just afraid that direction DCS series is going is not the one us (customers) and ED predicted at the start.

[EvilBivol-1]

Well, it works for Esim and to some point for 777. It depends how big the revenue from retailers is when compared to DCS website. I'm not asking for an answer though.

Obviously I can't speak for either eSim or 777, but from what I understand eSim is far more focused on revenue from the military market, which is why they are able to adopt the kind of gaming marketing approach that they have. For ED, the gaming market contiues to be a critical interest. Worldwide retail is very important.

[Trident]

By retailers, I mean to include online retailers as well.

 

I hope you understand that I cannot continue a discussion of company or product financial structruring. I hope, thought, that it may be useful to provide an example of the kind of thing we mean when we talk about external limitations on our decision-making process.

 

Of course. However, I think it is certainly important to consider whether ED's attempts to make DCS conform to "traditional" distribution models (one price fits all) are not causing more trouble than they're worth. Again, what I'm suggesting isn't quite the same as the models adopted by eSim or 777 Studios either.

[WRFirefox]

Originally Posted by Rikus

When ED finish the LOMAC - FC and start DCS, sayd, that every DCS Module will be compatible.

 

No and Yes!

 

No - at the moment not....

Yes - but next week for sure!

 

ED makes an awesome work!

[swe_badger]

First a question to the ED team, will there be a retail DVD version of the full BS 2 version?

 

Secondly to all complainers on why they charge 20$ for the upgrade, this is business, there are people doing jobs behind this game. You remember jobs right? where you receive a salary for work done. Now if the salary payments stop, well that means they can't release any games/patches at all, because guess what! work has to be done to achieve that and work costs money! How much do you think a software engineer costs/hour? That's right, they are not cheap.

 

Wake up people! ED is no Electronic Arts or Activision. They don't sell 20 million copies per release like CoD. If you can't figure out these things by yourself then just forget about what I wrote because you won't understand that either. I heard the Red Cross is helping people out with free stuff, you could always go there.....

[Aviators]

Config\Producer.cfg and change the "ForceFeedbackEnabled" line from

"true" to "false".

 

I do not find this file

[Kuky]

First a question to the ED team, will there be a retail DVD version of the full BS 2 version?

 

Secondly to all complainers on why they charge 20$ for the upgrade, this is business, there are people doing jobs behind this game. You remember jobs right? where you receive a salary for work done. Now if the salary payments stop, well that means they can't release any games/patches at all, because guess what! work has to be done to achieve that and work costs money! How much do you think a software engineer costs/hour? That's right, they are not cheap.

 

Wake up people! ED is no Electronic Arts or Activision. They don't sell 20 million copies per release like CoD. If you can't figure out these things by yourself then just forget about what I wrote because you won't understand that either. I heard the Red Cross is helping people out with free stuff, you could always go there.....

 

Its good you joined the train Aug this year and know so well about this business... unlike some who've been around for years, and guess what... if anyone asked on these forums few days ago about work to make current DSC flyables compatible is free ot payware, I can bet absolutely everyone would have said it will be free... and guess why... because that's exactly what years of reading and posting in these forums lead me to believe... if people like you can't see this than bad luck, I'd like to see what you will say bit down the road when nevada is out and possibly another DCS title... and you need to get them all compatible... just how much time ED will need to that and how much that will cost you to do this.

 

The purpose of this "whining" as some might call is to put perspective on what kind of mess this will lead to in time... it is not that bad when you have only 2 things to make compatible but it will get very messy and time consuming (hence the cost to ay for those hours of work) will go up quite a bit... and that's exactly what will happen unless DCS is developed with promissed compatibility in mind.

 

Why on earth did ED decide to charge little for such high fidelity sim is beyond me... I guess Ka-50 is not popular but really by now DCS titles are well recognised and now based on experince and good quality products I don't see problems with ED charging more for DCS flyable.... but then making things compatible should be free as expected as after all once you buy that DSC flyable, the avionics wil be same in every next release. So why pay for same avionics/FM/DM etc twice? Its the game world improvements that should be paid for, not the flyable aircraft.... well at least that's how I see it.

Edited November 4, 2011 by Kuky

[159th_Viper]

First a question to the ED team, will there be a retail DVD version of the full BS 2 version?

 

Not at this stage, no.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1319202#post1319202

[nomdeplume]

But maybe they could of made the compatibility patch free and the upgrade separate.

