homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation DCS World Campaign after Campaign - ED's new focus

you can buy a skin from me - I'll provide regular patches

You're selling patches of skin ?!!
Gross...!

Donno who might have been the first to do it but contributing to games and getting compensated is becoming more common. Generally its been limited to cosmetics in games like TF2 or Planetside 2. But there are instances of more complex works being implemented, again TF2 is an example with maps. It is overall very much a gray area with no solid consensus on what the best approach is. I seem to recall Skyrim had a bit of a kerfuffle over introducing a payware mod system. I think a problem with that was it wasn't exactly curated and it was 100% community driven. It resulted in people stealing mods to try and get a profit and I think in a few cases there were free mods rendered useless because of another mod it depended on became payware.




Payware liveries doesn't seem to be a thing yet. It'd be a bit of a waste considering we can't change them in MP nor show it off since it would be clientside anyways. Suffice to say its not something I think should exist. Though private commissions for a livery would probably be ok, just not fully sanctioned DLC. If it did exist I wouldn't be shocked if payware liveries wouldn't be allowed for a model until development on it has "stabilized" to the point where changes wouldn't be likely.

yes - you will be able to count on me, after you buy a skin, to patch if needed.

I know that what I post sometimes sound like I am joking, because most of the time I am ...

but in this case I am not.

No more freeware skins?

the way things are going, I doubt it - you will see, the moment that new map is announced most mod makers will have their "Aha !!!" moment , really, Eagle Dynamics is monetizing their products, we will pay now for every little thing : how long before a "Python 4" payware mod ? or a Desert Storm skin pack ??? or payware a high res skin pack for the Su-... ???

I'll continue releasing my skins for free and LOF will always be free , but if this trend goes the way I believe it will, how long I'll be able to continue ???

Tom, This is one of the reasons I love WOFF. Also has great support, a fantastic AI, and all backed up buy
several very nice and helpfull members.

Flying in WW1 is old style "one v one" ,get close and know your plane and the other guy.

WWI & WWII dogfighting is a lot of fun





which is what makes flight sims such fun - and to me : our community is all about sharing work for free.

It is the same situation in FSX. The file structure is completely open, with no build in copy protection. Users can access everything, yet 3rd parties can still sell their stuff successfully despite piracy.

Head over to the LOF website. You'll see how many of us have worked our ass off. Get nothing in return? Thanks from the community is all that mattered to me. I did it because I loved what I was doing. I've also fed people who were homeless and hungry. Nothing in that for me at all, right?

Hooray for you. I too spent lots of my free time in service to the flight sim community. Still, how does that entitle me or you to tell somebody else he has to work for free?

and you have been doing it for over 10 or 12 years ...

what we did - and still do, and will continue to do for P3D will increasingly become more and more difficult to continue doing in DCS as more people gravitate towards payware, soon, people will begin asking why you are releasing freeware while others try to earn some money out of their mods.

I dont mind earning money out of my work - but it is bad when it becomes the new normal in our hobby.

Of course - if you price it reasonably people wont mind.

Which is not the case in DCS, DCS is already one of the most expensive flight sim products around.

That is the way things are, no use rebelling against it.

Wow, bitter much?


Where was I telling anyone he had to work for free? Are you having those conversations in your head again?

I was merely commenting that some people don't mind spending their free time doing things for the community. It's a shame that once in a while a bitter angry person responds to that with "Hooray for you". I hope that attitude doesn't stop someone who is doing something for free. That attitude is counter productive and of course it's expected from some of the community members who are "supporters" (notice I didn't say fanboi?).

Certainly, it is the 3rd most expensive sim behind FSX and X plane (4th if you count p3d), which sims you defend while they do exactly the same thing DCS does.

Remon, feel free to disagree with my opinions.

thanks for your input.

Obviously, you have never looked at train sims.

I agree...bonus if payed DLC attracts talented 3rd party devs like orbx to DCS.

My main concern is first that not owning a DLC will stop me from using already owned content, witch I'm pretty confident won't happen. The other concern is Ed locking out people that want to mod and continue to give out thier work for free.

Look at the debacles of veao and avio. Those two third parties have struggled to keep up with the development of DCS and have continually failed to update their products citing ED as the problem. These two developers should be privy to the development of the core sim yet fail. Now we are to have community modders charging for DLC! With no knowledge of what changes are in the pipeline? Imagine a community modder like Tom whose has produced a lot for the community. 1 change in the core sim could mean he has to change everything he has produced. That is a lot of work to do for an unforgiving community.
Citing FSX and P3D as an example, FSX has a finished core, P3D has not. A lot of FSX developers do not produce as much for P3D or update their core as a priority purely because P3D is still a work in progress. The core is updating frequently and third parties simply do not prioritize P3D updates.
The problem with DCS is that it is a work in progress with a tagline "everything is subject to change". Who in their right mind is going to pay for community modded content when that content may very well be unusable after the next patch/update.

A core developer may well set out a roadmap and everything may look grand in the grand scheme of things. Post the roadmap on their fabulous forums but they then state "everything is subject to change". That puts a community modder in a sticky situation if they plan to charge for their mods. There is zero knowledge their mod will be compatible in the future. There is zero guarantee for the customer that their purchase will have a long lifespan. There will be no help from the core developers as they have no contract with the modder. For a finished product there would be no problem, for a work in progress I see nothing but a recipe for disaster for the modder. Modders breath life into communities, produce what the core developers don't. I see a lot of trouble for them with this new direction.
Also why keep the SDK from the community in general, citing not wanting unsatisfactory content to spoil the great work of third parties, then allow paid for DLC? It's a little bit weird don't you think?

Just out of curiosity...does anyone know what ED's percentage is on DLC from community modders?

I see the campaign comes with 3 activations...I imagine ED has to be getting something for adding the DRM to it. I'm not too stoked on having to worry about activations on a campaign now. I think the whole "activation" method is a little archaic at this point. This is something that I think Rise of Flight handled pretty well. As long as you log in with your credentials...it knows what you have purchased and what you haven't...pretty painless.