Whiners and fan boys

[mazex 419]

I had expected a lot of negative comments here after the release - but I am actually surprised about the massive glass half empty mentality displayed here.

So this is just proof of a major problem in the social media age. Have a look at Metacritic and Steam reviews for most major games that gets released these days. Most that really are good with immense production values but with some annoying bugs on release gets surprisingly bad user reviews, accept a few that has some "cult status". And we are talking about games that really are technological master pieces. In the social media age the whiners out there in our society can rage free and get way more attention than they deserve. We sure know them from work - the 5-10% that are constantly whining about something, never gets promoted, destroy meetings with bringing up all the negative things they see - completely ignoring the positive. And they can bring the 10-20% of semi whiners with them rather easy. The semi whiners in a positive climate will not whine but contribute and become appreciated colleagues. But have one real whiner in the team and they will get dragged down in the mud and whine as well.

So - with the digital distribution channels today that makes releasing patches a breeze companies have unfortunately adopted a policy to release products way to early. 10-15 years ago it was not possible to assume that everyone would have good internet connection so that you could release a game in late beta stage and do a massive zero day patch and then let the devs work day and night the first months to patch things that the customers find instead of the internal test teams. So these days managers can force the teams to release prematurely as large games/simulators are extremely complex software projects - and miss their internally projected release dates almost all the time. So then the stage is set for what we see.

* A huge complex game / simulation hits the market with 90% working features that are really polished and incredible in most ways. 8% of the features does not work as the team wanted it to do. Finally 2% does not work at all in the last build that they missed in the stressed testing that is incredibly complex for a piece of software of this size

* Enter the negative 5-10% real whiners. They quickly find the 2% broken features - and make lame jokes about the 8% that works a bit "weird". They completely ignore the 90% that is amazing.

* The 10-20% semi whiners read what the real whiners write all over the interweb and gets dragged into the mud.

* Those of us that see the marvelous 90% and the amazing potential try to intervene but often get mistaken as fan boys - as we see the problems as well but want to focus on the positive things.

So - the professional reviewers see the problems as well but understands that they will get fixed as they are nowhere as complex to fix/add than the incredible core of the product. So the game gets a 90+ metascore for reviewers but really low user score from the whiners that for some reason cannot see that the problems they focus on are really minor and easy to fix. But they are just as upset.

And in a forum like this the whiners have the perfect stage. They will bump their own whining threads forever - and we get trolled down in trying to answer so the whining threads almost gets pinned on the first page. And yes, I do agree that this game/simulation probably should have been released around Christmas to iron out more bugs and add more features like missions and challenges etc. I have found a few bugs but generally this is the most next gen simulator I have ever tried. So in a year we will have the simulator that the developers really wanted to release - and we have dreamed of. Fixing flight model parameters, auto pilot behavior, missing power lines etc is a breeze compared to building the core simulation engine that really is amazing. I took off from my own "home field" and was blown away with the fact that it looked almost exactly as in real life. And the planes behave reasonably well with lots of complex systems implemented so the base for building the most complex aircraft you could ever imagine in the future is there. Before MSFS was presented I think most of us thought we would have to live with FSX-clones and X-plane for the rest of our lives. Let that sink in.

 

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by mazex

[armchair_pilot 54]

Absolutely agreed. Today's kids have way too high and unrealistic expectations and there is a great number of them who are quite misinformed, judging by some threads I have seen here and on steam.

I was hyped for this sim and am still blown away by how good it performs, looks and flies, despite the lack of some features and the presence of bugs. A milestone in gaming technology for sure. No reason for MS & Asobo to be let down by all the negativity, they have done a fantastic job IMO.

[ErichB 3,638]

Well said.

For once I am happy for a sim to be released slightly pre-maturely.  The aspects which need addressing (and there are quite a few) do not impact other usable aspects of the sim necessarily.

I will primarily use MFS as a GA sim for the next 6 months and reacquaint myself with areas I used to love flying around.  The necessary changes will come and hopefully soon after that it'll be airliner prime time when FSLabs and PMDG roll out of the hangar.   

Much to look forward to and explore at low level until then using the simple, well modelled aircraft.  As usual, people are trying to do too much too soon - on Day 1

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by ErichB

[TOGA-saurus 330]

I really hope Asobo/Microsoft stumble across this post rather than all the other "Negative Nancy/Debbie Downer/Gloomy Gus" type posts!

I am MASSIVELY impressed with what has been delivered to us. I have spotted a few little things that need fixing here and there, yes. Anyone remember when FSX was first released? It was impossible for anyone to fly with disgraceful framerates and a bunch of other issues. Then the service packs came and it got acceptable. FS2020 is very well polished for an initial release IMHO. I happily would have paid $300 for MSFS if that's what was asked. Also, side note, every other streaming service asks for minimum $10 a month, yet we're off the hook with a measly one time payment!

[Slides 1,552]

It's really been interesting to see older flight simmers acting as childish as the Youtuber, Steam, Discord etc crowd they claim to hate. They're both acting out but for different reasons. Really embarrassing to see.

