If I'm generous, 45%; I think it's a half-completed 90% sim. I guess it'll be done in about 2017; but by then it'll probably only be about a 75% rating if we assume 3% inflation...
Haven't played for quite a while now, and don't expect to until there's a major patch. Just popped into the forum to see if there had been any developments or updates and it would appear not so I'll go back to other stuff.
I doubt I shall be pre-ordering anything from 1C again because the expected level of communication, updates, and patch progress hasn't materialised, so I might as well have waited for it to hit the bargain bin.
I am not so bothered by the unfinished state of the sim, or even the lack of progress, as by the lack of consistent updates.
It's pretty simple to type a paragraph a week saying "we did this; it went ok; next week we'll try doing that...".
If a simple update like this cannot be achieved on a weekly basis, then that doesn't exactly inspire much confidence that the really difficult tasks (finding the bugs, fixing the bugs, adding missing content without adding a disproportionate number of further bugs) are actually getting achieved.
Providing updates obviously consumes time which might be used for working on the code, but 15 minutes a week isn't much; 0.625% of a 40 hour week. And we're given to believe that 1C are working much harder than that. So really, a small weekly update would represent an insignificant investment of time, and would greatly increase confidence that things will get better.
It is that confidence that will keep the community going until the sim is genuinely functional (ie until it reaches the point at which the critics consider re-reviewing it), so that there is a good MP experience available to drive sales, especially sales of additional expansions, which will presumably be where 1C starts to really make some return on their investment.
This is important, because I for one won't be jumping to buy any such expansion unless and until it may be demonstrated that the current sim is finished. What I mean by this is that 1C don't even need to finish the current sim for free; they could fix it as part of a paid expansion, and provided that the price is not more than a normal full-price game, I'd probably buy it. But, and this is crucial, I would only buy such an expansion after reading good reviews, because I'm not chucking good money after bad.
Anyway, I'm off again. See you again in 2 weeks or whenever a patch comes out...
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