rF2 classified as commercial raises different expectations

I am a little disappointed that I spent $40 on a sim only to learn that it has only 2 cars that I like. I bought it thinking it would be further along by now. I check here once a week to see if something new has come along, and keep reading posts from people who feel as I do, and responses from staff that seem ridiculously condescending and confrontational. My god man, how about some tactful customer soothing? But, I’m really looking forward to that ‘Vette and Camaro!

http://www.upyourservice.com/blog/service-recovery-and-guarantees/how-to-uplift-angry-customers/

 

Offering a refund to someone who is wayyyy out of the time bracket for a refund is confrontational and condescending? Wow! I'd like to know what other software developers give refunds after 6 months.

 

Why yes, in my opinion it is. How about an attempt to console a client with kind words and helpful information, and letting the customer know that his custom is valued, instead of conveying that the customer's issues aren't worth working out, and dumping them and being rid of them are the best solution? But hey, everyone sees things differently. I don't expect you to agree with everything I say.

 

OK so what i can glean from this thread is that:
rF2 has always been "commercial" since the beta was released;
Commercial doesn't mean the game will acquire overnight all features expected in the finished product;
You buy the finished product today and get to play it in whatever state it is currently in (bonus!);
Buying said product doesn't mean ISI will immediately pander to any complaint(whinge) you may have about said unfinished product;
And all of this info is freely available here before you purchase and if you don't read it first you have 30days for a refund;
People will still whinge and think they've got a raw deal no matter how much they are told.

 

Basically, they owe us nothing other than a product we have paid for. As for now, we have paid for a product, which is now still in beta, evolving into a proper product when it passes the beta stage. Although I don't like the length of this stage, and the silently freeing up more time under a different name to justify it, realisticly, this is all we have and to wait it all we can do. How is quoting directly from the website a half truth?

Thanks for telling me what I do, guess I had that coming Luckily for me, I like to form my own opinions. If you don't agree with them, your loss really.

Guess you feel personally attacked or something?

How do you still think you (the community) are financing rF2? What about the entire year or 2 that went it development before we could play it? We don't know ISI's largest stream of income (my best guess is licensing for gMotor and the professional racing and training market) and thinking the people who purchased rF2 are actively financing development is naïve at best if you ask me.*
How about making stuff up... childish attitude from ISI? Holy crap this is getting better with every post, next thing you'll say is that ISi made you purchase rf2, right?

I think with Tim's posts, everything should be cleared up enough..



*
With all the sales for rF2 added up at this point, I would be surprised if you can pay one full time employee for two years straight. Pure guesswork of course, but just to make a point.

 

Tomatos change colour from green to red at a certain point in time... ahh and to be complete: Microsoft released windows 8, yes both 32 and 64 bit...

 

Did it come to mind Microsoft might have 500 people working on that, where as ISI have maybe 10 to 15 people at most, possibly including the coffee lady and phone lady?

 

AGAIN: the question is not if there are bugs or not, or if any other company in the world ever did something similar...

At the end, we all agree that rF2 is still in beta stage. (in this thread everybody agrees at least)

So why did ISI remove the BETA tag? Do you think it's beyond beta? Will there be another official launch?
ISI, what is so hard to explain in this?

 

So why did you bring microsoft in there in the first place then?

Why they did remove that tag is something they alone can disclose and probably won't, they don't have to explain themselves to us you know. Surely there will be an official launch, when it's gold, it will be gold and we will know when they start pressing those dvds.

The community seems not easily fooled into thinking that suddenly overnight all bugs are resolved and we have a release candidate here and I am sure this wasn't ISI's intention in the first place. Whatever their motivation, as always, we are probably over thinking it and give it too much food for thought, but that doesn't make it less silly when you think about it. Bottom line, there is 0.0 difference in how we experience rF2 at this point, and frankly I'm fine with that, as long as there is progress and improvements to be enjoyed.

 

I think you just did not understand the tomato thing...

 

Hey, I only had two coffee this morning...

 

Every time I have visited over the last couple of weeks it has been due to a report from other members on a post, so I can see how it feels like that.

The content of cars and tracks is listed on the downloads page of rFactor.net. Was it the Camaro and C6R you were only interested in? Camaro is early, as noted when posted. C6R is in late testing.


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It's not possible to give the information he wants and needs. And i am replying to someone who is posting that there is a problem at a company based on there being some silence. I honestly don't think theres a door to walk through once someone has warped that far... I trust that your suggestion works with some people, and that's why most people get exactly that.


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They also released Me and Vista. Can you explain what you mean more (I'm not understanding)?


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Gjon is the phone lady.


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It's hard to explain something you see as nothing. Unless you want something made up.

