BMS Community size: just how big is our community anyways?
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…even more non-mainstream - people who know and honor the difference between a simulation and a game.
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There is r/hoggit, the largest subreddit for DCS/BMS with 12,356 subscribers. A few hundred are active anytime. While the description says the subreddit is for DCS/BMS, most of the topics are about DCS as the name implies. There also is r/falconbms subreddit with 1,858 subscribers, which is also linked from hoggit page.
r/flight sim which is mainly for FSX/P3D/XP but okay to post about any flight sim has 27,911 subscribers. r/battleofstalingrad which is for IL-2BoX series has 1470 of members.
I often saw someone there tried BMS but gave up setting up their joystick. Thankfully, after I released “Alternative Launcher”, everytime someone posts “I would like to start BMS” other guys recommend the app.
What I now see so often is “I loved playing BMS but after I experience VR I can’t go back to a flight sim without it” posts. Like BMS 4.33 trailer starts with so many posts of questioning “When will be 4.34?”, I also can make “I can’t fly without VR” version of that intro from r/hoggit, or even from r/falconbms.
At Twitter, I sometimes search for Japanese account tweeting about DCS or BMS. I can find someone constantly playing DCS so many, I assume about a hundred there. I am not sure.
For constant BMS player, as long as I find…I can count all of them, it’s 7. There may be someone I don’t know. If including someone not playing BMS constantly but have an experience of touching it, maybe it is about 20-30…I assume.
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The increase of the BMS community has been clear and is a consequence of the release of first BMS 4.32 but more obviously BMS 4.33
that was in novembre 2015, 2 and a half year agoNowadays the community already started to decay.
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Lorik Eolmin and Unleashed Code’s BMS video had a good reputation at hoggit. Nice MP session video may catch up attention of non-active BMS user constantly.
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Decay is natural for games on release cycles of years.
BMS release cycles are slow and when they release 4.34 if the enhancements are significant enough than you will see a larger rise again.Again go look at the steam sales figures.
The combat hard core people are usually sticking around in BMS. SOme are doing both.
Like I have previously said all you need is better graphics and get better avionics on F-18 F-15 and a few of the other popular foreign planes and anyone that is interested in combat will be spending the majority of their time in BMS.
Especially since BMS caters to those who can not afford to upgrade their PC’s.Regarding DCS its not a good comparison. BMS is 100% combat based focused. In depth sim on only one plane at the moment.
DCS can be a lot of different things due to the modular nature of the sim.
That is a double edged sword because while DCS has the ability to add more planes by third parties it loses its coherency in combat with different simed packages and how weapons work etc…When you want a coherent package where things work properly together you dont want that much modularity. DCS is the shiny new toy for alot of people right now especially with 2.5 release just a month ago.
But I see new BMSers all the time as well more DCS players see other people playing BMS so the try it out and alot of crossover.
Having more people playing flight sims is never a bad thing wether its BMS or others.
BMS is already the best coherent combat sim available commercially and with faster continuous improvements really there is no parallel.
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So, my generation has the attention span of a goldfish, is egocentric, and dumb as bread left to mold. Do you want these players ? No. You want the dedicated ones. Those that invest time to learn how to fly this monstrosity.
I think that’s a quote from Socrates, the ancient greek philosopher, no? Let me see:
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” – Socrates
Yep, close enough
Thanks for sharing your inside view from a game developer’s perspective. I can well imagine it must be hard trying to survive and finding the next big “blockbuster” title that makes everyone in the company rich.
Compared to BMS, where people devote their free time and passion to improve the code, the models, the theaters and the mods, train new pilots, design missions and so on to share them with the community, it’s a completely different world.
“The best things in life are free” as the saying goes, and that’s not only apparently true for love & friendship, but also for operating systems and (simulation) software (I’m biased because I’ve been mostly lucky and sometimes smart enough to make a decent living off the latter for over 25 years now).
I’d say let’s not give up hope on the next generation just yet. Growth isn’t everything, sometimes stability is preferable. I think it was Mower(?) who once wrote “I love how this sim vets itself”
All the best, Uwe
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I think it was Mower(?) who once wrote “I love how this sim vets itself”
Ah ? I thought it was Socrates too.
