The truth about free updates and frustration (including opinions)

[FutureFear]

Afraid RCTW is gonna steal the show with a final update you mean? [haha]

Where does this assumption come from? Aside from the usual suspects, who would hold it against Frontier if they explained sorry, but for this or that reason we can't include feature XY as soon as we wanted to. And giving us a rough roadmap wouldn't mean they had to make promises.
You're arguing they shouldn't say anything and let people become frustrated because if they gave more information there's a chance people might become frustrated if things don't go as planned... [squeeeeee] Can you see the irony here?

We're not talking about perfection here. We're (maybe I should say I?) not talking about making everyone happy. There are 3 things Frontier says they're offering with PC: building, simulation and management. In every area there are issues that people have been pointing out for a long time.
It's only reasonable to expect Frontier to turn these three things into a working and enjoyable game. If after a year people are still complaining about the same things since before release you gotta wonder what's going on. This is what I think is happening.
Is it a huge game? Sure. But it was the company that set the scope of the project. If they can't get work done fast enough having more people work on it should do the trick, right?
You see, requesting faster progress/ more fixes/ etc. doesn't mean anyone is disrespecting hard working devs or saying they're lazy and should do more. I believe Bo when she says everyone working on the game is greatly invested. But there is still not enough progress at basic things. So we're talking about priorities here as well.

The best way to encourage people to encourage someone is of course telling them they're mad and cranky. [wacky]

Yes, yes today planet coaster doesn't have really big competition, but that doesn't mean other game development companies don't "spy".

Where do my assumptions come from? i'm suprised you have to ask. (manny examples out there)
Yes there is irony in it, but sadly it's human nature, we will always find something to complain about even if they did EXACTLY what we asked.
Welcome to the modern western society, where people can't do anything good anymore.

Actually we are talking about perfection, why? Because you have certain expectations, the guy next to you also has certain expectations, i have them and the entire community has them.
But that doesn't they are all the same expectations, so in the end it does end up to please everyone.... and make a perfect, and we all know it's impossible.
So yes Frontier has to dissapoint some people here, and i'm sorry you are among them, but that's life you can't have everything you want.

True there might be beter ways to encourage people then to tell them they are mad and cranky, but that wasn't at all my point.
If you look at some post here on the forum some people just are mad and cranky, i just wanted to point out that it doesn't help anyone beign so.
Like i said, look at the bright side of life.

 

[En Anu]

I can relate to manny opinions here, and I understand why people get frustrated @ Frontier.
I can't and won't blame anyone for that, but there are always 2 sides on the coin.

Yes, planet coaster could use a polish of it's basegame features and trust me they do know, Bo and other Frontier employees said so manny times now.
I can even tell everyone they have a team working on it, just read between the lines.
I'm not at all close to the source to know these things, I listen, watch and read almost everything Frontier does say/post.

Yes, Frontier could be more open about their current development status, but the picture is bigger then that.
The game industry is REALLY BIG, that also means the competition is REALLY BIG.
If they would communicate more openly other game companies could (in theorie) steal that knowledge and inplement those things in their own games (faster).
That's one of the main reasons they keep it for themselfs.

Another major part has to do with us, the players/customers.
If they would let us know what they are working on right now, and for some silly, minor reason the developers didn't notice it can't make it to the next (promised) update.
How would "we" react to that? Yes even more frustrated as we are now.
It can even be worse, they work on something really really cool, and at the end it's impossible to inplement it into the game... --> for alot of people here it would be the worst day ever.

This does make it sound simple, but marketing in the game industry isn't at all simple.
No doubt they have people hired to keep those things in check.
It's even so if you work for a company in the game industry (even small ones) you often have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
So try to understand them too.

The game industry did change alot the last decade(s). More and more companies see the benifits of involving their community.
I follow ALOT of companies that do so, since i play(ed) manny different games, so far Frontier is doing alot better then others.
They even organized an EXPO, I really wish I could have been there, sadly I couldn't make it.

You know I get frustrated that people just can't or won't understand that the people who work @ Frontier are also human, and that it's "just" their job and most if not all @ Frontier love their jobs.
That means they do what to they do as fast and devoted as humanly possible. I'm even impressed by their rate of updates and the amount of content they release.
If they could they would please everyone of us, but you can't make a perfect game in an imperfect world/universe/multi-verse... some things are just impossible.

We can keep posting all our concerns and frustration on the forum here over and over... it won't change anything because of the above reasons.
I suggest to instead of beign mad and cranky to encourage Frontier with what they do right, and gently make suggestion where they could improve.
It would make them happy and work faster and we wouldn't ragequit planet coaster because certain features aren't there YET.

