Just Need to Vent

[yzerwing]

Personally if saved games are wanted, fine, but I found it tough to upload a saved game. First you have to download an FTP add-on, and then you have to figure out how to use it. I think more save games would come if it were easier. Maybe it is just me, but I didn't find it that easy.

On what JeffR said about not getting the game to do the AHL lineup bug. How or what could I possibly do to get it to do this, and no one else? All I did was play the game with the available options. This is also goes for the player disappearing thing I already told JeffR about.

As I said, I have great hopes for this game, and am willing to help out if I can, although I agree with gmerger, in that this is supposed to be a full game, and yet there are still many issues that affect its playability. There is lots of potential with what I see, and I appreciate that, just frustrated that you still can't get far in without having to start all over again.

[batdad]

I have to say...the post from Jeff R in this thread for more saved games...on first though annoyed me to no end.

So at first I wanted to take the same opinion and track that some of you did here and say THIS IS NOT A BETA...we should not have to act like testers.

Then...I wanted to say....well to me that is an admittance of at least partial failure and somewhat of an apology without apologizing for the state of the game...and to beg for help from the customer...they really want to make it work. So I went to upload a saved game that was crashing on me.....

And then I saw went through what yzerwing went through before I saw his post..and it just seemed too difficult and time consuming. So I did not bother...and went back to opinion 1.

Then I read ciccarelli's post...and really want to help...and totally agree with him that they HAVE TO FOCUS on the nuts and bolts...and that we have to give them time to do so.

But OOTP gang needs in my opinion to decide on their track...fix the nuts and bolts of this game and make the simulations run or add features and do all kinds of extra stuff. Either way...some happy some pissed. Whether I am happy or not personally does not matter anymore...they have my money.

They need to decide...and well...they have...they said they were focussing on ad ons ....so I guess I leave here as one of the not too happy people as the foundation and nuts and bolts are not fixed and not ready for add ons.

I wanted to see the game run well....and maybe some day it will...but it will not until the focus becomes on the basics.

So until I see a focus on basics instead of on line play, instead of teams on the moon and fictional leagues with Klingon's playing Centre, there is not much I can do.

Although would it not be cool to have a Star Trek league with teams from Romulus, Vulcan, whatever the Klingon planet is called and whatever other places you can find? I want that feature added. ANd now.

[Deriken]

Personally I have not uploaded any saves in quite a while because there weren't any responses about the ones that I did. An no, I don't expect a response to everything, that would be ridiculous, but there was very little response at all (at least on the board) from the devs to anyone on the uploads. Same with the bug-reports. Many have gone unacknowledged at least in the forum.

I paid my money and I am still glad I did so. I'm looking more at this as a long term investment than buying a one-off game. I've read though the amazing amount of both vitriol and support, and all I do is just keep playing and installing patches as they arrive. Don't get too involved in doing anything special, just a handful of custom logos that are easily re-added each time, etc. And I will continue to do so and eventually the game will get to a point where I will feel confident about putting in the work to make it the way I like.

All that said though I really would like to see some sort of organized, regular information from the devs. An active bug-list with priorities or a list of items being currently looked at etc. Maybe a note or two of how its going (maybe the uploading of game saves would not have stopped if we knew how valuable they were proving). There are also a TON of very smart and experienced people on this forum and I'm certain they are a great source for suggestions, ideas, etc for anything the devs are having particular difficulty reproducing or addressing.

It all comes down to communication. And no one is ever so busy that they can't communicate something. Hey you have a PR person right? Tell him and he can post. Or an intern, or whoever.

I'll shut-up now and go back to just playing the game and waiting on patches.

Deriken

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

But if the dev team is going to say "this is it unless you help us" they're pretty much holding us hostage with the product that they have already given us unless the input comes largely from the "community."

I haven't said anything of the sort. We'll continue fixing bugs whether or not we get saves to look at. But we can't fix what we can't find. If it's not something we can recreate, we need the save. Otherwise, if we can't get it to happen in our tests or find the source of the problem through other means, we have to move on to fixing a less-urgent, but repeatable, issue reported by someone else. I've said over and over that we'll be continuing to work on this version of the game for months to come. But if someone wants their specific issue addressed, the likelihood of that happening gets a lot higher if we've got as much detail about it as possible.

[Northernsky]

I think I have been the only person who has NOT had the game crash and I play the games and sim them. Although my only issue at this point is the playoffs... for whatever reason I always lose in the conference finals..but that's just my luck not a game issue. I like the game.. I came into it with no expectations knowing it would be lacking many things. I remember OOTPB 5 and what it lacked... I do miss the family aspect of the game. Always loved it when my kids made it into the minors.

