“Generalizations are always inaccurate”.
Forget who said that, but it’s one of my favorite quotes.
This is one of the concerns that many of us, that are enjoying the sim for what it is, a “flight simulator”, have. The fear of bored pilots pushes the software development away from the mundane details, in favour of the excitement of seeing your name at the top of the leaderboard.
The developers have tried to expand their audience. (Great, more users mean more profits and more high end 3rd party addons.) The imagery and hype attracted a ton of new people to the hobby. Many of those have been very disappointed and got bored real quick. “Where are the mission challenges?”, they ask. Use your imagination. You can fly any mission you would like. You know if you did well. Don’t need a scoring system and leaderboard.
Unfortunately, gaming is where the real money is. Not simulating. The developers will continue to put out landing challenges and bush trips. Things that, we the hobbyist have been doing on our own for years.
Want to go tearing up the sky with hundreds of online pilots, trying to see how many kills you can rack up? I think there is a game available for that, but it isn’t this one.
I welcome the new people to our longstanding simulation community, as long as they understand that “flight simulation” IS the end game for most of us. That is where we want to keep the focus for this title. I enjoy combat sim as well, but that is NOT what I purchased MSFS2020 for. Or FSX. Or Fsx9, 2004, 2002 …