VERY Bad Reviews so far on Steam

[Chock 17,769]

If there's one thing many of those bad reviews on Steam demonstrate, it's not so much that FSW needs work (which it does), it's what a bunch of petulant, spoiled, brattish, idiotic, cry babies a good many flight simmers apparently seem to be. Moreover, many are apparently also unable to understand the basic content of a pre-sale agreement statement.

It states quite plainly on Steam that you shouldn't buy an early access title if you are not prepared to accept that it might be buggy, incomplete, need work, need changes, may not possibly get such changes at all. Now admittedly that is pretty much a standard warning for any early access title, but it really couldn't be plainer with regard to what one is buying into, but nooooooo -  we still see people posting these 'reviews' and moaning about having 'wasted' 20 quid. Oh my god no, the humanity! A whole 20 quid, Nooooooo! Think of the children!

Anyone who has ever bought an early access title knows it is a bit of a contra-deal, whereby you pay the dev some money, which shows your interest, you get a sneak preview of something which probably needs work, the dev gets some feedback and some early money to assist with development costs, and everyone hopefully ends up happy. This is not rocket science to understand.

I've bought many early access titles over the years and do in fact have about three or four on the go right now. Believe me, some of them were over ten times the cost of FSW to buy into (Elite Dangerous Alpha/Beta for example, was well over 200 quid), some were less (Mount and Blade was about 15 quid if I recall correctly), but most of them have resulted in something I was happy with and gave the developers a vote of confidence to effectively say: 'keep going, this is what we want!'

So what part of 'this is an unfinished early access title' (or words to that effect) are these people who are sticking up negative reviews as though this is a finished release unable to understand?

If one has a poor experience with a early access or beta, sure, write a a review, but write it as constructive criticism given what you have bought into, not as some petulant whine. To do otherwise is nothing short of pathetic in my opinion and frankly for anyone who does so, I've not one ounce of sympathy. Likewise, asking for a refund when having read the early access 'warning' EULA about what one is buying into, is tantamount to saying 'I am a moron who doesn't read the contract'.

 

[tonywob 4,768]

I think closed betas are the best idea at this early stage of development. The users who will test these betas will likely have received it for free and are willing to test and report bugs rather than rant on Steam or forums. In this sense, I think Lockheed Martin have the right idea. The ranting and bad reviews are only serving to put people of buying and harming the product's reputation, and for some people, £20 is quite a lot of money to pay to be a beta-tester.

My gut reaction is that many fire up the new sim and instantly compare it to their fully-loaded P3D v3 system with lots of addons, and this only leads to disappointment. If the sim is compared to a default P3D or FSX then it's not a bad deal at all. What's amazing to me is that P3D isn't that much different than FSX, it costs a lot more money, and somehow this doesn't seem to be a problem, especially the v2-v3 upgrade path which should IMO have been a free update.

Of course, if DTG don't fix the bugs and start simply releasing DLC then that's a different story, and something a less-forgiving community such as this won't forget in a hurry.

 

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Of course, if DTG don't fix the bugs and start simply releasing DLC then that's a different story, and something a less-forgiving community such as this won't forget in a hurry.

 

This would seem to be the critical point. It doesn't take most people long to wake up and smell the coffee when a developer leaves things unfixed and moves on to banging out more cash cow add-ons, be it with a train, plane, boat, car or whatever sim. If that should happen with FSW, we'll be looking at another 'MS Flight' in no time at all.

 

 

 

 

[Glynn 405]

21 hours ago, J van E said:

(Obviously not with worldwide scenery.)

Yes, lets spend years and millions of dollars building a Simulator of interest to a very small percentage of the potential customers that actually live on this planet. 

Those 1.3 billion Chinese, 1.3 billion Indians etc will never have any interest in Flight Simulation will they ? so why bother.

Let's base it on a tiny area such as Norway or the PNW , that way a very small subset of Europeans and a few Americans will buy it.

Even better we will be able to fly off the edge of the map just like we could two decades ago in Flight unlimited, no need for global real world weather either or a global navaid system.

That's a much better than what we have in FSX, FSW ,P3D, I can't for the life of me see why someone does not pour millions into such a marketable project. LOL *

 

* Someone did it was called MSFlight, look how well that turned out.

