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 doesn’t 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.
I’ve 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 can’t 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)…but it doesnt feel good right now.
That’s Stretch Armstrong levels of stretching I think. I think the simple truth is SU2 has left us with quite a few regressions, and they would like to eliminate as many of those, hopefully all, before it is released. This is taking longer than they expected I guess, but I wouldn’t read any more into it than that.
It doesn’t feel good at all and something definitely isn’t right. The least they could do is reassure people that all is ok and that we can expect a new update soon.
What you are looking at is an industry that has oversaturated the AAA market, prices have gone up, and the market now can’t take it any more. Quality has dropped, questionable decisions are made by desperate publishers who cave in to activist groups like Sweet Baby Inc., and games flop. That causes >$200,000,000 dollar losses in some cases, and houses to close. Covid has nothing to do with that, corporate greed does.
I had posted this in another thread, but it’s relevant here, it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide some input.
“rest assured, we will share more information as soon as we are able” – I think this may be what has a lot of us confused and/or frustrated. Why isn’t the team able to share information? Why can’t there be more transparency about the development process and the status of various bugs? Is there some high level direction forbidding more communication? This seemingly tight-lipped communication strategy creates a lot of tension.
The same bugs get posted about over and over because there’s no clear communication about their status. If there are major challenges preventing quick resolution of some bugs I think people would greatly appreciate knowing that.
Overall I think the lack of communication and the lack of explanation about why there’s so little commuinication leads to a feeling that the Asobo/MS team are not participating in good faith and are not taking users’ concerns seriously. That could easily be changed with just a bit more communication.
Here are some concrete suggestions:
Maintain a public list of bugs with links to forum bug reports and a priority + status for each
For any bugs that go more than a few weeks without progress drop a quick line in the relevant bug report such as “this is blocked by xyz, we hope to get to it after this or that”
Weekly post outlining the progress of various things on the bug list along with an ETA for the next patch or a brief explanation of blockers that require delaying a patch
I think if these things were done there would probably be a huge reduction in the volume of posts that moderators need to deal with. I think people would feel good in knowing what the status is, what the priorities are, and what challenges are getting in the way.
I mean, this would be absolutely fascinating for sure
As someone who worked at a large tech company and had access to our software bug tracking and change request database, I can confidently say this will never ever happen, ever
Those would be good question to submit for the developer stream. (Caveat: Since they didn’t give the URL in the last update last week, it’s possible that they’re no longer considering new questions. But, still worth asking.)
There has to be done something … MS publishes only some changes in a changelog but changed a lot of other stuff undocumented but often game/feature braking… and as soon as this happens (and it happens on each beta update, each su, each everything), the search begins for why something no longer works the way it did before. A complete changelog would help narrow down the possible causes.
I’m not entirely convinced this is true as there’s not an indication of what may have broken what. How do we know that it was the code change to fix the 737 MAX 8 transponder that broke the ability for Xbox controllers to use the EFB in the toolbar popout? Usually these kinds of things that break are the result of entirely unrelated fixes/changes elsewhere.
I don’t disagree that we should get as complete of a changelog as is reasonable, but I’m not sure yours is the reason why that has value.
The release of SU2 today kind of proves the point - although I am happy and hopefully it will bring improvements…nothing led to an idea it was going to be released anytime soon. What kind of communication is that? Seems really strange.
Indeed, I will stay away from future premium versions partly because of that. Also, the planes are nowhere near what Fenix and PMDG produce and stay in the 80/20 rule except 80 in this case is not good enough.
To be fair - todays Blog post was better - immediate beta for SU3 for 2024 and a SU for 2020…no dates but it appears my previous observation was off the mark and I stand corrected.
A major example fo lack of communication is the number one bug fix, concerning VRAM.
Asobo have marked it as “fixed” in the list, while many users (myself included) would disagree. Asobo must have read the forums, and they know people are puzzled. Why haven’t they posted a description of what thay have done, to justify it being labelled “fixed”. If they have done as much as they can, they should just say so, not just tick the “fixed” box and then ignore it.
I just don’t understand why there couldn’t have been a
“We’re shooting for May 15th to release SU2, but that’s not a promise. If we don’t make the 15th we’ll let everyone know that some blockers came up and provide another best estimate”
Those two sentences from a community manager are probably all that would have been needed to silence many hundreds/thousands of posts about this topic over the last few weeks.