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I wonder how many are missing the point? I’m sure BMS Devs know who their market is, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the work they do. They make no money from it, and they themselves are striving for an F-16 sim that is as close as can be. We are just VERY fortunate that they share it with us - after all, they don’t have to.
I don’t think BMS needs to add more planes at the level of the current viper to stay valid. It is an F-16 sim and always has been since day one. There is still a lot more to know about the viper than can be modelled, and I’d personally rather see BMS continue down the path it is already on.
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Agreed, i can´t speak for every dev team, and i am not fond of casual games, yet… i actively work with them, work ON them… but that is the difference between a job, and a hobby, isn´t it ? You get paid for it, and it takes your freedom away, quite much. Here, there is no limit as to what the community can, or can not do. If you take it as a hobby, and work on it purely for the love of the project, and dedication… that is a win. I myself have a pitch for a game and can see the gigantic gap between what i have to do, and what i love to do. As long as it stays a hobby, something you love… untill then there is no rest for the wicked, no end to a project (preferably, since reaching a point of perfection might no be possible at all…) and can be expanded upon, untill you reach the point where the source will no longer be compatible and break down.
BMS should stay a Viper sim, sure its cool to fly other frames but… i agree that the hearth is the F-16 and it should stay like this. But opinions might be different, and if there are dedicated people that want to add a pitch perfect F-15 ? Hell, do it.
Esports, competitions, leaderboards… not my cup of coffe. I would much rather help my teammates and cooperate than grab kills, do crazy “lone-wolf” actions and such. But sure, there might be players that get a kick from being the “Ace of the Base”.
I still don´t get what people mean by the graphics, they look darn good to me… might be because i don´t play as much modern games like i used to, or just my simple minimalistic style that i prefer… it serves its purpose.
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…even more non-mainstream - people who know and honor the difference between a simulation and a game.
Well lets group sim-games together, otherwise comparing one simulator against the whole mainstream gamingscene would be even more hilarious
And don’t let us be too picky about the term “Sim” because that would open a new (and endless) discussion
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Yes if they can make it even more realistic and keep adding things just to the viper like more detailed Jamming I would love that.
More detailed modeling on the sam systems and AI would be great too.
I would be very happy the more realistic it gets.Regarding E-Sports being all about being ace of base is not correct at all.
Team E-Sports is HUGE. And with the complexity of this sim would be pretty bad ass to set up some competitions that require teamwork.
Examples: Something like a offensive deffensive mode.
Each team takes turns running a complex mission that requires planning.
Just ideas not necessarily for the bms game but something we could organize outside of it.Getting off topic. I can concede that we wont need to get other detailed airframes if the Viper is getting closer and closer to reallife as the title is Falcon.
Hopefully we will just keep creeping up and up to gettting closer to real life on the weapon systems and viper avionics. Electronic warfare campaign AI… these things slowly but surely can keep BMS relevant for a long long long time to come. -
@Red:
The increase of the BMS community has been clear and is a consequence of the release of first BMS 4.32 but more obviously BMS 4.33
that was in novembre 2015, 2 and a half year agoNowadays the community already started to decay.
As Shisabandit wrote, it’s quite natural. We get more Falcon players when a “big” version is released, and fewer players when the last big release happened 2 or 3 years ago. It’s been the natural cycle for as far as I can remember, i.e. the past 14 years.
I don’t worry anyway : there are enough Falcon players around to get fun, and that’s what really matters. -
Well lets group sim-games together, otherwise comparing one simulator against the whole mainstream gamingscene would be even more hilarious
And don’t let us be too picky about the term “Sim” because that would open a new (and endless) discussion
I’d settle for just comparing BMS users to BMS users and knowing some stats on the average number of downloads across all releases…then we could at least noodle as to if the community is growing or shrinking.
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It is “shrinking” because no new releases. Thats just how it works man. Does not mean that many people will come back to BMS when there is a new release so we will grow and then there will be a logarithmic falloff from peak time after release.
There are new players discovering BMS and I think whats really happening
is since 4.32 we have new players “discover bms” some stick with it some come and go but every release lots come back for a while and go and so on and so forth only and every new release by BMS increases overall active player base…
but also increases inactive player base as well.
