[Polls] Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Marketplace Feedback

[Kapustick]

In my case, the Simverse coins is one of the best improvements made to the to the 2024 Marketplace.

Prior to the coins, each addon had to be purchased separately. Back when addons usually worked when you bought them, my credit card would get locked/flagged from the fraud department after about 25 “small” transactions. It was a hassle.

Now, I’m able to make only 1 or 2 transactions per month and be able to simply select the addons I want to “purchase”, without having a separate transaction show up on my credit card. From a sales and marketing standpoint, it made it easy to make purchases without one realizing how much they are spending - or consciously reflecting on their current budget limit - the money has already been spent and we’re not earning any interest on Simverse Coins.

However, since many addons don’t work when you purchase them now days, the Simverse coins preference has become a non issue for me. “We” can no longer “expect” products to work or install properly when you purchase them from the Marketplace, so I just don’t “purchase” or upgrade addons like I used to.

[ngreenaway]

Well, the coins isn’t really the solution, having a functional shopping cart so you can pay for multiple items at once like virtually every other online retailer is the proper fix.
Scrap the coins/credits altogether, add in a cart, and provide itemized receipts. It’s not rocket science.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight - I won’t buy from marketplace unless it’s an MP exclusive that I really want… But then, these simple fixes (along with the snails pace for product updates) are what keep me away

[Kapustick]

I 100% agree and had hoped that would be what the Marketplace would have given us. But, I figured that the coins is what other games typically use, so I just accepted it as the desired direction the overall game is evolving into.

It didn’t surprise me when I saw the coins wallet implemented vs. an actual storefront style implementation. It is consistent with marketing tactics consumers are subject to today - a psychological sales tool to dissociate consumers from directly realizing what they are paying for an item - with the intent to increase sales as a result.

It is also consistent with the apparent marketing tactics we have observed in the Marketplace over the last few years - i.e. maximize sales by intentional Marketplace releases to capitalize on unsuspecting consumers that don’t check what they are buying:

• PMDG annouces the imminent release of their Boeing 777-200
  ** The Marketplace quickly realeases the CaptainSim 777-200 before the PMDG release
• Kwikflight announces the imminent release of their AH-64
  ** The 2024 Marketplace quickly releases the MScenery AH-64 before the Kwikflight release
• DC Designs announces the imminent release of their SU-27
  ** The Marketplace quickly releases the Deimos SU-27 before the DC Designs release.
  -- etc. To identify a few examples

It is not coincidence. It is consistent demonstrated intent.

*** IMO - The above examples that began in 2020 evolved into the intentional omission of the Developer names from the 2024 Marketplace item banners.

The above is also why I don’t purchase as many addons as I used too - since I utilize the Simverse Coins. It is almost a certainty that we will eventually see a “bug” in the Marketplace conversion calculations relative to the actual currency price - consistent with most aspects of the game historically (arguably). It is why I consider it necessary to validate the coin cost vs currency price for each and every purchase/upgrade I make now - a hassle in itself, but at least my credit card won’t be locked if I miss the fraud alert and try to buy lunch later.

“Bug” = plausible denyability of intent or negligence = “We apologize for the inconvenience…”

[TheBlackWind977]

@ngreenaway

That’s because they’re really buggy in 2020 as well. Didn’t stop them from being sold as the premium tier aviators edition of 24 tho

At least most of them are relatively ok in 2020. In 2024 that is not the case. I feel like they said fixing them is effectively low priority on the distant horizon but I can’t remember which dev q&a that was.

[TheBlackWind977]

@hobanagerik

Unless you have read, or viewed, a review of a product, you don’t know until you have bought it.

That’s why we have Youtube.

[FndrStrat06]

This is classic gacha F2P stuff. Forcing people to buy more than they need increases profits, while also capturing money that can’t be spent anywhere else with those leftover tiny amounts you can’t use.

It’s deceitful and manipulative, and I hate it.

[TheBlackWind977]

Why is saying, “no, I don’t need that,” so hard? There’s no F2P poo and no gacha here.

[CoyBubble411]

Marketplace is not of much use to me when I am unable to make any purchase through it.

[Newspawnz]

Interesting experience as a Steam user.

Did my first purchase on the 2024 Marketplace two days ago. Clicked on buy, Steam came up, bought the necessary funds on Steam, got returned to the Marketplace, … nothing else happens. It would have been great to get at least some kind of message what happened or what failed.
I still see the button to buy the product (instead of showing “owned”) and can’t find the product in “My Library”. Steam reports that the purchase has been completed without problems on their end. I had failing Marketplace purchases during the early months of MSFS 2020 so I created a Zendesk ticket, asking for help.

Yesterday I noticed the button “Wallet” in the Marketplace. I clicked on “Wallet” and, surprise, surprise, I see the equivalent of simverse coins (or whatever they are called). So I went to the product and select the button to buy the product again, this time choosing to buy using the coins in my Marketplace wallet. Took quite some time to process it but in the end it worked and I now have the product.

So it makes sense to check the wallet if a purchase doesn’t seem to go through …

[SmotheryVase665]

My Personal Comment & Observation

There is a sale on at the moment (June 29th), and I saw that an airport - 2W1 De Vere - was on sale. I wanted to see what other airports in the vicinity might be on sale, so I could create a number of GA flights between custom departure & arrival airports.

