MSFS 2024 Is Still A Disaster After SU2, It Might Never Get Fixed

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Over 6 months after release, MSFS 2024 is still a mess. SU improved some aspects of the game (at least for some people) in terms of stability and performance, but there still is an incredible amount of bugs, some of which were introduced by SU2 instead of being fixed.

Listing all of the issues and bugs would take pages, so let me bring some relevant examples to illustrate the disastrous state of the game. Let me also add that the level of incompetence shown does not seem promising for the future.

In my opinion, there are reasons to believe that this game will never be fixed and will possibly be abandoned at some point (but more on this later).

Some people argue “for me and for what I do the game works well and it feels great and much better than at release”.
This is a fair statement, and it is not necessarily a false one, but it involves a lot of “if”.

If you do not play career mode, if you play on a powerful device, if you use the aid of some external addons, and if you limit yourself to only flying certain (almost) bug-free planes, then yes, MSFS24 can look and feel great to play. In other words, you can see its full potential.

However, this is a very specific scenario, let’s take a wider one instead.

If we consider that the majority of MSFS24 users are interested in career mode, which was one of the main selling points of the game, as well as one of the main reasons to upgrade from MSFS20, things look quite grim.

Let’s take VIP missions as the perfect example (but we could be talking about several other mission types instead). The missions have good availability, are usually enjoyable and not as buggy as some other ones. Dialogs can be a bit cringe, and the ATC is a mess, but other than that, not terrible.

However, here are your choices in terms of planes:

  • PC-24: V-Refs were finally fixed in SU2, but the update made it completely unusable on computer, as the throttle control is bugged and does not work at all. The pressurization system is partially bugged, the fuel use is about twice what it should be, meaning you will fail missions that the game suggests you to accept on this plane.

  • PC-12: Despite marking the oxygen & pressurization bug as fixed in every update (SU1, SU2 both marked it as “fixed”), you will die of hypoxia and fail the mission for flying the plane at its intended cruise altitude. A temporary fix for this was made available by the community months ago, it worked fine, and it still saves you in SU2, but now you get a very annoying warning from the plane pressurization system. In short, SU2 did not fix the main oxygen bug, and added a new one with the warning system.

  • Citation CJ4: V-refs and fuel use are bugged, the effective range of the plane is about half what it should be, and landing V-refs are too low. SU2 brought some amazing new bugs too. The plane is now incredibly more expensive than before (I believe it was around 9M, it is now almost 35M), this does not make any sense, as it does not reflect its real life value, nor the value comparison with the other planes available in the sim.
    More importantly, since maintenance costs depend on the overall price of the plane, flying the CJ4 will cause you to spend more money on maintenance than you make with VIP missions.

  • KingAir 350i: Several levers and buttons in the plane have no sounds at all, all of the v-refs are completely wrong, the engine PDF page is missing, the checklist is bugged and incomplete, the reverse control is partially bugged and difficult to activate.

  • KingAir c90: Similar issues as the 350i, and bugged Vrefs.

And that’s it, those are all your options.

There is not ONE single VIP plane that works as intended. Some cannot be flown at all (PC-24), some make you lose money for flying them (CJ4), some kill you for flying them (PC-12), some are so bugged that it is difficult to enjoy flying them (350i, c90).

Funnily enough, the PC-24, the PC-12, and the CJ4 were in a better state before SU2.

In 6 months, one step forward, two steps backward.

With several of these bugs which should have been addressed in a matter of weeks after release, not months.

Since, for some mysterious reason, they do not release hotfixes, it is likely that we will need to wait for several more weeks and months before seeing some relevant changes. We then need to hope that the changes actually improve the game, which is far from certain.

If we pair all of this with the fact that MSFS2024 is a massive failure (bad reviews, and steam charts showing MSFS2020 consistently outperforming MSFS2024, with less and less players playing the latter), there are reasonable doubts about the future of the game.