I don't think that'd be especially viable. A lot (i.e. most) of the work would have to be done to make it compatible. Come to think of it, I think it'd actually be a significant project to simply determine what updates needed to be made and what could be left alone, let alone actually implementing them.

 

And even if you did, you'd then end up with two versions of Black Shark you need to support, and when the next module comes out, do it again with Warthog? So now you have "BS compatible", "BS upgraded", "A10 compatible", "A10 upgraded", and "New module". And then when the fourth module comes out ...

 

But I do not want to be handled as a cash-cow.

I don't think anyone treats the simulation market as a cash-cow, otherwise Electronic Arts would still be producing simulations.

[Rhinox]

...Secondly to all complainers on why they charge 20$ for the upgrade, this is business, there are people doing jobs behind this game...

I would not have any problem to pay ED for their hard work, had I not the feeling they artificially made up some job just for earning more money from us, customers. Let me put it straight:

 

*IF* DCS followed modular principle (one common DCS:core and pluggable DCS:addons), I would *gladly* pay once full price for DCS:core, later for DCS:core upgrade every time it gets upgraded, and for every new DCS:addon (but only once per DCS:addon, and fixing eventuall errors/problems by addon-patch schould be cost-free).

 

But DCS is more like a series of independent software packages, and thus amount of necessary "compatibility/upgrade/patch-development" is increasing exponentially with each new DCS:part. I understand this is difficult task but I think this work on "each-with-each" compatibility/upgrade could have (and should have) been avoided. Otherwise with each new DCS:part we will have to pay more and more for upgrades/patches of all those previous DCS:parts...

[Dudikoff]

I don't think anyone treats the simulation market as a cash-cow, otherwise Electronic Arts would still be producing simulations.

 

On the other hand, do you think ED would be doing these simulations all these years if they were losing money on them? Are they a charitable organization?

 

I've noticed that a lot of counter-argumentation goes in line with "be happy that they are making sims and not some console FPS shooter". Of course, I'm happy they're here, but if it was so easy to switch to FPS development and produce successful games, I'm sure they would have switched to that already (who wouldn't?). It's easy for EA to do that since they're large and have lots of IPs which they can use to develop sequels, but try to check how many FPS games come out each year and how many are good/successful. Also, the MMORPG games.. You've had tens of games in the last couple of years trying to get some piece of WoW's cake and most of them failed miserably and are switching to microtransactions or shutting down. ED found a niche in the market they can survive in and I'm happy it's the flight sim genre. I'm just not happy about some of the things related to the way it seems to be heading, that's all.

Edited November 4, 2011 by Dudikoff

[nomdeplume]

Why on earth did ED decide to charge little for such high fidelity sim is beyond me... I guess Ka-50 is not popular but really by now DCS titles are well recognised and now based on experince and good quality products I don't see problems with ED charging more for DCS flyable.... but then making things compatible should be free as expected as after all once you buy that DSC flyable, the avionics wil be same in every next release.

So what's the harm in charging less and then charging additional for updates to the older modules? I mean, what's the benefit of charging more up-front rather than doing it like this? I can see some negatives in the form of making it harder to get retailers to stock your product, and putting people off buying it because of a higher purchase price. I can't really see a benefit, especially if people actually are willing to paying more.

 

As for the whole 'they should have developed it as a modular system' thing... given that they were the ones who described the concept as aircraft modules, I'm fairly confident that at some point over the last few years they did give some kind of consideration to the idea of implementing them as pluggable modules into a common engine that was updated as they went... and rejected it for some reason. Reasons that we're not privvy to and would only embarass ourselves if we tried to guess (not that that'll stop me :D).

[xhaos]

So the true question at this time is: Are BS2 and A10 compatible with the upcoming fixed wing US fighter title? My guess is that no they aren't cause radars and fast moving jets and and and will require ED to introduce new communication parameters in the netcode. Then again if/when (and I hope they will at some point) ED introduces ingame voip radio, again the netcode will need to change and thus all titles will need to be made compatible. So yes there is a trend that titles will be separated and in my opinion this will hurt the online's community momentum towards achieving critical mass. Online compatibility throughout DCS should be a given.

Edited November 4, 2011 by xhaos

[bogusheadbox]

Well to be quite honest,

 

ED should just announce this as an MMO, charge us a monthly fee and be done with it. At least that way we can all be online with the same game version.

