Razbam/ED please clarify - Is the Harrier out of EA and consequently complete?

It's an utter farce.

They are often on their discord. A logical conclusion given the facts would be that they use that because they can control all content and user access. However as soon as you raise an issue they have no interest in resolving you get deleted from the group. First off i'm not aware of any age restrictions for their discord group and many of ED's customers are minor's so swearing is utterly uncalled for, this is not professional not that they should need reminding.

I hope this post does not get deleted given other recent ones have.

Thankfully its now got to stage, where they cannot pull the wool over ED's eyes anymore by hiding, marking as resolved and deleting threads. Having a bug tracker on their site that mirrors no resemblance to the actual module. I actually think that once ED complete an internal investigation and review the module it will return back to EA.

First, we need to get to a position that no matter how critical in nature a customer's feedback is, this should not be deleted. We have over the years fought for our freedom, some at the sharp end and other's reading this will still be keeping us safe. To silence free speech or oppress opinions is not healthy, history is proof of that and thus we cannot tolerate any attempt to silence an opinion no matter in what form of life it happens, even if its something we don't personally agree with, we have to respect that person's right to express themselves with tolerance and respect. Any attempt to silence genuine issues is insulting to sacrifices made and unless the post itself is prejudice against a direct person which would cause insult aka racism, sexist, supporting terrorism,bullying etc, or totally disregards the forums rules they should be engaged not dismissed.

Genuinely highlighting an issue is surely what the Open Beta process is all about and should be welcomed. Dev's that cannot handle criticism of a product when it is based on trying to improve it need to look inwards and reflect, it is not a personnel attack on them but born out of wanting the product to be right. It is not just them that are passionate. I often see comment's to other users that have raised genuine issues being dismissed with EA is not for them, 80% of the time i agree its not for them but with the Harrier i actually think if constructive feedback can't be given, is censored and/or that feedback is totally ignored then EA is not for Razbam. It is that simple.

The harrier situation is a concern. Superficially the module flies, but that's where it ends. It is not feature complete, especially for what is sold as a level d simulation by any measure. It is not even complete on the list that it is sold by let alone the total disregard to how the systems work IRL, its MFD pages etc (would take pages on here but happy to spec out if the desire is there). It is clear that as the year has gone on resentment in the serious harrier players has grown, caused by a lack of forward progress on features with equally a total disregard to the official forum's and people raising issues there only to be frankly ignored. Whilst all the while we are showcased new screenshots of F15, Mig23, Lighting even by various other channels. Serious issues preventing the correct operation of the Harrier are still present, some from day 1 of release. If you have Natop's knowledge of the jet then the flaws just become even more apparent, but even for the casual player there are problems with such basic things as vital keybinds not working or present. I have said before Razbam have a very talented group of artists but lack code resource base.

To move this module out of EA is a mistake. But what cannot be tolerated is Razbam's continued ignorance to the official ED forum's and their customers who have purchased expecting in good faith a company to engage with them. I believe in the EA process, i'm committed to supporting ED (over $1000 so far) and i'm very patient and pragmatic. However simple common courtesy to reply to an issue costs nothing. I could in fairness work my way down the Harrier forum list each issue and reply to each post within a day. They have had 3 years nearly, there is not a valid excuse to not acknowledge now, only an apology and admission they got things wrong. It has got to the state where quite frankly over the last 12 months players who have signed up to support the EA process in assisting are not getting that assistance back from Razbam, its a two way partnership and one side of that partnership is not working, and hasn't been for some time. It either arrogance or head in the sand, either way its not good and needs resolution.

Apart from the utter failure in consumer confidence in Razbam to move it away from EA its a mistake for them also. Inadvertently what they have done is actually the worst thing for them if they are struggling as they have no justification anymore of it being an Early Access module. Bugs will be expecting to be resolved, actual non EA customers not ignored, aka the less tolerant ones. They have just hugely increased the pressure on themselves without realising it and for this reason alone its another mistake to move the module away from EA, its just not ready, mark my words, resentment will grow. and this will become a bigger and bigger problem.

Some of us have over 1500 hours in the DCS harrier, some 2000+ hours i dare say some probably have more time than the dev's flying it themselves. These are not, with no disrespect to our younger audience 12 year old's on their first flight simulator (who equally deserve a better level of customer service nor sworn at). The point is alot of us have 30 + years of experience , a lot of us fly IRL. I have seen some people state well the CM has left, however this is something that has only occurred in the last 2 1/2 weeks. I would invite you to look at the amount of issues/bugs raised and notice how many don't even get acknowledgement over the last 12 months, this is what has caused the issue. That and Razbam's expression of preferring their Facebook as they can control the content. They engage on their own platforms just not so much with ED forums, which is the reverse of what it should be. Have you noticed that they even dismissed the community bug tracker stating they only work to the Razbam one, which what a surprise they control and contains a fraction of the real issues.

