Why is MSFS 2024 not just paid DLC?

[boko]

It doesn't even seem like there's many new features. Why not just make it paid DLC rather than a complete separate game? Especially considering there is the in-game shop which they made sure to tell us was all transferrable to the next game.. Why do it like this, is there really just more money for them to siphon from supporters is that why? It makes 0 sense.

I guess moving forward everyone who supported Flight Sim 2020 will be left in the dark and receive minor bug fixes (if we're lucky) and everything else will be pushed to 2024. Having just bought 2020 last month I feel completely scammed and regret my purchase. I think it's the last time I buy a flight sim game knowing there will be a newer barely different one being sold in just a few years. What a great way to alienate your audience.

[Karpatenhund]

TBH, look at the History of MSFS, nothing special about the 4 years.

[LeonidasFett]

Originally posted by MycroftCanadaNS:

Originally posted by Jackson:

100% incorrect. Steam is aware of the download time and will issue refunds with a screenshot of the logbook showing less than 2 hrs or a "reasonable" time.

I know I'm right. Keep thinking that Valve would give you a refund. They wouldn't.

Valve/Steam has absolutely no way of knowing if it took 3 hours to install, and you played it for 30 minutes, then you head to support, and request a refund.

Valve/Steam has no way to know if you installed the game in one hour, and played for two, and a half hours before deciding to ask for a refund.

Knowing Valve/Steam as well as I do I can tell you they will tell you to go pound sand.

How long have you been living in this world? Screenshots can be doctored. Legally, Valve/Steam would be in the right to refuse a refund.

Yeah this is wrong. I can also say with 100% certainty that Steam approves refund request that go beyond the normal time limit when it comes to this game. I didn't even have to provide a screenshot or anything. I spent like 10 hours or so downloading the game and then spent 1-2 hours flying (and crashing to desktop) before having enough. I explained the situation to Steam support and they approved my request without any problems.

[SkyDriver]

DLC's are just additional content build into the same game on the same framework. MSFS 2024 is entirely new from the ground up to include much higher photogrammetry, improved physics and weather and other features that simply can't be added to the 2020 version. You can't just go into an already existing game, and change the game. You'll end up breaking the entire code, so if you're changing framework, you need a new slate.

[Doctor Hades]

The previous Microsoft Flight Simulator was only released in 2020 so I personally think that a new version just four years later was wholly unnecessary.

Having briefly tried the new 2024 version before refunding it I still believe that to be true. 2024 is a disappointment, a buggy, laggy and poorly performing cloud-based update of 2020 which is still a perfectly serviceable game in 2024. Navigating the menus was a pain; it literally felt to me like even those were being downloaded from the cloud! I don't even think the graphics look that much improved - it has only been 4 years after all - particularly when you are in the air. Sure, ground detail is better but I am in a plane so you really don't see that detail 99% of the time and the game still has visual bugs and glitches that mean avoiding flying low is probably a good thing if you don't want to break the sense of immersion!

The only standout feature in 2024 is the career mode, which looked great, but that could easily have been sold as DLC for 2020 in my opinion.

The whole idea of having the game running from the cloud is a great concept in theory since it means quicker updates and access to far more world data than is possible to store on a single SSD but the current execution feels like an early beta test to me. Maybe 2024 will be great in a few years when it will also be cheaper and offer more content just before Microsoft launch the new version: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2028!

[Manwith Noname]

Originally posted by SkyDriver:

MSFS 2024 is entirely new from the ground up.

No, it really isn't.

[SalMan1862]

I disagree that MSFS 2024 is entirely new.

I know this is 2020 forum and I also have refunded 2024 and am sticking with MSFS 2020. I have just under 1500 hours on 2020.

I was and still am VERY, VERY disappointed (and sad to be honest) with all the problems with 2024. I was so excited every day waiting for release. I know over time they will fix a lot of the bugs but why didn't they just stay with 2020 and upgrade that version and work to fix the bug list and work the wish list??? ATC is still broke, multiplayer, etc is still broke???

Well, a friend said this to me earlier.....he said....."don't be naive...MS/Asobo went to a completely new version because of money....Devs do not make more money with UPDATES...they make more money with new releases? " What a shame as 2020 could have been really amazing if they stayed with it and applied all the new stuff that is in 2024...but again it would have been a lot of work for no additional funds.

