These were the best of times. And these were the BEST of times! It’s never been better, y’all! (I am from the South and I do believe this might be the first time I used the IQ predictor contraction in social media!) A few days ago I rage-quit (past tense) IL2 (…again). Not because of any failure on 777’s part but because of my continued tactical and handling ineptitude. I am truly and irredeemably awful. One of my squadmates reached out to fly on my turf just so that we could stay in touch. He has DCS but never flies it. Every day on his commute he passes an old F-86 on a pedestal off an interstate. So he decided that he wants me to teach him about the F-86. I explained that I bought it 5 years ago, flew it for 15 minutes and haven’t touched it since. “No matter…teach me!” Last night I had to sit on Discord and listen to him as he purchased, downloaded and installed. I then had to hold his hand through the 5 controls that are essential to flying anything. That took 12 seconds. Then we flew together on one of the stock single player missions that I modified for two clients. He had never flown a jet other than the IL2 Me262. His utter enthusiasm for that plane, the simplicity, the speed, the “BOOM!” of the rockets was beyond contagious. For 20 minutes we were in heaven! It was fun just watching one another turn into fire breathing dragons when firing the cannons.
Yeah, there’s plenty to complain about. But I don’t riminess fondly of Janes or F-19 Stealth fighter anymore. Those times were great and I was young. But what kept me going back then was my imagination that things would one day be as the are THIS VERY DAY!
That’s one way of looking at it. The other is I paid for something that wasn’t fit for purpose. Now, it might be that I didn’t comprehend what impacts the incomplete features would have on my enjoyment of the product, but there’s still a bad taste potentially left in peoples’ mouths.
But who is responsible for that bad taste? The airline giving out packets of nuts that have “May contain traces of nuts” or the dude with the nut allergy gobbling them up without even looking? Caveat emptor. Always.
This customer-is-king bo’sheet is taken way too far by a lot of people. I’ve had people complain about the colour of bricks that “looked different on the photo”. As if after three months in the weather those bricks are going to look anything like either the photo or their current colour.
Corporate Stockholm syndrome is a thing. People go to bat online every day to protect the reputation for companies that in reality loathe them, it’s just part of the modern day imbalance of people treating profit-making businesses like their own team or tribe. The consumer-is-always-wrong is a useful marketing play and has been for a long time.
Weee…been gone for a week or so (I can confirm: I hate traveling, my back does anyway)…
I agree with everyone on this.
Just glad we have what we do. My 80’s flight sim-self finally has most of what I dreamed of. Just like to see more competition; never imagined this would turn out to be such a niche genre.
Well, despite not getting much seat time in the F16 yet (flying a fair bit of BMS to scratch that itch) I’m having a great time in the DCS FA-18C, flying multi with some friends on the Persian Gulf map, and its amazingly beautiful.
Four of us had two fantastic fights with some Iranian Mig-29s over Khasab on Monday night (2xF18s, 1xF14 and 1xF16) and then a scenic flight back to Minhad. This is truly a golden age for flight sims.
Viper development has only progressed steadily recently. After initial release there was a long period of time where it wasn’t receiving any progress at all. Then there’s still red-headed stepchildren like the Yak-52 which hasn’t seen any fixes or development in nearly two years.
Even if it causes negative training with all the procedure changes that happen along the way? I had to set aside the Hornet until it’s more complete because of all the IAM procedure changes that weren’t properly documented. Additionally, what about that 80~90% complete Tomcat and Jeff early access release? The people who complained about waiting so long for the Tomcat to release are much fewer in number than the people who complain about an EA module that’s broken and lacking features. I count the former as the immature outliers who shouldn’t even be statistically counted in the discussion because they skew the whole issue.
The same people who decide the standard of any product: the company that makes it and/or the entity that sells it (e.g. Steam, which has a higher standard of EA than ED does). If the customers aren’t satisfied with the standard set, they vote with their wallets. The company can either adapt and survive, or refuse and fail. Or become a monopoly and do whatever they want. That’s business.
Metrics for each category. Not that difficult. I have to do that professionally to assess a wide range of foreign language proficiencies in my students. A low-intermediate student (let’s say WW2 module equivalent) isn’t going to be held to the same standard as as an advanced student (let’s say Viper equivalent), etc. With jets clearly categorized by generation in real life it’s already halfway done.
For me, if ED sets a specific standard for EA and sticks with it (which they haven’t), and says exactly what core features aren’t working (e.g. Viper’s damage model), then I’d be fine with the EA model. Someone smarter than I analyzed ED’s EA model and talked about how they constantly shifted the goalpoasts of EA, but I can’t seem to find the writeup. I did find this, which is how I feel, just written more eloquently.