Even for the developers it could be easier to just give up on this mess and focus on the next project, since this one seems to have several important structural issues that probably cannot be entirely fixed. This is just speculation, but looking at the state of the game, so many months after release, does seem to point in this direction.

In all of this, I am always astonished by the amount of people seemingly happy about the state of the game and the progress being made…

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Couldn’t agree with you more, the go to aircraft in career mode which in my opinion work great in SU1, those being the CJ4 & PC-24 are now completely broken, I must be honest SU2 has totally ruined the whole experience for me, not to mention forking out £200 for the Aviator edition to have access to some potentially incredible aircraft in career mode just to be let down still six months later

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I only fly Free Flight.

Why, still thousands of bugs to fix.

I rarely have an issue in Free Flight, fantastic FPS (4k with Ultra settings) and amazing graphics.

I have kept FS2020 and fly it as well when I want an aircraft / airport that is not yet supported in FS2024.

FS2020 and FS2024 are light years ahead of any other sim and only a few years ago we were bleating about FSX and the death of flight simulation.

We should all appreciate what we have.

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I strongly disagree with the concept of “we should appreciate what we have”. This was not a gift out of generosity from the developers, this was a full price product which promised features which are still broken or not in the game 6 full months after release.

It is completely irrelevant what the competition has to offer. What is unacceptable is that a game which is not finished, and might never be, is sold at full price, without the “early access” tag.

You only play free flight and have no issues with the planes you fly? That’s great, but that’s only part of the game, what about people who bought the game for its main new feature over 2020, career mode?

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As a thought experiment, fair or not, we compare this product to Cyberpunk 2077. You’re at a minimum of another year from today before it becomes generally playable, where time is spent in simulation and not in real life trying to figure out why it’s not working.

I found it somewhat amusing or interesting in a recent dev cast where someone asked about plans for fixing the Control settings experience. Whomever that manager or executive was (a) had no idea about the issue and (b) had to ask the dev team. The response was that some things were already fixed or planned, and for the rest, and I’m paraphrasing, “we’ll wait to see what the continued complaints [feedback] are like.”

This led me to think that none of these folks actually play the game themselves, or certainly aren’t setting it up themselves, or are just being the typical accentuate-the-positive CEO: “we’re making good progress,” when in reality there shouldn’t be such a wide swath of progress to have been made.

I get the sense that the teams are too federated and possibly managed by non-technical project managers, because introducing this many regression bugs in a commercial product is fairly amateur at best, and at worst, yeah, a sign that despite any individual developer’s horsepower, the management powers that be are not setting things up for success, short-term nor long-term.

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Biggest issue with MSFS is it tries to do everything and does not master at any.

What would be better is MS / Asobo just mastering the base simulation, get the physics correct, the weather, the base models.

Make a platform that is “great” and then give a SDK that allows third parties providers both paid and freeware to fill in the remainder. Like a carer mode, like traffic, ATC etc. Thus reducing MS/Asbo area to concentrate on and this be able to provide a solid platform for others to feed into.

For me, third party addon is what makes all version of MSFS good, so why try and go what they do best.

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There are ways to do that, but it does not seem to be the team’s desire nor forte, which is to have a pencils-down feature code freeze and then a period of stabilization. The period I imagine for this product is a minimum of 3 months, during which time tried-and-true stabilization fixes could indeed be released depending on priority and severity.

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I can understand your frustration and I heavily criticised Asobo / MS when they released FS2024.

It was not even at Alpha standard and they took their followers for granted.

However, you / we have little, if any influence on them - did anyone lose their job for such a disastrous launch?

I try and relax and enjoy what we have in the hope that the sim will improve.

As I fly once or twice a day, I feel I have got value for money.

Best of luck in improving your experience.

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Sure, the sim is a hot mess still in a lot of ways, especially if you dip your toes into the beta, but there’s a number specious assumptions in your argument that need to be highlighted.
It’s in the interests of everyone to keep things as objective as possible.

