I can see why people come to a conclusion like this but I think there are some key things not being understood. On the point of competition. The underlying thing is that it shouldn't be seen as competition but rather options. It's not a good thing if there is only one viable server in a game like DCS. For one, the game does offer a lot of potential scenarios, the other things is that you are overburdening a group of staff members to hold up basically everything. The risk and fun should be distributed across several different servers. DCS Multiplayer is better now than it was two years ago, there are more options and less concentration in one or two servers. So on this point I agree with you. On the point of population softness before F-4. I have seen a lot of players come to this conclusion but I think they are missing two things, one obvious and one not. First the obvious thing, if a new module is coming out in CW, it makes sense to dial back on CW before the module releases. People cycle through different eras. Why grind CW when you are going to be playing it a ton a week from now. I was actively telling people to save it up for the release, I wasn't even playing CW right before the F-4 release. This period lasted a bit longer than anyone anticipated because the F-4 got delayed a few times but that's w/e. The non-obvious part is that people don't realize how easy it is to fill a server when you have a youtube channel. If a video is released, it gets 30,000 views and only 1% respond, then that is 300 players. Once you have a certain amount of reach, then getting players is a given. I think this is the hardest thing for people to understand because only a handful of people have channels large enough to do that. If you want to push back on this, then I invite you to think about Shadow Reapers. I made one video about that server and their population popped. Population issues don't really apply to people who can reach tens and thousands of people. Still don't believe me? Look at Growling. Their formula has not changed in a long time and they continue to hold population. I also disagree with your point about the marketing campaigns. I was reaching out to a lot of people and terminally active in discord to try to find players. On the point about the F-4 hurting cold war. I don't think it's the F-4 but rather how the F-4 is being handled. People raged about balance tweaks and changes but the thing is, it kept things even. If you nerf something hard enough then people will fly something else. It will balance out the numbers. On the point about heatblur running the server. This is the thing that I think people have really missed the mark. Heatblur said they were eager to maintain the server and to preserve it. This is a different mantra than before... We were trying to keep it a zoo, that's not their goal right now. They are maintaining a place to play cold war and that's good. There are 30 players playing right now. People need to reframe their expectations. Ultimately, there are more people playing Cold War now than there were pre-ECW and that is a good thing. It's an era that should be played and it was really overlooked and I am expecting more cold war servers to come to continue what we helped bring to a larger audience. I wanted to make this response because I feel people are being a bit unfair to HB and also this notion of the F-4 being a curse, I don't really agree with. The Mirage F1 has a huge balance issue associated with it and we nerfed it enough to stay in line, the same can be done to the F-4. I would expect CW to continue to flourish as more servers try their own iterations of the era.
Cheers for the response! I definitely did not want to downplay your role in the server's success, don't get me wrong. I more meant that you stepping back should not have had such an effect. I totally get your point that big channel like yours or GS doing a single video can make a huge difference, but surely Heatblur could do the same? Their channel has got 52k subscribers. Not one video has mentioned their new server. If they wanted, they could ramp it up. But they're very much just taking a back seat. And yes, I do agree the F-4 itself is not overpowered but how it is implemented in the server that's the issue. When it can lob fox-1s (abeit just two) in the 60s, where the sabre only gets guns just doesn't make sense to me. It encourages more people onto just the F-4 and increases the problem. I think the F-4 can be made to fit all time periods covered by HCW, but I'm not seeing any evidence that that is being done. Other modules are being nerfed to make BlueFor less appealing, but without changes to the F-4 itself, that just leads to the too-common scenario right now of it being F4s vs Red. I would love if HCW does 'bounce back' a little, at least to the point where it gets a healthy population at times Contention and SR do. As I said, I still enjoy the server, and had fun recording this little background footage. But I'm worried if nothing really changes then it really is 'the end' of the ECW era, and the torch is fully passed along to other servers. I don't think having HCW slowly become more and more empty is going to be good for the playerbase, even with other great options available. HCW still has something to offer.
Yeah. I really feel like the f4 not getting (enough) restrictions has just caused the current health of the server to spiral. I agree about SR and Contention not being competitors really as I still see HCW is still unique in how far back it goes into the Cold War and what vehicles are really the kings. Where it’s not as much of a “what server do you want to play on” question and rather a “what era of the Cold War do you want”.
I’ve been playing HB Cold War server recently for around a week or 2 straight and most of the time it’s blue sided. I’ll be in an a10 and there are 4-8 phantoms vs 4 red players. 2 days ago there was 1 red player vs 7 blue and it wasn’t fair in the slightest (he was in an Mi-8). I don’t know how I feel about the server rn, I have been having a lot of fun recently but the player base seems to get on only at a certain time. It is still fun though and on the weekends we still get around 30 players like enigma said.
Here we go again with the brain dead take that we should continue nerfing the F-4 because it feels unfair that it's "so good." 1. The Sparrow efficacy stats for some of the top F-4 players are *SINGLE FUCKING DIGIT HIT RATES*. That means out of 10 sparrows fired, your chance of hitting the target is BELOW ONE. So WHY THE FUCK are the sparrows continuously being called out as a problem? Look at the 530 stats - they're in the 60%+ range! Look at the R-3R even, it's in the 30% range. The sparrows are not good AT ALL, and they are 500% harder to use than the FC3 level implementations of the Mirage and MiG-21 radars. Fucking look down shoot down bullshit locks 2. SKILL ISSUE for red - when are they ever on SRS coordinating? When do they ever hop in JTAC and GCI? The blue team has a GCI every single time I am on, and we talk to each other. 3. RED is the problem. Stop blaming the fucking blue side for all the server's woes. We are there, we are on, we are flying, there would be more of us, but the stupid fucking balance bot doesn't allow me and my friends to play together, so we go to contention where we're not given the middle finger when we want to fly a fucking 4 ship 4. ECW HAS NEVER TRIED INCENTIVIZING RED with forward airfield spawns, with points bonuses, with spawn aircraft - all they care about is nerfing the F-4 into oblivion, so of course people go play elsewhere. Why on earth are interceptors only spawnable from 2 hexes back? You know the average red player has about 3 seconds of patience so why force them to spawn all the way in the back? WTF? Try some things ffs
Aside from Enigma's wall of text further up, the reason is simple: If a server like this is just maintained and not actively developed with new ideas etc., then yes, player count goes down. That's all there is to it. If HB doesn't do anything to the server it will slowly slide away into "once was great" territorry, which imo is very sad. It's the server that brought life into DCS multiplayer like never before.
I miss it every day. Sure sometimes it was dead, but everyone talked on the radio, and it was amazing to have a competent human GCI managing the entire battlespace. The atmosphere on the Heatblur server is just a lot more antisocial. Nobody talks on the radio. Why would you need to when you have the GCI bot? You're not on a team, it's not 20v20, it's 1v1v1v1v1v1v1 etc...
