michelip Posted July 4, 2024 Posted July 4, 2024 Many users have been disappointed by the further delay of the DCS Chinook mod. and by such delays in general. This has been a running sore for both ED and its customers for a long time, and some predictable rules should now be established. The following analysis and solutions should be considered by E.D. and all interested users: One can assume that the reason for the repeated delays include the following factors: 1 . D.C.S is free to download, and has a tradition of very high standards for mods and game structure. In an effort to maintain these attributes, and to maintain income and user interest, it must continually commission or create mods, terrains and updates. It must (and generally does) improve its products as technology and customer expectations become increasingly sophisticated. 2. We customers are constantly treated to tempting advertisements for new mods and updates. and those who buy mods pre-release do so in good faith that their mod , altough not yet fully functional, will be of a suitable standard for basic, reasonable use. They understand that later updates will provide further improvements which will result in excellence, although this usually involves a long wait - so they are paying for an unfinished product. 3. E.D., after a period of mod development, gives a delivery date for new mods, but those predictions are notoriously unrealistic. Part of a paying customer's reasonable expectation is that the mod will be delivered in a time frame promised by the seller, especially when the represented delivery date is used in the advertisements to encourage early purchase . Broken promises lead to angry and resentful reactions from many dissapointed buyers, and last minute announcements of yet another release delay because of unforseen complexities and a glib apologies do not assuage these feelings 4. So, in summary we have a seller of downloads which are highly complex in the making and a large group of buyers who have paid a pre-release price eagerly awaiting the advertised represented date of release of their product. At a late juncture the seller cannot fulfill its target date, but still holds the monies paid to it. What is a reasonable solution? We will all have some ideas about this, and mine are: 1. I have no knowledge of E.D's affairs, but it's a fair guess that the root causes are the same old commercial reasons that we all know: (a) Insufficient qualified staff due to either a lack of available personnel, or (b) E.D's business decisions to operate at limited staff levels, or a combination of both. Such restrictions are often necessary in business and are understandable. The above may also be combined with (c) Too ambitious a mod development program stretching those limited resources and causing more delays across those developments . Either way there is a need for E.D. to use more care in its release predictions. If it advertises with a simple disclaimer that there is no promised release date, this would deter buyers as it would be too open-ended. Perhaps it could, instead, hold the pre sale promotion pending its estimate of 90% completion of the mod. E.D. must be highly experienced at such estimates after all this time. Perhaps it could also state its estimate as a time bracket over a period of, say, 30 days to allow some last minute flexibility. (e.g. " .. between May 1 and June 1, 2024".) Perhaps it might also be reasonable that E.D. refund pre-purchase money to those customers who request it if the delays exceed (say) 30 days after the expiration of the estimated time bracket. If E.D. read this, I hope that it may be of assistance in reducing the problems outlined above. Regards, Mich.
ED Team BIGNEWY Posted July 4, 2024 ED Team Posted July 4, 2024 Dear Mich, I understand your frustration, and I appreciate your patience. However, we need to remain flexible. The delay of the CH-47F allows us additional time to complete necessary tasks, including the creation of tutorial videos. Regarding our patches, we always indicate planned timelines on our patch status posts and promptly inform you of any changes when they happen. We understand your concerns. However, balancing transparency and accuracy in our timelines is challenging. Without shared dates, we receive complaints, and changing shared dates also leads to dissatisfaction. Our goal is to deliver a high-quality patch or product release with minimal bugs or issues. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, bignewy 2 1 Forum rules - DCS Crashing? Try this first - Cleanup and Repair - Discord BIGNEWY#8703 - Youtube - Patch Status Windows 11, NVIDIA MSI RTX 3090, Intel® i9-10900K 3.70GHz, 5.30GHz Turbo, Corsair Hydro Series H150i Pro, 64GB DDR @3200, ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Gaming, PIMAX Crystal
michelip Posted July 5, 2024 Author Posted July 5, 2024 Dear BIGNEWY, My purpose in writing the previous post was not so much to express frustration, as to instill in E.D. some desire to change their method of mod promotion and prerelease predictions so that users can have greater confidence in deciding to buy pre-release mods. This would surely benefit E.D. also. With respect (and I do respect the work of you and your colleagues) your response is formulaic and does not indicate that anything will change. Regards, Mich. 3
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