The only thing true here is if you do not play career mode, which is a new addition. Free Flight in MSFS has always been prettty much the main activity mode, whether you use internal flight planning tools or 3rd party FP tools and/or career type addons. There is a whole continuum here from people who just do ad hoc VFR all the way to pretend airlines. This is a heteragenuous user and acitvity base, not binary, and that really needs to be emphasised.

Also, it’s not just potential. It works, now, for a range of Free Flight activities. YMMV depending on your hardware, your settings, and what you stuff into the community folder that might well kill the experience, but it’s not purely potential, it is.

Where’s your evidence for that?

According to May Developer stream talks MSFS 2020, 2024 with bug fixes, new aircraft, new scenery and more – Stormbirds it’s

“Career mode got quite a bit of discussion. Jorg reported that career and free flight are split about 50/50 on the player base and so there are plans to add more features to the mode and fix some of the issues that it has.”

People might be “interested” in it, but they’re also not going to let it stop them enjoying the sim if it’s broken. They use what works, that’s the sensible approach. Because they can. Even they fix the bugs in career mode I’m not interested in it anyway, as the current grind design is a total turnoff for me. No big deal, I make my own fun in Free Flight, just like we’ve always done. You have options, just like we always have.

Career also wasn’t one of the main selling points, just a selling point among many.
Free flight, in all it’s incarnations and activity varients, is far more useable anyway.

Another interesting bit from the Stormbirds article:

“Another stat that I found interesting is that 2024 has more people flying it than 2020. I think there’s a perception in the community that it is the other way around and that the bugs of 2024 are keeping most people in 2020 but reportedly the stats do not play out that way.”

I also have my own issues with the sim and the way it’s been developed, but it’s easy to be an armchair project manager too. It is what it is there, unfortunately. However, you need to recognise this is a very complex technology platform, far more so than any of the previous versions. MSFS, over its 40+ year history, has always pushed technical boundaries.

It hasn’t always worked in the past either, despite the rose colored glasses some people seem to have about different versions. I’ve personally been in touch with it since V1, and quite honestly I’d take MSFS 2024 even in it’s current state over any of them, including 2020 which I haven’t touched for at least 5 months I think.

It’s plain they are also working on it, so I think it’s premature to say it will never get fixed.
MSFS 2020 was just as bad, and they fixed that, more or less, and it took a lot longer than 6 months. 6 months isn’t that long, and I can see improvements, despite the odd regression and the fact that the SHORTS SKYVAN STILL CAN’T TAKEOFF AND THE ZLIN 2024 SAVAGE ULTRA HAS NO SPEED NEEDLE 6 MONTHS AFTER RELEASE. cough Sorry, that just slipped out!:joy:

Relax, use the parts that are known to work and save yourself the frustration.
It will get fixed, in time.

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  • When I learned how career mode had been designed and implemented, it became the new feature I wanted no part of. I want missions…journeys, to be precise.
  • I understood from the very beginning of my MSFS journey over three years ago that I needed a new, more powerful computer. The cost of the sim software became irrelevant compared to what I needed to spend in order to truly enjoy the most resource-demanding gaming title out there.
  • Bugs? Of course there are bugs. Like Sonicviz says, I can see them working on them, and for that reason I still use FS24.
  • Biggest negative for me is compatibility issues with my FS20 purchases. But again, I knew going in that it would be an issue, because this is not 2020 code.
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Here is the announcement trailer for MSFS 2024: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/p3xp-SnZDoY

Could you tell me how much of it is about the career mode and how much about free flight?
Could you go to the home of this same website in which we are typing and tell me what you see? The first thing I see is a plane that kills you while doing the same exact mission shown there at its intended cruise altitude.

Even if users were now split evenly 50/50 between career and free flight, that would not mean that career was not the main selling point. Of course, since most of it does not work, people play with what works, and free flight generally has less issues than career. And that’s still only 50% of the players.