[BlackIce]

I'd like to also chime in and voice my displeasure and say that I'm very disappointed not only in the quality of game that was released to the public for full price but also very disappointed at the lack of communication the developers have with they're customers.

I just read Jeff's post in this thread and was very displeased at the fact it's beginning to sound like we need to chime in more with "proof" or solid "facts" which alot of us have already posted or brought up in discussions for a few months or more now. Are they not seeing the same things we are ? Are they not having the same attributes fall of the planet with star players ? Are they not having problems with the Enforcers not fighting other Enforcers ? Are they not having the same problems with teams not resigning half they're team come July 1st ? Are they not having the same problem with the way rookies are laying dorment on rosters without any games played ? Are they not seeing the same problems with all of the post's that were added with actual screenshots and full test conducted ?

And why would we ? They don't communicate and that's my stickle to this pickle. Like a handful of the members have already quoted in this thread, I already bought this game and did so when it was available as Beta. I had all faith it was to be released as a fully functionable $40.00 PC game, now a few months after release I sit's on my desktop playing one season at a time and restarting.... now I just don't play at all. No mentions of patch information, no mentions of what in the heck they are working on, and absolutley no mentions of anything of sort other than a few blurbs here and there.

Batdad you come to mind here as i type this and I believe it was you who once said... Nuts and Bolts. If it wasn't then I apologize to the person it was. I was a believer in that quote. I may sound a little harsh on this but I do not care about historic or most of all fantasy or online at this time. What I would like to see is the game performing like it should at this point and the developers pondering about adding more and more to a game that isn't even working properly. I WILL NOT ask for a refund as I too am hoping for a free version or a heavley discounted version in the future as many as you should be entitled to as well. If this doesn't happen then I simply won't spend my money on this product until I gain enough trust back in the developers to achieve what they're pretty webpage describes and the list of features it says about the game.

I'm sorry to rant but indeed like alot of you it was time for me to vent as well. I apologize if some of you take this as an insult but I too have my opinion just like you. I believe they will bounce onto the right track at some point but time is what is needed for this game. Money I will not spend until that time comes...

End rant.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by batdad

I have to say...the post from Jeff R in this thread for more saved games...on first though annoyed me to no end.

So at first I wanted to take the same opinion and track that some of you did here and say THIS IS NOT A BETA...we should not have to act like testers.

For what it's worth, you'll get the same response from Markus for OOTP itself. Folks after a version is released will post about some bug, but Markus is unable to reproduce it so he needs the save game file to track down the bug and kill it. Do not assume that just because it happens on your PC it happens on the developer's PC. It may not, hence why saved games of crashes are important.

Originally Posted by batdad

Then...I wanted to say....well to me that is an admittance of at least partial failure and somewhat of an apology without apologizing for the state of the game...and to beg for help from the customer...they really want to make it work. So I went to upload a saved game that was crashing on me.....

And then I saw went through what yzerwing went through before I saw his post..and it just seemed too difficult and time consuming. So I did not bother...and went back to opinion 1.

Certainly the process of uploading a saved game file should be as easy and painless as possible. A thought that occurs to me there is that perhaps the game itself should include some built-in way to upload a saved game or otherwise register a bug report. (There are other apps that have such built-in means of logging a bug report, so perhaps FHM and OOTP ought to find a way to mimic that if possible. Might help make bug killing easier.)

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

For what it's worth, you'll get the same response from Markus for OOTP itself. Folks after a version is released will post about some bug, but Markus is unable to reproduce it so he needs the save game file to track down the bug and kill it. Do not assume that just because it happens on your PC it happens on the developer's PC. It may not, hence why saved games of crashes are important.

For any game out there fixing bugs involves a similar process to what's going on here.

It's not a matter of beta testing, or having the community do work for the devs, or a way of punishing those who report bugs, it's the simple fact that for every piece of software, fixing problems involves re-creating them.

That can often only be done with saves, logs, or other data provided by the users. Every game I've ever had, when I file a bug report, if anyone responds at all, they ask for my logs or other files. That's just how fixing bugs happens. It's not reasonable to expect any company to be able to fix bugs when you don't provide them with the info they need and ask for in order to do so.

[dave1927p]

In the new patch, every game I start, I enable commish mode and select an nhl team (then let the AI control). NHL, AHL, KHL, and Canadian Teams are selected. I simulate two years and get a crash each and every time. if I reload the save I cannot get past that time it crashes. I find it hard to fathem that these same issues didn't come up in testing the most recent patch. It really isn't an overly complicated setup I'm doing. In fact, i'd consider it basic so recreating it each time is probably simpler than uploading saves.