So I select “Airports” & see this:

No problem. I zoom into WA state & use the filters to limit to “MSFS 2024” & “On Sale”:

Where is 2W1 De Vere? After some trial & error I find I need to zoom in to see it:

Are there any other airports nearby? What is the closest airport to 2W1 that matches my search criteria? The only way to find out is to randomly scroll & zoom.

How about Left? Nope:

Maybe down a bit more? Nope:

Maybe somewhere to the east, perhaps?..Oh look! Here’s one:

OK, so how close is U70 to 2W1? I have to scroll out to find out. Can you see 2W1 on this map? (Hint - it’s that itty-bitty dot at the top).

Why does U7 show up in this view / zoom level with the airport & sale icon & 2W1 does not? I don’t know. It makes me wonder:

• How many other airports or airstrips that meet my criteria are not showing on this map? I have no idea.
• How far do I need to zoom in to see them? I have no idea.

Do I want to spend my time zooming and scrolling around to find airports? Nope. My time is valuable, and this type of “hunt & peck” work is not a good use of it.

Am I inclined to make purchases if I can’t quickly & easily find what I’m looking for? Nope.

The problem is that the visibility of the airport appears tied to it’s size. The smaller the airport, the more you need to zoom in to see it.

I would suggest this link be removed, so all airports that meet the search criteria are visible, even if, at lower zoom levels, the icons overlap each other.

This is just one example of why I gave the 3 poll questions in this topic a 1 or 2. I find the Marketplace UI cluttered, convoluted and overly-complex, which significantly decreases the chances of making any purchase unless I know ahead of time exactly what I want to purchase. I do not see myself making any impulse purchases on this site in its current form.

[SearFanatic1926]

Unfortunately, I find the 2024 marketplace so unuserfriendly compared to 2020. Its very easy to see all the latest releases in 2020 and search. Maybe its just me, I dont know.

[AdvanceCash6018]

On Xbox series x

The market place on Xbox as well as most menus are not smooth at all. They stutter immensely, which makes searching by scrolling a daunting, irritating, and just frustrating task. I end up just cursing the sim and just stop.

It should have options like installed and not installed ( enabled). Just like the 2020 sim did. It even took 2020 various versiónsto get the marketplace right.

2024 marketplace is not one step but a few steps back from 2020.

Word of advice to devs… If something works, go with it and make it better.
The 2024 redesign is not good. And for Xbox it just should not be even online. It’s a disaster. Please try it before you put it out for the public. You obviously did not, because it’s impossible that you would’ve put this out like this.

We must not be on the same sim.

Same with the free flight… Etc it Should save your personal preferences. Trying to load weather and buildings and add ONS all before even selecting an airport makes the scrolling around the globe also a stuttering and discouraging ordeal.

Why?

[Ploodovic]

One improvment the 2024 marketplace has, compared to 2020 marketplace, is the ability to click the smaller screenshots to see a bigger screenshot.

[AuralunaOne]

They still haven’t bothered to get the CRJ into the 2024 marketplace for those of us who were foolish enough to buy it from the marketplace back in the day. I do know that I won’t ever make a purchase from the in game marketplace again. It’s unreliable and all you get is needlessly encrypted nonsense – if you get what you’re entitled to that you paid for at all.

[ab353]

I made the decision after the disaster that was the 2024 release that I was not going to buy anything from the marketplace again. I don’t feel like they have earned my business. I will buy directly from the manufacturer and have done so with a half of dozen items so far.

[DoutorFunga]

But you don’t! Every purchase in marketplace counts the exact same “sim coins” needed to buy the product. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that there’s a way to buy said coins themselves (which does smell of deceit). Call of duty (from Asobo’s sister studio Activision), League of Legends and Fortnite are examples of actually forcing purchase of specific amounts of coins for in-game content

[Karamich]

To give my opinion about the Marketplace experience as I was thinking about it the other day:

I work with Unreal Engine on a project and there is their new “Marketplace” FAB. It was launched a few months ago to replace the previous one.

I believe MSFS (2020 and 20204) Marketplace could on one side benefit from a simpler and enhanced user experience (in-game). Yet, knowing that the menus experience in the MSFS2020/20204 are not a typical “Windows PC” one, I wonder if it would be a good idea to have a version of the Marketplace online, similar to the FAB experience (not a “console” type of UI, buttons and experience) and accessed through the web browser. And of course any purchase is sync with the sim…

[mbraortns]

Today I got my internet upgraded from 80Mbps to about 250Mbps. I’m on XBox Series X and I thought the clunkiness of the MP was due to a slower connection but it acts the same on the faster internet. Its just programmatically slow – needs to be written better Id say.

When I say ‘clunkiness’ I mean: images are slow to load (spinning circle icons); the mouse seems to catch on things and stutters across the screen; its always as if the program is trying to do a bunch of things I didnt ask it to do.

anyway, faster internet is not the answer.

[dreampage]

The responsiveness of the UI doesn’t depend on the internet connection.

One of the main problems I think is that even on the front-end menu, the game is constantly streaming something, either the globe in the background, or making something in the back-end so that rendering of the menus becomes very slow.

Another problem is that scrolling any menu with the Right Stick is incredibly slow, it goes with a snail’s pace. And “grabbing” the scroll bar with the cursor is also very cumbersome, but still usually faster than scrolling.

I find that the actual product pages are somewhat better, but browsing and navigating the marketplace itself is an excruciating experience.

[dreampage]

Honestly, I wish there was a web-based marketplace (just like we have a flight planner now), which would be much easier and faster to browse or even buy things with.