With almost equal numbers of supporters and detractors of B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th!, sales of this title are labouring under the uncertainty. Sure, the title has some serious technical difficulties, but patches can fix many of these issues. And yet, such serious technical glitches alone cannot explain the diametrically-opposed opinions toward this title we see in the community.

Upon closer inspection, it seems much of the criticism is due to the dashed expectations of those who feel the phrase "flight sim" doesn't apply to this game. From where could such a conflict in expectations arise? Our Jim "Bismarck" Cobb does a little content analysis and finds that the advertising medium is not necessarily the right message.

Abandoned Hell?! I never would think of buying it to begin with. After it became obvious about 2 years back that WE were all beta testers I have stopped buying sims that I have not first read copious reviews on. Most seem to agree that B-17 II is 1.) technically buggy 2.) A "run around in a B-17 and play Flight Surgeon" game. Even if a silver bullet mega patch came out that fixed the game, who-in-hell wants to run around slapping bandaids on fellow crewmen? Sims like this halfa$$ed product EAT money to develop . This is sad because it threatens the entire genre but I will not pay good money to eat the crap served to me with a spoon.

[This message has been edited by MrMinerva (edited 03-12-2001).]

It seems Hasbro knew they were unloading MicroProse and then pretty much threw B-17 II out there without much fanfare to the general public because they wanted to get out, cut their losses, and run. The points you brought up about Gunship! (who the hell puts a ! in a sim title anyhow?) are very good ones, no one knew what it was, Hasbro was tired of spending money on it so they kicked a Beta (if that) out the door and then promptly forgot it ever existed. Well they did remember it existed long enough to cite poor sales of it to kill Tank Platoon 3(!) which was something I was looking forward to. MicroProse being out from under Hasbro was something I saw as a Good Thing(tm), buuuut...

I really don't know much about Infogrames. I know what little I've read about them, they're French, they seem to be buying up developers like there's no tommorow...and that's about it. Now I'm waiting to see what they do with MicroProse, will they let it return to its former glory or shoot it in the other foot? In addition to B-17 they now own the rights to EAW and Falcon 4.0, a pair of 2 year old sims that many consider to be 2 of the best ever made. Any new plans for these? I seriously doubt it but who knows...

Also they bought Blue Byte, which means they own IL-2 now too. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed they they don't pull a Hasbro and blow it. This was long and pointless but I'm more than a little sad, the first game that I ever had that sucked up multi-hour chunks of my life was the original Gunship on my C-64, for a long, long time just seeing MicroProse on the box was enough to make me buy something, and that in itself got me some sleeper classics like Airborne Ranger and their Vietnam strategy game. Anymore MPS on the box is more of a warning than an enticement, a sad sad thing to me since I remember the "good old days".

Schatt eyes his box...nope don't see anything nude on there.

Maybe the Brit box is different? If so someone send me said box and I promise to investigate this alleged nudity till I get to the bottom of it!

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

If I am mistaken, my apologies, but I'm not

I hope with IL-2 we'll have no problems with new publisher.

The main problem for now is that due to changes of right persons in company(s), responcible for IL-2 title. Hope all will be solved very soon.

IL-2 has 2 modes of multiplay ALREADY WORKING ONLINE. Plus Mission builder for making single/campaign or COOP multiplayer missions. It works Ok.

On this week we'll finally implement special online software, which will register ALL players rating, playing Dogfight or Coop in a special database. All will be able to see their rating as a pilot

FM of fighters(as well as bommbers) - I promiss you'll get THE FIGHTERS with different behavior of FM and different DATA, corresponding to real things well.
As well as all modelled NAMES/MODIFICATIONS of planes have real changes outside, inside and tech data or FM.

At the risk of losing my journalistic credentials for objectivity . . . !!

The online database of online player's scores is a very welcome addition too. Games like Quake and Half-Life's "Counter-Strike" have had those for some time and it really gives a person an incentive to improve one's skill and standing.

To all:
I can, as I'm sure Len can too, vouch for Oleg's assertion that there will be differing FM's just from the few planes I've flown in the pre-beta.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Admin:
Oleg,

At the risk of losing my journalistic credentials for objectivity . . . !!

The online database of online player's scores is a very welcome addition too. Games like Quake and Half-Life's "Counter-Strike" have had those for some time and it really gives a person an incentive to improve one's skill and standing.

To all:
I can, as I'm sure Len can too, vouch for Oleg's assertion that there will be differing FM's just from the few planes I've flown in the pre-beta.

---

Freespace2 also has an online database of pilot rankings, medals and ranks gained in online mission, and even allows players to be listed and grouped into squadrons with an overall squadron rating and a link to their squadron's webpage. I always thought this was a very cool thing.

Two things. First, I think that the reviewer forgot just one thing. This could be the most important consideration... Flying a dumb, slow WW2 bomber is boring!! Please, no wonder no-one bought this shite. Hasblo ended up selling a dumbed down game that tried to please everyone, and in the end insulted everyone. Hah! What a bunch of knob jockies.