Before the patches are being uploaded, are they tested by simulating multiple seasons to make sure it does not crash? If so than I am more understanding as it could be other things contributing to the issues. I assume the longevity stability it is tested but I don't know.

Either way, I will upload my saved games over the weekend but not until then as I just don't have the time right now. I do feel badly for not being able to assist more, but such is life.

I really think it would be beneficial to create a simpler way for the user to send their saved game, perhaps through a button in the game if possible. If those steps are made much simpler I would expect more people to send them to a point where there would be absoluately no shortage or them.

[Mickeyb37]

I think the fixing nuts and bolts analogy is pretty much right with FHM. I made a comment way back about concentrating on getting a basic stable Hockey Management working first before adding on the customisation and historical functionality and I was pretty much shot down in flames.

If you have the basic engine of the game working then it doesn't really matter whether it is in 1965 or 2013. Trading is trading, signing free agents is signing free agents and players declining too fast (or retiring at 51) will occur no matter what the year is.

This project was very ambitious in attempts to please and pacify the many requested functions of the community users but what has been missed is providing a stable management game on release. Two patches in and there are still many bugs and crashes which need addressed and the game still plays like a beta version.

I doubt any truly honest users of the game would say they were happy with it regardless of their past experiences with OOTP.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Mickeyb37

I think the fixing nuts and bolts analogy is pretty much right with FHM. I made a comment way back about concentrating on getting a basic stable Hockey Management working first before adding on the customisation and historical functionality and I was pretty much shot down in flames.

If you have the basic engine of the game working then it doesn't really matter whether it is in 1965 or 2013. Trading is trading, signing free agents is signing free agents and players declining too fast (or retiring at 51) will occur no matter what the year is.

This project was very ambitious in attempts to please and pacify the many requested functions of the community users but what has been missed is providing a stable management game on release. Two patches in and there are still many bugs and crashes which need addressed and the game still plays like a beta version.

I doubt any truly honest users of the game would say they were happy with it regardless of their past experiences with OOTP.

I agree completely. OOTP is only relevant in so far as it leaves me convinced that the team will eventually get FHM right. But yeah, this first version of FHM is definitely disappointing.

I think it plays better than a beta version now, but that's only my experience, I'm sure others have run into different issues I haven't.

Still, a lot of similar games have had similar issues at one point or another, even (especially) EHM. I still feel confident that FHM will eventually turn the corner. It's just going to take longer than I'd (we'd) hoped.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by dave1927p

I really think it would be beneficial to create a simpler way for the user to send their saved game, perhaps through a button in the game if possible. If those steps are made much simpler I would expect more people to send them to a point where there would be absoluately no shortage or them.

Agree completely. An in game button/form would be most helpful and I think a lot of folks would be more inclined to use it than they are to go through the whole upload process.

[Dizzy]

I've been looking at this game but I think I'll wait.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by dave1927p

In the new patch, every game I start, I enable commish mode and select an nhl team (then let the AI control). NHL, AHL, KHL, and Canadian Teams are selected. I simulate two years and get a crash each and every time. if I reload the save I cannot get past that time it crashes. I find it hard to fathem that these same issues didn't come up in testing the most recent patch. It really isn't an overly complicated setup I'm doing. In fact, i'd consider it basic so recreating it each time is probably simpler than uploading saves.

I started a game with the same settings earlier tonight. Currently in the fourth season with no crashes. Whatever's causing the crashes in your games is arising out of unique circumstances that aren't going to happen in every game, and we're not going to know what they are without the save.

And if a crash that we could duplicate came up during testing, the patch would've been held until it was fixed.

Before the patches are being uploaded, are they tested by simulating multiple seasons to make sure it does not crash?

Of course. Multiple times. For stability checking on a release candidate, I usually try for at least one 10+ year season in modern mode, a 60+ year historical game, and at least one multi-season custom game. And that's only my own testing, Sebastian has his own games running and the testing volunteers have theirs.

[thehip]

Agreed, both types of customers are able to have opinions and thoughts about the game, but the problem with your rationale is that everyone is forced into the 'provide feedback/beta tester' role.

I haven't played the game in a long time. It crashes far too often.

Originally Posted by Smetana

Nah, not going to attack you. You've made your position clear, in a civil manner, and I can respect it.

Everybody has their own idea of what they should expect, as a paying customer, from OOTP Developments. Some expect a polished product off the shelf, and aren't interested in assisting with testing and feedback, and that's fine.

Others are more willing to cut some slack, to provide feedback and suggestions, in the hopes that they can help the devs improve the product. Because improving the product is in everybody's best interest--both customer and developer alike.