Look at the bright side of life

So what you are saying is we should be great full (in your opinion) that Frontier are better with community support than most and due to innovation secrets have to be careful disclosing to public domain. Hmm this is a brilliant get out clause for all those early bird players and many others who can see the various base game cracks which need fixing prior to any DLCs, logic dictates, so one would sort those out first would they not, this is rhetorical. I see patterns very quickly and have played the game long enough to know where the true concentrations need to be and I am not the only one, I too have read so many debates on what should be done and have to say I agree with the early bird players/customers.

Get the BASE game right and Frontier will have my support again and I will go and buy spooky and other DLCs however I am no idiot I am not just going to keep on buying DLCs (previous already bought the licenced ones although not into it did it to support Frontier) before the base game main issues have been addressed!

 

[En Anu]

Where does this assumption come from? Aside from the usual suspects, who would hold it against Frontier if they explained sorry, but for this or that reason we can't include feature XY as soon as we wanted to. And giving us a rough roadmap wouldn't mean they had to make promises.
You're arguing they shouldn't say anything and let people become frustrated because if they gave more information there's a chance people might become frustrated if things don't go as planned... [squeeeeee] Can you see the irony here?

Totally agree with what has been said here!

 

[En Anu]

This part again becomes very subjective to what each person has as its priorities. Around launch and during the first 6 months or so there were a lot of "complains" about too few rides (compare to RTC3) so Frontier prioritized adding/finishing more rides for the game. Now we have almost double the amount of rides compared to launch. Then there were a lot of requests for fireworks and they added those as well. There were also a ton of requests for custom screens so that was added to the game. A lot of people complained about the limit of not being able to select what textures they would like to use for each map. Frontier first said it would not possible and then they figured out a way to do it. to make us happy. All these were highly requested items that Frontier one way or another prioritized. Spending time on these items (I have no idea of knowing how they were prioritized originally, if at all) took away time from looking into other things. Unfortunately, for us, Frontier has limited resources, every company has, so if they change direction so please some parts of the customer base, other items may, temporarily, take a backseat for a while. You may not agree with how they prioritize things since they don't fit into your wishlist but it does for others. I don't think we can say that they have added anything that the majority did not like at the time it was added. Just look at the live streams, reveal blog posts etc and see the happy people..

I am that old I remember games that were 'completed' and very generous with content then it would be released and not the other way round!

Sigh...these WIP games is an insult to consumers as a whole, they release small parts of the overall game we then pay standard prices relative to older/classic games for quarter of the strength, then tell us we are getting free updates to try and psychologically motivate us and then use as guinea pigs to get the game correct (hopefully) and then later release a totally new version of game which means you have to buy it all over again!

Looks like a win win for the developers of games, hooray for the internet, hooray for customer exploitation...

 

[mr.sugar]

Totally agree with what has been said here!

Here, they don´t have to promise anything solid. Hell, I would even be happy if they made dev.blogs about what they are/were working on, what problems they had to get through (just to give people idea what the development is all about, maybe it would open people´s eyes and nobody would ever say that they don´t think coaster smoothes fix is actually not hard to do, as one told me on this forum)

Current PR is pretty cool, but honestly, I think the "interaction" with the community is sort of illusion (probably thanks to actual streams instead of simple articles). Yet I don´t think Frontier listens to feedback more than most of the companies out there. But thanks to the way they keep in touch with us, it feels different and better (but in reality, it´s not much better). I can only imagine how would you feel about Parkitect for instance. If they started similar streams like Frontier does. I can assure you they would blow Frontier out of water if they combined their blogs with streams similar to Frontier´s. Content wise, Parkitect is already better and I actually feel progress on the game and they are not afraid to unveil things even if it´s not certain they can really make it.

 

[En Anu]

another example: everyone i met at FX17 was insanely passionate, and talked enthusiastically and openly open their love of the game, love of the company, love of the community. so awesome. but bring up the lack of interaction on the forums and watch the body language: tense, shutdown posture, drop in volume and tone, muttering about "yeah, well, sorry", sudden change of topics... like suddenly an alien took over their brains. that is not natural, and i wonder if that is the result of strict rules, orders, policies, which make them uncomfortable.

