I've not played in a few weeks and now I need to learn all about this PowerPlay malarky. But where the heck are the manuals? the link from the launcher leads to an old 1.04 manual and I can't find them anywhere on here. I'm beginning to understand what the newbies complain about..
Simon, I sympathize. As a software professional for more than 30 years, I am disappointed too. I know the kind of reasons why they haven't yet been published - weeks after product release - but I can't tell you which or whether.
This kind of delay with manuals can sometimes be due to the way the product was designed. If it evolved and iterated, then it may either be due the company following so-called "Agile" development practices, or it may simply be due to lack of clear vision or proper program management. (Agile can sometimes be an disingenuous excuse, however, and poorly implemented Agile development processes can be frustrating for users who want more than non-intuitive working code: they also want training on the product.)
A company that is unsure of its product (whether or not it deserves to be) will claim to be responsive and that it listens to their user base. In the extreme this means the product is always shifting, and it's hard to write a manual if you don't know what the product will look like next week. They may be unsure of their product because they were under pressure from shareholders to release it earlier than they would have felt comfortable.
It can also be that the wrong people are writing the manuals. Developers are rarely the right people to write manuals as (a) they don't often do a good job of seeing things from a user's perspective, and (b) they're often pulled onto other things and manuals take a very low priority for them. Technical authors can do the job for you, but good technical authors have to be recruited or contracted, very often on a shoestring sub-contract basis, and often without adequate preparation or continuity from previous documentation phases.
It can be due to budget problems. Good writing costs money. Too few authors may be shared between too many projects. Training is always the thing that gets cut first when a company doesn't have enough money. Training often means internal staff training, but user training through great documentation is related to this. One always has legitimate concerns about whether a specific product or whether the whole company as a whole will exist in the future when you see warning signs like this.
So I don't know. There are many other reasons I could have listed but haven't. Whatever the reason, at the very least it's short of full professionalism and it paints the company in a poor light.
Frontier should hire me. I've developed software for decades. I've worked in test. I've worked as a technical author. I've worked as a trainer. I've worked as a project manager. I'm available.
