I am shocked, but not surprised, about all the negative comments here

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I posted this on another forum initially but it sure fits here as well…

I had expected a lot of negative comments here after the release - but I am actually surprised about the massive glass half empty mentality displayed here.

So this is just proof of a major problem in the social media age. Have a look at Metacritic and Steam reviews for most major games that gets released these days. Most that really are good with immense production values but with some annoying bugs on release gets surprisingly bad user reviews, accept a few that has some “cult status”. And we are talking about games that really are technological master pieces. In the social media age the whiners out there in our society can rage free and get way more attention than they deserve. We sure know them from work - the 5-10% that are constantly whining about something, never gets promoted, destroy meetings with bringing up all the negative things they see - completely ignoring the positive. And they can bring the 10-20% of semi whiners with them rather easy. The semi whiners in a positive climate will not whine but contribute and become appreciated colleagues. But have one real whiner in the team and they will get dragged down in the mud and whine as well.

So - with the digital distribution channels today that makes releasing patches a breeze companies have unfortunately adopted a policy to release products way to early. 10-15 years ago it was not possible to assume that everyone would have good internet connection so that you could release a game in late beta stage and do a massive zero day patch and then let the devs work day and night the first months to patch things that the customers find instead of the internal test teams. So these days managers can force the teams to release prematurely as large games/simulators are extremely complex software projects - and miss their internally projected release dates almost all the time. So then the stage is set for what we see.

  • A huge complex game / simulation hits the market with 90% working features that are really polished and incredible in most ways. 8% of the features does not work as the team wanted it to do. Finally 2% does not work at all in the last build that they missed in the stressed testing that is incredibly complex for a piece of software of this size

  • Enter the negative 5-10% real whiners. They quickly find the 2% broken features - and make lame jokes about the 8% that works a bit “weird”. They completely ignore the 90% that is amazing.

  • The 10-20% semi whiners read what the real whiners write all over the interweb and gets dragged into the mud.

  • Those of us that see the marvelous 90% and the amazing potential try to intervene but often get mistaken as fan boys - as we see the problems as well but want to focus on the positive things. And we maybe get a bit too positive as we try to balance out all the negativeness…

So - the professional reviewers see the problems as well but understands that they will get fixed as they are nowhere as complex to fix/add than the incredible core of the product. So the game gets a 90+ metascore for reviewers but really low user score from the whiners that for some reason cannot see that the problems they focus on are really minor and easy to fix. But they are just as upset.

And in a forum like this the whiners have the perfect stage. They will bump their own whining threads forever - and we get trolled down in trying to answer so the whining threads almost gets pinned on the first page. And yes, I do agree that this game/simulation probably should have been released around Christmas to iron out more bugs and add more features like missions and challenges etc. I have found a few bugs but generally this is the most next gen simulator I have ever tried. So in a year we will have the simulator that the developers really wanted to release - and we have dreamed of. Fixing flight model parameters, auto pilot behavior, missing power lines etc is a breeze compared to building the core simulation engine that really is amazing. I took off from my own “home field” and was blown away with the fact that it looked almost exactly as in real life. And the planes behave reasonably well with lots of complex systems implemented so the base for building the most complex aircraft you could ever imagine in the future is there. Before MSFS was presented I think most of us thought we would have to live with FSX-clones and X-plane for the rest of our lives.

Let that sink in.

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Well said and totally agree

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Love your percentages! they seem legit…and I love how you call everybody but the ones who think like you “whiners”, classy. Btw you are not whining…at all.

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Nailed it.

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Straight away another whiner. Unbelievable!

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Well said couldn’t agree more.

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Unbelievable! right? The time you spent reacting to me is time you could have dedicated to send a letter thanking MS for being so amazing. Rethink your priorities…maybe.

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I already have.

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My bad, I said nothing then :blush:

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Ah yes, whining about whining, never gets old.

The biggest problem at the moment is the lack of communication. A recent post by one of the CMs said that they can’t have developers responding in here but I just don’t buy that. Other game devs do it and the community is super appreciative. The CMs and devs are practically rock stars.

Nobody is here acknowledging that the real world weather is a dumpster fire for 90% of the planet. Nobody is in here acknowledging that the controls are a total mess. Nobody is in here acknowledging that the jets are stupidly overpowered with unreliable autopilots. We barely got word that they’re working on stability for the poor folks that can’t even run their $120 game.

If 2 community managers aren’t enough, hire 10 more. Get your devs in here and let’s work this thing out together. Show us that you care, not just tell us. This isn’t just a source of income for a company and its developers, this is a lifelong hobby for tons of passionate people. We want this thing to be a smashing success more than anyone! The negativity and criticisms are a symptom of some real issues.