Unfortunately, that predates me getting into DCS multiplayer. But I did have a go when it relaunched the other month. Seemed good but since then it's just never been active when I am. I hear it does have a following in US evenings, so that's good to know.
to me, them adding the phantom made me play it less, not stop but less, it is so annoying to join the server with 40 players and see 20 of the on phantoms and another 10 on the F-5E while you get 5 MIG-21's, 2 SU-25's and 3 Mirage's (This is an exaggeration, but not far off reality)
Good thing I don't have to rely on what other players do, like stack F4s or F15s, or whatever server hosters are up to while playing singleplayer. I'm glad about that.
I have been playing less often since the introduction of the spotting bug issues some 6+ months ago. It got incredibly frustrating (though there is a semi fix for it now) and kept me away. And then all the razbam stuff + the handover and general fatigue/burnout. I still love playing on the server particularly as a helo main, just gotta pick the right time of day for it atm. The F4 stack definitely contributed a good bit, I always thought it should at least rotate sides like the F1 did when it was introduced.
As somebody's who's played on the server for a bit over 2 years, the issue is not so much that there's a Blue Stack, but the fact that there are certain Blue groups who basically fly racetracks over their own airfields, and either drag & bag the few hapless Reds singletons who don't recognize the trap for what it is, or pounce on the odd A2G player (bravely trying to hit targets with no support and 100's of km from any friendlies) in a 2, 3 or 4 v 1. You can only farm singletons for so long before they just pack it in, and then suddenly Blue has no one to play against. A Blue stack of singletons (or even a few 2-ships) is at least tackle-able by a Red singleton. It's the groups of guys on comms farming kills that no one wants to play against. The dearth of new Red modules also doesn't help. If the MiG-17 ever releases, or the -23 miraculously comes back from the dead (exceedingly unlikely IMO) we might see a bump. Time will tell.
The irony of the F-4 curse, is that the first couple of weeks after the release of the Phantom, Redfor absolutely owned it! The kill counts were ridiculous and Redfor was crowing about how bad the module was and how easy it was to kill Phantoms. Nobody complained about the "Paradise of Phantoms" back then because they were just so damn easy to kill and put a stake in the heart of the F-4 mythos. I guess the wormed turned. But by and large I think you are on the right path.
This server used to be my favorite. It died overnight it feels like. I really miss peak ECW. If the F-4 had actual competition (MiG-23 my beloved), I feel like things could be different. It’s really a shame.
Been flying on HCW almost daily for a few months now. The phantom has been limited to 2x Fox1 and 4x fox2 with the exception of one time period where we did have access to all 4 Fox1s. Most of the time eras have a considerable limitation on how many mavericks can be carried and the special weapons adapter usage. I get that there are a lot of F4s running around but red is still getting kills and capturing zones. I think the F4 is a great balance to the power and capabilities of the F1.
since that entire month that GCI was not working on several slots I think people also were pushed moved to the (at the time) new servers. Me myself I mostly try to jump into the F-4 on 80s server and face it versus the fox-2 F-16s
The DCS customer base is beginning to revolt. It's happening everywhere. Fewer players playing. Players playing less often. Too many problems. Too many unfinished modules. Many DCS customers are tapped out of money. Why buy the latest new pre-leased aircraft when the ones you bought in the last 3 years, are still in pre-release? Problems and fights between DCS and third party developers. Many people are now seeking an alternative. I am asking this question now: Why spend thousands for a new computer, graphics card and hardware in order to continue to fly in DCS? Many of the DCS customer based is just moving on. We are tapped out.
I agree with everything you said except being tapped out of money. I've got plenty of money I am ready and willing to spend on the game and greater ecosystem. I've got all the modules released up to the F15E. But that was the straw that broke the camels back for me and made me take off the rose colored glasses. It was at that point I said I am not making anymore purchases until we either get some *long* overdue core game updates, or the F15E situation is resolved in a way ED accepts some responsibility for the way they've acted. I haven't fired up DCS since June and don't see that changing anytime soon... Because I honestly don't see a way out of this for ED. Nick grey siphoned too many millions of EDs money for his personal plane collection, and I just personally don't see a way for them to accomplish what they need to with the situation they're in. DCS is dying a death a thousand cuts and my view is that at this point is simply a waste of time and money to invest in it any further (until they can prove themselves)
@@Ry-ep8nl Money? I'm 73 and retired. Try living on $2,600 a month retirement and Social Security. Most the people I know, can not buy new powerful computers and hardware just to play a computer game.
I definitely get where you're coming from. And I do wonder what the numbers are like on DCS as a whole. I know I'm holding off any Razbam module because who knows if they will still work 2 patches down the line? That said, I don't think dropping DCS player count is the major reason for ECW losing out. Contention and Shadowreapers between them still are packed at peak times, and during off times have as many players added together as ECW could handle during it's peak. A drop in players certainly wouldn't have helped the struggling server though, and I guess once it's below that key number of seeding players to get others to join, it's just getting worse. Few people want to be on a server with 1 other plane.
I don’t mean this comment to be agreeing or disagreeing with what or why the server has dropped off; but I wouldn’t mind the Phantom actually being point restricted. There isn’t a lot of reason to fly anything else on Blue if you own the Phantom. It’s potentially the strongest fighter, it’s the fastest attacker, by a large margin, and it can carry significantly more ordnance than anything else apart from the A-10. We’ve never seen a vehicle locked for its A/G competitiveness, but I think making the Phantom point locked at a reduced cost, like the F1EE, would be perfectly reasonable. Too many people fly purely air quake, despite it being very easy to rack up points, I’m practically at 100 perpetually. Making people work the ground objectives to get the F-4 would serve to both progress the ground campaign and reduce the Phantom spam. The play style of point restricted aircraft tends to be more reserved as well, there’s more to lose, it adds an interesting risk vs reward gameplay dynamic, it promotes playing A/G and it solves the spam.
Yeah, I'd totally agree that point restricting the F4, particuarly on the 60s rotation, would help a lot. Not as many credits as the F-14, but a decent chunk to make people at least think about which plane to grab. As you said, it makes people spam it less, makes them a little more cautious, and encourages engaging with the campaign objectives.
The 'one side has 3x-4x the amount of players' is a problem in some other servers too, like ShadowReapers and Contention. It gets very annoying and i wish they would do something to balance it. Like if there's a big difference in players then the server would force you (when joining, not mid-flight) into the other coalition to help balance things. Sometimes you just don't feel like playing when you see that one side has a group of 7+ F18s flying in the stratosphere
i believe thats because of the lack of proper redfor aircraft, me myself don't like fliyng against f-16's f/a-18's and f-15's in dcs's su-27, the fc3 is so old that it feels moldy
@@torides. its a bigger problem than that. DCS community is pretty stupid so many people stack into blue because "they are the good guys" Even if you switch Russia and US around with blue and red, they'll still stack onto blue lmao.