[CFIJose 5,485]

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

My gut reaction is that many fire up the new sim and instantly compare it to their fully-loaded P3D v3 system with lots of addons, and this only leads to disappointment. If the sim is compared to a default P3D or FSX then it's not a bad deal at all. What's amazing to me is that P3D isn't that much different than FSX, it costs a lot more money, and somehow this doesn't seem to be a problem, especially the v2-v3 upgrade path which should IMO have been a free update.

 

This platform is already failing because it doesn't have a strong foundation. They managed to create a 64bit platform out of FSX, but did not make it open to the add-on community. They failed in so many ways because they asked the community, but did not listen or do what was demanded.

Scenery: ORBX day/night textures with LC and LOD to the horizon. This is what we want on a 64bit platform.

Weather: Active Sky Integration. This one is a no brainer. Planes fly in dynamic weather.

ATC: All they really needed here is to fix some bugs. FSX's basic ATC system is the best there is in any platform. Trust me on this one.

Planes: They need an A2A 172 & a Cherokee properly modeled. How can you call this a serious sim without those two planes? Later you must bring PMDG on board.

Performance. All the eye candy is worthless if the sim does not perform well.

I'd be happy to offer them free advice as a beta tester. But, they have to be willing to take advice and action. We want a new FSX sim, with the features we know & love and not another sim with empty promises. By now, someone should have got this right.

 

Edited May 21, 2017 by DJJose

[torium 207]

1 hour ago, DJJose said:

I'd be happy to offer them free advice as a beta tester. But, they have to be willing to take advice and action. We want a new FSX sim, with the features we know & love and not another sim with empty promises. By now, someone should have got this right.

"We are deeply committed to partnering with both new and existing content creators to create the best possible combination of technologies to power our simulators.  This is only the beginning” - said Stephen Hood (Creative Director at Dovetail Games).

As an example: - "We've developed a solid working relationship with the Dovetail team and we're confident that our terrain will look absolutely stunning in their enhanced 3D engine and provide a level of immersion unlike anything experienced before. We look forward to a long and productive partnership" - said John Venema (CEO of Orbx Simulation Systems).

Not to offend.  But do you think Stephen Hood is an idiot and ignorant - who does not listen to what his professional partners want and recommend for the new simulator? Stephen Hood has repeatedly told us about his intention. And that's not another "bug fix" of FSX (like FSX: SE).

I do not understand you guys.  :-)

[CFIJose 5,485]

11 minutes ago, torium said:

Not to offend.  But do you think Stephen Hood is an idiot and ignorant - who does not listen to what his professional partners want and recommend for the new simulator? Stephen Hood has repeatedly told us about his intention. And that's not another "bug fix" of FSX (like FSX: SE).

I do not understand you guys.  :-)

OK.

[Boomer 1,619]

All I hear about is pretty rain drops.

I agree with those who say DTG did not listen to this community.

just more truck and train cookie cutter shallow simming is fsw is bringing.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Boomer

[RichLP 32]

2 hours ago, Boomer said:

 

I agree with those who say DTG did not listen to this community.

 

Apologies in advance, Boomer, this is not directed at you, your post just happened to address a point I wanted to comment on.

 

Sometimes this community suffers from a touch of self importance.  As others have said, flight simming, in general, is a niche hobby.  And this community is a niche of that niche.

To be commercially viable, let alone successful, FSW must appeal to consumers far beyond this community.

Did DTG listen?  I'm sure they did.  Then they used the feedback they received here, and factored it into their ultimate goal of making a widely appealing sim.

Only time will tell if they've struck a successful balance between 'hardcore' simmers and people who just want to give flying a go.

[Bobsk8 12,576]

44 minutes ago, RichLP said:

Apologies in advance, Boomer, this is not directed at you, your post just happened to address a point I wanted to comment on.

 

Sometimes this community suffers from a touch of self importance.  As others have said, flight simming, in general, is a niche hobby.  And this community is a niche of that niche.

To be commercially viable, let alone successful, FSW must appeal to consumers far beyond this community.

Did DTG listen?  I'm sure they did.  Then they used the feedback they received here, and factored it into their ultimate goal of making a widely appealing sim.

Only time will tell if they've struck a successful balance between 'hardcore' simmers and people who just want to give flying a go.