I would highlight that this is not directly ED's issue so let's not be critical of them yet, they need time to take on board our comments and work with Razbam to performance manage them into delivering and equally long term review the op's structure on third parties re business continuity / redundancy if key personnel leave etc. Yes the book stops with ED however we need to give them the opportunity to resolve and hopefully the Senior Management will at some point be briefed and get this on their own radar. Also i would like to highlight that this is not Bignewy's or Nineline's issue - they have worked really hard this last year to massively improve on the communication to the community and in that sense have a tough role, even keeping across the ED discord too at all times of day and night, i feel sorry for them that they are now having to pick up further work because Razbam are failing to deliver on their end of the deal.

One last point, is it right that third party developers have oversight and moderator rights of official ED forums, i would suggest not until trust is regained. It provides an opportunity for things to be deleted, moved to resolved when not. Only ED should have this level of access.

I'm confident that ED, now involved will come back with us with a clear roadmap on how we make progress together, hopefully providing an oversight on Razbam's customer service, which clearly needs an urgent and honest review along with their output.

PS as for Baltic Dragon, if it takes him another year it will be worth waiting for. Fantastic content, always. Simply put if its got his name on it i will buy it.

Let not deflect away on a red herring. Nothing to do with BD the current status of Razbam and the issues listed in my last post re module out of EA.

It's an utter farce.

 

First, we need to get to a position that no matter how critical in nature a customer's feedback is, this should not be deleted. We have over the years fought for our freedom, some at the sharp end and other's reading this will still be keeping us safe. To silence free speech or oppress opinions is not healthy, history is proof of that and thus we cannot tolerate any attempt to silence an opinion no matter in what form of life it happens, even if its something we don't personally agree with, we have to respect that person's right to express themselves with tolerance and respect. Any attempt to silence genuine issues is insulting to sacrifices made and unless the post itself is prejudice against a direct person which would cause insult aka racism, sexist, supporting terrorism,bullying etc, or totally disregards the forums rules they should be engaged not dismissed.

 

Genuinely highlighting an issue is surely what the Open Beta process is all about and should be welcomed. Dev's that cannot handle criticism of a product when it is based on trying to improve it need to look inwards and reflect, it is not a personnel attack on them but born out of wanting the product to be right. It is not just them that are passionate. I often see comment's to other users that have raised genuine issues being dismissed with EA is not for them, 80% of the time i agree its not for them but with the Harrier i actually think if constructive feedback can't be given, is censored and/or that feedback is totally ignored then EA is not for Razbam. It is that simple.

Thank you.

They have delivered, and product sustainment will continue.

 

If you are not sure of the refund policy please read the EULA

 

Thanks

No they haven’t delivered and ED is expected to be a better gate keeper by ensuring higher standards are maintained.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well, that's good news at least.

NineLine are you seriously having trouble with a spreadsheet that brings together all the reported bugs on the forum. Closing this is not a positive move by you as ED’s representative and it just appears that ED wishes to hide the problems that have been reported for years. 181 reports and a grand total of 14 fixed last time I looked many over a year old.

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Out of interest when I purchased the AV8B module a Campaign was listed in the Products.

"Instant action, single, and training missions as well as a campaign"

This line doesn't currently exist in the Harrier Product Page - what happened to that?

Made me interested there and I had a check:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171108014830/https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/shop/modules/av8bna/

Can't see the mention of a campaign there. Maybe that slipped in there in between, but at least that archive tells they didn't run a preorder sale with a campaign advertised.

So the head of Razbam only wants to work from an "official" bug report from an official ED employee - not what the community is reporting - many of which are solid, reported by people who fly the harrier day in, day out.

What it's basically saying is all customers bugs raised they will not act on directly or investigate. Our opinions are irrelevant. I actually cant believe what i'm reading, how deep are they going to dig this hole?

As i said in my post perhaps EA is not for Razbam.

Have they apologised for expletives yet or removed it?

Notice once again how lots of content of their discord yet not one response on here still......despite now being chased by ED.

Lol, seriously.

Ok let me clarify something here:

1. I have spent countless hours LISTING IN AN ORDERLY MANNER most of the bugs reported on the forum. I did it in the hope that it could help visualize the sheer amount of work still to be done, and help Razbam notice the bugs they had left in a total mess on their own forum section.

I'll add that I didn't hear a single "thank you" from anyone at Razbam, including the now defunct Decoy who actually did everything he could to have the post deleted within, literally, 3 minutes of me posting it.

Go ahead and call me toxic.

2. I have done so because those reports were not ackowledged or mislabelled, and being moved to the resolved bugs section even though they are not even remotely resolved.

