Are we Even Here - No one is contacted are they? _ Long Read

All - Yes, XP has less users, still, again, why do not the big guys, periodically take time to comment or answer here. It’s not about sheer numbers. I have felt, as a user of this sim, that all of us are considered second level here. Yes, Q & As are conducted by “management”, but again I do not watch them, mostly because I cannot understand what they are trying to explain. That partly is that English is not their first language, and I do not get “all the technical jargon” being talked about. Results speak louder than words. My hope is every single person, who gets this can download and play, that currently is not, nor has been the case since release, something to consider.

I think what all of us want, is a locked in as possible timeline (realize that also is not possible) time frame explaining when “this at least a reasonable goal, that existing bugs will be fixed”. For example, Live WX has been broken since release, ATC and the AP’s in almost every plane, broken since release. Third party developers release planes into sim, and those are not working just so, because underlying code in sim prevents them from working correctly. But the Code was either broken from release or changes to code happened either in WU or to make X-Box work here. I do not know which.
To comment “yes I know I can leave this sim”, read my comments again, and I did pay good money for it, so should I just throw that money down the drain.

As aside-Flew in F-14 at KMGE for 4 TO’s and LDG’s. Wonderful. almost crashed, banking too steep and not having enough airspeed, just rolled over and slammed throttles to stop. Once above 220KIAS recovered and landed fine. Still cannot get in my brain, the sequence of NAV buttons so I can do Cross Country Flight. Got notes but working on another project now. Update coming on Plane in future, sorta waiting on that.

There is a written version of the Q&A here:
The vid is at the top, and the written transcript below it.

Thank you. Will look at it this evening when time is better.

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Among the things that concern me, MSFS is not one of them. It’s software.

I’ve been messin’ about with software for about four decades; nothing comes close to the complexity of MSFS.

Enjoy life, and be Thankful For What You’ve Got.

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Seven, I will put it this way, if this was a car, every government on the planet would ban it, until it was fixed. If it was a home appliance, same thing. That it is a game, no one cares. Visually nothing come close, but I use it to fly in, and that part is what is not as good as it’s predecessor, FSX, nor does it work as well as it’s competitor, X-Plane.

I have a working plane, full screen in less than 60 seconds in XP. For MSFS it’s almost 5 minutes. Yes, underlying process is way different, suspect 12 will be longer load times. But, a version of XP is approved by FAA as simulator quality level, MSFS cannot even guarantee, everyone who buys it, can get it to install on their PC, several threads on main forum, “CANT INSTALL”, that has been going on since release, almost two years. Never see that in XP forum, although sure it happens, but, bet company jumps on it and figures out what is wrong too. Never, any Asobo/MS types in the thread of “cannot install” offering help or options, just us users, and for me 90% of time in the dark on what exactly issue.

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I dont think MS/Asobo respond to individuals on a case by case basis but they are in touch with Kai at AIG and Sérgio at Helicopter Flight Simulation. You definitely get a more personal level of service from smaller companies though, that is often the case.

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Getting a little hyperbolic here. When was the last time your flight simulator killed a family because something didn’t work right?

When was the last time it caught your kitchen on fire?

You raised a couple good points originally, but an earlier response pointed out the difference in the audience size for this sim vs xp. And I think that was a valid answer. And also it was pointed out that rather than responding direct to a single user as you’re fond of, they instead respond to the community as a whole via the Q&A and other similar channels.

Telling one single user about something is not more efficient or better than telling everyone. Granted, a private message or mail from the boss makes ONE person feel like a big wheel, it really isn’t a better way to communicate with a big community.

MSFS has a lot of areas that need attention and the progress sometimes feels glacial. But they are actively working on it, and for the most part its improving. It sure didn’t take long to get the perma-haze 3 mile visibility fixed. When the problem is real and impacting a lot of people, the fixes come on a reasonable timeframe.

Nobody should take this as me defending MS dev team here. There are many things that should have been fixed ages ago but are still polluting the corners 18 months into life. All I am saying really is that while personal communication feels nice, that is a one person impact. MS is a much bigger operation with a much bigger reach, and it’s just not reasonable to expect that from them.

And while XP is a boutique product, this one is more mass market, there will be differences. Laminar has never been big operation, and I don’t think they have any desire to be the size of even Asobo, much less MS. That allows them to deal with their smaller audience in completely different ways and it doesn’t mean anything is right or wrong with either company.

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Wow, if you were in the Nav back when the big cat first made her appearance, you have been around shipmate. My hat is off to you and I enjoyed reading your post. Cheers.

This is just a difference of scale. Smaller companies can do more personalized outreach. As you get larger, you cannot.

Also, publicly traded companies have rules around information disclosure.

The CEO of a small company like Laminar can talk directly to you and this won’t be news beyond specialized flight sim sites (maybe not even there). If Satya Nadella wrote you an email, CNN/Fox/BBC would cover it - and their stock price might move, and stockholders could lose/gain billions.

Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company and the CEO mentioned MSFS in the last financial briefing - this is a major property for Microsoft. You simply will never see stuff being said off-the-cuff, as it were. People get fired for stuff like that.

