There is a Dev stream planned sometime this month. I learn more from the Dev streams than any other form of communication offered to us. Although I agree there has been more silence than in the past.
The communication in the beta is beyond poor, we donāt know what they are doing, what they acknowledge and why etc eetc.
All they seems to want is a survey for each build. The communication between 2020 and 2024 feels like a completely different development team.
I donāt understand how they have Asobo employees active in the SDK forum, but the beta forum they donāt. Iāve never been part of betas whereby the developers donāt directly interact with the users over specific and/or massive issues during that time.
The silence and neglect baffles me and itās one of the reasons I left the beta, because I refuse to waste my time helping them when communication is just one way, itās not helpful at all
It seems like Asobo/MS has cut back on communication drastically over the past few weeks. Is this the beginning of the end for MSFS 2024?
To be fair, one would rather have them active in the SDK/dev forum working directly with devs on fixing things. They can ignore me so long as they are fixing underlying bugs.
Would I like to know what theyāre doing? For sure. But if I had to choose, I want them fully involved on the dev forum.
In addition to what @BigCow74 said, donāt assume that just because developers arenāt posting on the forums that they arenāt reading them. Given the negativity and lack of patience I see on these forums, I probably wouldnāt want to post here either.
Frankly, Iād rather have developers working on fixing issues than spending their time posting in the forums. When they do post, I would imagine they are doing so deliberately to solicit additional information needed to help them reproduce a problem so they can fix it.
I disagree, Iāve seen very good communications between developers and users in betas with other games. Thatās where the respect and understanding comes from, the reason for the negativity and frustration on these forums could very well be directly attributed to the lack of communication in the beta forums.
Direct communications in the Beta forum has been minimal. The number of livestreams with direct access to not only those in charge but also with first party developers seems unprecedented in my experience.
100% this!
A few words of real people working on things would go a long way in brightening up the mood around these pages.
Iāve seen a fair share of grim forums out there, but this is right up there with the worse of them (you know, EA games and their vile ilk) - They all had this one thing in common though:
The negativity is inversely proportional to how much developers actually engage with players.
I think I can count on one hand the times Iāve personally seen an actual Asobo developer post here (not a CM, not a Moderator, not a 1st party partner, but someone from Asobo who is actually reviewing / writing / fixing code). It was someone whose focus was finding game crashes (like CTDās).
There was some interesting conversation, but there were invariably people on the forum that were taking advantage of the situation, sometimes treating the dev as their own personal bug-fixer (why arenāt you fixing issue XYZ?!), and sometimes just using the dev as a general target for their own frustrations.
If I was an actual dev, I would choose not to venture onto a forum with anonymous users behind nicknames. Sure, there will be people who generally engage respectfully and want to have a meaningful conversation, but it can just turn ugly way too quickly.
The communication and support are extremely bad compared to other companies/products.
There is no way to get in touch with the developers, or get direct feedback on posted issues and questions. If you post a bug, you can only wait for weeks to get any kind of indication it is being worked on. If you get an issue with performance or VRAM, basically nothing happens because itās a long running thread on the forums.
If you contact official support you get no help. They just follow a script and ask the basic questions. Have you emptied community folder? Did you install MSI afterburner? They donāt acknowledge the bug (which obviously has nothing to do with the questions being asked) and ask the same questions multiple times indicating they donāt in fact read the communication history. The conversations can go on forever with the same things being asked again and again.
How do we address issues and what is being worked on? I have multiple threads on this forum with issues that have been there since launch and no feedback or response on them.
Like many large companies they tend to acknowledge issues they have either fixed, or intend to fix. Less attention is drawn to issues that have dragged on for years, but if you are lucky your thread reporting the will have the tag ābug loggedā. If you get it that far, all you can hope for now is it gets a lot of votes, or it most likely wonāt get worked on. Triage, and all that.
And vice versa. Developers who refuse to take an active part in product resolution, tend to increase negativity and backlash. Works both ways.
You canāt abandon your base. Reap the rewards when things are going well, donāt treat the core like a pariah.
While itās my greatest wish that a developer would comment on all points listed on the snapshots (bugs, wishlist, etc.), itās not just the silence from MS/Asobo; the CMs are also noticeably quiet, too quiet. And while Iām not a fan of them just being a kind of āpostman,ā even that would be more than they currently are.
This is a bit inaccurate so just wanted to clear this up - if something is reproduced and turned into Bug-Logged, usually the votes at that point donāt matter as much anymore, as it is going through its own triage, fix, and release schedule. Of course, if there is something trending with lots of comments, votes, etc., that can affect some of this process as the high voted items may be pushed for fixes faster, but donāt think that a low voted bug report wonāt ever get fixed because of that votes!
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This community is very passionate about the sim. That is a double edged sword at time. While some people would be constructive, I am sure we have all seen times where there was non-constructive sentiment. I am sure they want to isolate the developers from that, so some innocent comment taken the wrong way doesnāt ignite into a forum war.
However, for many games what you will see is one general Community manager whose job it is is to interface between developers and the community. That way, no one person can get into a fight with a developer, its just the Community Manager talking with the user, and that deescalates things. Something like that would provide a development presence without actually taking a developer away from their work.
Iāve said it before but itās true.
āWe moan because we care.ā
Iāve totally given up on ever seeing a livery package for the 787 in MSFS2024. I paid a lot extra to get the Premium Deluxe version (with the 787), only to learn that developers canāt really work on it because of new encryption. So I paid $140 for a plane that only has Korean Air and KLM liveries. Flying from Denver to Dallas on Korean Air totally kills the immersion.
About 3 weeks after the target date for SU2, almost 2 weeks after the last beta build was released and no communication.
We inching closer to 6 month after release.
This is not how a company should treat paying customers. But I guess it is what it is.
A bit more substantial update on the weekly marketing blog post, ahh sorry development blog post would be appreciated.
Yes - it does start to feel like something might be going on - SU2 isnt released - no real communication on status (I know - not shocking at all) - Pulling the plug on MS Flightsim is stretch (but has happened before)ā¦but it doesnt feel good right now.