3. Nineline, I believe in your good faith, seriously, did you even have a look at that sheet? How can you say it has become a hard to follow "catch all"?

Yes, it is a cattch all, it has most of the bugs in it, with links descriptions, dates and categories.

Honestly, I am appalled.

In any case, of course the community bug tracker will stay FULLY OPEN and available for anyone to see, including Razbam.

LINK:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gYpmYD4VVaTn1YkHd_K7CJxOysoOqdN-K5oZs_anX7c/edit#gid=24479841

If you are really serious about fixing the Harrier, that bug tracker will be a tremendous help.

NineLine are you seriously having trouble with a spreadsheet that brings together all the reported bugs on the forum. Closing this is not a positive move by you as ED’s representative and it just appears that ED wishes to hide the problems that have been reported for years. 181 reports and a grand total of 14 fixed last time I looked many over a year old.

I agree with NineLine that a long thread of bug reports would be very unwieldy. On the ED forum we should stick to the standard way of submitting bug reports. (Edit to add: as a minimum, and the community tracker is a useful tool alongside those forum bug reports).

How can you say it has become a hard to follow "catch all"?

I read his comment as referring to the thread, not the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet is an excellent way to track issues, i mean even Razbam have one on their website, not that their version bares any resemblance to the issues with the module.

The community bug tracker should be the go to spot for reviewing the issues. IMO its actually the most collected and one stop shop for many of the issues.

IF only all forums had one of these in, that said this was born out of frustration, something that is more endemic to Razbam over the last 12 months.

Kudos to the OP for doing it in the first place.

Are you kidding?

The community bug tracker was the only good thing here since ever!

How can a "correctly reported bug aknowledged by the devs" be done when they don't aknowledge anything? With your approach you are destroying the work of many people who have invested a lot of time!

The community took enough pain - take the community bug tracker. There is nothing more you need.

Also there is still nothing mentioned that helps. If Razbam should really put more bugs on the tracker, it won't change anything on how fast they are fixing them.

Also there is no comment of how a module can leave EA while it is definitely not feature complete.

Or why they are so rude and arrogant to their customers?

Sorry, this is still emberassing. Is still would like to get my money back. It still feels like a scam for me.

F-15E and Mig-23 incoming - I hope people will vote with their wallet.

About the community tracker,

 

It is yours, it is open and no one can change that.

 

While the community tracker is useful, not all of the issues are confirmed by the team as a bug or not.

 

The post was closed so bug reports can be made in the usual manner, one bug per thread, it makes it easier to manage. You know how we do it on our ED forum sections, if bugs are mixed into a single thread it becomes chaos.

 

We are setting up a process here to make reporting easier for the teams, as bugs are confirmed they will get added to the ED bug tracker and assigned to the RAZBAM team.

 

thank you

Good news BigNewy, progress. Is this something that will be made visible on the official forums as a sticky, so we ourselves can get feedback on progress without having to chase / ask?

It's kind of pathetic. While BIGNEWY and NineLine ar trying to calm some upset users down, no one from Razbam thinks it's necessary to make an official statement here. :doh:

I think this is a good thing, but the core issue of what ED thinks a module out of EA should look like has not been addressed and will again rear its ugly head here or in some other module in the near future. It's not just a RAZ issue. You can't say EA isn't for everyone if there isn't a meaningful difference between EA and non EA

What? F/A-18C has a manual and is being updated as new features are added

Since you use it as point of comparison, BN, the TGP isn't even mentioned in Hornet's manual, despite having been in game for quite awhile.

Wags' intro videos are good and all, but are no substitute for documentation.

Not saying the manual has to be correct up to the minute, but if it weren't for Chuck Owl I'd have no idea how to operate it. That's bad by any standard, man.

It's kind of pathetic. While BIGNEWY and NineLine ar trying to calm some upset users down, no one from Razbam thinks it's necessary to make an official statement here. :doh:

I think many are calm, i certainly am. Just concerned over their unacceptable behaviour from Razbam oh and language used at their customers with minors present.

Hopefully Kate, Nick and Wag's will be briefed regarding users concerns as this isn't going away and a serious conversation with Razbam about their output, customer server (or lack of it and unprofessional in tone) is required.

Hopefully they will learn from it. But as for a response, that needs a culture change from Razbam, when their next module doesn't sell perhaps they will learn.

Quit honestly, it’s not the community bug tracker that’s the problem. It’s the lack of follow through on Razbams part. I see over in their discord that they say it’s out of date.

Where are all the fixed/resolved tags in the bug reports? If resolved the bug the CBT would’ve noted it on spreadsheet.

BKthunder wasn’t stupid

I like the sound of an ED bug tracker. The important part will be having Razbam actually act on the identified bugs/broken bits.

Incidentally, their own bug tracker seems to have been very recently gutted. I can't get anything to show up on two different browsers.