[Jonathan Berthier 99]

Agree with all of you, it's coming to a point where I think I'll just close the AVSIM and official MSFS forums tabs in my browser for now as reading so much negativity/whining/entitled comments is actually depressing me lol, don't need that in the current real life context.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Jonathan Berthier

[Nate1 163]

It is all a bit depressing. In my view this is the greatest gift I've received in 30 years of flight simming. A breathtaking step forward. We should perhaps recall what other sims were like on day one - and use that for a comparison. Or perhaps just load it up and go flying 🙂

[mazex 419]

What feels most surprising to me is the number of senior flight sim enthusiasts (many with IRL experience) that write very negative posts stating that the whole of MSFS is complete rubbish as feature X of the autopilot does not work, some flight model behavior is strange, FPS over NY is 25 etc. Is it me that fails to notice that the emperor really has no clothes? I don't think so - but for sure, the stitching in one of his glove looks a bit bad and for some weird reason he forgot one of his shoes 🙂

If they only wrote in a more positive manner I am sure that someone reading it would pay more attention - that's the way it works in the "real world" at least. "I really like this shop and the product I bought last week, but I am a bit surprised with the fact that..." always works better in my experience.

PS: My FPS over NY is below 30 FPS with 1440p and high-end settings on a 4790k and an RTX2080 (from the cockpit view of an airliner), but my god it feels like I am actually flying over NY ten times more than any other simulator anyway 😉 As hardware seems to scale well in MSFS I am sure that a Zen 3 processor in december will help, and in two years an RTX 4080 GPU will get me to 90 FPS instead.

Edited August 19, 2020 by mazex

[Dominique_K 10,137]

4 hours ago, mazex said:

I had expected a lot of negative comments here after the release - but I am actually surprised about the massive glass half empty mentality displayed here.

 

 

 

A well written post which I see as a half full glass 😉. I understand your point but somewhat I don’t like dividing  the community between fan boys and whiners. Labelling people, putting them in cases.  I prefer to discuss the issues at hand rather than the postures.

[virtualstuff 757]

5 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A well written post which I see as a half full glass 😉. I understand your point but somewhat I don’t like dividing  the community between fan boys and whiners. Labelling people, putting them in cases.  I prefer to discuss the issues at hand rather than the postures.

Well I agree here, I never liked the labeling or vs discussion just try to be honest and objective...

[mazex 419]

10 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A well written post which I see as a half full glass 😉. I understand your point but somewhat I don’t like dividing  the community between fan boys and whiners. Labelling people, putting them in cases.  I prefer to discuss the issues at hand rather than the postures.

I agree, and should have clarified that what I mean with my title. The whiners go all into the whiner role as they get annoyed with us positive ones that just post praise of MSFS even though there are a number of problems that are rather annoying. And us glass half full guys end up in fanboj behavior as we tend to play down the negative parts too much as we are annoyed with the whiners... So let's meet on middle ground? 😉

Edited August 19, 2020 by mazex

[EmaRacing 302]

Zoomers, we have to deal with them...
They can't install the game, they don't have the hardware to run it, they don't have the connection to install it, they weren't waiting 10+ years for it...
They go everywhere, spit their 1 star frustration review and go back playing forenite or mineshaft or whatever they play, zoomers...

Edited August 19, 2020 by EmaRacing

[driver101 26]

5 hours ago, mazex said:

I had expected a lot of negative comments here after the release - but I am actually surprised about the massive glass half empty mentality displayed here.
 

You made my day!

It is for sure not perfect right now but in 12 months it will be a totally different experience!

[Dominique_K 10,137]

7 minutes ago, mazex said:

I agree, and should have clarified that what I mean with my title. The whiners go all into the whiner role as they get a annoyed with us positive ones that just post praise of MSFS even though there are a number of problems that are rather annoying. And us glass half full guys end up in word not allowed behavior as we tend to play down the negative parts too much as we are annoyed with the whiners... So let's meet on middle ground? 😉

We have seen that from both sides. The « cheerleaders » willing to shout out the « nitckpickers »  and the other way round.

Middle ground ? Let's be true to what we think ! But lets discuss issues and not postures with behind the head that we all have our pet peeves.  

 

[MDFlier 2,031]

I think the negativity in here has gone out of control. MS/Asobo has undertaken a massive project and is doing a great job. If you think about it, people are literally complaining that MS/Asobo did not get everything in the world perfect on the first shot. It's laughable. The glass is always full, half with water, half with air.

I'm fortunate that I have flown every version of Flight Simulator ever released. From monochrome white ASCII graphics onward. Every release improves upon the next. Be happy about the improvements they made, and hopeful for the future improvements they will make.

The developers read these forums, and will get a better feel for what they need to look at in the future. Getting MSFS this far took a massive investment in time and money. They can't keep the word not allowed thing in development forever. They need it to start paying off so that they can keep moving forward. If you don't like it where it is now, then don't buy it. If you are like me, and know that it will only be getting better and better from here on out, then buy it, enjoy it, and put constructive criticism in here so that the devs can better understand where they need to put their resources.

I'm grateful that they have returned to the business, and am very pleased with what they have accomplished so far. I do need to keep P3Dv5 installed as I can not recreate the heavy iron full flight experience that I get in it in MSFS yet , but someday I will be able to. I'm not going to cry about it now, though.  

Edited August 19, 2020 by MDFlier