Atomic Systems

ANyone else concerned with the speed of sanitation on the "offical forums", it now seems than any bug that can't be fixed by "reading the manual or FAQs" or "It's supposed to do that" is speedily swept away, even constructive critique and suggestions for improvements seem to disappear with indecent haste.

It;s a shame really, because the huge band of beta testers than KRS now has do have some ideas on how to push things forward.

That's why I haven't bothered posting over there - or on Train-sim.com either, where it seems several of the grandees are badmouthing the response EARS is getting on UKTS.

Currently working on the review for my site which, while Im trying to keep a balance of good and bad, will pull no punches as to my opinion on the whole thing.

I guess it was too much to hope for any sort of official statement from EA/Kuju/RSDL or that a damage limitation plan would be put into action. Surely they weren't so naive to expect putting the game out in this state would garner anything other than the reaction it has and have some sort of ace up their sleeve to offset the issues.

bigvern wrote:That's why I haven't bothered posting over there - or on Train-sim.com either, where it seems several of the grandees are badmouthing the response EARS is getting on UKTS.

Well if ts.com are coming up with solutions to problems, I'm only too pleased.

Never thought I'd support ts.com but the circus here isn't helping anyone who's purchased KRS even if it's promoting free speech for this sim.

If I were RDSL, I'd sanitise the threads.

Here, good suggestions are lost amongst endless new threads not adding to anything.

Hmmm.........that goes someway to explain the recent adsence of RS from these forums.
I was beginning to wonder.
Cheers
Jon

Hmmm, but surely one comment "We anticipate that a lot (nice n vague over what it fixes)of problems users are experiencing will be fixed in the first patch which we anticipate will be ready <insert vague timescale e.g. in a few weeks>" That would actually shut people up, more so than telling them thier wrong or that the answers are in the manual or FAQs. Adopting a siege mentality, especially after trying to "engage the community" during the develpoment period, doesn't send the right messages.

I think maybe the inital reaction was perhaps harsh, but it's beggining to settle, people can see the potential and are now thinking "if it just had this or that" it'd be perfect.

Must admit i've always questioned the wisdom of a commercial developer having a support forum rather than a helpdesk system - ultimately you want to provide a service whereby your customers can get answers to questions, not get drawn in to long debates.

Forums tend to promote users discussing both good AND bad points, but no commercial entity wants the bad stuff discussed too loudly.

Forum users on an "official" forum hosted by the company, are generally expecting a relatively useful, perhaps even prompt answer to their questions, no matter how awkward for them, and by hosting such a forum one could expect that a company is proposing to do just that.

It seems entirely wrong, for their stated goals, to run a forum - an electronic helpdesk like Kayako would seem to me to be a far better thing for them to do, same as for any commercial entity that isn't prepared to roll up their sleeves and get friendly with their users.

I don't mean any of that in a negative way, I don't expect any commercial entity to go to any extreme such as replying to daily posts on forums etc - they've got better things to do like work on the product, leaving one person to field questions? Not really plausible... and any post written by an employee of the company will be read as OFFICIAL so it all has to be carefully checked by persons of authority, meaning the only likely things you CAN get out on a regular basis are "read the manual" or "that has been identified as a problem and may be included in a future patch" or "please submit that as a report to xyz forum for consideration" and so forth, all canned pre-approved responses that really don't tell you much and purposefully do not commit the organisation to anything.

Commercial groups simply can't provide that 1-on-1 snappy response that gets to the heart of the matter because there are bigger considerations at large for them, whether you like it or not.

... but by offering a forum, they grant that expectation and add just one more thing for people to get upset about when it doesn't happen.

Full credit to Europeanbahn for realising this long ago and switching to a support system that has enabled them to deal with customers more easily and free up their time to getting on with products. It's been extremely successful for them.

Personally I wouldn't get upset about the thread deletion, it's a fact of life for the aims they are trying to achieve. If you want to have your say with realistically no less visibility to Rail Sim Developments staff then that's what this place is for

Matt.

NeutronIC wrote:If you want to have your say with realistically no less visibility to Rail Sim Developments staff then that's what this place is for

But if you choose that option to make your views known please stay within the forum rules

I will take this opportunity to thank the membership for their contributions in the last week - I am mildly surprised that myself and my fellow moderators have not had to bin more threads than the very few we have done. It is clear more work is required on the simulator and some people are very disappointed in the product.

My own view is that there is potential but things do need fixing - I keep spreading consists all over the countryside due to route setting mistakes in free roaming.

Support forums work very well when the product in question has only minor issues, and maybe one or two major issues where reassurance has been given that they will be fixed, as users will help each other out knowing the outstanding issues will be fixed in due course.

They don't work so well when a product is so full of bugs that every other thread on the forum is complaining about this that or the other, and often a whole load of bugs, as there is no way to answer so many complaints if you hope to have any time left to fix the problems.

Deleting threads (rather than locking them) is always a bad idea on an official forum though; it suggests they are denying the existence of problems, unless an official statement has been made about known problems which need no further discussion.

This whole thing is about the issue of KRS of being rushed out the door to the general public. If it wasnt rushed out the door and was tested properly. None of this would probably be happening and there wouldnt be such as mess. The question that I am asking myself is how can a computer/gamer expert miss the bug about the spelling of "york" in one of the activities? That right there is pretty pathetic if you ask me.

I think Bioware managed to do a very good job with their offical forums for Neverwinternights, any topics considere dto inflamatory were locked but I don;t recall too many being deleted, even after the outrage after NWN2 was release.

It wasn't that uncommon there for DEvs to enter into ddiscussions about why the porgram didn;t do this or that, the problems they were having with bug fixes, what they were cnsidering for future patches etc. i guess it was this enivornment I had in mind when I saw the "Offical" RAil Sim Forums.

Hi,

I have posted 2 threads on there and they have both been removed, what a joke, if they dont like what you say, they take it off.

Brian

I have posted 2 threads on there and they have both been removed, what a joke, if they dont like what you say, they take it off.

The question is...were your two threads asking for support? Or were they passing comment (good or bad) about the product?

Hi,

In answer to your question, it was coments, a bad one I suppose, but it was not sarcastic and it was constructive.

Cheers
Brian

The trouble is, the way they've set it up (i.e. with no separate help system) this is an inevitable result. Genuine questions and requests for support can all too easily be interpreted as negative comments and get the chop. For example I'd like to ensure they are aware of the UI scaling issues in widescreen resolutions, but have yet to post over there as I can't come up with a way of phrasing that without it sounding like criticism. I suppose in a way it is, personally I don't mean it that way, I'd just like to make sure they know about it.

The problem with deleting threads rather than posting a comment and locking it is that different people will just keep asking the same things time and again. At leats if they lock it with a "thanks we're aware of the problem" or "it's supposed to do that" etc. comment people can see that an issue has already been raised.

What really worries me though is that the list of "Confirmed Reported Issues" is rather short and hasn't been updated since he day of release (other than to update the status of items as they are being fixed, which is of course a very good thing in itself). If I were a suspicious man, I might think that list was ready before release as it doesn't seem to have been added to based on user feedback. On that one, only time will tell.

Perhaps I'll email them about the UI scaling instead...

Paul

Yes the list of confirmed bugs, is that really "list of bugs we acknowledge and are going to fix"