We REALLY Need 1.3

[EYguy]

Sadly, I can only emulate what many vets are saying.  I know I've volunteered to help many times but never have been taken up on it.  

I have played the games with different airports, planes, and competition.   There just isn't much else to play for.

I have suggested countless items in Features and most go either don't get responded to, minused without understanding, or other reasons.  Some are so stupidly simple, I was sure they'd be implemented immediately but haven't.

I have about 8 airplanes to schedule and I am just not motivated enough to do it.  I just know that frequency wins, grab slots, and order tons of planes, and don't worry about commonality.

I'm trying to do my best to help players but even that is getting overly difficult to do.  

Sami, I am sorry to direct a small amount of this to you, but I have to....  when you asked for people to help moderate the boards and be game helpers, I am sure many applied.  I am surprised that no one got an email saying "sorry the position is filled but I really appreciate your interest".   I do know this is your sim first, but there are many people here who have done tons to try to help the community.  We just sadly don't have any channel to talk with you and rarely get responses.

From what I am reading, this sim may need a little boost.  While there are many people willing to help, their cries are falling on deaf ears.

Swiftus, what you wrote is what I tried to explain to many users here.

Sami is good but not allmighty. I mean, he's not Chuck Norris. He has limited resources, especially limited time. We have, say, 100 people proposing 3 nice feats each, so he has 300 proposal, but probably 250 are a more realistic estimate because some of those feat are similar and overlap themselves in certain cases. ne good thing IMHO, would be having polls held between players/users in order to give sami a proposal of, say, 30 features he can choose.
One thing that is important for you is probably useless for me, but if we have 10 feat prosposals each I'm prettu sure that 2 or 3 of them we'll be similar if not the same.

We have people basically "hogging" sami's time so, please, act like mature and smart people, and try to give sami something a bit more limited and really needed to for on.

Democracy is not perfect, but is the best system we've found so far. Usually majority get the attention of the authorities, but not always... Keep this in mind, guys and girls!

Cheers

[iFlysimX]

Yes but again we are a LOT of customers here. And if your overloaded hire someone. I dont feel sorry at all because it is his choice not to hire anyone.....dont have the money well bump the prices up. Almost everyone said they would pay more. So hello do something about it!

[Pilot Oatmeal]

Yes but again we are a LOT of customers here. And if your overloaded hire someone. I dont feel sorry at all because it is his choice not to hire anyone.....dont have the money well bump the prices up. Almost everyone said they would pay more. So hello do something about it!

+1 This is so true, were not blaming sami because he has done a bad job, we just think that given the circumstances and the amount of people/customers wanting new features/bug fixes that he should probably hire someone to do this... bump up the prices if you want, this simulation needs someone full time,  you would not expect this from ANY other gaming website where you pay a fee to play...

Regards,
Jordan

[Sami]

you would not expect this from ANY other gaming website where you pay a fee to play...

Probably then better way forward would have been the same what nearly every software company does; release the first version and only issue minor bug fixes during first 6 months but do not develop it further at all?

[Dave4468]

Probably then better way forward would have been the same what nearly every software company does; release the first version and only issue minor bug fixes during first 6 months but do not develop it further at all?

I think Sami, the point is, in the least horrible way, is that those sort of (pretty rubbish) actions are not really a problem when people are not paying a subscription.

Anytime that I have bought outright a game I am pleasantly surprised if they do keep changing and adding things like DLC. And when they do stop its not a problem, I've paid once, I don't need to pay again, I've not lost anything.

And therein lies the problem.

AWS is a subscription service, we have to continually pay to use it. Forget AWS for a moment and imagine a Pay TV service like Sky. When new and interesting programs are on its fine, no-one minds the subscription. If Sky suddenly turned round and just started playing repeats pretty soon everyone would stop paying. AWS is getting to that point it would seem. Another DOTM is about to start, we pay the same subscription cost and what do we get? The same problems with used a/c, the same planes getting 1,000 orders in the first year, the same airlines and players winning, nothing changes. The same experience.

Something needs to give sooner or later. Either AWS will have to make some sort of big change to change games, somehow or players will just leave. I really hope its the first one.

[powi]

There are many games where players have been left with an unplayable game after they have purchased it. I really feel that AWS delivers a reasonably good return for its modest subscription fee. I also feel that we the players are not abandonded by the developer.

While I would also like to see fixes for some major drawbacks of the game, it seems to me that there is now going on some kind of witch hunt against the game and Sami. I truelly regret that I'm guilty for that too. For now on I'll try to show more positive attitude and I'll hope that will reflect to game development. The problems are well defined. When the time is right, I'm sure that the plyers will be consulted when outlining solutions.

