IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad Discussion

Started by Grim.Reaper, December 28, 2013, 06:51:32 PM

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Grim.Reaper

Quote from: Skoop on December 29, 2013, 03:48:52 PM
I actually think the historical campaign sounds cool the way the above post laid it out.  I think the online server connection is how they control the persistent battlefield effects they might have planned.  I'm just waiting on more SP campaign details before I hit the purchase button for this one.  I probably will end up buying the non premium version that only has 6 aircraft on release rather than commit a hundred now and hope for the best.

Maybe, I guess we will have to see....I still like have an offline option if possible for the occasion where their servers are down or my connection is not working.

Rekim

Quote from: Father Ted on December 29, 2013, 08:04:15 AM
Those want to play flightsims will have to expect that they're going to cost a lot of money.  A hundred bucks seems steep, but that gets you 8 planes eventually (I think).  In comparison DCS Mustang is about $25 now on Steam, so their planes are twice as much.  WT is FTP but people spend hundreds of dollars to keep up with the opposition rather than grind.

I have no idea what the finial pricing will be for the DCS WW2 aircraft will be but if the kickstarter pricing was any indication they will be much cheaper than the $25 price tag for DCS Mustang. During the kickstarter campaign a single aircraft cost $0 (and that could turn out to be the P-51...still TBD). $30 was good for 5 aircraft.

http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/WWII/backer_paypal.php

Toonces

In both games, they could also strangle you to death with various optional DLC like soundtracks, skin packs, and such. 

I think the best approach to both BoS and DCS-WW2 is to buy in early if you're feeling altruistic, or if you really want to get in on the ground floor.  But I wouldn't hold my breath re: proposed features or speculation about what each will offer.  With BoS, for example, I would expect something very similar to RoF set in WW2...that means everything from DRM on.  Meaning, getting into offline campaign mode might still require an internet connection, etc.

With DCS, well, if you love DCS:World then you know what you're getting.  If you don't like DCS:World, like me, I see know reason to throw good money after bad.

There are some variables here, but both groups have put out sims previously (or are building on existing sims) so there shouldn't be a lot of surprises regarding what you're going to get for your investment.
"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

"Does a watch list mean you are being watched or is it a come on to Toonces?" - Biggs

Silent Disapproval Robot

They are going from Alpha to Beta tomorrow and they've introduced a new "standard" pre-order edition in addition to the "premium" one that was going for $95.

The standard edition is on for $54.99 USD right now (reg $59.99) and includes everything in the premium edition except the La-5 ser. 8 and the FW-190A-3 aircraft.  You can buy those at a later date if you want to upgrade.

http://il2sturmovik.com/

The devs have announced that the game will also be available on Steam later this year.

Here's the latest from the devs.

QuoteTo all who have been watching how our project evolves and have taken part in the Early Access including those that are labeled as Founders - we are glad to inform you that we're entering the final stage of development of IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad.

Eighteen months ago in December 2012 we announced the start of a new flight sim project and now you can see what exactly that project is. In February 2013 development started, and six months after that we decided to provide the community an opportunity to support our enterprise via the Founder program. Thus, the game became available for sale in July 2013. It was a bold and peculiar move for us and for flight sim fans as well. We hoped that our adult and mature community would understand the specifics and decide to help us in our courageous endeavor. And many of you did, helping us get to this important point in the development process.

Four months after the opening of pre-orders we started the Early Access program - another risky step considering that our goals and player's expectations could have been completely different. But then we decided to establish a highly transparent communication operation with the community. And there were arguments, kudos and critiques, but this was exactly the thing that allowed us to build such cooperation with thousands of players from all over the world. And we feel this approach proved to be a good one with positive results.

Today, a new stage of development is upon us – the Beta-version stage. The Alpha version is a cast copy of the project, it's a shadow with the original forms merely sketched. The Beta version already has all key elements and the game is practically ready to be released - it just needs to be tested and tweaked. Our game will remain in the Beta stage for the whole summer of 2014. All this time will be spent for testing and quality assurance procedures. lL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad will be released in September 2014.

Although not our original planned release date, we decided to prepare the game properly so we could present it to the worldwide flight sim community with pride. And your support and attention has proven us that the future of our project is worth fighting for despite all circumstances. Rest assured that the rest of the path will be exciting too. Firstly, we received numerous requests to make Standard edition available again, so we agreed to put it back in the store until June 18th. All the details about the two different editions are available on our site.

Secondly, as a sign of gratitude for your trust and great support we decided to give the Founders tag to everyone who bought the game from November 2013 till May 2014. Because that way you can be recognized as someone who made the rebirth of your favorite gaming genre possible!

We also plan to launch the game on Steam later this summer. Pricing will be similar to the one on our site. All details about the Steam release will be announced later.

Thanks again to all Early Access participants and pre-order owners! You have been making the game together with us. It's a rare and precious experience for us and hopefully you as well. And thanks to you the project is going to be of a nice quality. The remaining 50% of the development progress is polishing, debugging and taking care of performance and usability issues.

The next step is the Beta version. Looks like we made it, guys! And congratulations on the V-E day!

Today we give you soviet fighter La-5 for the early access. It's one of the two premium planes in our project. This means that golden Founders and early access owners will be able to try the plane in a few hours, but players with Standard edition already have time to plan purchasing La-5 in future. Both La-5 and Fw 190 A-3 will be available in our store in the end of June.

Jarhead0331

Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Silent Disapproval Robot

Well this is discouraging.  I was hoping they'd try to make improvements in the single player experience over ROF but it looks like they're going in the opposite direction.  Doesn't sound like a campaign at all really, just a series of unrelated quick missions tied together by a specific date.  Can't see a lot of user made campaigns coming out as the FMB will be the same as in ROF and that is an absolute bitch to use.


QuoteHow will the single-player campaign work? Are we going to play as an abstract or real pilot, or we freely choose where to server and what plane to fly? Are separate missions in the campaign connected?

Our goal is to tell the story of Battle of Stalingrad to as many players as we can. This approach along with restricted development period surely limits us in comprehensive recreation of smaller details. Thus it will not be a single player campaign about a pilot or a squadron. It will be about aircraft and war history.

We'd be glad to avoid endless community arguments on that matter. However, there's a lot to discuss since even historians are not certain about some moments. So we just turn away a bit from these issues and create a game about planes. Let your imagination personalize your gaming experience. We're an unbiased story teller. You are pilots living virtual lives in the sim. Also, this community is quite segmented in its desires, just because you are the loudest, does not mean you are the biggest. A lot of players can't afford to spend more than 1 hour a day in the game while the other group of players is able to play the game 10 hours a day or even more. And we realized that it's not us making the game emotional, it is you. Our part is to deliver necessary conditions for your experience.

IL2:BOS campaign will tell you the story of Battle of Stalingrad from November 19th 1942 till February 2nd 1943. The whole period is split into operations (phases of the battle). Each phase has a realistic template on how ground troops and airfields were positioned. We did our best to be as precise as possible in this and all templates are based on historically correct data and real maps. We divided the battle into several key parts: Uranus, Little Saturn, Aerial Bridge, Winter Thunder and so on.

Meanwhile the player is not limited with anything and the playable character is impersonalized. Each player is going to have their own virtual life and singular, specific experience and emotions. You'll be free to pick any plane, any airfield and any mission that is available at that moment. And this unique experience of yours will build your personal campaign.

Missions are not connected with each other. There's sort of a "groundhog day" within each single phase. Time of a day, weather conditions (within a list of historically correct ones for each period) will vary every time you start the mission. And you play this or that phase as many times as you want. Several successfully completed missions open access to the next phase leaving the completed one available for reply at any time. This is akin to sand-box style gaming.

Players who are looking for precise reconstruction of particular historical events will have community created missions to satisfier their demands. Those missions can tell about specific pilots, events and real combat missions down to historically correct personal skins and battle conditions. But our studio is not able to deal with such amount of tasks right now, that's why community we'll need to provide themselves with those WWII reconstruction missions. And the main campaign will remain available for the wider audience.

TacticalWargames


Nefaro

#37
Quote from: TacticalWargames on May 31, 2014, 07:18:39 PM
Isn't that just a random battle creator?

Sounds like it, although they say the mission types can change as the date (phases?) advance.  Dunno.  They're making it sound pretty abstracted, as if your pilot's "career" won't even be tracked.  ROF's beta career wasn't anything special, mainly due to the limited squadrons you had to choose from and the poorly randomized missions, but at least it kept track of your pilot's career and his accomplishments.  Not sure if BOS will even have that, after reading this.  :'( 

At least they're talking of trying to mix up the missions this time around.. would get so sick of flying the exact same mission & route in ROF repeatedly.  It was obvious that they didn't have much variation in their Beta Career mission generation.  The PWCG definitely does much of that stuff better, although I had to tweak some settings to be happy with that one too.

Silent Disapproval Robot

Patrick Wilson was the maker of PWCG for ROF.  He said it took him over 1,000 man-hours to make the program.  He also said he has no interest in WWII so he won't be making any such program for BOS.

JudgeDredd

I've had too many bad experiences with this series to even contemplate buying in.

Besides - I have to keep my money for Elite:Dangerous
Alba gu' brath

Grim.Reaper

Quote from: JudgeDredd on June 01, 2014, 01:14:58 PM
I've had too many bad experiences with this series to even contemplate buying in.

Besides - I have to keep my money for Elite:Dangerous

So is this your pledge to not buy any new games until Elite is out?  If so, I want in on that bet:)

JudgeDredd

Well, until I decide to buy Elite. I may very well cave on the next version of the beta which I presume will have trading and docking etc - things that are currently in alpha
Alba gu' brath

Jarhead0331

Quote from: JudgeDredd on June 01, 2014, 02:46:23 PM
Well, until I decide to buy Elite. I may very well cave on the next version of the beta which I presume will have trading and docking etc - things that are currently in alpha

The current beta has everything that was in the alpha as far as I can see. I just docked in a spaceport yesterday.
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


JudgeDredd

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on June 01, 2014, 03:31:09 PM
Quote from: JudgeDredd on June 01, 2014, 02:46:23 PM
Well, until I decide to buy Elite. I may very well cave on the next version of the beta which I presume will have trading and docking etc - things that are currently in alpha

The current beta has everything that was in the alpha as far as I can see. I just docked in a spaceport yesterday.
There's definitely a dark streak in you JH!  O0
Alba gu' brath

mikeck

"A government large enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."--Thomas Jefferson