Jamz, everyone expects bugs in a Release Candidate -- no question. But HUGE, GLARING, ones? We rightly figure that this Release Candidate means the devs are getting towards the end here, and they need all of us to find the type of bugs that are subtle and easily missed. After all, this is it. No more added features or improvements to CoD until
maybe "the sequel" --- a long time away (we're still waiting on the June announcement for THAT).
Instead of a near-finished product that needs some tweaking and some bugs to
hunt down, we get a sloppy patch with aircraft that won't even
start (
), and others that can barely get halfway to their service ceiling before they start shaking and spluttering. Other longtime missing/broken features such as AI and Comms haven't even been addressed. Even the long-awaited readme hadn't even been edited to remove previous beta items -- such as the nerfing of the Spitfire 2a and Hurricane Rotol. Sure, NBD except it points to astonishingly sloppy and careless work by a dedicated, hardworking development crew. Was there no leadership at all for someone to say, "OK, look guys, before we release this let's just fire up a few PC's and run a few quick missions -- let's focus on some of the
known problem areas". To be sure, some "oopsies" would've been spotted right away, tweaked or fixed, and then at least that would permit the rest of us to work on spotting the less obvious bugs.
At the very least, Ilya could have taken 10 minutes to proof his readme file, delete the old stuff (which gave more than a few of us a bit of concern), and deliver a more polished,
professional summary of the hard work done on beta 1.09.
If the glaring bugs had occurred at the last moment, then a quick mention in the readme would at least acknowledge these are known items to be squashed. We have no assurances these obvious bugs will be fixed, based on established track record. It's a darn shame, as some aspects of this beta 1.09 show real promise, but get obscured by the overall sloppiness exhibited.
Hopefully, Ilya will make good on his intentions to answer some of our questions and render all of our concerns and exasperation moot.