Now back to the game.

[Sami]

AWS is getting to that point it would seem. Another DOTM is about to start, we pay the same subscription cost and what do we get? The same problems with used a/c, the same planes getting 1,000 orders in the first year, the same airlines and players winning, nothing changes. The same experience.

AWS at it's present state is working like any "final" release version should. There are no major bugs, the systems work almost perfectly allround, and I cannot even remember when it has frozen the last time.

What you are talking (with the exaggerated examples) is "a new game" and a complete makeover and features and elements that are not present in the software. Sure, there may (and will) be something in the future, but talking like this and demanding new things like they would be given, granted and guaranteed is not fair. The software is "what it is" - but it is developed with further enhancements & features (what most software developers do not do). And if you are unhappy you have anytime the possibility to not play. With some other software you'd be stuck with the $50 purchase with no new features or updates at all (and possibly not even bugfixes), or in worst case you'd have to pay for version upgrades.

All in all very unrealistic expectations in my mind. Or am I missing the point? This is still a management sim and the scope of the play just cannot magically change overnight (or at all, since the idea of the play is still the same!). As I could very well just state that this is the final release since it is 100% stable and almost bug free; but I am not personally happy with it (missing things I have intended to build to it, and I am sort of perfectionist) and hence I am developing new things to it.

Yes but again we are a LOT of customers here. And if your overloaded hire someone. I dont feel sorry at all because it is his choice not to hire anyone.....

What is this demand about hiring (full time?) employees? First of all, I am making the decisions; it's not a shout&vote at forums like it feels now unfortunately.

AWS has started as my hobby project and it will remain as my top priority at my time off, but there is no potential for it to expand in such a way that it would support full time employees, or even me for being full time with it to start with (the sale potential would have to triple, or more, at least). But it is of course easy to shout such things "from the bushes" without knowing facts.

And still with all the very advanced things like city demand and such, the revenue potential would not increase since most "average" users are very happy with AWS presently too.

And for temporary help etc, like discussed before, it is often much more time consuming to organize the whole thing (and to check and config it) for someone else than to make it myself. Splitting the coding for example is not something that could be done "just like that". For data mining tasks other people have done it in the past and will do in the future too (but even with that things will not happen overnight).

(and as you can see I am not very happy with the tone of this discussion.)

[LemonButt]

Sami: The problem with this whole situation is that when you exceed expectations by going above and beyond, the new expectation is that you always go above and beyond.  There are plenty of other games to play and while I think it's a good sign that everyone has a common goal of advancing the game, in reality most of these people are being unreasonable with you.  I'd love to see as many updates/changes as the next guy, but I live in reality and I know personally that coding and everything else that goes into building a game like this moves at a snail's pace (in the public's eye at least).

People need to realize that sami is like a duck on water--all you see is him moving gracefully through the water, but underneath the water his feet are kicking as fast as they can.  If AWS was open source, I'm sure people find there is easily 100,000 lines of code to make everything work as it already does--not to mention the countless hours of brainstorming and thought that went into layout, design, and functionality.

Right now AWS costs (for one game) only 67 cents/week--the cost of a can of soda.  I'd also like to point out that there are ZERO advertisements on this website.  We're getting much more bang for our buck than you guys are giving him credit for...

[iFlysimX]

Well your not the only one not happy. Guess what we are the one paying and your the one making money.

[Bolier Dweller]

I just really think it's out of line to call out the the person who is making the this game saying hes not doing enough for the game. I myself hate for people to call out my work and tell me I'm not Doing enough or not doing something right. Maybe I just see this as a attack on the guy who put his time into this game and your going to call him out about it? I just don't think it's right.

[iFlysimX]

You no what keep paying for the SAME thing with nothing new over the last 6 months. Its your money not mine. And Sami must be making good money with AWS and yet everyone feels sorry for him. Wow people wow......

[Sami]

Clement. Seriously. READ what I posted. You have in no point purchased any guarantees for upgrades or changes but the present version and status of the software. And stop assuming things like "we" and "everybody" since you are wrong: Majority of the users are still extremely pleased with AWS, look at the user survey done a few months ago for example.

There WILL be updates and new versions according to the present plans but try to understand that they are not coming for granted, and plans may change, and at any point you have not paid a dime for them (until ready, tested and released), so you cannot act like that and demand things "now", since I assume you do not have the idea how large and complex the software already is!

End of this topic since nobody has anything meaningful to say, any furter comments via PM.



(fyi. Removed also one comment as it was too much of an personal attack towards other user, no need to fight.)