I know how these things work! Totally agree with you and as Public Enemy once said 'don't believe the HYPE'

 

[En Anu]

I will say this out of the 1 million copies sold. I would bet no more than 20K look at these forums or even post to them. that's only 2% of the entire planet coaster community. we are the minority of players to post or suggest ideas, or give feedback, and I would go even farther to say if the rest of the 98% looked on the forums it's in the troubleshooting section / bugs.

How about all those tens of thousands of players who buy the game realise it is incomplete don't complain and just move on to the next game, every thought of that?

Best not to try and assume with statistics as it is the evil of mathematics!

Yes everyone I know it is a contradiction it was done on purpose

 

[En Anu]

Here, they don´t have to promise anything solid. Hell, I would even be happy if they made dev.blogs about what they are/were working on, what problems they had to get through (just to give people idea what the development is all about, maybe it would open people´s eyes and nobody would ever say that they don´t think coaster smoothes fix is actually not hard to do, as one told me on this forum)

Current PR is pretty cool, but honestly, I think the "interaction" with the community is sort of illusion (probably thanks to actual streams instead of simple articles). Yet I don´t think Frontier listens to feedback more than most of the companies out there. But thanks to the way they keep in touch with us, it feels different and better (but in reality, it´s not much better). I can only imagine how would you feel about Parkitect for instance. If they started similar streams like Frontier does. I can assure you they would blow Frontier out of water if they combined their blogs with streams similar to Frontier´s. Content wise, Parkitect is already better and I actually feel progress on the game and they are not afraid to unveil things even if it´s not certain they can really make it.

Coaster smoothness is one of the prime areas and the integrity and refinement of this would be harder as it means trying to tweak the engine and that all depends on the software engine they used in the first place! They can still work on the other base areas and as you said 'keep us notified' and not in the dark. I do feel that they do the forum/community thing as this POS tool and marketing fashion for companies from all walks of life as a whole so nothing special there and they could be doing a much better job as a whole relating to the community.

James Viago has been in talks with them and by what he has written has has a mixed bag of thoughts. James is constructive and fair when he writes and you can also see the passion he has for PC, I too once had that, for me I do not like being turned over and I feel Frontier are relying on a cash cow of DLCs over engine refinement and base game integrity being generous with terrain items at a bare minimum before beta came out.

Never tried Parkitect have heard good things about it. The graphics do look very retro, however looks can be deceiving, however I am in the process of researching this game.

Just really want Frontier to be more transparent as a whole and be genuine through and through and they will get my devotion.

 

[mr.sugar]

Coaster smoothness is one of the prime areas and the integrity and refinement of this would be harder as it means trying to tweak the engine and that all depends on the software engine they used in the first place! They can still work on the other base areas and as you said 'keep us notified' and not in the dark. I do feel that they do the forum/community thing as this POS tool and marketing fashion for companies from all walks of life as a whole so nothing special there and they could be doing a much better job as a whole relating to the community.

James Viago has been in talks with them and by what he has written has has a mixed bag of thoughts. James is constructive and fair when he writes and you can also see the passion he has for PC, I too once had that, for me I do not like being turned over and I feel Frontier are relying on a cash cow of DLCs over engine refinement and base game integrity being generous with terrain items at a bare minimum before beta came out.

Never tried Parkitect have heard good things about it. The graphics do look very retro, however looks can be deceiving, however I am in the process of researching this game.

Just really want Frontier to be more transparent as a whole and be genuine through and through and they will get my devotion.

Yea, well they could at least tell the community that they are aware of the coaster smoothnes problem, try to fix it, but they have this and that problem and they are still looking for a solution, for instance. Although I´m the one who consider that problem as a lower priority, I know some people are crazy about it and I think they deserver some insight into this.

And Parkitect is cool. I´m not fan of the artstyle, that´s the only thing I don´t like about the game. Besides that, for a game using "dated" grid system, you can create astonishing stuff and with ease.

 

[Chems]

Craziest smoothness person checking in. Frontier did acknowledge the thread about the smoothness issue in one of their livestreams a while back, so there's something.. [tongue]

 

[jamesviago]

I got some feedback about smoothness at FX17.
If I recall correctly, it was:
1) there was an issue with the joins not being smooth.
2) the data issue is fixed, the calculations are now smooth at the joins.
3) There are unresolved technical issues with the track rendering looking unsmooth (so the spine maths are right but the rendering isn't).
4) there may also be issues with the camera tracking in a jerky fashion.

I was in a group, and the developer assured us it's an accepted issue, it's tricky, and it's getting attention.

