Maybe some should pay better attention to Luthier's post:

"Most importantly, please don't take the frequency of my visits as an indication of anything right now. As a matter of fact, if you see me here posting a lot, that's the best clue that we are NOT working as hard as we should. All of us at 1C:Maddox Games, 1C Softclub, and Ubisoft, are fully committed to the game and to the series, and like we always said, we will continue to support it with patches, add-ons and sequels in the coming months and years."

Taken from this post:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22887

I know this post. But 2 lines a week about the actual status do not even reuire a reading of all the forums. Just a small update is not asked too much and wont keep him off his important work for too long. Thats out of discussion. Really - cmon. Anyone that says diffrent just doesnt get it.
I am employed as well. I write tons of mails everday each with more than 2 sentenses. And i know 2 sentenses dont take longer than like 30 seconds.

Winger

^This.. managed to post my statement before reading through the thread.

Totally agree on this one. There is no excuse of being too busy to drop atleast a few sentences about the progress every now and then. It takes a few minutes and when recurring bi-weekly or whatever it gives a nice sign of life and faith for the future.

It doesn't have to be groundbreaking news everytime around. Just something in the ballpark of 'were working on X & Y, have problems with Z so currently we got no concrete schedule for next patch release' will do just nicely. But seems like they're not very good at it or just don't care. Let's hope this community manager thing mentioned before will materialize one day.

Whether this product known as CloD is called a game, simulation or whatever in between makes no difference. It is the only modern title of it's kind (WW2 CFS) in existance or in development as far as I'm aware of atleast and that's the point that matters. The people enthusiastic for this title can't just jump into the next release waiting around the corner because there is none. So failure of this title may well mean the end of a beloved hobby or jump back to the ancient version already used to death.
So I would imagine one can see the difference between the two despite the prestigious army career.

And indeed it would be great to jump into one of your high fidelity sims or high perf prop planes to play around with whenever you feel like getting a few aviation kicks, but unfortunately that is not an option for many people around here. And I agree whining on things that you can't change or that have been whined to death already makes no sense. But we're not talking about a rainy day or a cripple here, but 5-10 mins weekly investment from a development team. Customer intimacy is not some weird science of the future, but a pretty fundamental part of running a business. So whether it's the trend of the industry or not it's a low hanging fruit with high rewards through customer retention and additional sales.

I'm not as pissed off about CloD as it may sound, it runs pretty well for me. But I not too happy seeing an attitude of trying to get people to shut up 'and fly a prop plane' if they would prefer to get more regular updates on fixing the title they've bought.

sorry I gotta chime in - have you ever worked in a software house environment or along a journalistic route - there the same principal and that principal is called a deadline. Software and game industries work to deadlines do you seriously believe that they have the time let alone the energy to drop a quick hello onto these forums - no I don't and I do work at a software house I don't think about forums or community when all I'm trying to do is get on with my job - Christ a week goes by without anything and all you can do is whine who cares they are doing the job, at the minute the deadline is the US release and that release is coming soon don't you think the devs are aware of the issues and bugs by now it gets bleated left right and centre every five minutes on these forums silence is good news means they are getting on with the job. It's not that they don't care of course they do you whine about the state of the sim after 6 years of development after less than 2 months of playing grow up and have some faith they've been working for 6 years! don't you think that grates on them too 6 years chaps - 6 years of someone in an office going to work everyday like you do sometimes getting stuck in traffic jams, babies being born family passing away etc - don't you think they've got enough on their plate let them do the job don't depend on luthier to bring you an update every week, just get on with it like they do like I do - I'm not upset i don't care if i get an update every week, live your lives if you can't maybe you should stick with chess it's dependable and the bugs have been worked out.

I beg to differ. Posting and update to a customer base often requesting one should be pretty high on the todo list. It is indeed the 5-10 mins a week that would be sufficient to keep the communication flow alive at this stage. Loosing that time will not change anything of importance what comes to the progress they can make with CloD before the US release.

And why would it mean that you need to communicate less the longer you've developed your initial release? If you work on a project for six years, and still have issues after release I think it's even more of a reason to connect with the customers. You need to convice them of the fact that despite we spent so much time on the development we will be quick in fixing the issues instead of spending a long time on it again.

I'm not saying that I would be desperate for updates per se, as there has been pretty frequent patches etc. I'm just saying that frequent customer communication is a fundamental thing in time of 'crisis' (I recon this situation qualifies as such, given the number of issues and scoring from many reviews?). And saying that one would not have the time for it is untrue. It is a matter of priorities and as I see it they should re-prioritize. And I don't mean reading through the all the threads, but communicating actively in a recurring manner. I would even concider making a bug tracker visible for all to see what the devs are aware of.

But it seems that the importance of good communication is understood at Maddox too based on the message of hiring a community manager. So maybe we'll see a change there.

Ahhh my eyes... it burns it burns!

Lets just get some things clear here, its not as if the game was released and after a few weeks the community found a few small bugs that needed fixing, this game was released with the full knowledge by the Dev's that it was not fit for purpose, they knew it had all manner of issues, and sadly they did deliberately mislead us in the run up to release. If an apology is out of the question then in the very least they should be bending over backwards (if they wish to carry on with future products) to keep us informed. Those of you who do not feel an apology is necessary (because its only $50) are just playing into the hands of shoddy software companies who believe they can release any pile of junk through steam without any comebacks, because getting refunds from steam is impossible.

I think that some here are missing the OP’s point, and others, in that the lack of communication is being targeted, rather than any aspect of the game. To quote from the same post by luthier listed above; “We are however in the process of creating a full-time community manager position and setting up an old team member who will interact with you guys daily, answer questions, and keep you up to date on all events.”

This was something luthier undertook himself, rather than as a response to someone’s request, which was two weeks ago. A short note stating that this was still being planned, or whatever, would renew some faith in their commitment.

You are pretty well equiped to run this games :eek: You are having problems with FPS or are you mad about other bugs :confused:

I think we are here as beta testers. You dont need to be smart to see that it is the truth as they are always delaying the USA release date. They just dont call it BETA.

Besides that, I am creating my own training missions on FMB and getting acquainted to the sim while we dont have the final product :)