We wait for marketplace to QA items prior to release. Some vendors have consistently held low ratings and have been discussed within the community. At the same time, for general exposure and visibility, other developers end up lowering prices to compete with products like these. It’s easy to say “price your product for what you think its worth” but if you really look at the data in the background, numbers don’t come from honesty, but rather competitive pricing. GotFriends priced their Mini-500 $15 to be a go-to chopper for anyone considering their first rotorcraft payware. The team is anticipating a Marketplace release in a a few weeks but nervous considering the Wilga had roughly 2 months between an external website and marketplace release due to a Marketplace QA backlog since SU11 had launched.
Curious what your thoughts are when QA allows submission with a thumbnail that quite literally has the skids in the ground, meaning contact points were not set correctly. In the last two weeks, this developer has had 3 helicopter releases appear on marketplace. How has your experience been with their rotor craft thus far and what else should marketplace integrate to help developers retain visibility?
Don´t worry about how bad other developers work quality is and focus on offering a good quality product yourself with unique features that make it attractive. Price is not always a variable that decides a purchase in my opinion, as sales are also an option for those not having so much to spend. A market is always a place where you can find garbage as well as gems but you can´t pretend that all customers are always looking for gems.
If I were you I would focus on keeping the customers willing to invest on quality happy. The garbage collectors or the ones looking for cheap and mediocre products can vanish as fast as they appear while the other customers will most likely stay with you for years.
QA for the Marketplace is mainly to ensure there is no “harmful” content embedded in the product, and that is also the reason it takes some time to process.
It is not a check for the product’s “niceness”.
That is up to buyers to research before purchasing.
Marketplace QA notify developers when elements arent up to par. Just recently, Emerald Design had his EGH2 scenery held back due to a final LOD (Level of detail) on a hanger door appear out of sync at a distance. A minor graphical / visual discrepancy but enough to be brought to his attention and require a re submission process.
While I do believe QA exists to verify nothing is harmful, it does also seem that QA notify when something is miss. That is to say if there is consistent testing across the board. I remember during GeeBeeR3 release, QA caught a bug that caused xbox controllers to vibrate for extended periods of time post landing. There is certainly some level of testing taking place but perhaps it just depends on who is doing it at the time.
1: many people in this forum have voiced their disappointment with the quality of their work. Again and again.
2: exactly what the OP said, even their preview images in the marketplace are pixelated, grainy, and missing textures, and the overall quality we have come to expect in MSFS just isn’t even close. One of the images from the cockpit looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint.
3: The name just looks like it’s pronounced “Misery”(MScenery) to me and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
As an Xbox user, and a simmer who really enjoys flying rotorcraft, it is a huge disappointment to see what quality can or cannot reach the marketplace. I don’t want to get into WASM or any of that… But shouldn’t they be prioritizing products that make the sim shine and stand out? Why are we allowing Dollar Store designers to flood the MP with mediocrity? It’s frustrating to see
I didn’t realise MScenery had rushed out that many copters already!
I think the whole store needs a good redesign in terms of visibility and discoverability. It should have some weighting to the reviews and push those with better scores to the top, like any of the mobile app stores do (there is a lot more to it of course, and anything like that opens it up to people gaming the system - but with FREE apps like on mobile it is a lot easier to cheat. There are measures that can be taken by the store to minimise that if they cared to, and I suppose the only way at the moment would be for the developer to get loads of people to actually BUY the product to be able to rate it so that would quickly cost them more than they will make back even if they are getting 70% back haha). It has to evolve but seeing as they are still taking (up to and over) 3 months to approve items I think any deeper changes to the way that marketplace operates are sadly a long way off.
If there was some automatic weight to showing well rated products then Got Friends would have nothing to worry about with these rubbish products flooding in.
I know you can limit the store to only show “4 star +” items (I use that) but I bet a lot of casual users don’t really use those filter options. And I don’t know the ratio of buyers that even rate a product. Not many! Probably like 0.2% absolute max.
Really the simplest thing would be that the DEFAULT filter is to list by review ratings as the primary sort order. Then it would encourage developers to make products that users like and drown out the trash.
As for your original question - I see your concern but in the long run, word of mouth and quality will always win I think. You have no worries on that front!
EDIT: I must admit I have never left a rating on any purchases I’ve made in the game store. They don’t make it very obvious or push it. Perhaps they should have a system that tracks how long you have used or had an item installed, and push a popup offering to rate it when you first load the game after that timer is passed. Yeah it could get annoying, and many people still might cancel the popup, but if it made it an easy and attractive ‘1-click-and-done’ affair, it would certainly get more interaction than the current way of having to find the product again in order to rate it. Which I think is the only way - it’s quite buried.