For me, and for ISI, the method of development stays the same, but we have finished testing the features we wanted tested (with more priority and earlier). The software itself became public during that time, and remains so as we now continue exactly as before. I've explained this a lot, it's hard to explain something you see as no real change


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In fact, I did feel attacked by your post. You speak as if you posessed the truth. You may fell comfortable with the situation and I guess you are ready to wait for as many years as it looks like it is going to take at this pace. Others don't. I think I deserve more than a f______g product since I have paid, tested, fedback, published tracks for something I could not even play until some months after I purchased it (Build 49 exatcly). I previously unsuccesfully changed my laptop to a 1000€ gaming model that fulfilled ISI rf2 requirements and still need to adjust the settings for a minimum framerate. Now Tim offers a refund for which I have not asked (I repeat again as I posted in the original thread about the "few changes": I don't want a refund. I ask for calling the stage of the project where we are now by what it really is BETA. I ask to reconsider refund policy which I would say is preventing new people entering the project and I think is not good for rf2. In this way I would like Tim to confirm that I am wrong and that the sales petitions since the status change announcement have increased and the refund petitions dropped. For sure, Tim will not answer since it is not convenient, despite being able to take 10 minutes or more to defend against my critics. If half that time was spent informing about the project itself, we probably would be not be talking now.

 

Maybe the tone or the argumentation from some peoples are a bit hard, but i mostly can understand they.
Some friends, my brother and me have all purchased rF2, but we all didn´t enjoy it up to now. This one don't like the cars, this one missed some cool tracks, the other one don't like the graphics and so on. But we all together don't enjoy the online racing in rF2. Without a sanctioned online-service you have to be part of a league or something to have good and fair races. But no one of us wants to wait for "this day" to race at "this time - this event". Thats why we mostly race another sim that offers us this service. So maybe ISI should or could develop something to make the puplic online racing more enjoyable, or should offer own ranked events or puplic races or so.

Another thing we dislike is that rf2 have some great features which are pointless in its current stage. We have nightracing but have to struggle with strange reflections on the windscreen. We have weather/rain racing but no spray and no water on the windscreen (and than some people wonder why nobody wants to race in the rain). This all looks really half baked.
The most enjoyable features for now are the real-road and the great tire-model, but this alone don't keep us to race rF2.

Of course, there will be updates, additions and all in the future. Bur ISI really strained the patients of her costumers.


greetings Marcus

 

Tomato, potato.... Words aren't important around here. We started with tomatoes, but in the course they started to call it potatoes before any update package expecting nobody asks the diference. Fanboys eat whatever is given to then without questions.
See the skins issue: its not a bug. Its a feature. Because in other way it will result in a crash and any solution that don't become a crash is called feature.

 

Thx for your clarification but could you please help me to see what is there...
I'll be very direct, don't take it wrong but it explains best why I'm reacting to this change:

You raised some confusion on existing customers and it will mislead new customers. (even though they can refund for 30 days).
If you can't properly explain the reason, I think this says enough.

So what I see now is:
You're trying to sell more of a beta product by removing the BETA Tag.
Even now being out of BETA, you're not improving the communication, will not tell us about bugs or upcoming content, not speak about a timetable.

While the game was still tagged as "BETA", we were told we're in a BETA and asked not to complain...
Now that you're selling it as "Out-of-beta" your saying that it was always commercial and that nothing has changed...

So it seems that you are confident enough with your software to remove the beta tag and hence we should be pretty close a bug-less release? Don't you think that the persisting mirror bug is a bit embarrassing after over 1 year of paid beta?

Maybe I'm seeing it all wrong but this "BETA-trick" move is really disappointing, especially for a company like ISI, having the reputation to care more about the software than the marketing of it...

Honestly, you could at least have removed the existing bugs, do a 134b release (clean of known major bugs) and remove the BETA tag. That would have made a bit of sense at least and you would have arguments. (kind of)
Now it just looks like you're trying to fool the community.

Another related question related to beta or not?
> will you differentiate between "stable" and test releases in future? Will we be able to choose which update to take or not?

I would'nt create or join a championship if the sim is still BETA. If it is not BETA anymore, I can count of the developpers to release stable, bug-free updates. During beta, you can't ask this.

So at the end, it does matter if rF2 is in BETA or not. Even though you might bend the word BETA as much as you want. There is general understanding on what a BETA is.

If rF2 is not BETA anymore, ISI must release stable versions in future and communicate on bug fixing with their customers. (content and new features is something apart)

But then comes the next question: if ISI releases only stable versions, who will do the beta testing ???
...
as you can see, there are more implications resulting from the removal of a simple word than one could think....