I will stay with 2020 and seriously thinking about hanging it up completely...even as much as I love aviation. And as a side note I bought and installed 2020 on day ONE and had NO ISSUES...all worked well, graphics were great, and FPS was averaging 45-65 FPS.

And I would have paid for a 2024 DLC without hesitation.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by SkyDriver:

DLC's are just additional content build into the same game on the same framework. MSFS 2024 is entirely new from the ground up to include much higher photogrammetry, improved physics and weather and other features that simply can't be added to the 2020 version. You can't just go into an already existing game, and change the game. You'll end up breaking the entire code, so if you're changing framework, you need a new slate.

No this is bad development practice. Thousands and thousands of QA hours have been poured into the existing code base. You can evolve it but you don't have to throw it all out. I laugh at people who think like this b/c what makes them think they won't make the same mistakes or new and interesting ones in the rebuild?

FS 2020 is not a rebuild. It is a refactor. Some of the core systems were switched over to cloud and multi-threading was added into the rendering. The career 'feature' was added and then a whole bunch of other stuff was broken. I see the same bugs in 2024 that we have in 2020. We know the code line was ported over from 2020. Essentially you create a new branch from 2020 release at some point in time and call it 2024. Then you add to 2024, patch 2020, and so on. If the fix goes into 2020 then you merge those changes to 2024, etc, and so on.

But it is certainly not a brand new code line. To say that makes me think you don't know much about how development happens or you just don't have much experience with long lived code bases. Throwing code out 100% and starting over is very expensive and is rarely done. Just b/c existing code may have issues does not mean the fundamental concepts behind it are not good and valid. So you re-factor, restructure and so on. But you don't have to throw it out. That is, if you want to keep the doors open and the lights on you won't throw it out piecemeal.

In games and software you must learn to distinguish 'marketing speak' from reality b/c they are not the same. Marketing hypes something through the roof while the technical side is not nearly as exciting nor revolutionary but more evolutionary.

If I write code and it is getting max 20 FPS (but not everywhere) on one release and the next one I get a max of 40 (but not everywhere), marketing will take that and say the new code line is 100% faster. Is it? No it isn't. It is one sample taken from one scene in one location in the game. And due to the sample size the percentage means...well..pretty much nothing. You can't even be sure that both measurements were measured using the same scene. That is marketing speak. They leave out all the convenient details. It sells well, but is it not quite the whole story.

[Maverick]

I think MSFS 2024 as a full game is just a business, shareholder move. Investors want to see what’s new on the horizon, the next new thing. They don’t want to hear that MS is supporting a 5 year old game, sales of which have already peaked and probably isn’t generating that much revenue with the Marketplace. I’m no business expert, though.

[Jackson]

I would guess the market generates a lot more money than the game. They've sorta said roughly what people are spending which is... enormous! But of course if it's not first party content, like 2/3 of it goes to the dev not to MS. But they still get a hefty cut of every sale.

[♀⛤WitchyWoman⛤♀]

I honestly hope it fails. The greed totally sold out a loyal FS2020 community. FSX lasted decades, 2020 had no reason to be retired this quickly and with MSFS 2024, they gave us a locked content sim forcing streaming and no hard drive option, horrible AI voices that do not sound human, locked planes preventing the user from making liveries, and the talk of having to buy liveries now is a big joke. The excuse to move on was not just. Regardless the DLC content community was still churning out loads of content and still is for 2020. That is simply a weak argument to suggest it wasn't generating money..

I could go on but do expect the community to reject this on a large scale which is already happening if you read the open letter to MS and the forums on flightsim.to. To heck with MS and Asobo. Trying to scam us once again like they did with MS Flight which failed miserably.

[Witcher]

I believe some believe 2024 has been redesigned and uses a significantly different game engine is because one of Jorg's reasons for releasing 2024 when first announced was Asobo is limited by the codelines they inherited from FSX. Some of us on the other hand knew 2024 is simply tweaking the 2020 codelines to be hosted in the cloud.

It's a good marketing strategy, except poorly executed. When you can convince consumers a new product is significantly better than the old one, those consumers will willing buy it.

[Doctor Hades]

Looking at the Steam files in the MS Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 folders, prior to refunding the latter game, shows that they are using the same libraries and engine so I don't really think 2024 is that different from 2020 other than moving most of the local saved data into the cloud.

