The community hate

I am posting this out of frustration please don’t @ me.

I am 46 years of age. I grew up with games, simulators, the original Bruce Artwick sim was installed and played. I enjoyed it all.

I was lucky enough to design scenery, add-ons and work with very talented people to get fsdeveloper.com up and running. I was then lucky enough to be involved with the Microsoft ACES team on getting them all blogging and talking to the community on various forums around the world. The community was excellent, and in the main very welcoming for the developers, designers, newbie flyers and old-timers.

Alas, it is not the case now. It’s a sess pool of hate, judgement and general unpleasantness. Examples of flaming development teams on here and other forums is now the norm. I joined the discord to try to have a nice chat about history and where the game was going only to be attacked by some 16 year old who wanted to be the boss of that particular chat channel a the time.

I even tried to get discussing developing some scenery again on another forum and was met with massive inability to be nice to a fellow human.

I am not sure what is wrong now with the community surrounding the product, or in general the way in which it can be fixed, but I tell you what - from a purely commercial point of view, I have no interest in this product anymore other than firing it up on the PC or Xbox occasionally.

No, I do not have the answer or fix. I guess this is an old man rant!

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I think unfortunately it is the same in a lot of forums and not just related to Flight Sim. The internet and world in general (in my opinion) has become more divisive and vitriolic than ever before. There is a general lack of looking at anothers’ point of view and either respecting that it is different or perhaps trying to understand why/where they have come to that view point.

I believe we are seeing a societal problem not just a FS one. This is not helped by algorithms that are built to reaffirm a persons world view and beliefs, it is easy to call another persons’ view fake news or untruth rather than use reasoned debate.

Please don’t give up on the forum, there are people who want to enter reasonable discussion about a topic and by leaving we will all be missing out.

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Use the ignore functionality and mute the folks who simply refuse to be reasonable. There are plenty of good discussions here - I have disagreed with many people, and many people have disagreed with me in a pleasant and collegial manner. But we still share information, talk to each other, and generally have a good time without getting mad.

Then there are those who call me and other people names, or are extremely unpleasant and only want to rant or run others down without leaving room for discussion - those people I use the ignore function for and never give them another thought.

Or, as they say, “Don’t feed the trolls” :slight_smile:

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I agree - the attitude and some of the comments are rather pathetic.

I dislike and get frustrated when posters infer that everyone has their problems, issues and opinions!

It is likely that these forums are populated with the vocal 10% and that the vast majority take a pragmatic view and know that most problems will be fixed.

And why do some not take advice offered to fix their issues?

If people did not mess around with CFG files and followed the guidance / preparation to update MSFS 2020, they would have a lot less problems!

I used to post regularly to offer advice but I find it rather pointless.

I have had no issues with the last two updates - this one has been the best for me so far. It downloaded fast and so far, I have better performance and very good stability.

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I totally understand that perhaps for some the experience they have had is sub-par; I also understand that for some it has been absolutely fine. My own experience has been ok throughout. I’ve experienced the odd CTD, the odd bug but nothing that makes it unplayable.

I disagree with your point about the sim not being for simmers however; I would class myself as a simmer. I try and fly aircraft using as much as I can real world procedures and practices. I am not a pilot, nor can be because of poor eyesight. However I do enjoy dropping in and completing some of the more ‘gamey’ things because that is all I have time for.

I have watched and read most updates from the team (MS/Asobo) and all I can see are a group of people passionate about their product and keen to keep iterating it for the next 10 years.

Totally with you on that point!

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I see your point there, but I can also correlate with those that are frustrated because of this. People like me, who bought a premium version of this product, are still waiting for important bugs to be solved for an entire year (like the longitude), and what we get is more cosmetics after a downgrade to fit a console?
Even tho I dont throw it all out like those 16 yr old kids you mention, I am really feeling betrayed by this company, who promised one thing, and is delivering another.
Where I come from, this is called scam. I wont buy a single product from them ever again, and advise others not to do so when asked.

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I would like to take this opportunity and ask why? What is it that you fly? It is very possible to fly under IFR in IMC even in the Cessna 152. I’ve done it on multiple occasions. Not that long ago I even shot an NDB approach.

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But what do you say to those who did al the right tings; emptied the community folder before updating; tried it without a single thin in that folder and can’t get it to run more than 12 minutes? This from someone who has never messed with the cfg file; someone who didn’t have the Xbox app installed because I don’t have one of the things and finds out through the forums that the app, which was never required before, makes the download much easier and faster because the folks at Microsoft either simply forgot to tell people that or were too incompetent to tell them or maybe they made the decision that since they, MSFT, are gearing things more towards the Xbox crew, simply assumed everyone had the app. And we know what happens when we assume. I agree the graphics are much better, the FPS is much better with this update; unfortunately I can’t get around the CTD at the 12 minute mark, give or take a few minutes, in their stock longitude.