Yeah, I totally agree. Imo the main issue was that they simply became too complacent at the worst possible time. The handover shouldve also brought about some major changes, as it was already beginning to nosedive. Instead, the announcement that heatblur would simply be "preserving" the server, hammered hundreds of nails into the coffin, simply by killing interest. We've been granted with so many enormous changes to the core lately, which ECW never kept up with. Alongside the fact that any decisive changes (esp regarding the f4 and broken EWR) were never made quick enough...
As a newish player and especially to 80's contention I'd love to see a few changes. Planes like the mig 15 and 19 should not show up on ewr and should have FAC capability, as they are guns only and no flares. Less capability than the trainers should have the same or more ability. Also the i-16s needs a way to be able to call in FAC, I've done some research and found it never had a radio so although time correct it has way less use on contention compared to the other warbirds, which is fine but also limits sales and I really want to play it more 😅 It would also be nice if the transport helicopters could carry 2 creates (aa/logistics/tank) etc
Totally agree with all of what you said. Especially as It pretains to the f4. Many servers tend towards an unbalanced number of players red vs blue and it makes the game un playable for me personally. Dosent matter if it's basketball or a video game like DCS. If the teams aren't reasonably balanced im not going to play on either one.
You should check out Max Afterburner PvPvE Server. It's modern and has lots of dynamic objectives. There is an AI Balancer that kicks in AI CAP aircraft if sides are imbalanced. Also, you can spawn AI Escorts to provide CAP if you want to do some ground pounding (controlled from the F10 menu).
I can only speak for myself but the F-4 was the turning point playing on ECW. The server brought me into DCS and will forever be grateful for that as I am enjoying it a lot. But as mentioned in the video there is basically no reason to not fly the F-4 on blue it does everything the other planes do and in some regards better as well. I enjoyed the variety of planes that was around, the (mostly) balanced teams but that went away. The new server options we have are great but also not without flaws of course. Shadowreapers mission system is great but the endless stream of AI fighters can make A2G very annoying. There should also be either a minimum range for mission popups for the fast jets or some incentive for them to take the further away missions. It gets frustrating when all close by missions are taken by F-16, F/A-18 and other fast movers forcing the A-10s and Helos fly >30 minutes without CAP to get munched on by AI Fighters.
Queue time is the main issue for me on this server. I understand the purpose of the queue but being an A10 main (blue side) I don't have 30 min to wait for a spot. I tried 4-5 time to play on ECW and ended up playing on Contention instead. Kind of sad since I really liked ECW.
I used to play ECW for 10-25hrs a week and I’m probably still top 10 most time played on ECW even after months of not playing. - CONSTANT blue stack was 75% of the reason I left. I like to fly blue, but won’t join a stacking team. This halved the modules I ‘could fly’. Flying red was fun on the early scenarios where stuff like the mig19 can handle a 1vs2 or 3. But in mid/later scenarios the F4 was just too dominant where a 1vs2 is only just manageable but a 1vs3 was just death. And the server was 1:2 minimum all-the-time - the other 25% is just lack of development and constant whining from the community when devs actually tried to force some kind of balance using the balance bot or loadout / plane restrictions.
I've never played on the Enigma server, not even with that GS, although I've watched videos from some players like yours and it looks very good. The ENIGMA server is better, it has a story and a mission, you just need to approve the rockets properly, as the factory produced them and put them into use and not to block them. and the GS server is boring, there is no mission, no story, no competition, they just take off and die and so on in a circle🤣. when I create a mission, it runs by itself 24 hours a day and night, whether players or not, and when the player enters it, he has to fight against ground units, armored units, artillery units, air defense units, planes, helicopters, ships, everything is included on both sides, so the pilot never knows when saboteurs will break into his airport and shoot the plane with a Kalashnikov 🤭
Ha I've been wondering this, agree with all the points here. Ironically i feel like me, you and the people commenting on this video are probably the only ones on there at any given time
I'm here raising my hand up for flying solely the F-4. I wouldn't mind if there are restrictions on the FOX-1's. Atleast on the 60s weapons set you can only have two AIM-7E's as your fox-1 missiles. Also I'd say mavericks need to be removed entirely from the plane. It doesn't really need them either as dumb bombs achieve the same effect on those barracks and you won't really be in any danger. But my biggest complaint about the server is the lack of creativity in ground strike missions. There used to be much more interesting objectives like factories etc. but now it is literally just one barrack and four ground units scattered all around. The server needs variety and less ground targets in general but make those targets harder to take out even without any fighters covering them. Just my two cents.
With looking at competition for dynamic campaign servers, Strategic DCS or SDCS Server is damn near un paralleled in new and unique features to allow for a true player controlled dynamic campaign. Its unfortunate to see people praise one trick pony servers like Growling Sidewinder when SDCSs goes largely unnoticed. (Also its owner puts hours a day into improving and upkeeping the server.)
I have been only playing 6 months. I play using VR and I have yet to find anyone to talk to on SRS. On GS, nobody seems to talk to each other, nobody seems to care to attack targets to get to a mission goal. Everybody seems to takeoff, fight , get killed, fly again. While, I understand frustration with bugs and modules, a lot of things still work. Is that really the problem? I am still looking around for a place to fly with people red or blue to accomplish goals. Most servers I try except for GS, seem empty or have passwords.
I strongly reccomend Contention and the Shadow Reapers servers. Both are very objective focused and I've some great luck coordinating on SRS. The other option for general coordination is to find a Discord community, whether part of the server or on someone else's Discord. I have great time flying out with folk from my Discord server. Normally at least one person I can wrangle on at strange times.
@pedrosura @pedrosura also depends on the timezone and stuff. I know in contention, it can be dead srs all day or busy as hell. Really depends on who is on, what is happening, and how many are on. Though I mainly fly helicopters trying to attack and capture stuff. So I don't really talk all that much anyways unless coordinating.