 

[Chems]

Very interesting James. I hope the issue gets proper attention. With the recent release of friction sliders, and the upcoming train swap feature, I think its fairly save to say more coaster improvements will be coming up. [up]

 

[Tillietwos]

To slightly disagree with myself for a moment,
FX17 did offer some pre-release hype value, although not in the more exciting modes I was referring to here:

So maybe they are hunting for some kind of compromise? I still submit that the old free flowing modes, with oopsies , clips, diaries and sneaky hints, was more effective than grand reveal announcements.

Agree so much with you James. Way back when they used to release oop's and photo's with hints, the forum came alive and everyone joined together with the hype. Those days were a lot of fun..

 

[ojonas]

Agree so much with you James. Way back when they used to release oop's and photo's with hints, the forum came alive and everyone joined together with the hype. Those days were a lot of fun..

I agree, miss those times. But I think we, the forum community killed this for Frontier by being too greedy and too hard on them if they did not release everything shown at once. I think this is the main reason why they adjusted slightly how they do these reveals. The other reason was that that other game (RCTW) always seemed to undercut the release with their own (very crappy) version of whatever Frontier planned to release. I understand as a company you don't want to give away your "secrets" before you have to, especially when it was so obvious that Atari just tried to steal the show (and falling very flat by doing do). This may change now when RCTW is nowhere near to be a serious competitor anymore./ Although there is always a chance/risk (depending on which side you are looking from) that another game in this genera is being developed and just feed off any information they can get from Frontier.

 

[ojonas]

Very interesting James. I hope the issue gets proper attention. With the recent release of friction sliders, and the upcoming train swap feature, I think its fairly save to say more coaster improvements will be coming up. [up]

I never understood why people seem to think that we won't get more improvements going forward. This game is treated as an iterative process rather than release and then start developing Planet Coaster 2. Just look at Elite Dangerous. It is a much older game but is still technically just the first release with tons of add-ons to it to constantly keep the game develop. My prediction is that we won't see a Planet Coaster for many years to come, if ever. In order for something like that to make sense they would have to develop a new version of the engine as this one can only handle so much (as can our current computers). If nothing else, Frontier has shown that they constantly have added, tweaked and improved the game. Have the pleased everyone and every category yet? No, but they are working on, what they think with input from fans, is the most important stuff. When they are ready they will include it in a DLC or regular update. So far none of the core features, improvements and additions have been in any paid content and today there are no reason to believe that will change anytime soon. Frontier is not stupid. They know where they have the fans and what they can get away with as paid vs. free content/features. Main reason why we have not seen any improvements to some of the major items being requested here is probably because they are very hard to get corrected. It is not like they just flip a switch and then boom, issue resolved.

 

[seeker939]

I haven't overlooked your response.

Stating personal opinions as if it were facts (which apply to everyone) doesn't make those opinions facts.

Are we actually talking about the same thing? [weird]

It's my opinion that the sky is blue and 1+1 equals 2 but that doesn't make these facts subjective.

Fact: Building in general takes longer in PC than it did in RCT 3.
Opinion: It does/ doesn't matter that building takes longer in PC because I only/ never want to build stuff.

Yes there is irony in it, but sadly it's human nature, we will always find something to complain about even if they did EXACTLY what we asked.
Welcome to the modern western society, where people can't do anything good anymore.

Actually we are talking about perfection, why? Because you have certain expectations, the guy next to you also has certain expectations, i have them and the entire community has them.
But that doesn't they are all the same expectations, so in the end it does end up to please everyone.... and make a perfect, and we all know it's impossible.

You're saying no matter what Frontier does or doesn't do, people will always complain and no matter what they do or don't do PC will always be imperfect. So if I take your argument seriously it leads to the absurd conclusion it doesn't matter what Frontier does or doesn't do. The devs could as well pack up and go home. Hm....

I got some feedback about smoothness at FX17.
If I recall correctly, it was:
1) there was an issue with the joins not being smooth.
2) the data issue is fixed, the calculations are now smooth at the joins.
3) There are unresolved technical issues with the track rendering looking unsmooth (so the spine maths are right but the rendering isn't).
4) there may also be issues with the camera tracking in a jerky fashion.

I was in a group, and the developer assured us it's an accepted issue, it's tricky, and it's getting attention.

Good to know! This is exactly the kind of information people are interested in.

I agree, miss those times. But I think we, the forum community killed this for Frontier by being too greedy and too hard on them if they did not release everything shown at once. I think this is the main reason why they adjusted slightly how they do these reveals.

I'm just glad their strategy has lead to less greed and people being more appreciative and understanding. Oh wait, it hasn't!