All in all we have a lot of active players on discord everyday a few 24 hour servers going on …My main complaint about that is our community is very fragmented and would be nice to have something some events that everyone can get behind kind of like you know
Karate championships or something that tests pilots skills and team work skills.
Virtual campaigns on 24/7 on Falcon Online are the best example of this. Really good flying online there against others. -
I like the idea of a VFS, but I’m not really interested in joining one until I get my cockpit finished - and maybe that’s a bit of the problem. Committing to build a cockpit is a long-term, high $$$ task…I find a lot of exchange and dedication amongst cockpit builders, but seemingly fewer of them than “gamers”. For the obvious reasons.
Maybe there could be more BMS releases if some features - like alternate aircraft - fell out and it were simply to become a Viper sim? Or if the code was shifted to be more modular and allow third parties to work on alternate aircraft? Personally I’m not at odds with the pace of new releases of BMS…that just seems to me to be part of dealing with any volunteer project - you have to be patient and accept what you get. We get all the best with the BMS Viper, and yet even as old as it is there are still aspects of FAF that I find superior as far as the simulation goes. And in both cases all I care about is the F-16 because that’s the core point of the sim, and there are far more things that one can do with either one than are to be had on the surface. I’m content…
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I like the idea of a VFS, but I’m not really interested in joining one until I get my cockpit finished - and maybe that’s a bit of the problem. Committing to build a cockpit is a long-term, high $$$ task…I find a lot of exchange and dedication amongst cockpit builders, but seemingly fewer of them than “gamers”. For the obvious reasons.
For me, it is more a thing of anxiety of sorts to join a VFS. I don´t know if i can be as commited as other members, and am limited by time quite a bit. During the week i might just have two or three hours to play, one or two times a week, and have yet so much to learn to be at least a bit productive in a group. And i dont think that any VFS would commit their time to teach a newbie the basics, just to see him one time per week. I have so much going on that at the moment, that i have no clue if i would really be able to commit as much as i would like. But that might just be me…
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I think that’s most people, really. And that’s ok - one simply has to find a community that fits. Me, I’m pretty hardcore…but because of my put project and other considerations I’m also hardcore about not flying my BMS Viper under current circumstances. But that will change…retirement and ability to devote full attention are looming. Large.
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What exact number do you guys think BMS users are in the world?
I guess it’s…30,000 and 1,000 of them are active. -
I dont know but how about 4.34 update BMS collects user statistics hehe
Falcon4.0 has been on steam for about two years in that time around 20000 users… thats 10,000 sales a year
does not include people who already owned the game people buying it on GOG or downloading by some other nefarious means.
Im gonna say its way more than you think as far as player base installs.
Active users lets say for every person you see active in a forum there are 100 that are lurking or just dabblers.
I kind of pulled that last one out of my ass but I would say conservative figure would be something like 10,000 or more active
50,000 - 100,000 people with at least the game installed. Thats my stab at it. -
hmmm and my dad has a spaceship that long that we moved the moon to park close to earth. :lol:
Guys all those are just about to get a feel for no actual reason unless u want to get money from utube and u want to see if there will be enough guys to create for u an income.
The change of active users is fluent. Affected by many many many reasons.
From BMS it’s self, from us the community, from GOG steam etc, from forums, from squadrons from facebook (social media in general) and from other flight sims releases and updates, family work crisis.By maintaining the squadrons list for years what I found is that when I started almost half the squadrons of the initial list where off, closed or inactive and still some have very few members to actually call them squadrons.
This doesn’t mean that newcomers didn’t come and most probably closing a squadron the members shifted to other squadrons. New squadrons emerged… so active ones raised.
On the other hand there are members -believers that keep the faith and the sparkle and reignite the fire when the pool starts to get empty.
It’s a never ending flow that raises and lowers the participation.
Flacon is alive and kicking and after all Falcon never dies (this is proven, thus a fact) so there will always be the guys to continue the legacy. Guys passed through fire and hell and they came out nice and shining.
The fact that forum participation here get’s low or slow is because of the long time a release is done. as the time passes from the release the participation falls. This doesn’t mean they are not active, the opposite. They don’t bother with the “how the tool?” but are using the tool.
so who has a bigger spaceship? :rofl: