1 minute ago, HiFlyer said:

I also try to keep in mind that Asobo apparently lost serious time due to Covid (and informed us of that) which seems to have thrown their schedule for a serious loop.

I share the same opinion covid probably screwed everything over for them . 

4 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I bailed out of the Tech Alpha about halfway through, after posting a number of issues, some of them critical. After getting very little feedback from Asobo there didn't seem much point after a while. 

To be fair, I think we did manage to get a few things changed or added to the sim based on Alpha feedback, like cockpit views saved for each aircraft. I don't think that was on the original roadmap. Mostly though, it felt like Alpha tester issues were ignored, or else logged and Asobo never managed to fix them before release. 
 

It was also a way to generate fancy screenshots for promotional purposes at zero cost, plus free Internet buzz. 🙂

I don't blame them for that, it was a smart PR move. And it did give at least a select group an early look at the sim.
 

I'll never understand why they didn't make it a paid Early Access release, which would have defused a lot of the complaints on the current state of the sim. Maybe MS just doesn't have the mechanics in place for that kind of release. Have they ever done an EA release for any of their other games?

 

I'm thinking the whole "tech Alpha" thing was a great advertising scheme for Microsoft, and it worked great for that purpose. It did create a LOT of hype, free advertising for Microsoft, EVERYONE wanted to be a tester. I know when I got accepted(first round of testers) I couldn't be more excited, I was like a kid again(I'm 55). I also feel this sim has been at this state for quite some time and even a few updates like V.R. are sitting on a hard drive somewhere lined up to come out as future versions. This gives Osobo and Microsoft lots of time to make really big changes up the road. Actually, really smart for them to create all this hype, free advertisement a year before actual payed launch. I bet all us "testers" have already bought it too.

Well we all understand the Covid situation, but all the more reason to have been honest and explain that it was in an early access state, with maybe the price tag adjusted to match.

In the meantime back at the coal face and idlily examining my computer stats while trying to find a non Steam game to occupy me ...

… got to wonder why the process of (slowly) re-downloading the game is pushing the GPU at 99% with the CPU sat on 24% (and 1.6Gb of 24Gb of RAM being used). Asobo do know computers have CPU's in them which is usually where the code for this type of thing would be directed?

10 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I purchased at the $90 dollar price.

It was explained to me by others that this actually only buys credits, applied to your use of Premium deluxe, as long as you remain a member of Game pass.

Customer service generally confirmed this, and I was not a happy camper.

I purchased the 120$ one, and I dont have a gamepass and I play just fine. 

2 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

maybe the price tag adjusted to match.

To be fair... If people just want to test it beforehand... the price tag is $1

Hmmmmm... remember all the similar forum angst about how it was definitely going to be subscription based?

(Wonder what happened to those guys?)

1 minute ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

I purchased the 120$ one, and I dont have a gamepass and I play just fine

I purchased the $1 option, liked what I saw, and "upgraded" to the $90 option, not knowing that despite what my account was saying (owned) It actually was not.

32 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

It was also a way to generate fancy screenshots for promotional purposes at zero cost, plus free Internet buzz. 🙂I don't blame them for that, it was a smart PR move.

 

Yes free publicity is always an advantage, but out of hundreds of pre-release YT videos I couldn't find a single one that had about it any kind of critical faculties. No doubt that is NDA linked but I was interested to see a couple of patreon-financed commercial pilots attempting to land the A320 and B787 and making an embarrassed hash of it. But it wasn't their lack of skills and I was surprised how they simply ignored or minimised the blindingly obvious poor control afforded by the flight models. It is one thing to be forgiving of flaws but when a commercial pilot finds a desktop sim harder to land accurately than the real aircraft it's a bit of a concern.

I stopped watching these promo videos after a while -,once I understood the scenery and clouds looked pretty good. As for mass alpha and beta tests, you are never going to get salient feedback listened to from a pool of several thousands because the perceptive comments from hard working testers get buried in the vast white noise.

If I ever requested Beta testers I asked a very few established pilots or aviation professionals with a lot of sim experience so they knew what was possible and what wasn't, but specifically asked them to test extremely critically. We weren't looking for praise or approval but brutally honest criticism. There is no point in having any other kind of beta testing.

