I am sim happy! I have power. I love where DCS has been headed so I buy everything. I am way less happy with IL2 WW1 so I’ve bought nothing beyond the original Flying Circus. Those two acts are the only two I deserve to have. I vote with my wallet. I rarely visit either forum because they are both equally unpleasant. That’s ok. I buy games, not forums. If I want to share opinions and experiences, there is only one stop to shop: Mudspike!
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I used to visit the forums of any game I played quite regularly in earlier days.
It used to be the place to get the best inside info like guides, handy tools and meet a large portion of the fanbase.
I feel like a digital homeless guy at times these days; things have scattered so much.
Steam has a ‘community’ section for every game where one developer puts in lots of time to make it the central place for info (usually indie devs) while others completely ignore it.
Then we have Discord where devs and fans pop up servers willy nilly, resulting in sometimes having to track multiple server for a single title.
It’s all so much busywork. And I am just an enthousiast, must be hell to wade through for a ‘community manager’.
All the while, the trusted old websites and their forums are a dying breed.
I am glad Mudspike is here. It keeps me sane and grounded in this rapidly changing online world.
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Yes, MS feels like a warm cozy cabin I can use to get out of the storm. A storm that never ends. Likely what @jenrick said has a lot to do with it:
This subject reminds me (maybe it’s my mood) of my “Clickbait Title List” and those that feed off it. Kind of related: my list of YouTube sites is shrinking based, in part, on this ‘concept’ – much like my hobby forums list.
Quick, random search and I find the article below. Just skimmed it but they appear to be serious. No, I’m not naïve, just weary.
It’s the same old advertising modus operandi that’s been around for generations, only now available to anyone with an internet connection, scaled to current times:
CLICKBAIT TITLES: WHY YOU NEED THEM + HOW TO WRITE AN EFFECTIVE ONE
As we mentioned, clickbait titles are necessary because your content is often jostling for the top spot on Google with other quality blog posts or pieces of content. A good title that clarifies what a reader will find in the article can help you stand out and get more clicks.
The key to a good clickbait title is to not lie to the audience.
That last one made me chuckle.
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We should have also posted a picture of us with our mouth agape and some big red font…
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I get what you’re saying. I just wanted to say that I vote with my wallet too, but my reasoning is quite different. I know IL-2 FC has faults, but given the past performance of the developer, I’m willing to gamble my money on them. After all, it’s not like there’s another horse in the race… I just hope my horse finishes the race before someone puts him down. 
SIMS, goshdarnedit! 
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Getting closer…“Simulation of Deadly Reality”.
Oh no…wrong Gif…
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I don’t think I’d call Strike Eagle 3 buggy or unfinished. It did what it was meant to do remarkably well, it just didn’t try to do much.
At least it offered coop, either 2 planes or FS/BS, while Jane’s F-15 only had that pointless H2H mode. I played a lot of SE3 online and F-15 offline, while F4 soured me with all its problems to the extent I think I played more of F4:AF which had solved a lot of that.
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I think he explained it well. He was an actual fighter pilot and make-believe flying just isn’t like the real thing and he says so. What’s the problem with that?
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Hi @Piiman314 and welcome to Mudspike! 
Don’t think anybody had a problem with that. If you’re talking about Mover, in the first post…? 
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I don’t think there is anything “wrong” with flight sim fans any more than there’s anything “wrong” with the 11-year-old pipsqueaks shouting racial slurs into the voice comms during a Fortnite match.
Okay, there’s something wrong with the budding sociopaths, there’s nothing wrong with flight sim fans.
I think flight sims tend to attract a more cerebral gamer than does Call of Duty. I work with teenagers every day (school counselor) and I don’t sense that a lot of them are as thrilled with a good approach on a target and setting up a nice level pass, readying countermeasures for the egress.
Most flight sim fans tend to be a little more mature, and as a result, they know what they want out of a product and what they don’t want to see. They like research. Most of them have a personal library. Some are amateur historians, some are semi-professionals at it. This doesn’t make them better people, it makes them different people. The attention to detail is something I think they expect everyone involved in development and production of flight sim products to share in common with them and they are often mystified when people might not have the same….enthusiastic approach…
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You’re absolutely on track with regards to myself, @PFunk. My love for flight sims and particularly combat flight sims stems from a love of the history, traditions and technology present in military aviation.
I’ll read a book about a squadron or perhaps visit a base museum…and then I’ll fly with a livery from that base for a while.
I’m currently reading Miracle at Midway (highly recommended) and enjoying flying Marine Corps Hornets in the Marianas in DCS doing fleet defense missions. It’s fun to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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All true when we look at ‘why’ we play. But if you look at the ED forums its amazing how toxic people can behave over there. And how demanding they can come across towards devs making the products of their hobby. It goes beyond just being critical often.
Aparently many people have a hard time respecting knowledge of others and why? For fear of not being the authority on the subject anymore, that they obviously are in their own private circles?
I find it baffling to witness. Especially since we get these character profiles mentioned like above every time a discussion about who simmers are comes up.
Don’t you feel its disjointed at times?
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Heck yeah.
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Me too.
But that’s normal to me, so I wouldn’t notice if it is different from one community to another.
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I wonder if the sim racing community has the same issues as the flight sim one does… are they arguing over how many rivets should be in the front left wing of a car, or hounding the devs
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I’d be willing to bet they are no different than the flight sim community in that regard. Probably the same for the train simmers too.
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I seem to recall a lot of arguments about tire traction, heating, wear, durability, etc.
They also have aero issues (how much drafting is affecting or not), how much warning you get before the car slides/spins (think Fw/P47 flipping on its back when you pull the stick back in Il-2), and of course AI.
Despite only working in 2 dimensions instead of 3, and the greatly simplified SA of only dealing with your immediate surroundings in 2D (no SAMs at long range), the AI in racing still leaves a lot to be desired. Ramming you like your car isn’t even there, being on rails when collisions occur as opposed to player cars being on ice, etc.
It’s different but also the same. Physics and AI are top of the heap for contentiousness.
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