I appreciate your level headed sentiment when all others are raging. I must say however that they are not handling this particularly well at all. I used to work in Bulkhead Games Studio as a programmer, and if you look back through their release history you will find a similarly disastrous game launch. The studio learned a lot from that launch and while I wasn’t part of it, I was certainly read-in on the lessons learned. What strikes me about Asobo’s reaction to the problems of the last few days, is that they should be communicating a lot more.
They’ve done the right thing of keeping the developers out of the public spotlight, they’d be receiving death threats by now; I wish I was joking. However, the senior leadership team, e.g. Jorg Newman should be hosting regular updates, ideally by video, and explaining the technical troubles they are having. People want to know what’s really happening, “the servers not work gud because many people” isn’t enough. Why aren’t they working? Is it one server? Is an elastic service not working properly? Is it a code issue or an infrastructure issue? It’s a golden opportunity to educate the players on the complexities of the sim, how it works, and in so doing, bring them on-board with the solution and time-frames.
You’re right in that we shouldn’t be raging at them, but they aren’t communicating enough, and aren’t communicating in enough detail. If they explain in technical language what is actually going wrong, people will appreciate the difficulty of the situation, and be a lot more patient.
I have sympathy for this. I’m reading the forum because the sim is stuck loading a free flight (again). If the servers could push out the necessary data that individuals are capable of receiving, we’d be in a hugely better place. [XboxX UK. 500Mbps BB.]
It’s just frustrating. I was hyped AF for this game, and it being broken for 3 days and counting, especially when 2020 had a similar poor launch, feels like the team didn’t learn their lesson.
I hope they figure it out soon, but for now I will keep doing what I have been doing for the last 3 days: anything else. It’s just frustrating not knowing when I can enjoy the game.
At the start the communication was in a terrible place: literally- it was on X and there was nothing on this forum. It took badgering from myself and other community members before the X message (with its recommendation to restart if stuck on 97%) was copied to the forum but even then it was a comment in the middle of one post on here soi most people would not see it. Further badgering and the pinned message at the top of the forum was born.
Seb did a video that night, well past his bed time, explaining exactly what the problem is. I can’t understand why people want more information that nobody currently has. They said they’re working on it. What else are they going to say? If they knew when it was going to be fixed, they’d tell us. They can’t. So what we know is what they know. I know you know what it means to be trying to figure out a problem like this.
They’re trying to fix the problem with the hardware they have on hand. If they need new hardware, we’re looking at at least a week to bring it on line (probably a month, but I’m being hopeful). Then there’s the software configuration, remembering that FS is only a very small part of their business, and they can’t give it all to us. So if they knew how to fix it, it would be fixed. It’s not like they don’t care and don’t want it to work. Configuration issues like this take time to figure out how to get the system to work while still maintaining everything else.
If they knew how to fix it, it would be fixed. It’s only been 36 hours. There’s only so many hours a day people can work.
We’re talking a worldwide server problem here. It’s not just a localized problem. Their servers were not designed for this load. They thought they were. They were wrong. Now they’re working to fix it.
And if they haven’t made any progress worth reporting, but are still working on it? What good is them taking time out of their day to write a report for us going to do for getting our problem fixed? They reported about 36 hours ago. When they have news to report, they will. They always have.
@Legomaster4383 technically, it’s only been 2 days. Day three just started a half hour ago.
There is plenty more that they could say which would help remove some of the uncertainty. Indeed, you’ve actually given some examples here yourself.
Do they need new hardware? If so, will it take a week to come online? If so, fine, tell us that. “We’re terrible sorry, we grossly underestimated the number of users, we believe we need X new servers, the earliest we can get them is next Wednesday, so please check back then.” There, problem solved. People will be disappointed, but they will understand what has happened and when to try again.
Or the geographical problem: “We have analysed user reports and login data and it does appear that some regions are experiencing more significant problems than others. As a temporary workaround, those who can use VPNs should try, but we continue to investigate the reason for this discrepancy and if we need to add further capacity in particular regions, we aim to do this in the next two weeks.”
Instead, at the moment we have “There are problems, we can’t tell you why, we can’t tell you what we’re doing, we can’t tell you what types of resolutions might be put in place, we can’t give you any timeframes.” They might as well just write “Please, don’t ask us anything, we have no idea what we’re doing” because that’s clearly how it comes across.
“Trust us, we’re fixing it” after this debacle is not going to fly, if you’ll forgive the pun.
They’re as uncertain as we are. They said that.
It’s only been 36 hours. They don’t have a solution yet. They are working it out. It’s more than an engineering problem. There are going to be costs and other management work that’s going to ripple through and triple the amount of work and time it gets any information to us. Sure, they might have a solution right now (my bet is they don’t), but, if they do, it’s likely going to have to go through rounds of approvals before they’re able to say anything.
Give them a chance to solve it. It’s only been 2 days.
We all had tons of anticipation and excitement, so I get your disappointment. As problems go, though, this one is pretty small…
If Asobo comment and state they are aware of the issue, you’re no better off
if Asobo comment and say they are working on it, you’re no better off
If Asobo comment and say they have no ETA, you’re no better off.
Asobo need to comment when it makes sense to comment, when there’s something to actually comment on.
Really guys, it’s only been 2 days… not 3! Tuesday at 11am, it’s Thursday at 11am. I suggest you check your math. And, technically, it’s been less than 48 hours as it took a little bit for the problems to manifest to the point of, OMG!
You obviously understand their situation. Are you looking for someone to hold your hand or something? What you just said is exactly what’s going on. You know what’s going on. They can’t tell you any more than what you just wrote!
Well it’s been over 48 hours since launch and these problems were reported right at the beginning. But actually, many of these problems (possibly except the server load, just because they didn’t test that properly) were known before launch anyway; the whole thread about how it was not ready for launch was created a week before the launch and with plenty of evidence that it was in a parlous state.
But they have a supposedly expert team of hundreds of developers and network engineers, plus all of the additional expertise in the cloud services division. Are you seriously telling me that after 48 hours and countless reports, they still don’t know anything more than we do? If so, that would certainly explain the state of the game at launch but it would also be the biggest swindle in the history of gaming. Critical as I am of them, I’d like to think they’re a bit more competent than that and have been engaged in some meaningful trouble-shooting during the last two days that they can share with us.
I have bought that on the Windows store. I have the game refunded, it is not in a state where it should be released. I will stay wit FS2020 and maybe try it in a few month again. Actual the MSFS2024 is pure frustration. The refund was accepted, maybe you should think about a refund and give it later, in a fixed state a new try.
That’s right.. They’re screwed! Jorg could lose his job and we may lose our simulator. That’s the stakes.
I didn’t hear Seb say they “Solved” the cache problem. I heard him say they realized that’s what the problem is. Essentially, Asobo created a giant denial of service attack system. It’s clearly not solved.
I’m sure they’re like any company that will never buy x times the number of servers they’ll need just for launch day. The launch was a disaster, but that’s in the past - they’re not going to increase their capital outlay for us, so we’ll have to live with that.
My bigger concern is the long-term problems. 2024 was supposed to be the best ever, but it fell way short of that. Admittedly my concerns when I decided to purchase it were related to performance - not the bad UI, slow processing, and graphics quality problems.