1500 votes is NOT incredibly high. It’s one source of information from a few users. There are at least a couple of million users out there. The highest vote count is 1500. That’s not even a drop of water in the ocean. Do not overestimate the power of this forum. It is strong yes, populated by a few users, at least they do get some direct feedback here. But they have many other sources of information as well.
They are NOT going to split the development stream. As I’ve always said, this platform, for Microsoft to fund it, HAD to be supported by Xbox. They chose a development house who’s primary development experience is Xbox. They are absolutely going to support PC, as a pretty much equal sister to Xbox.
The subject of this thread is “The Voting System is Flawed”. If we stay on that topic, what does that mean? Are people sad their favorite topic isn’t at the top of the list? Sorry. That’s how voting works.
All topics should be freelly discussed and shown to dev team. Them (and only them) are the ones who can “judge” or “select” which of the topics are or aren’t relevant/possible to be developed.
We, users, are the ones who should show them what is happening to OUR sim and, as one, build a better sim.
I understand your frustration. It seems clear to me that MS/Asobo had a very clear deadline to get the Xbox version out of the door and that appears to have had some bad, hopefully only temporary, unintended consequences.
With the increased Xbox audience (and hence more money) I trust this will raise the stakes (and funding) to keep developing (and fixing) both platform versions as much as possible.
I hope this forum and the feedback threads within it can help that process.
Hello Jayne, I second a lot of the dissatisfied comments on here. Communication just now is very very poor when significant issues still remain. And the post about how well they have done has stirred further annoyance; a pr stunt that is a real kick where it hurts for the significant amount of people still experiencing problems. I would encourage MS to read actual user reviews and it is clear that something is wrong. Steam reviews have tanked recently and so have users playing the Sim because of all the problems. These are factual observations. Players are walking away which is a massive shame and really sad to see. This Sim was in a good state after SU4. can we get more regular updates from the devs otherwise I fear that irriversable degradation of trust will be firmly emplaced, and those willing to invest in the Sim will go elsewhere. Let’s get back on track. Have a great weekend everyone.
I think the issue is that many are not even aware of the voting posts. I would probably analyse both MS store reviews and steam reviews. Go take a look and you will see common themes very quickly.
Well said and I agree entirely with you regarding the self congratulatory marketing ploy when only recently certain people have had a lot of game breaking issues (e.g. CTDs) recently. Not the best timed statement was it?
I also don’t think the moderation of the forums or the vote system is hugely flawed.
I can see and understand why some threads are closed prematurely.
however the devs interact with us, for some, it will never satisfy and while it’s nice to get info from the devs, we don’t “deserve” nor are we entitled to it.
I don’t think the vote system is their only avenue to feedback and if a pertinent thread was shut down then, if that original point is important enough, it will re occur and then get voted on.
rember, although criticism may be wanted by the devs. it’s how we put that critique across that counts.
if its not constructive or not based on fact, its often not helpful.
There are times when there is no avoiding non-constructive comments. Persistent CTD’s, and other issues, brought on by an “update”, is not constructive either, so the golden rule applies.
If this were a one time error, or a rare occurrence, we would not be having this conversation. The main thing is truth, honesty, and keep the topics about MSFS.
I truly believe the moderator team here and the MSFS development team understands this.
I mean the topic you bring up that was closed… what would voting do? Obviously they are well tested, but they can’t possibly test every system combination on the planet. And if they tried, and took longer for updates, people would cry that we aren’t getting hot fixes soon enough.
That post you highlight is more just criticism. Not sure what we would be voting for.
With numerous issues documented within this forum impacting both pc and Xbox including CTD’s it appears that testing even within the closed ecosystem of Xbox leaves a lot to be desired.
As for
This is an overdone argument given that nobody writes code specifically for Intel or AMD or hynix or Samsung.
Additionally every cpu on the consumer pc market for the last 20 years has been made by just 2 manufacturers.
Likewise every gpu on the consumer pc market is also made by only 2 manufacturers.
Those manufacturers define the board reference for OEM’s, design the motherboard chipsets and write the drivers.
In total that’s only…3 manufacturers.
And given the original recommended minimum specs for the title only reach back as far as the GTX 9xx that adds yet a further limit to the mix of hardware and drivers.
While I am sure there are people trying to use this with Ivybridge CPU’s, gtx7xx gpu’s and ddr3 these are not officially supported and such older hardware causes a warning to be flagged during installation.
However, both of these points actually divert from the point I was originally trying to make.
Any voting system where a wishlist/votable thread can be closed (thus stopping the vote) is flawed.
A secondary point would be that - effective beta testing before the release of updates is actually a reasonable wish.
I would suggest that ‘effective testing’ is a self-evident basic requirement and therefore it would be ridiculous to have it on a ‘wish list’ other than as an exercise in snark.
MS/A can see the issues reported both here and on zendesk.
But what would this achieve - what has it achieved? MSFS is still a mess.
If things need to be fixed still and things continue to be broken - who else is to blame? There is blame assigned; it does not matter if its an unintended error, its still a problem that the MSFS team is fully responsible for.
In life, has any revolution been respectful? Riots and wars also are a real thing, and they get things done too. Its not always respect that gets things done.
We don’t need them to agree with methods of communication, in this context, we need them to agree and concentrate on why the methods are how they are. So far the evidence shows that they do understand the frustrations. If this community is silenced MSFS will fade away.
How is voting on this topic, asking MS to test before release, useful to developers?
It isnt as if by voting someone in Microsoft will suddenly say ‘hey what a good idea, we will test in future’.
I mean there was nothing to actually VOTE for. It was more a moan in a way.
However, voting for the suggestion they create a beta test panel before release, that is a proposal one can vote for. The voting system is quite different from the complaining forum surely.
That is another way in which the voting system is flawed in my opinion: It promotes specific solutions that may not do anything to address the actual problem.
I do not believe the poor quality is a result of a lack of testing. The hints given by NDA-constrained beta testers and third party developers clearly suggest issues were known before updates released and the SW was released anyway.
That is not a QA failure that additional testing will solve, it is a program management failure that needs a different set of solutions.
I believe the solution is pretty simple: Increase the time each release spends in testing and pre-release hardening from branching off the release branch to release date (if they actually use release branches; if they release directly from an integration branch they have an even bigger management problem). That increases feature latency (time from a feature or fix is done until it is released) to improve quality. I think that is the right tradeoff right now.
But would such a topic get more or less votes than “wishlist: more testing”? How many users without a SW background would even understand what I just said and how it is important? And why should we - it is not our job to solve Microsoft’s quality problems.