@longhorn1tx

I can totally understand your frustration and MS/Asobo have got to address these issues. I suppose for me interpreting the OP’s intention is that perhaps the hate and negativity has really had an affect on them.

We know that MS should really be helping those with CTD’s but there are also many in the forum I’m sure who are tech/IT developers (myself included) who would help try and trouble shoot your issues in the forum, what holds us back sometimes is the massive negative posts in between.

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I say that’s very unfortunate that you’re having a bad experience. However, given that tens of thousands (or more) people aren’t facing this situation, you should be optimistic that this bug affects a small number of people, and thus, can be fixed.

As with any bug, try and narrow down the variables and see if anything helps. You’ve already emptied the folder, but have you

  1. Disabled or deleted any marketplace downloads
  2. Disabled any form of overclocking
  3. Validated that your system isn’t somehow power throttled

and so on. The sim does work for me and many other people, so it’s not like the whole game is broken. There’s something on your config that’s breaking it - could be a driver, could be hardware, could be your particular path to the Microsoft servers, and there are ways to find out what’s breaking.

I totally understand that this is a pain in the neck - for example, the nuclear option is to do a complete bios reset, followed by a complete Windows reinstall, followed by taking the machine to a friends’ house (with a different internet service provider), followed by changing hardware (GPU, Power Supply) and seeing if the problem goes away. This is not something that everyone can do - I use my PC for work as well as MSFS and I can’t just wipe everything willy-nilly. And obviously changing hardware isn’t easy or feasible.

But I’d be happy to help you troubleshoot (as will many others) and I’m sure you can find a solution to the issues you’re facing because it’s working fine for so many people - so we know it isn’t something intrinsic to the game!

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There are too many folks who simply complain gripe and try to blame others for some things that are of their own making, like following recommendations when doing the update. The frustration yesterday seemed centered at the Xbox app suddenly being required. Once word of that got around, things seemed to calm down. Not sure what’s causing the constant CTD’s on mine but continue to troubleshoot. It’s been an issue since SU5 and hasn’t really improved yet. A little research and a lot of the complaints would go away because, as you say, there are plenty of folks with good recommendations on the forum.

I am certainly not unhappy with the product, Sim / Game - whatever… I love technological advancement. I sat watching the late Steve Lacey coding sun bloom 10 years ago, and building reflections in the sea and they couldn’t make it work in the sim.

The content manager, the online delivery was all spoken about back then - but the technology wasn’t able to keep up. It will be the same again in 10 years more.

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Never had anything overclocked; have all other programs other than Navigraph turned off when using FS because like yours, mine is also used for a work project right now; all the drivers are up to date and like you, I’m not going the total nuclear option. My hardware is all less than a year old; specifically driven to run FS more than anything and it exceeds the minimums for even the Ultra settings. Once or twice before it took a delete and reinstall of the longitude files from MS and a delete/reinstall of WT update for garmin and dakfly’s modification and I’m going to do all that today ( the semi nuclear option?) It’s possible one of the mods is the problem but the stock plane with no mods won’t work right now either.

Ok, so you do have mods installed? Yeah, I’d start by removing those and going to a base game.

But it’s not, note my post again. I did say IMC. See I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to make such a claim.

Couldn’t agree with OP more about the current state of the forums.

Why is General Discussion full of bug reports and CTD when there are forums specifically for those issues? These users don’t seem to want to actually solve the issue they are experiencing, they just want to complain about it.

Then you have the “Xbox players aren’t actually simmers” and “it’s not a game it’s a simulator!” people who are just completely insufferable and detached from reality. They seem to think there is some grand conspiracy to turn flight simulator into a game (whatever that means) because they are improving performance and adding air races, etc.

Not to mention the people who make personal attacks towards the developers, calling them “incompetent” or incapable or whatever. There really should be zero tolerance on that, it’s completely inappropriate regardless of how upset you are.

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Hang in there. We have many nice people here too

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Spot on. It’s everywhere now. Thank the media, politicians and doctors.

Quite frankly, this is not unique for this forum, it is no different elsewhere. It is “in” to show force, it has been for about 3 years now and getting worse.

As far as these forums, it was not like that. It started with the England update and then it went downhill. A lot of people feel betrayed by what the devs have said earlier compared to what actually happend so they have them selves to blame on.

Once SU5 came all hell broke loose. If they do not fix simple issues and stop introducing new ones this will continue. It is almost farcical, it invites the trolls and the harsh rethoric.

How happy would you be if you fire up the simulator after the update to see the nightlights have been screwed up?

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Absolutely. But the underlying “tone” of the community here and elsewhere is not good. Zero tolerance should be considered.

Discord. Well… my goodness, its a disaster.

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