- Holiday vacation (I'm fine with it): I defended this on a dozen occasions. Programmers work about 60-80 hours a week. The game just released. They have every right to take the holidays off. Everyone does. That said, the game is online and does need to continue to run and technical support should be available for the most serious issues such as players who purchased accounts not being able to access the game. Technical support is not composed of programmers. Let them off for Christmas Eve and Christmas and New Years. They should be, but they should be available and on the ball with their duties otherwise.
- Recently, a friend purchased the game and there was an error when his card was charged (on the Elite website end). The charge was indeed charged. He could not access his account and login to the game. The charge was reflected on the bank statement. No response from Frontier for a week. Now the charge has been refunded. It's one thing to put 98% of issues on the back burner during the holidays, but these kinds of issues are priority #1 when someone has paid you for a product and service (the game and to be able to play it). Next, the money was placed on another card and charged with that card for a second attempt. The account was created successfully, but now he is unable to play, because the launcher will not launch the game (and will only do so in safe mode).
I really don't hope you ever work in software development as a manager.
Seriously for a sec, yes ED wasn't finished on release, so yes it needs more dev work even now to squish bugs and bring in promised features. I totally agree that some level of customer support should have covered these times after/before the christmas break in some capacity, again another lesson for FD to learn, but its hardly a scandal. They've probably been working flat out and you know what, i can't blame them for all taking a break. If i'd had a problem with the game over that time i'd just do something else.
- Exploiters and / or bugs giving away free money to players: I was in IRC when a lot of this started to happen. The server was acting up. People started getting free money by exploiting the system. I watched people talk about how they were able to do it and some admitted to taking advantage of it. At some point (I'm not sure how it occurred and if it was a result of this same occurrence) players were, in error, given 5 billion credits apparently. Frontier's response? Let them keep it. This illogical response from players that it doesn't effect other players isn't even the issue. I personally could care less that someone has 5 billion credits. The problem is that Frontier allowed a player to keep a very significant amount of in-game funds that were created in error. It is unprofessional and it's not something that you do as a game company.
How is this unprofessional ? If the fix required to take money away again took 5 hours of dev time then wouldn't you consider this action logical when you have a stack of game breaking bugs with a stack of angry users screaming for a fix?
Understand a few things: it is not one thing. I have defended Frontier entirely. The negativity on Reddit -- I've defended it there too. Not pressing a single button to check if your insurance is covered and losing an expensive ship is your own fault. But there are lots of legitimate concerns. I have said, don't worry about it, these things will be resolved with time. Now as time has gone by I've seen some pretty unprofessional behavior by Frontier that makes you revisit the concerns you've witnessed that you brushed aside and all of these things compounded, you start to realize that they really do need to start to get it together.
I'm just starting to see a pattern here and I'm feeling less obliged to defend Frontier. I've personally had no issues. This is because of what I have witnessed.
Edit: My suggestion to Frontier is to make a public statement outlining how you intend to correct the legitimate concerns that people are having. Let them know you aren't just leaving them out to dry. Also, you should seriously re-think your position on allowing players to keep items/funds that were received in error.
I agree their communication on some issues hasn't been great, its certainly put a few noses out of joint and caused more hassle than required if they'd said something earlier. Again i think they're on a learning curve as this goes, considering this is their only product worth a look (Zoo tycoon anyone?) and i'll still give them the benefit of the doubt for now as its probably a little more than they can chew on.
As for the free money thing, I agree its not fair, but at the same time its not impacting on my enjoyment of the game. If i chose to play solo then it wouldn't even touch on my gameplay.