Also, the issues with the planes I listed above are all valid in free flight as well, with the only exception of the CJ4 price.

The list of planes with relevant issues that cripple the game experience is long, and it is honestly hard to understand how some of these bugs can still be in the game so long after release.

By the way, 2020 has significantly more active players than 2024.
2020: https://steamdb.info/app/1250410/charts/
2024: https://steamdb.info/app/2537590/charts/

Of course then another indication of the state of the game is the amount of negative reviews, both on Steam ,on Metacritic, and on the Microsoft store.

Again, I cannot deny that some of you can enjoy the game, if you limit yourselves to certain activities.
It is objectively true that a large part of the game is unfinished, and is seeing very little progress over what can be considered a long time (6 months).
It is objectively true that career mode was largely advertised to sell the game, and most of its features are missing or broken.
It is objectively true that the majority of the community is highly unhappy with the state of the game.
It is objectively true that SU2 not only did not fix the planes listed above, but made them worse in several aspects.

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Great post! :saluting_face:

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I do not think it is true that the community has no influence over what happens at Asobo.
My post likely has no influence, but reviews and sales certainly do.

I honestly feel like we have an obligation to make it clear that it is not okay to release a game in Alpha state and sell it a full price. They need to pay for this mistake, and while I paid the full price for the game, I can save other people from making the same mistake by making a point about the way the game was released and is being developed.

That being said, your way of taking it, by enjoying what you can, rather than being upset about what does not work, is a great way of enjoying a flawed product. So if you can do that, I have absolutely nothing against it, and I think it is great.

At the same time, I feel like the developers need to see and feel how unhappy the community is with what does not work, since we did not buy a game to play only “50%” of it.

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Okay, you are not interested in the career mode, and maybe your favorite plane works perfectly, you have a good pc and most stuff works well for you. I am happy for you then.

The point stands, whether or not you personally were interested in the career mode, it was and still is the main and most advertised selling point of a game which was released in alpha state and at full price with no “beta” tag.

6 months after release I see some minor progress in some aspects, but I also see new crazy bugs being added to the game. This, in my opinion, shows superficiality, lack of competence and lack of care. I think the community should be very mad about this, rather than grateful that something works…

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Because they want the revenue.

That’s why everything is encrypted and there’s a “buy more liveries” button. Marketplace is a cash cow and they’re prepared to milk it all they can.

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My response to the opening post is that it seems to be discrediting “ifs” while containing a few of its own. We all have scenarios that draw us to the game. It just so happens that my ifs (helicopters and light fixed-wing Career) form an experience in the current beta that range from mostly favorable to mind-blowing.

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They could have and should have done MUCH better with the release. Everyone from the top down at Microsobo to us users knows that.

I’m not a programmer, so I can’t comment on whether the work being done to fix things and improve the software is by competent people working hard, a bunch of slackers laughing at us while they count their money, or something in between.

Maybe I may have more patience than you. I see progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. I’m going to bookmark this thread, come back in a year, and see how we both feel about the state of the sim.

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I took VIP missions as an example, but there could be many others. There is just not enough space to list all of the things that do not work.

What seems crazy to me is that you guys respond to my “a great part of the game does not work” with “there are things that work”.
Yeah sure but that’s not how it is supposed to be is it? I did not pay 50% of the price so why should I be happy with 50% of the promised features?

Imagine you are playing, say, The Last Of Us, and 50% of the story is not available or broken. Would you be saying: “oh but I love that 50% I can play!”

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On a personal level, I feel like your approach is better than mine, and you can probably enjoy the game more than I do, which ultimately is the most important thing.

On a more general level, though, I feel like if we are okay with games being developed like this, we will get more and more of these releases in future. I’d rather not.

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It’s hard to appreciate what you have when what you have is a game which won’t even launch without crashing.

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