Second, the reviewer mentions the patches released / to be released. HELLO!!! How can you condone such sloppiness? I will NEVER buy a game like this!! I always read the reviews of games on more than one website before I buy. I also never buy a release in the first few weeks until reviewers have plenty of time to either 'pick' or 'pan' a certain game. This ensures I get a quality game for my money. It sounds like this B17 sucks dog balls. Too bad for Hasblo. Never liked them in the slightest anyway.

LD.

A. I didn't review the game, just the marketing.

B. My mention of the patches was only in the context of Hasbro not promoting them quickly.

/rant off

No one doubts that the bombers didn't do an incredibly difficult job which 'won the war'. My point is just that for a computer game, bombers are boring. It's your personal enjoyment that counts. I do not think this was incorporated enough into the B-17 II game. It is proven that compared to bomber sims, fighter sims sell. ** Comparatively speaking. **

Imagine if Hasblo created a MP website that let simmers fly a multitude of flyable aircraft (including bombers and fighters), and then let those simmers 'go to war'? Wouldn't that have been totally cool? Anyway, I think I'll stick to Janes F/A-18.

LD.

The most fun I'm having with a sim right now while waiting for Il-2 is in the Falcon 4.0 Vietnam campaign. I flown God knows how many sorties and have a grand total of 7 air to air kills, which is very low for most sims but it actually is pretty damn high for Vietnam. The MiGs in that are rare and don't like to tangle with Phantoms, especially since a F-4 doesn't have to give up any of it's hardpoints from carrying the important stuff (bombs) to still pack 4 Sparrows. So right now I have 7 A2A kills and over 400 A2G ones, and am having a blast.

The same thing happens in EAW, I'm in a Marine fighter squadron and we fly Corsairs. Online when we do missions, they're almost always ground attack missions, because that's what Marine aviators do, put bombs on target. The air to air kills are just the icing on the cake. In EAW I have a lot more than 7 kills because we tangled with online Japanese squadrons and you just have to shoot them down you know? Plus the engine guarantees that you'd get at least a squadron of enemy interceptors even in an against the AI co-op every time out.

Point of all this? Well moving mud is fun for us and what we dig. Bombers on the other hand, well yeah they're just dull...well except for the Ju-88G7, but that's a nightfighter so doesn't really count.

Airpower alone can't win a war, although there may be a case for saying it finally made Japan fold when the atomic bombs were dropped but by themselves they didn't win the war in the Pacific any more than bombing Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, etc back to the stone age; both air campaigns were successfull because of what the infantry did on the ground. It's a trusim of war that the only way to win is kick them till they ain't getting up, destroy as many of his assets as you can and occupy his territory till he says enough, the only way to do that is through combined arms not just by bombing.

And I agree with you about Iraq, some said we'd have to occupy the country for 10 years if we would have taken Bagdhad and that argument seemed to have been taken into account on why we stopped when we did. But if you look at the situation now isn't that more or less what happened anyhow? An aerial occupation of 1/3 of the country with the no-fly zones, and what real results has it gotten us?

Anyhow I've rambled enough. Good points though Twitch. My only disagreement is that Moving Mud is Good IMHO. LOL

You have very eloquently stated what I was trying to say. Thanks for filling in the
blanks! When it comes to B-17, I have flown exactly 4 "combat" missions and have found
it nurse-maiding at it's worst. To be all full of the cliches, someone once said that
bomber missions are hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror...

misha1967
Crewman posted March 17, 2001 11:08 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(This is gonna be a long one, so please bear with my babbling or, alternatively, just scroll past it )

I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from and don't worry too much about AC, he tends to be a bit vocal when he feels that someone is badmouthing Wayward's efforts And I have to admit that, as time has passed, I'm leaning more and more towards his view of the whole sorry deal. One thing's for certain, there's no argument that AC knows a WHOLE lot more about the development process of B-17 2 than I ever did

I used to think too that Wayward was basically a bunch of less than stellar, if idealistic guys who, once they after two years of development realized that they'd obviously bit off more than they could chew, finally decided to just launch whatever they'd managed to put together and then be done with the whole thing.

I don't anymore.

And why don't I? Well, for one thing I have to be quite honest and admit that I have NO clue what exactly goes into designing a sim of this type, so my saying that "two years is more than enough and if you can't come up with better than that, then you're obviously a bunch of dweebs" is based on "facts" about as solid as a Democrat inauguration speech, if you'll pardon the simile

But, what has forced me to re-evaluate my standpoint more than anything else is the fact that, when I (and many others, I suspect) had frankly totally given up on anything by way of support and/or remedial action from Wayward, they turned around and delivered. Not merely an interim patch (and it should be mentioned to their immense credit that they delivered that one *directly* to this forum to bypass corporate red tape and get it to us before anybody else) that took care of a lot of CTDs as well as some less palatable contents of the package that are all water under the bridge now, as far as I'm concerned. No, they also promised delivery of a second and more comprehensive patch (and hinted that any patches after that were far from being out of the question) that is currently in testing. And, as if that wasn't enough, to address a lot of user requests on this forum, they handed over their own proprietary art editing utility (the OMFeditor) with instructions on its usage so that we could tinker around with all of the graphics to our hearts' contents.