But at this point we just keep going round in circles. In the meantime, I’ll only teach half of my class periods with chunks of the students’ textbooks missing and tell my boss that I’m “early access.” I’m sure he’ll understand
YES! That’s what I would call a valid reason to be upset.
The development pace of many modules is cause for concern. This is not just on the module makers, but also on the progress of DCS, which seems to break modules and hinder development. Remember the days of both 1.5 and 2.0 branches in development…? That must have been a fun time to code add-ons for DCS!
But, and I know I’m repeating myself, I don’t see why the state of development at release into Early Access, is a problem… As long as development continues.
To set a standard for the end of EA would be much more important. When and what is released from EA.
The customer can decide for themselves when they want to buy into the EA, but they can’t decide if they got what they paid for until the EA is over…
Well, yes. Of course. I mean, we want them to actively develop the module, don’t we?
That is not something I’m familiar with but I’ve seen releases on steam which are so broken as to be literally unplayable so I’m not convinced this is totally correct or true. But won’t argue as maybe there is something I don’t know about this.
Could have been a recent change. I remember there was an issue with one of ED’s modules not matching Steam’s standards (something to do with release dates?), if I recall correctly…but that’s all I recall At least with Steam you can get refunds. What was that high-profile shooter that got temporarily pulled because it was so buggy?
Like I say I have no experience of steams policies so won’t pretend to know what I’m talking about and yep I remember the release you mentioned from ED. If I follow my gut that might be an outlier rather than the rule though.
Give me an airframe that flies believably with a gun and dumb bombs and I’ll happily fly it while the other systems are fleshed out. When I buy an early access module or game I see it as a personal choice and I know exactly what I am buying into. People who don’t want to buy an unfinished product with an open timeline for development should be actively encouraged to not buy in at that point. Up to this point there has only been one early access module that I regretted buying, VEAO’s Hawk. All the others have been fun to fly while their capabilities were fleshed out. Some matured faster than others, but that’s ok IMHO.
The bar on quality for Steam is subterranean. You can pay a small fee, get your dev license, compile and upload a turd and it stands a 50% chance of being green lit for release. Valve take a laissez faire approach, then remarkably overlaps with them not having to do to much manually, like see if the game works. Anything repetitive is contracted out, at least for the last 5 years.
The times EA tends to come up with ED is when ED mention some rule that means they can shockingly only discount or sell it on their own store and not Steam. Being really familiar with the Steam store rules I always get confused how that works (I mean, Valve are never going to come back and say ‘That’s not true’, they’re too busy floating on a cloud of money in the ethereal plane), but I can’t blame them, they literally make more money that way and Valve treats small outfits like bugs.
I think this is reasonable.
You really should have researched the purchase better before paying I guess. I have no sympathy. I shall reply to any complaints every.single.time to remind you of this, as is my grass roots duty.
Not for DLC, or rather, you have to get onto the ‘find me a human!’ mini-game with support and even then a low chance of completing that quest. All DCS purchases on Steam are DLC.
For every VEAO there’s been a Heatblur, so it all evens out in the end I guess. The Gazelle people are still going, right?
We are lucky to have a small outfit making sims, but I feel that doesn’t mean we can’t wax lyrical about where the lines are best drawn, or even disagree with what’s best - it’s part of the hobby and has been for 20+ years.
(thanks to @Fridge for moving this out of the news topic)
You’re right. You said you could understand it, but it wasn’t what you felt I’d guess? Upset is a bit of a wide spectrum of course, so plotting the distinct level of that is a losing game. Empathy perhaps, spectrum aside, for those not super cheery about it though?
What do you think @Clutch can do about not feeling happy about the EA Yak’s progress? Do you think it needs a rebuttal from other buyers that don’t care or think the status quo is all good - like a proxy for a company? If not buying future things cut’s the nose off to spite the tiny niche’s face then is there any chance of change other than just sudden self-awareness by ED through a random chance?
I think ED reads things like this (maybe, there’s a lot of noise out there and I’m not helping) and it might help steer the tiller a bit, although I am a hopeless optimist. I think the misunderstanding is often people think the EA feedback is directed at them because they don’t mind it or are happy, so they read an opposite position and then want to offer why they don’t agree, when actually they aren’t the target for the message at all. I think you’re great @Troll, I don’t care if you buy sim hopes and dreams, as I do it as well. None of this is even an eye brow raising level of upsetnesses.
At least with Steam you can get refunds. What was that high-profile shooter that got temporarily pulled because it was so buggy?
