How to attract more players to MSFS

Well, Iā€™m on 2160p HDR, soā€¦ yeahā€¦

Fix the glaring bugs (systems and visual), keep improving the flight model and continue to release World Updates and they will come.

Oh and I like the idea above about Combat, that could be a huge draw.

Iā€™m sure Asoboā€™s team has a good laugh reading these threads lmao

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Note the plane effects I was referring to from DCS that would be beneficial to be emulated for MSFS were the plane FX (vapor, trails, gear smoke, etc) that give those planes a real visual sense of speed, flight, weight, etc.

DCS videos look like real life planes in flight while MSFS look like floating plane models because of the missing effects.

Not suggesting combat be integrated. However plane damage from over-stress, engine fires with well rendered flames and smoke, electrical, etc would be beneficial for simulating emergencies, aviation failures, and procedures for remedying the situations.

the mass market doesnā€™t want a civilian flight sim :wink:

show MSFS to any friend and theyā€™ll be like ā€œwow, thatā€™s amazing!!! ā€¦now, how to you blow sh*t up? can you crash into something?ā€

if they canā€™t do that, theyā€™ll try to grief others that are trying to land an airliner on a VOR approach :stuck_out_tongue:

If you want to make MSFS more accessible in general, it should:

  • Do more things well out of the box ( seems like Asobo is trying to achieve this )
  • Not require the user buying or installing loads of 3rd party programs ā€œto make it work rightā€ ( not talking about add-on planes / airports )
  • Not require hours of tweaking to get a balance of visuals & perf
  • Not require hours of tuning curves, hardware to ā€œget it to feel rightā€
  • Streamline the update/install process ( 3 separate downloads for 1 update?! )
  • Improve multiplayer, so you can interact with other players without needing to have a Discord account and pre-arrange group flights.
  • Shared cockpit - so multiple people can be in the same aircraft and a. learn from each other b. have a more social / realistic crew experience
  • Replay mode - so people can properly fly from the cockpit, then go back and re-watch the flight from any camera angle.
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What do they want?

Ah, they want to be a**hats, I get it. Sorry, no griefing here.

Now you just want to take the fun out of it entirely! :wink:

You mean so I can be sworn at by people who have no real interest in aviation? To be fair, itā€™s not a terrible idea in principle, but unless they added robust controls for banning/muting people, why try to re-invent the wheel when Discord works so well?

Already have it, via an excellent mod. I realise this violates your rule #2.

Again, there is a mod for this, several in fact. Sorry, Iā€™m two for two now, arenā€™t I.

Agree. Asking for Asobo to branch off MFS into a combat sim, reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Homer designs a carā€¦LOL. You canā€™t be all things for all people.

You want a combat flight sim? Download DCS World. Itā€™s free. Buy a few planes, then realize itā€™s too complex, and come back to MFS. Hahahahaha.

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I still agree with OP though. Performance, natural landmarks/better/more realistic terrain & FX such as smoke when landing would definitely make things more attractive to the casual gamer but I think Asobo is already working on those.

Valid points. All of that stuff would make any sim better, be it a train sim, trucking sim, racing sim, or flight sim. The more immersive, the better for sure.

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because this is already using XBLA, and you have to add friends on XBLA anyways and then have a totally separate account on Discord and do voice and chat through a different app when it should be built in. Discord is great if you want additional functionality, but you should be able to do basic voice and chat in-game. ( muting and blocking - obviously required )

I met a ton of people on FSX multiplayer and did a bunch of shared cockpit flights with people that were just learning the game, or wanted me to fly and look around without having to worry about crashing.

Thatā€™s currently ā€œimpossibleā€ - you see someone flying the same type of flights in the same area and think - oh, thereā€™s someone I have something in common withā€¦ youā€™d have to stalk them to track down their XBLA account, then try to find them on Discord? nah. You can pretty much fly only with people you pre-arrange to meet on Discord.

Making the game accessible is about removing barriers to entry. Like not spending hours, days, weeks to make things work right for your setup. I used to show my setup to people for FSX or P3D, and theyā€™d be amazed and ready to pick up the game ā€¦and when I described the 5-6 payware addons required to make it look like it did, the 3rd party scenery required and the add-on planes - they were like, yeah, no.

Iā€™ve been tweaking and tuning stuff for decades - and frankly, Iā€™m kinda tired of it. Minor tweaks are fine, I mean - Iā€™m running 4k at 30-40 with a 1080 Ti, but I donā€™t enjoy weeks of digging through forums, editing files, etc. anymore :wink:

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You just got to get a damageable physics model. At least as in DCS. All video hosts will fill with various air crashes. And of course failures must be working on just like in real life - leaking fuel or jammed gear.

black screen after crash is the most disapointing thing in game

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Iā€™d like to see more than a message telling me I overstressed the aircraft, or the engines, and just end my flight. I want to deal with the repercussions of that. The failure state for my flight really should be the point I press the Esc key. Have the engines quit on me, or flaps no longer working, any number of things except a black screen.

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would you like to see your wing cut off? would you like to land a plane without a tail? would you like to see a dark line of smoke out of your engine and deal with it? i would like!