I think most players are casuals and dont like a more hardcore take on DCS, thats why noob servers like GS are always full, same for advance noob server like Contention, with multiple rules, static warfare and aircrafts nerfing Also the last updates have kill complex servers, for example the best one, DDCS server is down due to the new updates killing the code and breaking the server, so maintaining a complex server must be a nightmare. Its just a weird time for DCS, lots of discontent, only soft servers avaliable, low player count, and a feeling of abandonment by ED
Ahh, yeah. I've heard a lot of mixed things. The swap worked fine for me since I'm in europe, but I can imagine having the core who used to get good ping suddenly getting a lot worse would have hurt the heart of the server's playerbase
@@Dr_Jebus The server is literally the same, same locations, same machine, etc. We just took over the ownership and the responsibility to pay the bills. 🙂
I've been playing ecw for about a year, and I'm tired of repeating the same process over and over again. You take off, fly low, engage in some dogfights, rtb and repeat. Worce, it usually happens in the same places. I hoped that the f4 would be a refreshment. I've brought some sparrows, a few bombs and tried high alt airspace penetrations. In 70% of the time i was simply ignored, and my long flights resulted in no joy. In 20% of situations interceptions were awful enough that they didn't have a chance to catch an f4 with some bombs. Only a couple of times i had a joy of actually fighting someone at high alt, and that wasn't worth the time investment
@@leos4203 do any servers show up? If not, then check your install is updated and check firewall as many block DCS. Also in do note that the server is now called "Heatblur Cold War", not Enigma's anymore
@@Dr_Jebus yes, the day before yesterday Heatblur was on my favorites list, but since yesterday, it has disappeared, while all other servers are displayed. Maybe it, as a separate server, will be affected by reinstalling the antivirus, without affecting other servers? And how, in this case, to solve the problem?
@leos4203 it may have changed IP? In which case it will disappear from favourites. Best place to check if it's just that one server is the server's discord (now the Heatblur discord, cold war channels are a little bit down in the list)
1)Performace: Got 4090 and 7800x3d and sometimes I get less than 40fps.Imposible in VR. 2) DCS lack of vr suport. I mean, you wont spot a 747 at 10nm. 3)other servers apeared like shadow reapers so I can use all modules I spent alot of money on 4) Reslised that everything ECW is based on Warthunder Sim battles so why dont go to the source?
Idk why but for me visual spotting in this specific server works awfully. On other servers I can clearly see the dots, but on the ecw about half of them just suddenly apper/disappear over time only to jumpscare me afterwards
Do you have TacView installed? Try *uninstalling* it and see if that helps. It was crippling my framerates. If you can't get good FPS on your hardware, which is a generation newer than mine, *something* is wrong with your setup. Spotting is highly dependent on graphics settings. Use the mission editor to test your spotting ability. Using antialiasing and upscaling to any degree will destroy visibility. Couldn't speak to VR though.
Let's not forgets ED's incompetence when it comes to modules, and the recent feud with Razbam, which has driven players away. ED's lack of listening to the community and offering up solutions to broken modules, the constant back and forth between broken spotting dots and other broken stuff, and a ton of broken promises on fixing things and instead just cranking out modules for *sarcasm on* Nick Grey's warbird Avgas addiction... I've taken a step back from DCS and only boot it up to see some changes with VR or for some very basic singleplayer shit, because of ED's complete lack of self-awareness.
The gap between the MiG-21 and the F5 is nonexistant. The F-5 has better maneuverability, better range, better missiles, and better systems for employing them. The MiG-21 is faster in a straight line, but that's where the advantages stop. The gap between the MiG-21 and the F4 is extreme, even without taking missiles into account at all, just factoring raw performance alone.
@@aldeng3608 21 gets waaaay better TWR than F5, waaaay better radar than both F5 and 4, more missiles than F5 and radar ones on all of the scenarios where they can be guided via STT at low altitudes F4 can dream of. Its vertical is superior to F5 and on par with F4. You cant do any, literally any mistake in F4 to stand a chance against competent mig. F1 is fastest jet on server, its sustain is better than F-4E at lower speed so not only it wins two circle, it wins one circle. Its radar is best on server and gets absolutely amazing gunsight that makes using defas a dream. The gap between F5 and 21 is small and its on par. The gap between F4 and 21 is huge in favor of 21 down low and in favor of F4 up high. What red lacks is fast jet with guided munitions and something people want to fly in large numbers. F1 is niche french plane with poorly simulated radar. 21 is just glorified clickable FC3 with inferior FM, DM and avionics thats flown as its still only mig21 (early supersonic mig) we have. Red needs properly done F1 with well made radar and missiles so it can gets its fox1s back and attract people back to fly it. There is plenty of mirage fans out there who stopped flying it because its radar is just meme and not fun to use.
@@honzavasicek Yeah but the MiG-21 sucks to fly. And I don't wanna hear "skill issue," It's legitimately much harder to fly than the F5. And that means the pilot has to be thinking about things other than how to win the fight, he has to focus on staying in the air as much as keeping eyes on the enemy. That's why it's balanced. If you have an AMAZING MiG-21 pilot, he'll dunk on the average F5 pilot, but an average F5 pilot against an average MiG-21 pilot will win almost every time. Raw statistics are fun to compare, but since there are humans flying these things, you have to take human factors into account. A human isn't a computer that can keep an airplane on the bleeding edge of its performance all the time while maintaining eyes on an enemy aircraft trying to evade him. Mind you I'm only comparing the MiG21 and the F5 here, I have literally zero experience with the Mirage or Phantom.
Enigma himself said he would be abandoning it. He’s just done keeping up with DCS which is a fine choice. I wouldn’t care to buy into whatever people whine about related to DCS because if you are playing/learning DCS then don’t let some burned out old fools tell you why you should or shouldn’t enjoy it. This isn’t something like enjoying caviar on the backs of child slave labor so there is no great moral dilemma enjoying DCS exactly how it is, and how ED operates.
Yes I have lost interest in the last month. I was disappointed when the CH-47 came out and was a halfass production. I loved the OH-58 which took years but it felt finished. The CH-47 should not be that complicated and they released it with no gunners. It’s always some bullshit.
I can see why people come to a conclusion like this but I think there are some key things not being understood.
On the point of competition. The underlying thing is that it shouldn't be seen as competition but rather options. It's not a good thing if there is only one viable server in a game like DCS. For one, the game does offer a lot of potential scenarios, the other things is that you are overburdening a group of staff members to hold up basically everything. The risk and fun should be distributed across several different servers. DCS Multiplayer is better now than it was two years ago, there are more options and less concentration in one or two servers. So on this point I agree with you.
On the point of population softness before F-4. I have seen a lot of players come to this conclusion but I think they are missing two things, one obvious and one not. First the obvious thing, if a new module is coming out in CW, it makes sense to dial back on CW before the module releases. People cycle through different eras. Why grind CW when you are going to be playing it a ton a week from now. I was actively telling people to save it up for the release, I wasn't even playing CW right before the F-4 release. This period lasted a bit longer than anyone anticipated because the F-4 got delayed a few times but that's w/e.
