How would this be done?
They know who have bought the sim and those of us on forums who have been around for a while.
They could request a well known simmer to do a published review (for free) which is placed next to the star ratings.
There are a good many pilots on here whose opinion I would trust.
But everybodyâs opinion will be biased by his or her preferences. Even the experienced, so-called core simmers , or rl pilots with 10.000 hours. Maybe they are especially biased. There already are videoâs that bash the products of this so-called company. But still people buy the stuff and MS rakes in the free revenue.
We need to drop this romantic idea from a market that only sells the products that we deem worthy. Itâs a free world, where one manâs jewel is another manâs stone. The sim suits many simmerâs styles, and accommodates for this by selling products to match those styles.
Why is it so difficult to understand that MS will never close a revenue tap thatâs not drip dripping, but gushes free income? MS facilitates, and doesnât dictate.
An honest review would show all aspects and use cases of a product. And this is already available, one search phase away, on you tube.
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Iâm not asking for them to close a revenue stream. That would affect the sustainability of the sim.
I would just like an honest comparison. Why should the good devs be seen to have the same rating as MScenery. There needs to be a way of giving the good devs visibility.
Navigating the MS Marketplace is not really any different than navigating the largest online seller in the Western Hemisphere, Amazon. I assume Ali Express also has the same issues.
Donât expect any of them to do your work for you is where I see it.
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To state for other people whatâs good or not is borderline arrogant, I think. To state whatâs honest is tricky to say the least.
Why not just accept that the mp is the mp, and that there is enough information available in the free knowledge and information market place called the internet, for each to do their own due diligence. Who do we need to protect here? The people who are impulse buying everything thatâs cheap and looks sleek? mp even has a refund system. So what is really the point we are making here?
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I donât think that is the case (IMO). See Jorgâs comments in this interview.
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Yes, indeed, and I was surprised. I think that was his passion speaking. I think the mp should be open for everybody to sell stuff. From a 1,99 flying match box, to a 99 $ study level star ship. As long as ms takes the responsibility to make navigation and searching as easy as possible. For me a persistent filter is enough for my needs.
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The MP is open for everybody to sell as long as they have reached acceptable levels of functionality. Donât pretend for a moment that this MP is similar to other large MPâs. It is not. There are a large number of development hurdles devs have to overcome to meet acceptance just to be visible.
MS could themselves easily set up a grading system within which the dev would need to place their wares according to a set level of quality criteria.
Then within those gradings purchasers could award stars
This is not a fact, but an opinion. Within such sentences lies the message that there are people who decide whatâs acceptable for other people. If one simmer is perfectly happy with a 10 bucks 3d model that looks good, and another who wants to flip every switch in the cockpit of an 80 bucks airliner, both are happy, I guess.
So, my question again is: what exactly is the problem that we are discussing here? If I go to the DIY market for a drilling machine, I can buy an obnoxious brand for 25 bucks, or a De Walt for 149. With the first one Iâll probably have fun for a few months, the De Walt will probably do its job for years. I always read reviews before I buy stuff.
So why do we keep hammering on MS being responsible for a certain level off quality. I donât see any problem with certain companies releasing plane after plane, thatâs in fact only an outer shell. Why? Because I donât buy those planes. And someone who does it for the first time (after not reading any review) can get a refund. And yet someone else proudly flies his 15 bucks 737 through the Grand Canyon, and is happy too.
Please tell me what exactly is the problem that we are discussing here.
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Thanks for the clarification. But we donât know whether these are false reviews? I mean the people who donât buy these products should not be able to review it, and the people who do buy them might be perfectly happy with a great 3d model, or shell.
Itâs hard to trust these listings when they launch with a perfect five-star rating already in place. The reviews appear to have been submitted before the product even hits the marketplace
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I saw that indeed. But in those cases itâs mostly only 1 or 2 votes. Maybe those screen shots were made just a minute too late, after publishing the content.
I am curious though how the MP will develop in the years to come.
It is fact. The plane wonât work unless certain criteria are met in the Mp. Functionality not marketing!
Sorry, you are not seeing the fact that I am not arguing a point about whether someone can sell here in the mp. I am talking bout the very obvious fact that they call their planes professional, and clearly they are not.
I donât care who may sell as long as their product is honestly represented. I donât have an opinion on whether it is 10.00 or 90.00 dollars.
Clearly we all have different levels of ethics about marketing reliability. You are entitled to yours as I am entitled to mine
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The Marketplace is effectively a website. Just trawl through the logs of the webserver for what is being accessed, and by what IPâs. If they were dumb about it they used multiple accounts from the same location, and that would be easy to spot.
For example, if I access our Intranet server, and I tail its âssl_access_logâ file, when I open its home page it generates log events clearly showing my IP address. It indicates my IP, a timestamp, and what was being accessed. Similarly when I enter search terms, those search terms are visible also.
Anyone posting a review of this product would have to be in a log file somewhere, or the server team arenât doing a very good job. This is trivial stuff. Their logs may also indicate the user account that is submitting these reviews, and that too could be cross checked.
What are the names of these accounts?
Who created these MS accounts, and when?
That kind of analysis should make it obvious that someone is fiddling the numbers.
If I have the time tonight, I may try to run a Wireshark trace of what happens when I submit a âreviewâ of an MP product I own. Itâs all encrypted I expect, but Iâm curious all the same.
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I guess that would work if the user is someone from the developer themselves - guess I always thought the allegation was that they were compensating real users for reviews, which seems hardly traceable. Your allegation seems more like something that could be tracked down - if the desire to do so were strong enough.
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Yeah, if one were to buy positive reviews, that would be much harder to find, if not impossible.
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Do you know whether a dev could rate their own products, particularly if they owned a couple of versions of this sim themselves?
I ask this because a couple of people have mentioned that the product lands in MP with seemingly pre-existing ratings. By that I mean it has 5 stars by a few âusersâ before it is feasibly possible to have flown it and checked it is fault free.
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IIRC Jorg mentioned that they can, but that the Marketplace team ask them not to
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Wonder how many are in the dev team as that could be how they get a couple
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