When an important issue affecting many users arises (e.g. widespread CTDs, terrain spikes, connectivity issues, issues affecting third party addons, etc.), the Community team puts up a prominent banner in the forums that everyone here can see. (Something similar is done for the official MSFS Discord server.)
That’s great for the forums, but you have to be in the forums to see them. A lot of users never interact with the community, or even if they are regulars here, they may not be in the forums on the day a major issue arises.
It would be helpful if announcements could be made inside the sim when there is a large known issue affecting a lot of users so that people feel comfortable knowing that the issue is being worked on.
Other uses for such a banner could be to announce that a hotfix, regularly-scheduled sim update, or world update is coming up. Sometimes, those updates catch users by surprise.
Not only are banners needed for major bugs, but also for the “service” as a whole.
This product is effectively SaaS (software-as-a-service) and its core functionality absolutely depends on the cloud (infrastructure, services, data streaming, etc.).
So much so that, the game is (and has been shown to be) completely non-operable for large swaths of customers when there are significant impairments or outages.
I could see a banner or page that would appear during app launch. You can hit “OK” to continue if you don’t want to read it. Perhaps the inclusion of a message center could be used to push critical messages to users where they can bring them up as desired.
A challenge I see in the message center idea is what to do when something reported is resolved or no longer relevant.
I agree that not all users may engage in the forum and even if the do, the forum doesn’t “force” you to read anything. You must seek it out.
While it could reduce repetitive questions for known issues, I don’t know if it would reduce the amount of messages created in the forum about whatever the issue is, weather information on it is provided or not.
Hello Asobo and community. Want to offer all of you one idea what i like in DCS World by Eagle Dynamics.
They have a small notification rollup window with short notifaction about simulator changes and it’s would be great to see the same in MSFS.
This small feature is best way to say customers about updates and/or current issues like we have today with real weather, this window can also show notifications about Azure services status.
For me it’s a better solution than we have now with tweets from @MSFS_Support.
Since Aug 20, there have been a number of issues affecting s sizeable number of users. These issues are reported and discussed in this Forum, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, FaceBook, However, not everyone uses social media. Users of this forum who have an issue don’t always search the Forum for possible solutions. This results in duplicate postings, additional time spent on replies, and moderater time to clean up duplicates.
MSFS should use the start up time to post NOTAMs (Notice To Airmen) for issues impacting some or all users. The best recent example is the CTD problem impacting the area around KDCA and Andrews AFB. A “NOTAM” at MSFS startup describing the issue and workaround would save time and improve communication to ALL users.
Here’s an idea to inform userbase in the sim main menu and this forum top page if there’s any problems related to any on-line services like weather, traffic, marketplace, photogrammetry data etc.
Now we have huge amount of frustrated simmers not knowing what is the problem causing failures in sim.
This needs to go further, considering the angst it has caused this evening, with a sim launch telling thousands of users that their entire profile and sim settings, log book, etc were in the bin.
There should be an obvious big red notice at sim launch telling the user that services are currently down, and giving them the option to launch, with the consequenses clearly displayed, or to quit, and a pointer to the service status website where they can track the situation to a succesfull conclusion.
I mean, why does this not already exist after 2.5 years of release of a Software as a Service product?
I was thinking it would be quite nice to have a news box on the main menu (where the Marketplace is advertised). It could toggle between different items but would be especially good for:
Community Fly-in advertising and a link to grab the flight plan and load into the World Map (if that’s possible)
Other update news and any notable events
Essentially, the inspiration of the idea comes from games such as Rocket League and many others that have a news box.
I don’t recall seeing anything like this apart from Marketplace updates, so if I have missed anything then do let me know.
