Annoyed

[Deriken]

Warning: in this post I do some ranting a bit so apologies in advance to anyone who reads the entire post

I have to say that I am annoyed by the fact that I have now posted in the current bug forum or the beta bug forum 4 times since version 0.9.47 and July of last year about the salary floor issue I keep running into when I disable the Salary Cap (I hate it and also hate teams getting points for losing, first things I modify if I can). My last post: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post3659119. To date there has not been one post from the developers about this continuing issue (at least that I have been able to find and I have searched pretty thoroughly). I know I am not the only one who has experienced the problem (at least in previous versions). I've seen at least 10 other people reporting it.

<Begin rant>
I have supported this game since before the day the beta was released. I was so anxious to get it that I had the beta within 60 seconds of it being made available (thank you F5). Happy to pay for it and for every version that comes out. I have posted several times in support of the developers, have not been overly critical of anything except the lack of regular communication. Don't think I've even made too big an issue over that.

I know I am not one of the people with hundreds or thousands of posts over months or years. I'm not important in any way other than the fact that I am a customer.

I have been in IT and customer service for close to 35 years and been working with computers and networks for about 40 (yes there were computers and networks before Tim Berners-Lee made it accessible to every idiot with money to burn). I understand that the developers are hugely busy. I understand having a very small shop to service a large customer base (I designed/installed and currently manage twenty-five 500+ computer networks across the US with over 25,000 customer devices, all with a team of 2 people for over 90% of it). I understand coding challenges and I understand customer service. So please no one tell me that I don't understand what the developers have to go through.

I don't think that I am being unfair or unrealistic to expect some kind of response/acknowledgement of that issue.
</end rant>

Now having vented all that, I would say that in my opinion (and experience) there should be:

1) A bug list that is viewable by everyone with a current status on the state of the bugs. Just read only access to see what's on the list and what the current state of it is. No ETA's needed, nothing else at all in fact, other than keeping it up to date. Bug/Current State. That's it. No one should be able to comment on it other than the developers so not ranting, raving, flaming etc. Just visibility for those of us who would like to know that the issues we've reported are on the list and being addressed or not. It is very simple to do and I for one would find it enormously helpful.

2) WEEKLY, regular posts from the developers with a brief synopsis of what's going on. Yes, there is Sebastian's update thread, but it is not posted to as promised or even with any regularity. And to be fair, I find "No news to report this week" a perfectly acceptable post (as long as it's not that every week). There is absolutely no reason that can't be done. It would take a total of 5 minutes tops from a developer or developer rep once a week. For those wanting the math, that's 0.2% of a 40 hour work week.

Those two items are easy to do and would go a very long way towards keeping the community informed.

I have been and will continue to be a supporter of FHM. I am having fun with it again, despite the 7 tries it took me to get a viable second season going. Trading, which is my favorite part of the game, still has a ways to go, but is demonstrably better. Vast majority of crashes seem to have been fixed (personally haven't had one in at least 3 or 4 months now). General improvements all around and that with at least one more big patch coming gives me a very good feeling about the game's direction and I am looking forward to playing it for years (well I'm 52, smoke and am fat so maybe I should say as long as my heart holds out ).

Final thing, are there any plans to make teams exportable to a CSV? It's a huge pain in the buttocks to screenshot and OCR to get my teams into a spreadsheet where I find that I get the best visibility of them and how best to build them and my team.

Okay, I'll shut up now since this is probably longer than all of my other posts put together.

Deriken

Something like online bug tracker?

[Deriken]

Originally Posted by dmytron

Something like online bug tracker?

Yep

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Point taken, the very least you can expect from us after posting such a helpful report is getting feedback from us. I can assure you that all your findings were added to our internal PT and will be fixed as soon as possible.

Not using this as a accuse for not answering you (or anybody else) but it is only Jeff and me doing the communication and that is in addition to coding (2 projects at the same time for me at the moment), designing, handle beta tests and research and a million other small things at the same time. We do our best to stay on top of everything and we know our communication has room to improve but as you can see the last few days, I try to post as much as possible now.

We do our best to stay on top of everything and we know our communication has room to improve but as you can see the last few days, I try to post as much as possible now.

To stop people ranting, please please post in the "Sebastian update thread"!

[Aliean]

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

Point taken, the very least you can expect from us after posting such a helpful report is getting feedback from us. I can assure you that all your findings were added to our internal PT and will be fixed as soon as possible.

Not using this as a accuse for not answering you (or anybody else) but it is only Jeff and me doing the communication and that is in addition to coding (2 projects at the same time for me at the moment), designing, handle beta tests and research and a million other small things at the same time. We do our best to stay on top of everything and we know our communication has room to improve but as you can see the last few days, I try to post as much as possible now.

why not just give the information to jeff or anyone to post it up for you?
thats how we worked back in the day when i worked with coders/developers
they gave me notes(or we talked alot in skype or any other program)
i posted them and explained to the community in a more in depth way so we had reguler updates for the customers to read and we bearly had any complaints due to it

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Yes, in theory that would work but Jeff is way more then our community manager and has a lot of stuff to do on it's own. The moment I'm done with iOOTP I will reorganize the infrastructure of FHM, it badly needs an improvement (and since this is my project I take full responsibility for the fact, that it is far from perfect at the moment).

Originally Posted by Aliean

why not just give the information to jeff or anyone to post it up for you?
thats how we worked back in the day when i worked with coders/developers
they gave me notes(or we talked alot in skype or any other program)
i posted them and explained to the community in a more in depth way so we had reguler updates for the customers to read and we bearly had any complaints due to it

Originally Posted by Sebastian Palkowski

The moment I'm done with iOOTP

And it will be...

[JRoc]

Great suggestions especially the bug tracking one. A little communication does wonders to appease the masses. Time to do it always is the issue.

Cheers

[Empach]

I think a Known Bug List would be a useful feature.