I haven’t tried creating a small MP group lately because the original implementation didn’t work for my needs and was super wonky anyway. And I’m not sure if the groups need to be overly specific, at least for me. It could be as simple as
Choice A - free flight. Use whatever weather, aircraft, rules, etc you want
Choice B - intermediate. Learners, people who want to try flying correctly but might turn the weather off, change the time of day, etc, to suit their scenario (no need to be grounded if you want to go fly a Cherokee in the winter when and where icing conditions exist IRL)
Choice C - advanced. Real weather, real time, non-fantasy aircraft, and an attempt to adhere to the rules (enforced how, I don’t know)
I play in both worlds - my streams are open multiplayer so folks can come and go as they please. For one series it’s pretty much choice A for the sake of virtual tourism (no, I would not orbit over Dulles at 1000’ AGL in real life while talking about the Udvar-Hazy Center and I apologize to the poor Choice B or C sap in the A319 that was trying to takeoff during that).
The other stream is either B or C, depending on the weather and aircraft capability.
Unless they somehow change the underlying architecture of the online servers to have separate servers for casual and by the rules flight, it will remain an all-or-nothing proposition by design. You either deal with the BS of MP, or you fly offline. Under the current model, those two are mutually exclusive. The other option is to use Vatsim, IVAO, PilotEdge, etc for your online flying if you want to ultimate in realism. So basically, not relying on MS’ MP servers at all.
What it comes down to is that those who want “realism” and want MP enabled want folks to follow the same rules they do, which is not an unreasonable request. That’s how it would be IRL. However, that’s just a pipe dream that will never happen unless you have separate servers for the “real as it gets” group to separate them from the rest of the MP crowd.
They could create “realism” servers for sure. That part is not a big ask. Enforcing the rules, however, is. You can bet all the griefers who have their fun by ruining other peoples’ gameplay would be all over those servers like Michael Jackson on a troop of boy scouts.
Ain’t that the truth, which I acknowledged above. Enforcement would be tricky.
For option C, I like the idea of relegation. You crash (by running into anyone or having a crash detection), you’re relegated to A or B for a set amount of time. Not your fault, too bad, see ya in a few hours/days/etc. haha
Set it so there are only ramp/parking spawns and crash detection doesn’t turn on until the aircraft has moved as least, say, 300 feet. That eliminates building and double-spawn issues. But crash detection is on.
Now, I know that won’t prevent somebody from taking a shot at you at the end of your 7-hour pacific crossing, but a guy can dream. What’s the opposite of spawn-camping, anyway?
Edit to say, this could result in an entire sub community of enforcers and escorts. A mini game in its own right. 3rd party vendors would line up to sell countermeasures.
All good points, but the original point of this thread is that everyone deserves respect, no matter how wonky you want to fly.
I agree that flying like a blithering idiot in M.P. is downright rude. But short of being the MP Police, (or separate userspaces), I don’t know how to cure this.
Unfortunately trolls will be trolls and, aside from banning them from M.P. - or allowing peer-to-peer connections between players so they can bash themselves - I don’t know how to solve that.
The big point is that I think it’s unkind, (make that read “rude”), and doesn’t build community when anyone, on any of these forums, starts waving the “ultra-realistic” flag and talks down to the other simmers on here that may fly different ways for different reasons.
To quote Letterkenny “to be fair,” I’d wager there are a number of people who view some behavior in a free for all MP as disrespectful as well. Why should a person be forced to fly in a sterile environment if that’s not their desire? But also their desire to not be subject to anybody’s random whim?
That’s why I’m offering the idea of a middle ground with options.
I personally have zero problem with people who want to fly however they want. But how about meeting people at approximately the level they want to be met?
One allows free for all without restriction and the other allows free for all with everyone forced to use live weather / time. It doesn’t prevent any of the stuff that people who genuinely want realistic aviation behaviour are complaining about.
if this is how you want to play the game, why let anyone else dictate this? Why let those detractors live in your head rent free?
As long as you’re happy, who cares?
MSFS is not a casual flying
It’s not a “simulator” either.
It’s a Sandbox. You can play casually as OP decides to do or you can play true to life. The only time you’re “wrong” is if you’re telling someone else how they should play the game.
I don’t think this necessarily needs different servers just some settings that allow a similar filtering. As someone pointed out earlier, although the marketing material would have you believe it’s one community that’s just simply not wholly possible because we are all different and want different things. There is nothing wrong in separating yourself using selection filters into the group that has a similar ethos as you. This I think is what is required. It should be easy to self police. If someone is doing stupid things while having selected using filters to be ultra realistic then users should have the ability to simply hide that user either for a couple of hours or if they chose permanently. It’s really quite simple it’s how we tend to lead our lives outside of the sim so why should the sim be any different. Just mix with those that are like minded.
Hmm interesting, I haven’t heard of that mod, what’s it called? I miss in P3D when you start the sim it starts with you in the plane at parking ready to start up so when I get back to the computer it’s all ready for me and I don’t have to click a million things. Being able to skip one of those clicks would be nice.
It’s from Stan who makes Pop Out Panel Manager. It used to be in the same download but I’m not sure if it’s a separate download these days. Will be on Flightsim.to or GitHub.
If you set multiplayer to “Live”, you will only see other people who are also on “Live”
Weather and time is locked, for everyone. This way everyone is flying in the same conditions.
It doesn’t stop people from loading onto the runway, but you won’t see people flying with the setting “All players”
This was initally implemented to make some distinction between playing around and the more “serious” people.
@hobnagerik Yes, exactly. E:D has exactly the kind of group mechanism that I’m talking about.
@Pieter2427 I think what’s needed is groups that you have to actively choose to join and accept a ‘group charter’, where you can be suspended or banned if you break those rules.
The key problem with the current groups system is that they are temporary and only work when the group owner is flying. (And also that they are super-flaky.) Persistent groups that remain active on the servers continuously with some kind of ‘moderator’ role that can kick people out if needed would provide an opportunity for like-minded players to group together and fly how they want to, without bothering those who want to fly a different way.
One example of what an “ideal” group mechanic might be that is they can be user created, persist whether the owner/creator is online or not, and the owner can set “permissions” on the group. Example permissions would be whether anyone joining that group can spawn in on the runway or not, whether they can spawn C&D or not, those kinds of things. Maybe tie it in to weather control as well, like whether group members can customise the weather or they are locked to live weather.
If you want to just fly about in MP, and not worry about such things, you can still do that by using the existing group, however if you want to join an MP group with some “rules” attached, then you can do that also.