The non-obvious part is that people don't realize how easy it is to fill a server when you have a youtube channel. If a video is released, it gets 30,000 views and only 1% respond, then that is 300 players. Once you have a certain amount of reach, then getting players is a given. I think this is the hardest thing for people to understand because only a handful of people have channels large enough to do that. If you want to push back on this, then I invite you to think about Shadow Reapers. I made one video about that server and their population popped. Population issues don't really apply to people who can reach tens and thousands of people. Still don't believe me? Look at Growling. Their formula has not changed in a long time and they continue to hold population. I also disagree with your point about the marketing campaigns. I was reaching out to a lot of people and terminally active in discord to try to find players.
On the point about the F-4 hurting cold war. I don't think it's the F-4 but rather how the F-4 is being handled. People raged about balance tweaks and changes but the thing is, it kept things even. If you nerf something hard enough then people will fly something else. It will balance out the numbers.
On the point about heatblur running the server. This is the thing that I think people have really missed the mark. Heatblur said they were eager to maintain the server and to preserve it. This is a different mantra than before... We were trying to keep it a zoo, that's not their goal right now. They are maintaining a place to play cold war and that's good. There are 30 players playing right now. People need to reframe their expectations.
Ultimately, there are more people playing Cold War now than there were pre-ECW and that is a good thing. It's an era that should be played and it was really overlooked and I am expecting more cold war servers to come to continue what we helped bring to a larger audience. I wanted to make this response because I feel people are being a bit unfair to HB and also this notion of the F-4 being a curse, I don't really agree with. The Mirage F1 has a huge balance issue associated with it and we nerfed it enough to stay in line, the same can be done to the F-4. I would expect CW to continue to flourish as more servers try their own iterations of the era.
Cheers for the response!
I definitely did not want to downplay your role in the server's success, don't get me wrong. I more meant that you stepping back should not have had such an effect. I totally get your point that big channel like yours or GS doing a single video can make a huge difference, but surely Heatblur could do the same? Their channel has got 52k subscribers. Not one video has mentioned their new server. If they wanted, they could ramp it up. But they're very much just taking a back seat.
And yes, I do agree the F-4 itself is not overpowered but how it is implemented in the server that's the issue. When it can lob fox-1s (abeit just two) in the 60s, where the sabre only gets guns just doesn't make sense to me. It encourages more people onto just the F-4 and increases the problem. I think the F-4 can be made to fit all time periods covered by HCW, but I'm not seeing any evidence that that is being done. Other modules are being nerfed to make BlueFor less appealing, but without changes to the F-4 itself, that just leads to the too-common scenario right now of it being F4s vs Red.
I would love if HCW does 'bounce back' a little, at least to the point where it gets a healthy population at times Contention and SR do. As I said, I still enjoy the server, and had fun recording this little background footage. But I'm worried if nothing really changes then it really is 'the end' of the ECW era, and the torch is fully passed along to other servers. I don't think having HCW slowly become more and more empty is going to be good for the playerbase, even with other great options available. HCW still has something to offer.
Yeah. I really feel like the f4 not getting (enough) restrictions has just caused the current health of the server to spiral. I agree about SR and Contention not being competitors really as I still see HCW is still unique in how far back it goes into the Cold War and what vehicles are really the kings. Where it’s not as much of a “what server do you want to play on” question and rather a “what era of the Cold War do you want”.
I'm not too fussed about the f4s getting some of its toys, but to restrict the sabre at the same time? Bonkers.
I’ve been playing HB Cold War server recently for around a week or 2 straight and most of the time it’s blue sided. I’ll be in an a10 and there are 4-8 phantoms vs 4 red players. 2 days ago there was 1 red player vs 7 blue and it wasn’t fair in the slightest (he was in an Mi-8). I don’t know how I feel about the server rn, I have been having a lot of fun recently but the player base seems to get on only at a certain time. It is still fun though and on the weekends we still get around 30 players like enigma said.
Here we go again with the brain dead take that we should continue nerfing the F-4 because it feels unfair that it's "so good."
1. The Sparrow efficacy stats for some of the top F-4 players are *SINGLE FUCKING DIGIT HIT RATES*. That means out of 10 sparrows fired, your chance of hitting the target is BELOW ONE. So WHY THE FUCK are the sparrows continuously being called out as a problem? Look at the 530 stats - they're in the 60%+ range! Look at the R-3R even, it's in the 30% range. The sparrows are not good AT ALL, and they are 500% harder to use than the FC3 level implementations of the Mirage and MiG-21 radars. Fucking look down shoot down bullshit locks
2. SKILL ISSUE for red - when are they ever on SRS coordinating? When do they ever hop in JTAC and GCI? The blue team has a GCI every single time I am on, and we talk to each other.
3. RED is the problem. Stop blaming the fucking blue side for all the server's woes. We are there, we are on, we are flying, there would be more of us, but the stupid fucking balance bot doesn't allow me and my friends to play together, so we go to contention where we're not given the middle finger when we want to fly a fucking 4 ship
4. ECW HAS NEVER TRIED INCENTIVIZING RED with forward airfield spawns, with points bonuses, with spawn aircraft - all they care about is nerfing the F-4 into oblivion, so of course people go play elsewhere. Why on earth are interceptors only spawnable from 2 hexes back? You know the average red player has about 3 seconds of patience so why force them to spawn all the way in the back? WTF? Try some things ffs
Aside from Enigma's wall of text further up, the reason is simple: If a server like this is just maintained and not actively developed with new ideas etc., then yes, player count goes down. That's all there is to it. If HB doesn't do anything to the server it will slowly slide away into "once was great" territorry, which imo is very sad. It's the server that brought life into DCS multiplayer like never before.
Let’s not forget AlpenWolfs Cold War server, in a time before ECW even existed! Good memories 😭
I miss it every day. Sure sometimes it was dead, but everyone talked on the radio, and it was amazing to have a competent human GCI managing the entire battlespace. The atmosphere on the Heatblur server is just a lot more antisocial. Nobody talks on the radio. Why would you need to when you have the GCI bot? You're not on a team, it's not 20v20, it's 1v1v1v1v1v1v1 etc...
Unfortunately, that predates me getting into DCS multiplayer. But I did have a go when it relaunched the other month. Seemed good but since then it's just never been active when I am. I hear it does have a following in US evenings, so that's good to know.
@@Dr_Jebus I check for it every day but I never see it.
@aldeng3608 I'm not sure. It was there a couple of months ago but may well have been taken down again.
@@aldeng3608 It's coming back
to me, them adding the phantom made me play it less, not stop but less, it is so annoying to join the server with 40 players and see 20 of the on phantoms and another 10 on the F-5E while you get 5 MIG-21's, 2 SU-25's and 3 Mirage's (This is an exaggeration, but not far off reality)
Good thing I don't have to rely on what other players do, like stack F4s or F15s, or whatever server hosters are up to while playing singleplayer. I'm glad about that.