 

F:censored:'ing rediculous

 

So the true question at this time is: Are BS2 and A10 compatible with the upcoming fixed wing US fighter title?

 

Of course they won't.

 

There is absolutely no incentive no for me to purchase every released flyable as i will have to pay to keep them all up to date.

Edited November 4, 2011 by bogusheadbox

[Dudikoff]

I would not have any problem to pay ED for their hard work, had I not the feeling they artificially made up some job just for earning more money from us, customers.

 

Agreed, it's easy to get the feeling that somebody up there decided to slap some things onto the BS patch to the Warthog level (like a campaign and cockpit shadows) as a justification to charge it and get some extra cash.

 

One of the reasons IMHO is that the feature list looks pretty much like the Warthog feature list (and maybe some things developed for the something.something.something.10 patch).

 

The other reason is that the communication about it was non-existent. I don't recall anybody asking the potential customers whether we would like to have some extra content for the Black Shark added to the compatibility patch and would like to pay for that. I guess I just expected them to transfer the flyable Ka-50 to the Warthog engine standard with no changes to it which didn't seem like it required a lot of effort. But, I guess the compatibility changes were not so simple since many standard systems have changed (e.g. like communications and sounds) requiring extra work and testing. Ok, fine, but once this was realized that I would have appreciated some forward notice about it. Being unexpectedly put in this "pay-to-have-DCS-compatibility-of-a-DCS-product" situation is not so easy to swallow principle wise since this business model was not advertised up to this point and even now the official responses are very few and in between.

[159th_Viper]

Again, a final reminder:

 

Friendly request:

 

The financial implications and arguments relating to the pro's and con's of the product have now been thoroughly discussed over a period of approx 2 days and close to 800 posts.

 

At the risk of perpetuating the proverbial perpetual argument, it is hereby requested that if you have already voiced your opinion on the matter, either for or against, kindly refrain from further comment on the matter and rest assured that your opinions/comments have been noted. For all newcomers to the thread, please feel free to voice your comments/opinions.

 

As to the further conduct of the thread, let's kindly keep it on topic.

[Nate--IRL--]

So the true question at this time is: Are BS2 and A10 compatible with the upcoming fixed wing US fighter title? My guess is that no they aren't cause radars and fast moving jets and and and will require ED to introduce new communication parameters in the netcode. Then again if/when (and I hope they will at some point) ED introduces ingame voip radio, again the netcode will need to change and thus all titles will need to be made compatible. So yes there is a trend that titles will be separated and in my opinion this will hurt the online's community momentum towards achieving critical mass. Online compatibility throughout DCS should be a given.

 

You actually highlight a very valid point, it would be much much easier to abandon the inclusion of new features in order for the modular concept to work.

 

I've made this single example elsewhere, but the improvement made to the radios and AI radios in Warthog, needed a lot of work for BS2 (New Voice acting, Radio logic etc). And radios are only one tiny example of the changes that needed work.

 

If you were given the choice would you want the A-10C in the BS1/FC2 simulation with half the features (eg no Jtac/HDR etc) or the Black shark in the Warthog simulation world?

 

I know what I want. Unfortunately it required a lot of work to get what I want.

 

Nate

Edited November 4, 2011 by Nate--IRL--

[LostOblivion]

I realize now that the point I made earlier with modules similar to ROF would be a trickier task to than for ROF devs, because DCS modules are released with A LOT of more development in between than the ROF modules are.

[Dudikoff]

I realize now that the point I made earlier with modules similar to ROF would be a trickier task to than for ROF devs, because DCS modules are released with A LOT of more development in between than the ROF modules are.

 

Definitely. Maybe the initial build of Rise of Flight contained a more complete list of features for a WWI sim then what ED had with BS (especially since it was a helicopter sim and they were building on the Lock On developments and not starting from scratch), but it's certainly ungrateful to compare a WWI sim developments to those of a modern one.

[EtherealN]

The ROF guys cheat through making a WW1 sim. :P

 

:D

 

Well, not really cheating, but I'm sure you agree that there's a certain difference in complexity between simulating a WW1 bird and WW1 battlefield, and doing the same for modern aircraft and the modern battlefield.

 

What works for them may very well be extremely difficult for ED, simply due to the subject matter being simulated.