The other reason was that that other game (RCTW) always seemed to undercut the release with their own (very crappy) version of whatever Frontier planned to release.
I understand as a company you don't want to give away your "secrets" before you have to, especially when it was so obvious that Atari just tried to steal the show (and falling very flat by doing do). This may change now when RCTW is nowhere near to be a serious competitor anymore./ Although there is always a chance/risk (depending on which side you are looking from) that another game in this genera is being developed and just feed off any information they can get from Frontier

It sure was neck on neck! Up until the summer update I was under the impression RCTW was the better game. The geniouses at Atari had me fooled there for a second. [wink]
But who knows maybe EA is secretly working on Planet Sims Coaster World. Don't tell them you're fixing the UI because they will just do the same!! [mouth shut] (Sorry but somehow your post brings out my sarcasm.)

 

[Chems]

When major flaws of the game aren't being acknowledged for over a year it is understandable people lost the hope it will ever get fixed.

 

[ojonas]

I am that old I remember games that were 'completed' and very generous with content then it would be released and not the other way round!

Sigh...these WIP games is an insult to consumers as a whole, they release small parts of the overall game we then pay standard prices relative to older/classic games for quarter of the strength, then tell us we are getting free updates to try and psychologically motivate us and then use as guinea pigs to get the game correct (hopefully) and then later release a totally new version of game which means you have to buy it all over again!

Looks like a win win for the developers of games, hooray for the internet, hooray for customer exploitation...

It is a very different world and economic climate in the gaming industry today than back in the days. Back then you more or less were forced to release a game with no bugs because there very very limited ways of updating them after release. You had to make new CD-ROMS for example. Very costly. If you had a bug you just had to live with it. Slim chance to get an update out quickly. Buying a game back then was a much higher risk than today and the games cost about the same as today. Some might even be cheaper today than before. But the consumers also did not know about a certain game until it was ready for release and you only heard about them through a magazine or maybe a TV show. There were no Internet (as we know it today), no YouTube to advertise the game etc. Unless you were a big developer or a brilliant person (Chris Sawyer) you had no chance to survive in the gaming industry. Today news about games are leaked (or released on purpose) long before a game is finished. With platforms like Steam even a tiny 2 person company can get their games out there for next to nothing compared to how it used to work. Now they are "forced", in many ways by us the consumers, to release early to undercut the competition or to stay relevant as a company (survival). It doesn't always work but just see what happened with RCTW. PlanCo was a hell of a lot more refined and finished game at release than RCTW ever became. But Atari saw that they were losing towards PlanCo and were forced to release early or all the customers would have gone to Frontier (which they eventually did do). So we, the consumers as a whole, not just for this game, has created this way of release cycles long time ago. Even the mamoths in the software industry, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe etc. have stopped releasing new versions, they just released updates to the existing ones. In many of those cases, like Adobe and Microsoft, you still have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee. Same thinking with the "Season Pass" feature a lot of games, mainly FPS and bigger AAA releases. You as a consumer either pay a subscription fee and get access to whatever new content they decide to release (not always known upfront what it will be and how much). This is the economy of the gaming industry today. The past is in the past, we need to move on shape the future. It was not always better in the past. Certainly not in the gaming industry world.

 

[seeker939]

It is a very different world and economic climate in the gaming industry today than back in the days.

I agree that things were not better in the past. There was a time when there were no patches. Games got released with game breaking bugs and they got never fixed. It is a different time now.
You will probably agree, we should participate in the shaping of the future. This is why we're here, we want to participate.

 

[En Anu]

It sure was neck on neck! Up until the summer update I was under the impression RCTW was the better game. The geniouses at Atari had me fooled there for a second. [wink]
But who knows maybe EA is secretly working on Planet Sims Coaster World. Don't tell them you're fixing the UI because they will just do the same!! [mouth shut] (Sorry but somehow your post brings out my sarcasm.)

OUCH, keep those claws in

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When major flaws of the game aren't being acknowledged for over a year it is understandable people lost the hope it will ever get fixed.

Very fair point.

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I got some feedback about smoothness at FX17.
If I recall correctly, it was:
1) there was an issue with the joins not being smooth.
2) the data issue is fixed, the calculations are now smooth at the joins.
3) There are unresolved technical issues with the track rendering looking unsmooth (so the spine maths are right but the rendering isn't).
4) there may also be issues with the camera tracking in a jerky fashion.

I was in a group, and the developer assured us it's an accepted issue, it's tricky, and it's getting attention.

Did they say when this will be resolved and put on an update?