What the heck was going on in Alpha/Beta?

[djbully 210]

Beta only lasted 2-3 weeks, not going to get a lot of bug squashing done in that amount of time! 
 

Many people absolutely said that was not enough time. Half the forum seemed to think a “magic build” would appear out of nowhere with all the glaring issues fixed. Well that never happened! 

[JRBarrett 3,071]

5 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Could a tester mention whether the install issues were reported during the Alpha/Beta, or if it would have taken more testers with slower connections and systems to uncover them? I'm still so baffled how this client made it out of Beta.

Never had any install issues as a tester, and had none yesterday installing the release version. In all cases downloading and installing took just about 3 hours start to finish.

[IgorBR 19]

IMHO gamers and streamers took over to promote this product instead of engaging real pilots into it.

[Dominique_K 10,149]

27 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

 

As usual, I will continue my lifetime contemplation of human nature.

Playing the old wise man contemplating the foolish world below him, hey ? So easy and also so self-gratifying... 

The fact is that this launch is very special.  

MS started in June of 2019 a never seen before PR campaign  culminating on Youtube, which raised expectations to a white hot level and it is normal that we, the users, take them to their word.  They actually did deliver a lot on August, 18th but certainly not up to what was expected through their campaign. 

They associated 16K testers, a process never seen before either if am not mistaken, under what seems  a pretence to team up with developers. I say pretence because a lot of testers whom I trust say they didn't see their added value in correcting what needed to be corrected and was not. 

The FS team repeatedly said that they had learnt from the past mistakes of their predecessors.   And they have just pulled us a v5...

What seemed at a time a clever marketing campaign  comes back as a boomerang to MS face.  Putting some pressure on MS is more useful than mocking other users. 

 

[KenG 492]

8 hours ago, norman_99 said:

I’m trying really hard to stay optimistic about 2020, but I keep finding mind numbingly poor features/decisions/physics that make me wonder what was going on during Alpha/Beta? Was there any constructive feedback or was everyone to busy drooling at the scenery to see the glaring issues?

How about make your reports to Zendesk. Now you get to experience the same reporting system that the Tech Insiders had to suffer with. Welcome to the Beta, they did say EVERYONE would get a chance to participate. 

[scotchegg 4,186]

46 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I'm leaning back watching all the angst, and just thinking to myself "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Indeed. Sad to say, I have to agree with another poster who said Reddit has been a more mature place than Avsim over this launch.

[Slides 1,552]

8 minutes ago, IgorBR said:

IMHO gamers and streamers took over to promote this product instead of engaging real pilots into it.

Oh no. How dare they

[Slides 1,552]

3 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

What seemed at a time a clever marketing campaign  comes back as a boomerang to MS face. 

What boomerang? Most of the issues are about installation and downloads which will get solved in the next week and for the mass market all will be good for some time.

[gallen144 12]

I was an Alpha/Beta tester and can assure you I didn't just drool over getting in the sim. I'm a serious simmer with real world flight experience as well as sim experience going back to Bruce Artwick's original version that turned into MS Flight Simulator. I am also a user of of FSX, P3D, and X-Plane that gave me a broad base for comparison/contrast. I also have experience working on software development teams.

As for me, numerous issues and recommendations were submitted, many of which I have not seen the results show up yet. Some are now included. The decisions to remedy and implement changes were not in the hands of the Alpha/Beta testers. The product is very good even considering the many deficiencies and an improvement over the predecessor. I'm sure the bug/feature backlog is large. I would have liked the sim to be more refined for release, but I understand the process. I feel confident improvements will continue to be worked and put into production.

There were many other dedicated, volunteer testers like me that were making contributions. I find it insulting to see insinuations they weren't doing their job.

 

[Claudius_ 326]

Too many people want McDonald's products here, but we have a very good flight simulator that needs a lot of work to be better. I'm very satisfied with it, waiting for future updates.

[KenG 492]

Nice Ritzer reference there with the McDonaldization of Society. 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

5 hours ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

If only you knew the state of the Beta just a few weeks ago. Frankly I'm suprised how much they managed to still fix in the short time they had.

Apart from that, me and many other testers said it for weeks:

• Realistic expectations
• Don't preorder

If people still don't get it and insist on preordering a sim/game they know very little about, when there wasn't even any incentive AT ALL to preorder, it's on them.

It was worse than just preordering.

It was preordering, deleting their previous sim and then posting proudly on the internet that they had left x-plane/p3d/fsx behind forever.

Never made any sense to do this for a sim you’ve never seen.

Not sure why people act like there’s a one-sim-only rule. MSFS is a lot of fun, but it’s in no way a full replacement for my other sim platforms.

[W2DR 1,860]

6 hours ago, Mark_A said:

Just fly the sim - it’s great.

Im sure nobody will be going back to P3D or X-Plane which says it all.

I've already gone back to P3D.............

[KenG 492]

4 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

It was worse than just preordering.

It was preordering, deleting their previous sim and then posting proudly on the internet that they had left x-plane/p3d/fsx behind forever.

Never made any sense to do this for a sim you’ve never seen.

Not sure why people act like there’s a one-sim-only rule. MSFS is a lot of fun, but it’s in no way a full replacement for my other sim platforms.

 

[ryanbatc 12,857]

9 hours ago, LHookins said:

There were 16,000 of us at the end reporting bugs and glitches.  Some were even getting fixed.  Our purpose wasn't to report bugs, but to stress test the servers. 

As for the bugs, we did our best.  Asobo had an internal team of testers that verified our bugs and passed them on to developers.  Many of us were worried about reactions just like yours. 🙂 

Hook

Amen!  I just wrote about this in another thread.  I knew end users would act like the OP.  "Well what the heck we're the testers even doing?!". A heck of a lot of bug reports sir!  There were NUMEROUS rw pilots reporting.  At the end the corporate machine Microsoft decided to release this early...not Asobo!