It’s unfortunate all the collateral damage that’s happened since November 19th.
I was cynical, didn’t buy into the marketing, so I’m unscathed. BUT …
A lot of people have gotten the shaft. Developers who missed out on the biggest sale time of the year. Customers who didn’t get anything near what was promised.
And people have been losing it - several cases where they have been accuses of being paid shills for competitors, others being forced to question how their hobby has become such a toxic source of frustration.
The sim should have been released 6 months from now. So what I’m suggesting is people take a mental health break, go do something else (2020 still works, explore other forms of gaming, or take time away from the keyboard). Do things that bring you joy.
The bugs aren’t going to be fixed any time soon, just like watching a kettle doesn’t make it boil any faster.
It’s a new year. Seize the opportunity take a break. Have some fun, relax. The bugs will still mostly be there next month no matter what you do.
Tomorrow’s Blog Post will be the standard procedural show of numbers - and will not address any concerns at all about quality. If they do mention quality, it will be caged, minimized and dismissive, is my prediction.
The Dev Q&A will also be procedural. Jorg will say “we know things aren’t great but we hear you and we are working on it.” It will mean little. They’ve been asking for patience for too long, and unless behaviour changes, I’m out.
The only thing I want to hear is that there will be a new internal Quality Assurance team given the authority and resources to ensure all aspects of MSFS meet a standard of quality higher than exists now. Period.
“Early access” has been widely used in the gaming industry to give buyers access to the game before the public, but the game is finished or at least without major game breaking bugs.
What MSAsobo did was selling us an unpolished product that has so many blatant bugs that makes me think if there was a human behind the decision to release the “game” in this state, because if it was, theres only one conclusion: $$$$
[MODERATOR EDIT: Please do not ping team members.] If able can you just give the information that the white screen issue with the Inibuilds aircraft is under investigation or you guys have started to fix it and if so when it will be released, the issue is known to be occurring from past 2 weeks and its not fixed yet… for low end pcs or pcs who can’t affort to rendered at high or ultra configuration and also the XBOX SERIES S
Think we’ve got no options? That’s where you’re wrong.
Microsoft had the nerve to ship this mess, so they can face the consequences. It’s not just about the money—it’s about trust. This disaster is wrecking their rep, and I’d love to see how much that’ll cost them in the end.
I’ve already canceled GamePass, Copilot and other MS services for me and my company, and I’ll warn anyone who asks me to steer clear of Microsoft, since they’ve once again shown they’re not worth our trust.
Sorry but my Trust in Asobo MS is gone. They have proven with the release of msfs2024 that they completely ignore all QA levels, quality is not their thing.
To regain trust why doesn’t MS offer refund to all who purchased it in their Xbox store ???
Weeeeelllllll. I guess we can learn from this, annnnd apply that learning when inevitably they release another iteration in 2-4-6 or however many years and not purchase that. But will we? I am sure there will a new bunch of people who won’t remember any of this. Hopefully I can remember this like an elephant.
The argument about 2020 being buggy at launch, so it should be expected here in 2024 as well doesn’t have much merit in my opinion. 2020 was revolutionary and with a dev team who are new to this. So that can be acceptable and then they did the meaningful and right thing with a prolonged tech alpha / beta period before releasing it for retail sale.
But 2024 is not revolutionary, it’s a evolution. Plus they already have at least of 6-7 years of experience we we consider the dev time of 2020. I guess many people are frustrated with the regressions of the new sim. People expected atleast close to 2020 levels of stability. But oh well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.
I think many here are asking for a bit of transparency in the bug fixing status. Just having the bug logged tag is not enough as @NixonRedgrave points, there are bugs leftover from 2020. Atleast another tag about if a bug is being worked on would provide atleast some more transparency.
What are you talking about? Some times its tremendous fun to just be a thorn in everyone’s shoes and watch the world burn..
Well that’s not entirely true - you can certainly interpret statistics differently and thus draw different conclusions from them. But these are the only stats we have to view on usage of MSFS2024 (and comparison with MSFS2020) so they are interesting though (as you say) they may tell several stories.