Currently when I rate something in the MP the ratings don’t “stick.” I can rate an addon then go back to the MP menu, find that addon again and the rating I placed has disappeared and I can rate again… it’s a mess!
I bought both new helis.
They are both ok, the biggest problem they have is something that is very very wrong in the FM itself since they fly basically just like the longranger that was ■■■■ from the start!
On controller on xbox the left rudder is basically not working! If to much force to the right takes over for any reason, it dont matter how much you push the button, it just rotates forever!
And countering it with the cyclic makes it worse, since pushing up make it all turn right, pushing down makes it turn right and turning left makes it go up!
The only way you turn is… RIGHT!
All is of course because the rotor goes that way!
And sure, turning left and right doesnt behave the same in a real helicopter ( or does it?) so this might be realistic, but its way to much!
And combined with the weak left rudder its a ■■■■ show!
And yes I can fly these things, even with all these crazy forces going on, its just not very fun!
Only the cabri is really flyable/controllable, but it still has all these problems too, just less.
But!! Its rotor goes the other way!!
That means the left rudder problem is much less and the right rudder behaves much better countering since its not weak, even though it now is on the ”wrong side”, so its just left rudder settings that are faulty some how.
I really hope that the FM changes coming fixes these things!
We cant have choppers that can only turn right!
There is legitimate frustration surrounding the MSFS Marketplace and it’s coming from all sides.
It seems justified to me and also seems to be begging for some attention from MS/Asobo
I think a little clarification on just what EXACTLY they do WRT new material is in order at the very least.
What exactly is the process? What exactly is examined? How many testers are there and what does their worksheet or workorder look like? What is the back log? Why cant they give a developer an ETA on a release for a product or update?
Understanding that they are busy with the flight sim schedules and updates - they still operate the Marketplace and need to provide some governance for that in some form or another - dont they?
Whish there was a Standards system in place. Minimum functionality and quality requirements. That would weed out a lot of the money grab content… Also be nice if the market was available outside of MSFS 2020 with a detailed review system.
I would love to purchase the Mini 500, but Gotfriends only accepts Paypal or Venmo. Since I’m not a fan of Paypal and don’t use Venmo, I’ll have to wait for it on Simmarket or MP.
It’s everyone’s decision to purchase trash like that for such an amount of money or use the brain. It’s a pity that good addons are held behind but MY consequence is simply to never ever use the market place. I get that XBox has no other possibility but using the XBox is a decision, too.
Yes, I got that far where I could put my credit card info in, but then you have to create a Paypal account to complete the transaction, which I do not want to do. I emailed Gotfriends customer support about another method but they haven’t responded yet. I’ll be patient and order it from .to or Simmarket when they list it.
With the state of the FM right now, there cant be any good addons.
I was planning to buy the cowan 500 today, but I am sure ( after reading how it behaves on PC ) that it would be basically unflyable.
And one thing these two new ones do good is that they fly pretty stable in ordinary forward flight, the cowans does not.
Unflyable? No idea what you’ve been reading but it fly’s great. The 500 clearly needs features such as RBS and VRS inplemented, but apart from that i have zero issues with it. From skids up to touchdown that thing is an absolute blast to fly. I cant stop flying it. It’s taken over my life I’ll spend 30mins in the Mini500 or the FI 206 (which are both very good) but most of that time is spent thinking about firing up the MD500, which inevitably happens very quickly.
Does it need additional work? Yes. It’s by no means perfect, but calling it unflyable is ridiculous in the extreme. It’s fantastic and imo the most fun you can have in a heli in MSFS.
”I really was looking forward to this but for me, I just cant control the pitch on this thing. Tiny movements of forward and back with the cyclic results in either it nose down in to the ground or into the sky at speed. ”
This sounds like controlling it on xbox cloud with xbox controller would be not very easy.
And then someone wrote they had trouble following roads, and thats a red sign.
And the 206 from them arent really stable either, so I am seeing a twitchier 206 in my mind.
But sure hope its fantastic and reading you really like it makes it hard to wait for it!
will buy it even if its not, since I want to support all that makes helis!
And its really the FM that is the problem right now.
and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I’ll spend 30mins in the Mini500 or the FI 206 (which are both very good) but most of that time is spent thinking about firing up the MD500, which inevitably happens very quickly.