Microsoft is communicating with us in ways that they can - can this be better? Sure, but it’s unrealistic to expect Jorg to pop into the forums or write you an email.

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I think over all he’s saying their communication with the community needs to be better. If you need more people to respond hire them. We’ve had an update that put thousands on 1.23.13 and have had no communication on what the update was. Further more that update has made the sim unplayable and it’s been nearly a week and the devs and such have been dead silent. There’s no patch notes. The file itself says it’s version 1.23.13 and the sim itself in its patch notes is saying 1.23.12. Over all the level of communication isn’t just low it’s grossly unacceptable. I enjoy the sim but there’s many things that MS/Asobo are practicing right now community wise that is UNACCEPTABLE for a company of their size.

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Sim version 1.23.12 is Sim update VIII.
There was a beta session, and a thread in the News & Announcements Section.
I don’t think they could have communicated that much better!

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Please re-read what people are writing.

The Xbox received an update on March 9, seven days ago, that updated our sim to 1.23.13.0 — again that is 1.23.13.0 not 1.23.12.0.

The in-game release notes are an amalgamation of 1.23.12.0 Beta and 1.23.9.0.

There has been no official acknowledgment or documentation of this update even though we have been asking for a week.

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You’re absolutely correct, I suspect I focused on the one number.
My sincere apologies.

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I’m sure plenty of MSFS employees read these forums. But often employees can’t post for a variety of legal reason and they would probably not be left alone for help requests either.

I was on a project many years ago on a company we had just purchased. There were several internet groups where people were bashing us for having ruined this company and put all the blame on us. So much misinformation but I couldn’t say anything!

Turns out, they had messed up their product before we got there and we were trying to get the same issues fixed. They totally ignored us, shut us out and we became the bad guys on the Internet forums that took the blame.

This is 100% correct. The Community Team (me, @Jummivana, @iinKWest, and @OlieTsubasa443) reads almost every post here, and you will often see us posting in topics and interacting with our players. Additionally, several members of the dev team, including producers, programmers, and QA analysts, often read topics on the forum. If you don’t see us responding directly to a specific question, please refer to this section of the Code of Conduct:

The most frequent staff members you will see posting on the forums are the community managers and moderators. We enforce the CoC and respond to threads and posts, whether it is to address an issue or simply having fun.

If you don’t see us responding, it isn’t because we are ignoring you. Sometimes we don’t have a good answer, or we are looking for an answer or we cannot comment on the issue at the time.

We also have other work we have to do that isn’t on the forums so if you don’t see us around, we are working on something else for you!

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I agree with this section of your post specially. It does seem to me that the reason why someone with a very high spec and an empty Community folder experiences issues while someone else running the same on a lesser spec machine does not has to be hardware related and well beyond users to try and sort themselves. As stated elsewhere, if MS included an automatic fault reporting in the Sim then eventually I am sure the reasons would become clear and can be fixed.

All - I appreciate the comments both good and bad. Please remember MSFS is the “new kid on the block” as time passes, assuming it will get better. Down the road, or over the hill, something else will eclipse it.

NOTE: we puny humans developed this software product, I more than many realize humans make mistakes, and although released in 2020, development was in progress for a long time before release, even before the announcement of the sim. Alpha testers commented on things broken and Asobo knew about them.

My feelings, lock down core sim code, get problems fixed BEFORE MORE WORLD UPDATES. Sort of like car won’t start, but fix flat tire first, both important, car won’t move with flat tire, but car won’t move if it won’t start either. Hmmm, and here is the “human part”, I would get engine running first, others would fix tire first. Lousy analogy, but it sort of fits. World Updates hook more users possibly into purchasing sim, but world updates break things as well as add content. What is a body to do?

In point of fact, I have been using MS Flight Sim games for 27 years, and on PC’s longer than that. I never worried about bugs and inoperative systems before, but I have a “pattern” of how and what I fly, and this sim fails in some of those planes and the type of flying I do. Others not so much, as we puny humans are all different. What bugs you, might not bug me, and same other way. I still think it would be nice if we are quoted or mentioned once in while, or maybe special recognition of a user pointing out a fix to an issue and Asobo can apply it. Special SIM Stauts of something. It is always nice to be thanked or appreciated, seems maybe lost in todays fast paced world. I know the person serving me a meal at restaurant is doing their job, but I thank them anyway several times over that meal, even though just doing their job. Kindness is not bad.

hmm, some folks need a pat on the back I guess. Just make sure to use the official format for bug reporting - I’ve seen moderators ‘promote’ some topics and posts to the dev team for special attention in response to community members here.
With such a massive and ambitious project as this one is - patience is key…for us and them that are sifting through the lists and trying to prioritize the repair work

Interactions that I have had with the people at the Zendesk have been handled rather quickly with several suggestions made by them as to what a cause could have been and steps to rectify the problem.
Yes, it took several days for a response to come back but, it was worth the wait to get the response.
Their response didn’t fix the problem but, again they took the time to look at my issue.
Cant remember what the issue was so I turned to the brains trust on the forum and eventually got it sorted,

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