I would agree Jedi. My largely “Hot Take” from earlier today not withstanding, I always felt Midway wasn’t a great fit and said so in different threads. Honestly if they had just said they were making BoBo, and only BoBo, because its more lucrative I would have said great, can you make the P-47 first? But the other stuff…I mean great I guess? I know many want kites, and cockpit-less planes are great in VR so ok, but I am tired of huge over reach. I know, I know, Extra devs, Work in parallel, Existing assets, Third parties, gonna be easier this time, yup. I know. I really valued the focus because the plan was clear and streamlined.
I am really excited and I will crow to the heavens when I am flying in a jug over Holland. My concern comes from the feeling that there was a good chance I would be flying a naval plane in the PTO this time next year. Now I have a feeling I will be reading a press release instead this time next year.
So this will be my last sour face on this subject. I am very much hoping for success in all they are planning and I will give them the benefit of the doubt going forward. I have greatly enjoyed the product they have built so far. I also plan to purchase the pre-order to help them get there.
I have had to make the difficult choice to postpone, NOT CANCEL our plans to go to the Pacific theater. The reasons for this are many and have everything to do with the complexity of the subject (Ships, Japanese Aircraft) and the inability to marshal the required resources to develop this content up to the standards you expect and in a reasonable time frame and within a budget we could afford. I have not taken these steps lightly and for fans of the PTO, of which I am the biggest, this was not something I wanted to do. But the dream still lives!
What you see announced today is my plan to try to build, in a hopefully clever way, larger infrastructure so we can tackle the PTO in the future. Also, by rapidly expanding our content I hope to increase sales so we can afford proper solutions to building PTO content and doing the necessary research to build Japanese planes and ships to our current level of accuracy and fidelity.
I will explain more on this topic once the dust settles from this big announcement and I have caught up on my sleep. I will also address it in my next TeamSpeak chat session this weekend.
Please, please, please understand that there is no conspiracy here and we STILL INTEND to go to the PTO as soon as feasible. It has been my professional dream for 10 years. I won’t give up on that dream.
I am glad about the transparent view on this topic from Jason. As well as i am a bit sad about the delay of the Pacific scenario, i also can accept and understand the decision. And while waiting, the three announced scenarios are fine for me
There are some people who feel «cheated» out of their PTO. And since it was the developers themselves that created the expectations, such feelings are understandable, even if no promises were made.
I remember how I felt when they decided to drop VR support for RoF.
The only way to avoid letdowns like these are to say absolutely nothing about pending development and I’m certain that would not be preferable…
I’d much rather hear what the developers are thinking, how they reason and how they make their decisions, even if they sometimes don’t go my way.
I embrace the open dialogue with developers and the early access businessmodel as it makes me feel part of the process. They do listen, you know.
I may be mistaken but there were never any promises made to deliver the PTO theatre, it was more off an open wish made by Jason long ago even when Stalingrad was fresh out of the box, its been a long held desire of his. Having the IL-2 moniker in front of a PTO sim always did feel strange (and for the ill-fated Battle of Britain theatre with Cliffs of Dover), I’d rather see them rename the series now its established along with the game engine name change and develop their own series without being tied to the past.
That’s AFAIK correct.
But that doesn’t stop people from feeling how they do, when it’s postponed. Just that the devs are entertaining the idea of a PTO is enough to get the expectations growing.
Afaik there were few additional (lets call it) ‘announced intentions’ since Stalingrad. For sure no promises of course. So what follows is more like time line for info.
First big official announced plan to create PTO happened with the announcement of Battle of Kuban (SEP-2016 but the original announcement is not existent anymore)
And this was additional comment on that subject in MAY-2017:
So, let’s talk about what happens after Kuban for a moment. When we announced battle of Kuban I made it clear that our intention (assuming it is possible) was to do something different, something many have asked for that would shake up the norm - The Pacific Theater starting with the Battle of Midway. It’s been over a decade since a new Pacific themed product was developed and I hope we can change this. After much research and thought we have come to understand that this will be an extreme challenge for us on every front.
Of course, a PTO sim requires not just expanded naval ship code but also carrier ops and that cannot be taken lightly. Not without blowing it, of course.
Let’s face it, if a BoMi comes out and carrier ops are awful or broken there are far too many “fans” who will gleefully crucify them for it and declare they’re done. So given that the non-plane, non-terrain stuff is going to require a big leap, getting a large number of the planes and terrain stuff done with earlier titles lowers the slope they must climb to hopefully more manageable levels.
I want a coop MP PTO sim with carrier ops, like Il-2 PF had, quite strongly and I want it to expand to include all the major USN, USMC, IJN, IJA, and even some of those other nations’ branches planes. I don’t care so much about planes that had minimal impact that Il-2 46 tossed at us in huge numbers, just give me the main players and I’m content.
Yeah, IL-2 PF had some fantastic MP game play. My only reservation is that since the Pacific theater covered such vast distances, the mission planning has to be spot on. That’s why Guadalcanal and Okinawa made for such good maps, because the missions could be focused around relative choke points. I remember one that wasn’t, maybe Coral Sea, and we flew our Wildcats for well over an hour before making contact. Then a 6 or 7 minute furball and it was an hour + back to the boat.
I seem to remember Il-2 having a ‘Jump to Event’ feature, where it would fast forward until your flight came into a certain range of an enemy. I don’t think it worked terribly well, and it is probably only feasible for Single Player, but it’s an idea.
It worked well in the Strike Fighters series, EAW, and the old Sierra sims, but those are about it. Most of the others I would use regular time compress and monitor carefully.