Edited September 22, 20205 yr by robert young

1 minute ago, HiFlyer said:

To be fair... If people just want to test it beforehand... the price tag is $1

Hmmmmm... remember all the similar forum angst about how it was definitely going to be subscription based?

(Wonder what happened to those guys?)

The point is, at launch we didn't have these download/installer looping issues that are now occurring nor did they afflict the delivery of the first patch. It's a bit of a strawman to start suggesting people should only have paid the Gamepass to try the game out, none of the now fairly obvious closely managed presentations on You Tube etc. gave any indications of the problems down the road. You kind of think when Microsoft put their name to a product continuing a long fine line of previous products that comes with a certain pedigree (then again, Windows ME, Windows 8).

8 minutes ago, robert young said:

There is no point in having any other kind of beta testing.

What about beta testing for the load on your internet structure?

Plus data on how people are using the sim, where people are visiting, etc....

2 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

What about beta testing for the load on your internet structure?

I thought that's what the Beta was for at least that's the way they made it sound and pretty much didn't ask for feedback.  They just wanted users in the system.

26 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

The point is, at launch we didn't have these download/installer looping issues that are now occurring nor did they afflict the delivery of the first patch.

Perhaps its expectations. Our current sims have bugs. I was expecting this sim to have bugs, too.

I also think Asobo/Microsoft have more than enough resources to fix those bugs in a timely manner, subject to their own priority schedule, which is also not a situation we should be unaccustomed to.

26 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

It's a bit of a strawman to start suggesting people should only have paid the Gamepass to try the game out, none of the now fairly obvious closely managed presentations on You Tube etc. gave any indications of the problems down the road.

Many people have waited, wallets-in-pocket, for an assessment by the early adopters who immediately jumped in on launch day. Others took the cautious approach of only "buying" into MSFS via the game pass one dollar offer. Caveat emptor is not a strawman.

And there were always going to be problems down the road. I'm at a loss, if people did not expect that.

26 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

You kind of think when Microsoft put their name to a product continuing a long fine line of previous products that comes with a certain pedigree (then again, Windows ME, Windows 8).

Microsoft just withdrew a patch that was slowing down windows, probably their biggest product with their highest pedigree, which they nonetheless made an error in updating. Newly released games and sims will have errors. Fully released games years into their runs will encounter errors. To me, the developers and programmers are fallible humans, and this is all expected.

The outrage would come for me, if they refused to fix what was (critically) broken.

Edited September 22, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

On a more practical note, does anyone know how big fs-base-cgl-0.1.21.fspackage.001 is?

It's taken quite a bit of time just to get to 2% (at 500KB/s) and the total download has updated by 1.25Gb. That would indicate the file is somewhere in the region of 34Gb which essentially is not going to be possible to download with a throttled speed. At 1.8Gb an hour that will be 18 hours to download. Not leaving the PC on overnight so that will effectively be game over until/if Asobo fix the server problem.

5 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I'll disagree, 50% (just read all the early reviews) of the buying user base not being able to install what they bought is definitely a "hair-on-fire" event.

That, I will agree with. But even in that extreme, Asobo/Microsoft/Steam stepped up to the plate as far as refunds, and obviously they pretty quickly came forward with a fix, which is exactly what was required of them in that situation.

I try to keep a certain perspective.

A quick search would show probably thousands of instances where large swaths people were unable to access their newly purchased games, often due to copy protection snafus. 

Its unfortunate, and we all wish such things didn't happen, but... Of course they do.

Perhaps I'm simply too laid back. I blink at my screen, try this or that, do some research on remedies, and if their are none, I wait for a timely fix. (or maybe my refund)

Hair on fire never enters the equation unless lives are on the line! 🙀

Those of us that participated in the alpha/beta testing are wondering just what exactly was the point of that "testing".  So many of the bugs that we reported months ago during the technical previews are still in the game today even after this patch.  It's frustrating, but this just seems "business as usual" for software developers these days (been that way for awhile actually).

Wheres the freakin lights at the airports none nada - ghost towns whats up with that - makes no sense - thank you - carry on