Not exactly the response of a team who doesn't give a damn about their customers or the sim they've been working on for two years, if you ask me

So I've found myself revising my opinion of WW a LOT, which has served to reinforce my trust in my fellow human beings, which is a Good Thing™

Not that I'm sorry for my reactions a couple months ago. Based on the situation and the feedback (or lack of same) from WW, there was, in my opinion, no reason for me to think differently of them back then.

But I was wrong, and I'll happily admit it. I'm glad I was, because it gives me high hopes for the future of this sim that I've been waiting eagerly for along with everybody else here.

So who's the culprit in this whole deal? Well, clearly there is a culprit, because no one in their right minds could ever claim that the situation surrounding the release of B-17 2 as well as the state it was in when it "went gold" was anything even close to being "acceptable" It was a scam, a scandal and a disgrace to the industry, a shameless ripoff that will send ripples through the entire sim market for a long time as users burnt by this corporate heist view every new title with the utmost of skepticism.

And the culprit, in my opinion, is Hasbro. None other. Full responsibility, no alleviating circumstances, no leniency called for. They did publish a product that they knew was unfinished, tore it out of the hands of the development team, wrapped it in a pretty box, printed a stack of lies on it so shameless that it would make even our ex-president blush and proceeded to charge full price for a product that wasn't even 25% of what they'd promised.
If there is a Hell for software publishers, then surely it will have a sign at the entrance saying "Welcome to Hasbroville"

Hasbro jerked B-17 2 out of development.
Hasbro lied to the public in its advertising about the features that weren't there.
Hasbro failed to provide any of the customer support that they, as a publisher, are obliged to deliver.
Hasbro failed to do ANY QA on the product before it hit the shelves. (The now gone (no thanks to Hasbro) offensive contents alone are proof enough of that.
Hasbro proceeded to ignore an outraged public.
and, finally,
Hasbro and Hasbro ALONE profited from this callous, calculating scam, yet Hasbro are the ONLY ones who have not gotten off their lazy asses and done ONE SINGLE THING to rectify the situation.

Hasbro

I'll say it again,

Hasbro.

Whenever you're in a store and you pick up a product, look at the packaging... If you spot the word Hasbro anywhere on that packaging, just know that if you proceed to buy it anyway and later find that you've been ripped off, don't come crying to me that you weren't warned.

If you feel ripped of to a degree where you're finding it hard to find a comfortable position when you're sitting down, just know that

Hasbro

did it to you.

Hasbro.

Other than that, good luck with your future in game programming, 1ManArmy, I'm sure that you'll never forget what it feels like to be robbed and I'm sure that, if you keep this in the back of your head, you have a great future in the business ahead of you.

Mike "Misha" Lisby

IP: Logge

- The interface & music is strikingly moody, in a charmingly seductive way, but I'm not sure what the message is. The overall feeling seems to be apocalyptical.

- A criticism I have of the interface is that moving to any new screen requires two-step clicking on the switches. I can appreciate the designers’ desire for atmosphere, but an interface should never, ever make the user work harder than is necessary.

- Despite the fact that this sim is supposedly all about “crew,” but B-17 II seems strikingly empty and lacking human personality. There’s all those empty chairs in the debrief room, and even on the aircraft there’s not much sense of “companionship.” I don’t think the you see a human face until you’re on the plane with that pop-up menu of the crew.

- The flight model leaves much to be desired. On takeoff, the B-17 seems to float off the runway like it’s powered by a magic carpet, not Wright Cyclone engines. Same for landing. Big bore.

- I still can't figure out how to navigate within the B-17. I'm constantly thwarted when trying to return to the cockpit out-of-window view.

- Lame documentation. I have yet to go through all the steps required to start the engine when the instructions are in a tightly bound manual.

- A long time ago I used to play another B-17 sim (B-17 “I” maybe?). My criticism then was the amount of time it took to play a mission—3 to 4 hours was typical, with no option for saving a game mid-flight. Is B-17 II the same way?

Where the programmers dropped the ball is on the multi-player aspect. This game has a lot of potential. Like EAW, the game has evolved to be much better as a result of the community. I would still like to see multi-player added at some point soon, but I won't hold my breath. I don't think that this is a sim that will be taken off my machine for quite a while.

There is much to be added to the game, as in more aircraft, maybe even an additional bomber or two, but as it stands, it is a terrific pick up where SWOTL left off. As has been said many times before: Fighter Pilots make movies, Bomber Pilots make HISTORY. Piloting a B-17 had to be an exercise in boredom, interrupted by moments of sheer terror as the fighters swarmed over the squadron, and the flak was bursting all around. I personally hate flak, you can't do anything about it. At least you get to shoot back at fighters.

The true fun while morbid, is aiming your guns at other planes in your formation and watching the damage you inflict. There is nothing more rewarding than watching a BF-109 explode in a fireball from a well placed burst from your .50s.

Tending to wounded crewmen, taking the Norden over the target, milking altitude out of your crippled plane as you near the English coast, these are a few of my favorite things.