Friday 2010-10-01 Dev. update and Discussion

[ivagiglie]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

Personally, I think that one of the main reasons why they're posted is for Oleg to read constructive criticism. This way he can gauge the opinions of some people and look into the aspects which come under question. Forum members who develop games have come on here an said exactly the same thing. It's great for the team to hear our honest opinions, as we are the market.
If everyone lied about their feelings, the sim wouldn't be as good as it is now (as many of the changed features may not have been looked into)
If Oleg didn't want the help, he wouldn't use it. Simple as that.

Exactly.

I work on software, not games, but it's the same story.
When we review customer feedback we probably spend 5% of the time on the "good" feedback (yeah, we know that's cool or at least working) and 95% on the NEGATIVE one.
Heck, we probably spend more time *getting* into the meeting room, taking seats and setting up the projector than on the positive things!

Personally I don't care about how harsh the feedback is:
I'm a professional, I'm paid to do my job so I sit down, set aside feelings and try to filter and elaborate on the good input, that is, anything that I can use when I get back to my desk to improve stuff.
Sure, there are times when you read a sentence and all you can say is "this guy's an idiot, he didn't even understand the feature!" but it still leaves you with something to think about...

What's different on a forum compared to "static" customer feedback is interactivity.
People answering back to others that made negative/bad/harsh comments are just polluting the good info, that is, again, stuff that *might* make the product better.
In this thread there are already more than 200 posts and probably only 20 or so that contain anything the team working on SoW can find useful!

One last thing and then I'll finish with this whining.
Stop talking like you were in Oleg's brain!
"I'm sure they will do it" / "It's certain they will change it"
No, you can't be sure or certain about anything and, once again you pollute the forum with nothingness.
There can be one godzillion (which is a godzilla followed by a lots of zeroes) reasons why that specific thing you are sure about in a piece of software cannot be changed with reasonable effort.

That's all, good night!