But the important point here is that whatever our individual opinions and experiences of MSFS2024 are, the market will decide its future. It in a few months time more users have stuck to MSFS2020 than MSFS2024 then MS/Asobo will have some difficult decision making to do. On the other hand, if these stats are wildly unrepresentative of the general trend, and that MSFS2024 is encouraging 2020 users to ditch it and flock to MSFS2024 in large numbers as it’s such a superior sim, then 2024 will be a big success and everyone will be happy.
We only have a glimpse of some limited data so must be cautious about reading things into it - but the important point is that it is market forces that will determine the success or failure of MSFS2024 and the future of our flight simulators. There may be a viable argument that we have to invest it it, good or bad, to ensure that there’s a follow on in the future - but the downside to that argument is very obvious too.
I think once the market place opens up then 2024 will rapidly become the sim of choice over 20.
More and more 3rd party developers will be releasing a/c for 24 …that may work in 2020, but wont have all the bells and whistles. …and people like bells and whistles!
Sigh…
My plea from the old days for a true bi-directional communication… which is still not really there.
Yes, community managers take a part to pass info back and forth…but it’s far cry from being anywhere as sufficient IMHO.
Dev sessions Q&A ? don’t get me even started… it’s more like a public auction for a very few highest bidders, that’s not how issues can be really addressed, especially the more complex core parts.
Solution IMHO:
We need dedicated representative for each major sim aspect, have a kind of a back and forth dialog .
A way to follow-up on issues, understand the current priorities and some expected timeframe for fixes/changes.
A way to further discuss topics with the very knowledge people in the community, especially in core aspects.
Working Title is the best example that does exists, and while probably an extreme example, it’s still proves that it can be done and the outcome shows for sure.
Real transparency - well a lot has been said so I won’t add any further…
The devstream Q&A sessions are an absolute joke. The same question, in slightly different formats, will be asked at least 3 times every single stream. This leads to Jorg/Seb/Marsh having to give the same answer 3 times.
You would think that the Community Managers would pick an array of questions from the many asked. The fact that they consistently pick questions which will all have the same roundabout answer just shows that they are not fully engaged with the product itself.
I disagree, over the past year, the Dev Q&A sessions did improve to become much more focussed on collecting and answering user questions, and answering them in more depth. I really appreciated that change.
The December Q&A session focussed on the MSFS 2024 launch CDN issues, but neglected to discuss the other elephant in the room - unfinished “Alpha” or “Beta” state of MSFS 2024. The more they address this in the next Dev Q&A, the more trust they can start rebuilding, in my opinion. But at this point, almost 2 months after launch - it’s late, and the opportunity to rebuild that trust is less and less as more time passes, in my opinion.
I believe the real issue is the chaos, mandate and decisions above MSFS at Xbox Game Studios and it’s head, Phil Spencer, and of course Jorg can’t discuss those things. MSFS is just a line item way down on the Xbox Game Studio budget page. He has to convince them to fund MSFS properly, while convincing us that it has the resources it needs.
They wont talk about being in a Alpha or Beta state simply because that will cause them lots of trouble. Besides that, as you said, it’s almost 2 months and ‘wasting’ time on this could be spend much better. I dont want to hear excuses and trust is gained by action not by words and they need to do that swiftly.
I care when I can download addons instead of the streaming only. Never got a answer to why this option isn’t available at all. And the marketplace being opened, it hurts 3rd party devs a lot.
MS has a long tradition to release products early and let it become better with the customer. so i dont think MS from higher mgmt level sees the release negative.
Unless we are given the option of having extensive local storage like we have in FS 20 rather than having predominantly cloud streaming it is doubtful tbh that I will ever be buying this game even when a lot of the bugs are sorted.
Firing up the sim and wondering about having or actually having connection issues at peak times is not really my idea of fun. Crazy decision imo from day one especially given all the connection losses we have had in FS 20 over the years.