Both types of customer are justified in their position and thought process.

[thehip]

As someone who purchased the game, I offer my free advice. This attitude will kill the game. You may want to consider not going on the offensive at all in the future. Blaming the lack of fixes on the lack of uploaded bug reports will solve nothing and only encourage people such as myself to never purchase an OOTP game in the future. If it doesn't help and could possibly hurt, don't do it.

Originally Posted by JeffR

The problem with a lot of these bugs is that we need savegames to check them, and just haven't been getting any - the last user-uploaded save to our ftp server was over a month ago. Yzerwing, I spent quite a bit of time yesterday tyring to repeat the problem you reported with AHL players getting excessive playing time, but couldn't get it to happen. A save with where it's occurring, or when a crash happens, would be extremely helpful in getting these sorts of issues fixed.

The uploading instructions, if anyone needs them: How to FTP files to OOTP Developments - Kayako eSupport Help Desk Software

(Use the /fhm directory instead of the OOTP one. It's also helpful if you include a short text file describing your problem in case we have trouble finding the forum post.)

And if you can't use the ftp server, posting the save on a filesharing site and giving us a link to it works, too.

[gbmoore121]

Originally Posted by thehip

As someone who purchased the game, I offer my free advice. This attitude will kill the game. You may want to consider not going on the offensive at all in the future. Blaming the lack of fixes on the lack of uploaded bug reports will solve nothing and only encourage people such as myself to never purchase an OOTP game in the future. If it doesn't help and could possibly hurt, don't do it.

I didn't get the feeling he was being on the offensive. It reads to me like a statement of facts with no aggressive or defensive tone at all.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by gbmoore121

I didn't get the feeling he was being on the offensive. It reads to me like a statement of facts with no aggressive or defensive tone at all.

Same here. How is anything said there "going on the offensive"?

[pens66]

About uploading savegames... two things:

1) Jeff, you are obviously right that you developers can't reproduce every possible situation which may lead to a bug. You need our help and I think most of us know/understand that.

which leads me (again!!!) to...

2) I just took a look at the thread you created in April in the beta bugs sub-forum in which you ask for our savegames and tell us how to upload them. Your initial post was the single one any of you developers made in the whole thread.
This is simply ridiculous!!
There were three pages of people telling you they made uploads and discussing their bugs/uploads. Yet, they probably never got an answer of you guys. I just hope to god you may have given them feedback via PMs...
And now we actually argue about the lack of savegame upload by the community?? I honestly can't believe it.

I made this point multiple times now, but I do it again (in other words):
The lack of communication by the developers, for me, is astounding and deflating.
Feedback for ideas/questions/bug reports has at points been totally non-existant -- sometimes for weeks. I pointed out the posting history of Sebastian a few times now, so there's no point argueing that...

Me personally, I am way past the point that I look for certain bugs or errors in the game. By now I know that a) won't get an answer and b) that the same mistake may very well still be in the game in five months (yes, that has happened way too often during the beta process and even past two patches for the "full release").

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by pens66

About uploading savegames... two things:

1) Jeff, you are obviously right that you developers can't reproduce every possible situation which may lead to a bug. You need our help and I think most of us know/understand that.

which leads me (again!!!) to...

2) I just took a look at the thread you created in April in the beta bugs sub-forum in which you ask for our savegames and tell us how to upload them. Your initial post was the single one any of you developers made in the whole thread.
This is simply ridiculous!!
There were three pages of people telling you they made uploads and discussing their bugs/uploads. Yet, they NEVER got an answer of you guys.
And now we actually argue about the lack of savegame upload by the community?? I honestly can't believe it.

I made this point multiple times now, but I do it again (in other words):
The lack of communication by the developers, for me, is astounding and deflating.
Feedback for ideas/questions/bug reports has at points been totally non-existant -- sometimes for weeks. I pointed out the posting history of Sebastian a few times now, so there's no point argueing that...

Me personally, I am way past the point that I look for certain bugs or errors in the game. By now I know that a) won't get an answer and b) that the same mistake may very well still be in the game in five months (yes, that has happened way too often during the beta process and even past two patches for the "full release").

For how many games do the developers post responses to individual forum members questions or issues at all? Almost none, in my experience.

Whereas here, they post quite often, if not daily then at least every couple days. That's really good compared to most games I've used.

Would you rather they spend their time holding the hands of folks on the forum, or working on improving the game? Because that the choice they have to make when choosing whether to answer posts directly.

That the FHM developers are as accessible as they are really seems like it's spoiled some people, who expect 24-7 status updates and individual updates to each issue they raise coming directly from a developer.

That's not how the world works, you won't get that kind of communication from any company anywhere.