It is basically the same in the Train Sim world. The two big players today are DTG and Run 8. Run 8 appeals to people, some of whom actually work on the railroads as conductors and engineers , and people that want to learn the proper procedures to operate a Train, If you think this doesn't sound challenging, take a 100 car freight train fully loaded with coal, from Cajon Pass to San Bernadino without breaking a coupler, or losing control of the train, all this while other people are watching you. Now compare this to DTG Trainsim, where you are in a passenger train , going from one station to another, with not much of a challenge to make the run successfully. The DTG trainsim has nice scenery, pretty stations, people walking around, nothing like you see in Run 8. Many more people buy Train Sim as opposed to Run 8, and that is probably what DTG is hoping for with FSW, You can spend literally thousands of dollars on DLC for Train Sim, and they will always be releasing new DLC next month, much of it in the $40 each range. Doesn't take long to go through some big bucks. By the way, Train sim World has many bad reviews on Steam too, and it has been out for a couple of months. Bug fixes and performance seem to be big negatives. 

[vortex681 806]

3 hours ago, RichLP said:

Sometimes this community suffers from a touch of self importance.

That's because we are important! We (members of the flight sim community) represent by far the largest part of the potential market that DTG is aiming at.

3 hours ago, RichLP said:

Then they used the feedback they received here, and factored it into their ultimate goal of making a widely appealing sim.

It's unlikely that any realistic/accurate/non-violent flight sim is ever going to be "widely appealing". We're a niche market and always will be. As people drift out of our hobby, more will drift in - it's unlikely there will suddenly be a flood of new users. A real-world simulation which is complex, difficult to master and generally needs time invested just to learn the basics AND doesn't involve shooting things down is never really going to appeal to the mass market.

[Paraffin 2,197]

14 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

That's because we are important! We (members of the flight sim community) represent by far the largest part of the potential market that DTG is aiming at.

It's unlikely that any realistic/accurate/non-violent flight sim is ever going to be "widely appealing". We're a niche market and always will be. As people drift out of our hobby, more will drift in - it's unlikely there will suddenly be a flood of new users. A real-world simulation which is complex, difficult to master and generally needs time invested just to learn the basics AND doesn't involve shooting things down is never really going to appeal to the mass market.

Granted that vehicle sims are a niche market, but there sure are a lot of niches out there that can sustain a specialist market. 

The Euro Truck and American Truck sims seems to be popular enough to remain healthy. I don't quite get the appeal of things like Farming simulators and Bus simulators personally, but those seem to be popular in the European market. And then you can toss in all the various car racers. There are a LOT of those, some with very serious/realistic modeling. It's not all combat-oriented in the sim market. Heck, we could even add Kerbal Space Program here; a mix of semi-realistic orbital dynamics and slapstick comedy when you screw up a design. The market is out there for niche simulations that don't involve combat.

The main issue with FSW is that it isn't alone in this market.

It will have to survive by offering enough that is new, or better, or at least different to what else is out there. There are at least 2 (and eventually 3) other companies continuing to move this hobby forward into the 64-bit realm of flight simulation, regardless of what DTG does. I hope they can pull this off, because competition is good. 

[RW1 615]

What really is the point of releasing a brand new simulator to a very selective and fussy community when it has absolutely zero wow factor, it`s already tarnished and now stereo typed by the failed Flightsim School, and has been pre released to the community with no expansion options, no SDK, No Simconnect, No ATC, weather or VR options! How can DTG expect the majority of users to hang around for years while they build a great simulator without growing weary and tried of it when they failed to grab us by the horns at day 1.... .

 

Ok some credit is given for FSX/Flight rehashed into a 64bit sim with nice rain drops... but FSW is far from heroically dominating the FS market from my POV.... Indeed as many others pointed out the business plan of DTG for the wider community in regards to 3rd party content is somewhat of a killer also.

[JDWalley 354]

27 minutes ago, rick66 said:

Ok some credit is given for FSX/Flight rehashed into a 64bit sim with nice rain drops... but FSW is far from heroically dominating the FS market from my POV....

Yes, because we should have expected it to have done so after four days in early access...

[RichLP 32]

3 hours ago, vortex681 said:

That's because we are important! We (members of the flight sim community) represent by far the largest part of the potential market that DTG is aiming at.

I rest my case...

😉