However, even with my 100% reliable 1 Gbps fibre connection when playing 2024 several days after launch the game was lagging with slow loading, sluggish menus that seemed like they were also being pulled from the cloud. Gameplay was rife with constant hitching and it was only when I was in the air that the game finally felt smooth enough to be called "playable". The rest of the experience was a mess in my opinion which is why I requested and received a refund.

I just do not think the game is in a very good state right now but maybe in 2-3 years it might be. I don't see why a game like this needs a brand new version every 4 years when it can simply be updated over time to add features and improve things.

The problem is now the developers have to presumably support 2020 and 2024 rather than one version of the game unless they intend to abandon 2020 next year. The only stand out feature in 2024 for me was the career mode but is anyone going to suggest that that would not have been possible in 2020 as a DLC add-on?

2024 is a huge disappointment. I am looking forward to Digital Foundry's coverage of this as they were quite taken with MSFS 2020.

[ZombieHunter]

I just do not think the game is in a very good state right now but maybe in 2-3 years it might be. I don't see why a game like this needs a brand new version every 4 years when it can simply be updated over time to add features and improve things.

This seems to be a common thread for 2024. I am sorry your experience in 2024 was not that great. I do not want that sim to fail, but at the same time I refuse to buy into something and wait 3 years for it to be good. I did that here and it was ok b/c 2020 was completely new and light years better than FSX. The upgrade in fidelity this time around is not that worth it for me. It really upsets me that the core issues that were ported to 2024 from 2020 that we asked to be fix multiple times, are still not fixed and likely won't be for a long time. I mean what if they are not fixed till 2028? Do we really want to invest in something where tech debt is just pushed off to a new title? That is starting to feel more like a sports game that is released every year with a roster update, same bugs and new bugs with new features, and not much more.

I keep seeing videos about walking around in first person. In a flight sim. Why are YTers focusing on this? It really makes no sense to me. One of them is highly respected and should know better. This is about flying, not walking, not hiking, not fishing, etc. It is about flying from A to B in VFR or IFR. If it cannot do that, it is not a flight sim. I would actually prefer the avionics be spot on and the flight model a bit dodgy. Flight models will never be perfect and never simulate the real thing (hence why wind tunnel tests are done on actual airfoils instead of just on a simulation of airflow over it on a computer), but avionics and so forth can be spot on. Airspace restrictions and so forth should be rather simple to implement b/c they are pretty simple shapes and so on. But a lot of that is missing. FS 2024 does have towers and lines now wihich is great, but We Love VFR already added that in 2020.

Plus I have so many controls setups and peripherals for 2020, I really don't feel like going through the headache of setting it all up again. 2020 came out of the box with great control templates for my yoke, throttle, panel and pedals. If 2024 does not, I don't want to mess with it.

I hope Digital Foundry takes note. Those guys know how to do it.

At this point my next sim is going to be X-Plane 12, not 2024. I'm jumping ship if this is the direction things are going. Maki will be pleased. Haha. I'm going to need XP12 for the avionics fidelity when I get into my IFR training.

I do not fly 2020 for stick and rudder skills. I already know how the plane I fly flies in real life. In fact stick and rudder in the sim can be detrimental in the real thing.....albeit until you get airborne and it becomes like riding a bike. Muscle memory kicks in and you are good to go. I fly 2020 for practicing checklists, procedures, VFR checkpoints and dead reckoning, airspace familiarization, airport familiarization, emergencies, etc, etc. I cannot tell you how many times I have practiced loss of engine on takeoff at my training airport on the sim. So much that I know exactly where I would go if it happens in real life. I hope and pray it never does, but if so the sim has helped me to understand exactly what is going to happen and how fast it will happen. I use it as a training aid.

But there are times I fly NeoFly and treat FS 2020 as more of a game, yet still follow checklists and so forth.

I am thankful for 2020 and the value it has provided. It is the reason I went back to get my PPL after having to quit earlier in life. I'm thankful to the team and everything put into it, but after 2020 it may be time to part ways and move to XP 12. I'll take a loss in visual fidelity for a gain in aircraft fidelity. I actually have no choice. I have to do this.

[Manwith Noname]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Why are YTers focusing on this?

It's the bit that works.

[Witcher]

Originally posted by Manwith Noname:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Why are YTers focusing on this?

It's the bit that works.

Lol, I have never watched a YT'ber say too many negative things when they get free copies or kickbacks, except one