Very short development update

[klem]

Originally Posted by Madfish

Oh how very kind of you to call me a child just because I ask for and advise a professional company with more than a dozen employees, engaged in making a game for an global audience, to actually do some customer relationship management..............

So before you start calling people childish you might take that advice yourself and actually stop being one in the first place.

Please stop quoting David Hayward, you are defeating my ignore list. But as it has leaked through, we are not asking to be told every ten minutes, we are asking to be told on a reasonably frequent basis, say weekly or fortnightly, when we can expect our faulty goods to be fixed. And more people, new customers for example, will keep asking until they know.

Question: Have MG admitted there are defects in CoD and acknowledged what they are?
Answer: Yes
Question: Are MG Programme managing their way out of this hole?
Answer: No idea
Question: Do MG have Recovery Programme milestones for the key faults that prevent many people actually playing the game they have bought?
Answer: No idea.
Question: Is the Recovery Schedule, if there is one, on target? Is there schedule slip? Can it be explained to the waiting customers?
Answer: No idea.

I used to work in simulation. Any programme Manager that turned up at programme reviews without answers to those questions would have been roasted alive. Any Programme Managers not reporting on a reasonable basis to their customers, especially on product defects, would also have been roasted. And any Programmes Director that didn't hold those programme reviews would not have lasted very long.

Are MG so unprofessional that they think they owe us anything less?

Most of the vitriol in these threads is caused by people with no responsibility for fixing CoD sniping from the sidelines at those of us that are trying to communicate with Luthier. They are simply swamping every effort we make. He must be laughing all the way to his next joke.

It would be nice if we had a more formal and professional way of submitting our questions to Luthier instead of in this playground.

Originally Posted by klem

Please stop quoting David Hayward, you are defeating my ignore list. But as it has leaked through, we are not asking to be told every ten minutes, we are asking to be told on a reasonably frequent basis, say weekly or fortnightly, when we can expect our faulty goods to be fixed. And more people, new customers for example, will keep asking until they know.

Question: Have MG admitted there are defects in CoD and acknowledged what they are?
Answer: Yes
Question: Are MG Programme managing their way out of this hole?
Answer: No idea
Question: Do MG have Recovery Programme milestones for the key faults that prevent many people actually playing the game they have bought?
Answer: No idea.
Question: Is the Recovery Schedule, if there is one, on target? Is there schedule slip? Can it be explained to the waiting customers?
Answer: No idea.

I used to work in simulation. Any programme Manager that turned up at programme reviews without answers to those questions would have been roasted alive. Any Programme Managers not reporting on a reasonable basis to their customers, especially on product defects, would also have been roasted. And any Programmes Director that didn't hold those programme reviews would not have lasted very long.

Are MG so unprofessional that they think they owe us anything less?

Most of the vitriol in these threads is caused by people with no responsibility for fixing CoD sniping from the sidelines at those of us that are trying to communicate with Luthier. They are simply swamping every effort we make. He must be laughing all the way to his next joke.

It would be nice if we had a more formal and professional way of submitting our questions to Luthier instead of in this playground.

Whilst I agree to most of your post Klem i have to say that some people have gone to great efforts to try and help Luthier, we have a seperate part of the forum where many have posted their findings and problems, to date i dont think Luthier has posted in any of those threads neither as he posted in the bugs thread. Eventually people think why bother, a lot of people have kicked CLOD into the long grass or just given up on the project. Out of ten people that I fly with who have purchased the game only two of us have stuck with it or show an interest. This is partly down to how bad the game is but mostly down to the pathetic communication from the dev's. Unfortunatley Luthier as made many claims regarding this sim and for many people his words carry little weight. Sad but true.

[klem]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Whilst I agree to most of your post Klem i have to say that some people have gone to great efforts to try and help Luthier, we have a seperate part of the forum where many have posted their findings and problems, to date i dont think Luthier has posted in any of those threads neither as he posted in the bugs thread. Eventually people think why bother, a lot of people have kicked CLOD into the long grass or just given up on the project. Out of ten people that I fly with who have purchased the game only two of us have stuck with it or show an interest. This is partly down to how bad the game is but mostly down to the pathetic communication from the dev's. Unfortunatley Luthier as made many claims regarding this sim and for many people his words carry little weight. Sad but true.

I know Tree. I have been one of them and I fully support CoD in principle. I was one of the many that said "lay off MG" during the early weeks when they were actively communicating and delivering patches.

My sole argument now is a lack of meaningful information. I know that some people will flame Luthier if they don't like his info but that comes with the territory although I have suggested a locked information post. I would just be glad to have a little light shed on when we can expect the fixes.

We have in excess of 20 people on our Squad Roster, 17 regularly 'active'. We could nearly always put up 10-12 on our squad nights, sometimes more, on-line. Then CoD shattered the Squad. A few can't run CoD at all, only two of us are happy to (I fly COD on non-squad nights) and the rest are disgusted with it. That's almost a 90% rejection rate. We have moved to RoF (not really my choice) until CoD is playable by all of our 'Codders' on-line. I get a lot of good-natured banter and occasionally some pretty harsh criticism for my support of CoD, particularly over Luthier's lack of communication and especially the US release and his little joke. A few of them think I'm mad to bother with it and that's an extension of the problems CoD causes me. These guys are old friends, some of many years, all with WWII combat as our common interest. It's not like I'm some Johnny-no-mates playing off-line, that's of no interest to me, so I have lost WWII on-line air combat with my friends until CoD is fixed. Like the rest of my Squad I can't go back to IL-2, especially Vanilla, as CoD has moved us on but things like the sound bug make it unplayable for too many people.

We know it will get fixed but I'm not prepared for it to be open ended. I wonder what some of the "don't ask" guys on here would say if Luthier said the sound bug, SLi etc weren't going to be fixed until next year. That's not likely to happen but we deserve to be kept informed of their progress.

[klem]

And just one more thing,

You notice how this started off as a bit of humour and how the usual suspects have dragged it back into a personal fight?

One meaningful post from Luthier would stop all this nonsense.