I have been playing less often since the introduction of the spotting bug issues some 6+ months ago. It got incredibly frustrating (though there is a semi fix for it now) and kept me away. And then all the razbam stuff + the handover and general fatigue/burnout.
I still love playing on the server particularly as a helo main, just gotta pick the right time of day for it atm.
The F4 stack definitely contributed a good bit, I always thought it should at least rotate sides like the F1 did when it was introduced.
As somebody's who's played on the server for a bit over 2 years, the issue is not so much that there's a Blue Stack, but the fact that there are certain Blue groups who basically fly racetracks over their own airfields, and either drag & bag the few hapless Reds singletons who don't recognize the trap for what it is, or pounce on the odd A2G player (bravely trying to hit targets with no support and 100's of km from any friendlies) in a 2, 3 or 4 v 1. You can only farm singletons for so long before they just pack it in, and then suddenly Blue has no one to play against.
A Blue stack of singletons (or even a few 2-ships) is at least tackle-able by a Red singleton. It's the groups of guys on comms farming kills that no one wants to play against.
The dearth of new Red modules also doesn't help. If the MiG-17 ever releases, or the -23 miraculously comes back from the dead (exceedingly unlikely IMO) we might see a bump. Time will tell.
The irony of the F-4 curse, is that the first couple of weeks after the release of the Phantom, Redfor absolutely owned it! The kill counts were ridiculous and Redfor was crowing about how bad the module was and how easy it was to kill Phantoms. Nobody complained about the "Paradise of Phantoms" back then because they were just so damn easy to kill and put a stake in the heart of the F-4 mythos.
I guess the wormed turned. But by and large I think you are on the right path.
It turns out people trying to learn a module in a pvp environment are easy kills
This server used to be my favorite. It died overnight it feels like. I really miss peak ECW. If the F-4 had actual competition (MiG-23 my beloved), I feel like things could be different. It’s really a shame.
Been flying on HCW almost daily for a few months now. The phantom has been limited to 2x Fox1 and 4x fox2 with the exception of one time period where we did have access to all 4 Fox1s. Most of the time eras have a considerable limitation on how many mavericks can be carried and the special weapons adapter usage. I get that there are a lot of F4s running around but red is still getting kills and capturing zones. I think the F4 is a great balance to the power and capabilities of the F1.
since that entire month that GCI was not working on several slots I think people also were pushed moved to the (at the time) new servers. Me myself I mostly try to jump into the F-4 on 80s server and face it versus the fox-2 F-16s
The DCS customer base is beginning to revolt. It's happening everywhere. Fewer players playing. Players playing less often. Too many problems. Too many unfinished modules. Many DCS customers are tapped out of money. Why buy the latest new pre-leased aircraft when the ones you bought in the last 3 years, are still in pre-release? Problems and fights between DCS and third party developers. Many people are now seeking an alternative. I am asking this question now: Why spend thousands for a new computer, graphics card and hardware in order to continue to fly in DCS? Many of the DCS customer based is just moving on. We are tapped out.
I agree with everything you said except being tapped out of money.
I've got plenty of money I am ready and willing to spend on the game and greater ecosystem. I've got all the modules released up to the F15E. But that was the straw that broke the camels back for me and made me take off the rose colored glasses. It was at that point I said I am not making anymore purchases until we either get some *long* overdue core game updates, or the F15E situation is resolved in a way ED accepts some responsibility for the way they've acted. I haven't fired up DCS since June and don't see that changing anytime soon... Because I honestly don't see a way out of this for ED. Nick grey siphoned too many millions of EDs money for his personal plane collection, and I just personally don't see a way for them to accomplish what they need to with the situation they're in.
DCS is dying a death a thousand cuts and my view is that at this point is simply a waste of time and money to invest in it any further (until they can prove themselves)
@@Ry-ep8nl Money? I'm 73 and retired. Try living on $2,600 a month retirement and Social Security. Most the people I know, can not buy new powerful computers and hardware just to play a computer game.
Tired of streamers saying it is what it is
I definitely get where you're coming from. And I do wonder what the numbers are like on DCS as a whole. I know I'm holding off any Razbam module because who knows if they will still work 2 patches down the line?
That said, I don't think dropping DCS player count is the major reason for ECW losing out. Contention and Shadowreapers between them still are packed at peak times, and during off times have as many players added together as ECW could handle during it's peak. A drop in players certainly wouldn't have helped the struggling server though, and I guess once it's below that key number of seeding players to get others to join, it's just getting worse. Few people want to be on a server with 1 other plane.
14 unfinished vs 41 finished.....
Grayflag servers are a great option as well!
They should put the sparrows and mavericks behind credit prices on some of the scenarios to balance out the phantom.
I don’t mean this comment to be agreeing or disagreeing with what or why the server has dropped off; but I wouldn’t mind the Phantom actually being point restricted.
There isn’t a lot of reason to fly anything else on Blue if you own the Phantom.
It’s potentially the strongest fighter, it’s the fastest attacker, by a large margin, and it can carry significantly more ordnance than anything else apart from the A-10.
We’ve never seen a vehicle locked for its A/G competitiveness, but I think making the Phantom point locked at a reduced cost, like the F1EE, would be perfectly reasonable.
Too many people fly purely air quake, despite it being very easy to rack up points, I’m practically at 100 perpetually.
Making people work the ground objectives to get the F-4 would serve to both progress the ground campaign and reduce the Phantom spam.
The play style of point restricted aircraft tends to be more reserved as well, there’s more to lose, it adds an interesting risk vs reward gameplay dynamic, it promotes playing A/G and it solves the spam.
Yeah, I'd totally agree that point restricting the F4, particuarly on the 60s rotation, would help a lot. Not as many credits as the F-14, but a decent chunk to make people at least think about which plane to grab. As you said, it makes people spam it less, makes them a little more cautious, and encourages engaging with the campaign objectives.
Thank for the VOD. 🥃🥃
The 'one side has 3x-4x the amount of players' is a problem in some other servers too, like ShadowReapers and Contention. It gets very annoying and i wish they would do something to balance it. Like if there's a big difference in players then the server would force you (when joining, not mid-flight) into the other coalition to help balance things. Sometimes you just don't feel like playing when you see that one side has a group of 7+ F18s flying in the stratosphere
i believe thats because of the lack of proper redfor aircraft, me myself don't like fliyng against f-16's f/a-18's and f-15's in dcs's su-27, the fc3 is so old that it feels moldy
Yeah, we REALLY need that Mig-23 or the full fidelity Mig-29
@@torides. its a bigger problem than that. DCS community is pretty stupid so many people stack into blue because "they are the good guys"
Even if you switch Russia and US around with blue and red, they'll still stack onto blue lmao.