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I think if Asobo/MS made this game/sim catered towards the fan/hardcore simmer it would have been more positive than now it’s catered for the masses due VFR/Sightseeing. I understand using satellite maps to cover the world is huge and innovative. Same with true live weather. It’s amazing, but meanwhile they lacking the sim-part; learning and understanding how a airplane works. Gauges, knobs, VOR, DME, G1000, physics, checklists, charts and much more. There’s more than sightseeing and VFR, which can go incredible boring fast. There’s people out there who desire to fly, but can’t due reasons and want to learn it as realistic as possible.

You can create flying and race games for the masses by making them arcade. Red Bull Flying would had been perfect for Asobo/MS. Give it some American tune over it and you can sell it like Codies sold Dirt 1, 2 & 3, (and 4) and in the future 5.

Now it’s feels too much as a jack of all trades. Catering the masses, catering the simmers, but leaving a lot of stuff out for the simmers. Non working knobs, bugs, non-working G1000, phyiscs questionable, flightplan wacky, no ingame charts or better checklists or anything like that. Codemasters tried to cater both crowd in Dirt 4 and look how it failed hard.

Asobo/MS need to find out what they want. VFR/Sightseeing and a game for the masses or go deeper in the rabbithole, take everything from FSX, Xplane, Prepare3D and anything else that has been released outside of the simulation-games, put it in the game and make it better. I think if you want a 10 year long term project you invest in the hardcore crowd and make this game a true sim and legendary, like Richard Burns Rally is the sim to be for Rally-enthusiastics.

Edit: I didn’t mind if the game as focused on Europe/North-America, so it’s quality > quanity first. Better airports, better everything. Then have more time to works on the feature and all that. Then during the 10 years they could slowly cover the rest of the planet.

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Hello, do you have a few moments to talk about our lord and saviour MSFS?

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I concur with this post. I think there is a large number of angry people on here - whenever someone posts a happy-go-lucky “Omg this is so awesome look where i went/what i did/that view” post they come charging over like something out of 28 days later with their zips undone ready to urinate all over that persons chips “IM NOT HAVING FUN IM GOING TO HIJACK THIS THREAD TO ENSURE YOU DONT EITHER!”

At least its only a fraction of the community though.

On the good side their are a lot of people on here also enjoying the game, having issues but venting and looking for help in a mature way and giving constructive feedback about some of the problems so that’s something.

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Compared to communities for other video games, this one is EXTREMELY toxic.

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I certainly think simmers have a set of pre-requisites that the casual gamer or new sim enthusiast almost certainly doesnt care about or think about and the threads reflect that. Simmers will expect this new sim to at least match what existing sims can do and more and that is not unreasonable. The new sim which isnt bogged down by the need to be backwards compatible with older scenery and aircraft should be better, Where is falls down simmers will be rightfully upset, particularly if they paid well over 100 bucks for it.

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I am geniunely interested in why others opinions can “ensure you don’t enjoy the sim”? Do you need others to validate your opinion in order for you to trust yourself?

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Armchair psychologist?

I don’t need anything - i haven’t posted a happy go lucky thread, merely talking about some of the threads from happy excited people who have had their threads hijacked by angry people who bring nothing to the post other than to complain, You are excited about flying through a hurricane? Let me go off on 1 about how ■■■■ i think the hurricanes are in this game, sprinkle in a bit of “xplane does them better”, sign off with “what a flop” and end with “refund time”.

How much are these sessions per hour btw?

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I couldn’t disagree more. You’re missing the distinction between critical and toxic. This community is probably the most critical one I’ve seen, but far from the most toxic. Go play League of Legends for a while and come back and tell me that the flightsim community is the most toxic.

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I’ve said this before, but I cannot agree with the normalization or acceptance of releasing software in a sloppy state. I say that as a consumer and as a professional simulation engineer and software developer.

Beyond that - the people who literally cannot download nor start the game, nor play it for more than a brief period of time without it crashing… that’s not “whining” about a feature that doesn’t work quite as intended, that’s a pretty legitimate gripe with a show-stopping problem.

There are for sure people who are overly critical, or overlook a wealth of good to focus on a few small negatives. There’s certainly a lot that can be enjoyed in MSFS as it is now. I’m fairly sure (or at least hopeful) that the first major patches will be centered on bug fixes.

But I cannot defend sloppy software and development practce.

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Liberty and Justice For All… :us_outlying_islands:

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