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I guess. I donā€™t feel too strongly about it either. I tend to fly inside the cockpit, and not use the external views much unless I am capturing screenshots, or rarely shooting a video.

Smoke from a damaged engine would be nice, as would glancing over to one of them and seeing sparks or flames, for example.

Wings being ripped off is pretty extreme, as would the tail. Not sure what you gain from that as the situation is likely unrecoverable so simulating it probably has limited value.

It might keep those watching elsewhere happy for five minutes I guess.

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Iā€™d love physics based damage, but it wonā€™t happen - aircraft manufactures, that Asobo has a license agreement with, will never allow their planes to be depicted as crashing and breaking up. Same with cars in Gran Turismo - Ferrari will never let them show a street car getting trashed in a wreck.

Iā€™d settle for better physics reaction, say if you clip a wing while taxing off the runway or drag a gear through the trees on landing - because the trees are way too high on short final. You get a black screen instantly in a lot of situations that might have been survivable. ( Like ramping the Icon A5 - gear down into or out of the water = crash )

the black screen is a total bummerā€¦ Iā€™d prefer ā€œcontinuing the crashā€ and just not show aircraft damage.

sure - better failures and emergenciesā€¦ but thatā€™s not a mass market feature, thatā€™s for the hobbyists like us :wink:

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totallyā€¦ I fly 99% in the cockpit, in fact I totally donā€™t get people that play in 3rd with the HUD onā€¦ but play however you want.

Although, if I make a great landing - itā€™s really nice to replay it in external view with any camera angle you wantā€¦ and have the ability to record video after you did something cool.

Like in Ace Combat - you fly in cockpit or HUD view - but then you can re-watch the whole mission in cinematic mode and itā€™s a whole new experience - like watching Top Gun, but itā€™s you flying.

Iā€™d love more ā€œconsequence hintingā€ with audio and f/x - like hard braking - thereā€™s no real noise or shaking like in the real plane, excessive aerodynamic forces generating intense stress noises ( Flight Unlimited did a great job with this ) etcā€¦

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I agree with you that the world needs more custom landmarks and local vegetation system. I have seen many freeware airports, but most of them (not all) look very similar. For example, I see the same pine trees and places where they donā€™t belong. The trees are dark green trees and bushes in places where the vegetation is green as grass. The user base can localize the vegetation, but they need much more varied mix of objects of the natural world.

Now, to attract new users I would suggest to make the sim more adventurous. Many of us want to travel to places that are magical and unknown like Africa, Asia, Antartica, etc. We want to fly to land on airstrips that are dusty or muddy in a tropical rainforest or the savannah. Where we have to look out for animals or people on the airstrip, where we have to deal with terrain and cloudsā€¦ But when we finally landed there should something to see. Custom houses, safari jeeps, angry villagers, a crashed airplane on the side of the runway. Anything to make the experience exciting. I even tried to launch a virtual airline bases on this ( https://safariva.com/ ), but its hard to find interesting places to fly to, particularly in Africa, Asia and South America. Microsoft has to realize that new users can learn about about flying (aerodynamics), but also about topography, geography and different cultures. So its not about entertainment, but it also has educational value. Its striking that thereā€™s so little documentation for learning to fly. Teach new users pilot skills and donā€™t make it too easy so they can actually learn something. Offer lessons with a virtual instructor to teach about the basics of flying.

For me, I think there should be something like a campaign or missions to keep people playing MSFS.

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I guess the question here is, why do people play MSFS in the first place? Why do you need to ā€œkeepā€ people playing MSFS? Itā€™s not a subscription game like a P2P MMORPG. As long as they keep selling the game, Iā€™m sure theyā€™re happy without having the need to ā€œkeepā€ them playing.

My point here is, people are different, people play MSFS for different reasons, some like the free open world VFR low flying, some like the IFR airline long haul flights. Others like to practice and learn.

While having campaign or mission could be a good thing for ā€œsomeā€ people. It doesnā€™t really guarantee that people will come to MSFS. And even if they do come for the campaign or mission, once thatā€™s done, what will happen? Theyā€™d probably leave.

Then thereā€™s people like me, who just likes going from one airport to another using Airbus, I want to learn the system, I want to learn how to fly like an airline pilot. Even if thereā€™s a campaign or mission, it doesnā€™t matter to me, I probably end up removing them from the content manager because itā€™s something that hogs storage space for a content that Iā€™ll never going to use and I end up doing my own thing anyway. The same reason why I bought the premium deluxe version, only to end up removing the premium aircraft off from my content manager because Iā€™ll never use them.

Yes on the one hand hand we have the people who love to fly the Airbus or Boeing airliners from one hub to the other. But I actually noticed on this forum that many discovered that bush flying is a lot of world now that the sim world looks more real. So please, donā€™t underestimate this group. To be honest, I like both the airliners but I got involved with bush flying since MSFS was launched. But when I fly airliners and did all the procedures when taking-off I love to look outside the window and enjoy the landscape on the ground whioe cruising or see some the airport surroundings on final approach.