Yeah, I totally agree. Imo the main issue was that they simply became too complacent at the worst possible time. The handover shouldve also brought about some major changes, as it was already beginning to nosedive. Instead, the announcement that heatblur would simply be "preserving" the server, hammered hundreds of nails into the coffin, simply by killing interest. We've been granted with so many enormous changes to the core lately, which ECW never kept up with. Alongside the fact that any decisive changes (esp regarding the f4 and broken EWR) were never made quick enough...
As a newish player and especially to 80's contention I'd love to see a few changes. Planes like the mig 15 and 19 should not show up on ewr and should have FAC capability, as they are guns only and no flares. Less capability than the trainers should have the same or more ability. Also the i-16s needs a way to be able to call in FAC, I've done some research and found it never had a radio so although time correct it has way less use on contention compared to the other warbirds, which is fine but also limits sales and I really want to play it more 😅
It would also be nice if the transport helicopters could carry 2 creates (aa/logistics/tank) etc
Totally agree with all of what you said. Especially as It pretains to the f4. Many servers tend towards an unbalanced number of players red vs blue and it makes the game un playable for me personally. Dosent matter if it's basketball or a video game like DCS. If the teams aren't reasonably balanced im not going to play on either one.
I've moved mostly to Contention because I wanted more of an 80s cold war aircraft to fly
You should check out Max Afterburner PvPvE Server. It's modern and has lots of dynamic objectives. There is an AI Balancer that kicks in AI CAP aircraft if sides are imbalanced. Also, you can spawn AI Escorts to provide CAP if you want to do some ground pounding (controlled from the F10 menu).
I can only speak for myself but the F-4 was the turning point playing on ECW.
The server brought me into DCS and will forever be grateful for that as I am enjoying it a lot.
But as mentioned in the video there is basically no reason to not fly the F-4 on blue it does everything the other planes do and in some regards better as well.
I enjoyed the variety of planes that was around, the (mostly) balanced teams but that went away.
The new server options we have are great but also not without flaws of course.
Shadowreapers mission system is great but the endless stream of AI fighters can make A2G very annoying.
There should also be either a minimum range for mission popups for the fast jets or some incentive for them to take the further away missions.
It gets frustrating when all close by missions are taken by F-16, F/A-18 and other fast movers forcing the A-10s and Helos fly >30 minutes without CAP to get munched on by AI Fighters.
Queue time is the main issue for me on this server. I understand the purpose of the queue but being an A10 main (blue side) I don't have 30 min to wait for a spot. I tried 4-5 time to play on ECW and ended up playing on Contention instead. Kind of sad since I really liked ECW.
I used to play ECW for 10-25hrs a week and I’m probably still top 10 most time played on ECW even after months of not playing.
- CONSTANT blue stack was 75% of the reason I left. I like to fly blue, but won’t join a stacking team. This halved the modules I ‘could fly’.
Flying red was fun on the early scenarios where stuff like the mig19 can handle a 1vs2 or 3. But in mid/later scenarios the F4 was just too dominant where a 1vs2 is only just manageable but a 1vs3 was just death. And the server was 1:2 minimum all-the-time
- the other 25% is just lack of development and constant whining from the community when devs actually tried to force some kind of balance using the balance bot or loadout / plane restrictions.
I've never played on the Enigma server, not even with that GS, although I've watched videos from some players like yours and it looks very good. The ENIGMA server is better, it has a story and a mission, you just need to approve the rockets properly, as the factory produced them and put them into use and not to block them.
and the GS server is boring, there is no mission, no story, no competition, they just take off and die and so on in a circle🤣.
when I create a mission, it runs by itself 24 hours a day and night, whether players or not, and when the player enters it, he has to fight against ground units, armored units, artillery units, air defense units, planes, helicopters, ships, everything is included on both sides, so the pilot never knows when saboteurs will break into his airport and shoot the plane with a Kalashnikov 🤭
Nailed it !
Ha I've been wondering this, agree with all the points here. Ironically i feel like me, you and the people commenting on this video are probably the only ones on there at any given time
I'm here raising my hand up for flying solely the F-4. I wouldn't mind if there are restrictions on the FOX-1's. Atleast on the 60s weapons set you can only have two AIM-7E's as your fox-1 missiles. Also I'd say mavericks need to be removed entirely from the plane. It doesn't really need them either as dumb bombs achieve the same effect on those barracks and you won't really be in any danger.
But my biggest complaint about the server is the lack of creativity in ground strike missions. There used to be much more interesting objectives like factories etc. but now it is literally just one barrack and four ground units scattered all around. The server needs variety and less ground targets in general but make those targets harder to take out even without any fighters covering them.
Just my two cents.
With looking at competition for dynamic campaign servers, Strategic DCS or SDCS Server is damn near un paralleled in new and unique features to allow for a true player controlled dynamic campaign. Its unfortunate to see people praise one trick pony servers like Growling Sidewinder when SDCSs goes largely unnoticed. (Also its owner puts hours a day into improving and upkeeping the server.)
Same could be said for Hoggit servers. Think the main thing is the die off from the covid numbers surge.
I have been only playing 6 months. I play using VR and I have yet to find anyone to talk to on SRS. On GS, nobody seems to talk to each other, nobody seems to care to attack targets to get to a mission goal. Everybody seems to takeoff, fight , get killed, fly again.
While, I understand frustration with bugs and modules, a lot of things still work. Is that really the problem?
I am still looking around for a place to fly with people red or blue to accomplish goals. Most servers I try except for GS, seem empty or have passwords.
I strongly reccomend Contention and the Shadow Reapers servers. Both are very objective focused and I've some great luck coordinating on SRS. The other option for general coordination is to find a Discord community, whether part of the server or on someone else's Discord. I have great time flying out with folk from my Discord server. Normally at least one person I can wrangle on at strange times.
@ Thank you for the response and recomendation. I have log on to some discord lounges and nothing as well. Maybe bad timing..
@pedrosura @pedrosura also depends on the timezone and stuff. I know in contention, it can be dead srs all day or busy as hell. Really depends on who is on, what is happening, and how many are on.
Though I mainly fly helicopters trying to attack and capture stuff. So I don't really talk all that much anyways unless coordinating.
I think most players are casuals and dont like a more hardcore take on DCS, thats why noob servers like GS are always full, same for advance noob server like Contention, with multiple rules, static warfare and aircrafts nerfing
Also the last updates have kill complex servers, for example the best one, DDCS server is down due to the new updates killing the code and breaking the server, so maintaining a complex server must be a nightmare.
Its just a weird time for DCS, lots of discontent, only soft servers avaliable, low player count, and a feeling of abandonment by ED
From my place the server ping goes over 300 since swapping
Ahh, yeah. I've heard a lot of mixed things. The swap worked fine for me since I'm in europe, but I can imagine having the core who used to get good ping suddenly getting a lot worse would have hurt the heart of the server's playerbase
@@Dr_Jebus The server is literally the same, same locations, same machine, etc. We just took over the ownership and the responsibility to pay the bills. 🙂
@@104thironmike4 yeah, the move to Europe came quite a long time before the switch to Heatblur
I've been playing ecw for about a year, and I'm tired of repeating the same process over and over again. You take off, fly low, engage in some dogfights, rtb and repeat. Worce, it usually happens in the same places.
I hoped that the f4 would be a refreshment. I've brought some sparrows, a few bombs and tried high alt airspace penetrations. In 70% of the time i was simply ignored, and my long flights resulted in no joy. In 20% of situations interceptions were awful enough that they didn't have a chance to catch an f4 with some bombs. Only a couple of times i had a joy of actually fighting someone at high alt, and that wasn't worth the time investment
For some reason, the server in DCS multiplayer is not displayed at all for me. And no matter what I do, he doesn't appear. What could be the problem?
@@leos4203 do any servers show up? If not, then check your install is updated and check firewall as many block DCS. Also in do note that the server is now called "Heatblur Cold War", not Enigma's anymore
@@Dr_Jebus yes, the day before yesterday Heatblur was on my favorites list, but since yesterday, it has disappeared, while all other servers are displayed. Maybe it, as a separate server, will be affected by reinstalling the antivirus, without affecting other servers? And how, in this case, to solve the problem?
@leos4203 it may have changed IP? In which case it will disappear from favourites. Best place to check if it's just that one server is the server's discord (now the Heatblur discord, cold war channels are a little bit down in the list)
@@Dr_Jebus Thank you very much! I'll go and dig in this direction
1)Performace: Got 4090 and 7800x3d and sometimes I get less than 40fps.Imposible in VR. 2) DCS lack of vr suport. I mean, you wont spot a 747 at 10nm. 3)other servers apeared like shadow reapers so I can use all modules I spent alot of money on 4) Reslised that everything ECW is based on Warthunder Sim battles so why dont go to the source?
Idk why but for me visual spotting in this specific server works awfully. On other servers I can clearly see the dots, but on the ecw about half of them just suddenly apper/disappear over time only to jumpscare me afterwards
Do you have TacView installed? Try *uninstalling* it and see if that helps. It was crippling my framerates. If you can't get good FPS on your hardware, which is a generation newer than mine, *something* is wrong with your setup.
Spotting is highly dependent on graphics settings. Use the mission editor to test your spotting ability. Using antialiasing and upscaling to any degree will destroy visibility. Couldn't speak to VR though.
Let's not forgets ED's incompetence when it comes to modules, and the recent feud with Razbam, which has driven players away. ED's lack of listening to the community and offering up solutions to broken modules, the constant back and forth between broken spotting dots and other broken stuff, and a ton of broken promises on fixing things and instead just cranking out modules for *sarcasm on* Nick Grey's warbird Avgas addiction...
I've taken a step back from DCS and only boot it up to see some changes with VR or for some very basic singleplayer shit, because of ED's complete lack of self-awareness.
Smashing Tigers and Skyhawks in TWO Mach 2 interceptors (Mig21/F1) was peak for Redfor and now they don't wanna play. So sad.
The gap between the MiG-21 and the F5 is nonexistant. The F-5 has better maneuverability, better range, better missiles, and better systems for employing them. The MiG-21 is faster in a straight line, but that's where the advantages stop. The gap between the MiG-21 and the F4 is extreme, even without taking missiles into account at all, just factoring raw performance alone.
@aldeng3608 lol no.
@@robertkelly3186 ok
@@aldeng3608 21 gets waaaay better TWR than F5, waaaay better radar than both F5 and 4, more missiles than F5 and radar ones on all of the scenarios where they can be guided via STT at low altitudes F4 can dream of. Its vertical is superior to F5 and on par with F4. You cant do any, literally any mistake in F4 to stand a chance against competent mig. F1 is fastest jet on server, its sustain is better than F-4E at lower speed so not only it wins two circle, it wins one circle. Its radar is best on server and gets absolutely amazing gunsight that makes using defas a dream. The gap between F5 and 21 is small and its on par. The gap between F4 and 21 is huge in favor of 21 down low and in favor of F4 up high.
What red lacks is fast jet with guided munitions and something people want to fly in large numbers. F1 is niche french plane with poorly simulated radar. 21 is just glorified clickable FC3 with inferior FM, DM and avionics thats flown as its still only mig21 (early supersonic mig) we have. Red needs properly done F1 with well made radar and missiles so it can gets its fox1s back and attract people back to fly it. There is plenty of mirage fans out there who stopped flying it because its radar is just meme and not fun to use.
@@honzavasicek Yeah but the MiG-21 sucks to fly. And I don't wanna hear "skill issue," It's legitimately much harder to fly than the F5. And that means the pilot has to be thinking about things other than how to win the fight, he has to focus on staying in the air as much as keeping eyes on the enemy. That's why it's balanced. If you have an AMAZING MiG-21 pilot, he'll dunk on the average F5 pilot, but an average F5 pilot against an average MiG-21 pilot will win almost every time. Raw statistics are fun to compare, but since there are humans flying these things, you have to take human factors into account. A human isn't a computer that can keep an airplane on the bleeding edge of its performance all the time while maintaining eyes on an enemy aircraft trying to evade him.
Mind you I'm only comparing the MiG21 and the F5 here, I have literally zero experience with the Mirage or Phantom.
For me it’s just because of the server ping changed.
Idio ts should stop putting f4 on blue only. They need to add f4 to red ad well
Enigma himself said he would be abandoning it. He’s just done keeping up with DCS which is a fine choice. I wouldn’t care to buy into whatever people whine about related to DCS because if you are playing/learning DCS then don’t let some burned out old fools tell you why you should or shouldn’t enjoy it. This isn’t something like enjoying caviar on the backs of child slave labor so there is no great moral dilemma enjoying DCS exactly how it is, and how ED operates.
Yes I have lost interest in the last month. I was disappointed when the CH-47 came out and was a halfass production. I loved the OH-58 which took years but it felt finished. The CH-47 should not be that complicated and they released it with no gunners. It’s always some bullshit.
I'm just not super interested in the planes of that era.
F-4 the server! XD
git gud nothing wrong with f4
Tell us you missed the point without saying it
This right here is the problem.