Any chance of a new Razbam video status update or a company statement on modules?

Put it this way - if I were in Decoy's shoes, I would have thrown in the towel some time ago, as nobody needs their passion for our mutually shared hobby tainted with negativity from the community.

Its hugely frustrating for the Razbam customers, especially since Razbam now almost completely deserted the forums and show off their progress info only via FB and /or Discord.

That is what I find disturbing. The products receive from ED an official forum, and sub-forums for dedicated modules etc. And then the customers of DCS World needs to go read Facebook and install discord to get some other chat discussions.

No!

The primary communications channel should be ED forums. Then it can be as well put on the Razbam own website, but none of those are requirements as is the ED forum.

All the news, all the reports, everything should come first to here. And in such a formalization that any new customer can jump to Razbam forum and then find sticky "Completed/In Progress/Pending" thread that list all the major changes, updates, plans.... And no discussion from anyone else that Razbam reports.

Devs or Administrators are not allowed to have tantrums ;)

Customers give bad feed back when they don´t get what was advertised. That includes software, clothing, electronics, cars, services.. whatever.

Its frustrating, yes I know. But focus your frustration on what makes the product lacking, NOT your customers.

Razbam products are NOT bad, its just not what was advertised or allowed to Hype.

Stop the hype train before it begins, be clear on what you can do and what you cant and sell it like it is, and you should not have this problem in the future.

Put it this way - if I were in Decoy's shoes, I would have thrown in the towel some time ago, as nobody needs their passion for our mutually shared hobby tainted with negativity from the community.

Glad you re not in Decoys shoes then.Passion is nice to have, but this is after all still a business with customers paying for their module.Part of the business is providing adequate product support and reacting to bug reports.

In both areas , as well as in general communication Razbam is unfortunately well below average for DCS.

So yes,it‘s bad that Decoys has to deal with so much negativity , but there is a reason why customers have these tantrums nowadays, if Razbam had gotten their support and customer care on a good level from the get-go, it probably wouldn‘t have never grown to this level of hostility.

However it seems they continue their way , largely abandoning the forums here and rarely if ever responding to threads or reports here.

I like the Mirage very much and it has huge potential,probably the same as their other products, but if they don‘t seriously change their attitude towards support&customer care, it will be definitely the last product I ever bought from them.

Regards,

Snappy

Put it this way - if I were in Decoy's shoes, I would have thrown in the towel some time ago, as nobody needs their passion for our mutually shared hobby tainted with negativity from the community.

Decoy is a big boy and doesn't need you to stand up for him, and as a company rep he is held to way different standards than J-random customer.

That being said, the overwhelming bulk of negativity is basically self-created by razbam and their poor business and PR practices. Literally, every DCS module has issues, unfinished stuff etc. Its how the developer deals with the customer base thats the difference. Heablurs modules have their assorted and numerous issues, however their PR/customer service creates a good and mostly positive atmosphere on their forums. Same for ED, though with a different and more heavy handed approach but on the balance I think they do ok. Razbam's approach as near as I can tell has been to take their ball and go home and let things fester because people aren't singing their praises. I give credit to Overstartos since he did participate in the mig side of things, and seems like Elwood is doing the same on the Mirage side, but its business as usual over here mostly, though I did appreciate that Zeus popped in with a few more details on jdams.

I give credit to Overstartos since he did participate in the mig side of things, and seems like Elwood is doing the same on the Mirage side, but its business as usual over here mostly, though I did appreciate that Zeus popped in with a few more details on jdams.

If that kind of involvement and response in general (like a state of razbam or something) was even once a week just to give a rough standing on their progress and what sort of issues they are focusing, it would go a long way towards rebuilding the atmosphere with the customer base. Hell, I think a lot of us would settle for even bi-weekly with just a couple short sentences or key points. I understand they're busy/focusing their efforts on fixing things when they can, but it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to give a short post saying "Hey, this is what we're working on/tracking, more to come soon".

If that kind of involvement and response in general (like a state of razbam or something) was even once a week just to give a rough standing on their progress and what sort of issues they are focusing, it would go a long way towards rebuilding the atmosphere with the customer base. Hell, I think a lot of us would settle for even bi-weekly with just a couple short sentences or key points. I understand they're busy/focusing their efforts on fixing things when they can, but it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to give a short post saying "Hey, this is what we're working on/tracking, more to come soon".

I totally agree.

I would also say that a timely response, not resolution, to bug reports would be greatly appreciated. Along with a tag on the title that it's been [REPORTED], or other appropriate status, would go a long way.

With opensource projects the community is not so demanding because of the general perception that it's "a bunch of amateurs that donate their free time to the project", so the users are more respectable by default toward the staff, subconsciously even, as it's a perception that their peers work on the code, their friends from the other class, or another school, another home, which is still half true, even tho some project these days have pretty good people doing really complicated work and many of them are actually genuine employees in large business position (but they usually dont disclose or it's noted low profile), the perception stuck because it all started from people at home and the cottage way of just some fellows in a garage, that perception will probably stick for a very long time, ofcourse the free natrue of it also helps that a lot, it's all free, even tho they're not interchangible, and under the hood some devs get paid, but it's not directly known by the community, there no PR about it, so these realities get unnoticed.

Some console emulator projects seem to be trying to get commercial and closing their source code down, so as more people get into some of the projects and more grassroots people than there is, more who want to work full time, but the commercialization makes it morph out of opensource completely technically, but practically, if they don't embrace the corporate business model facelift and PR with fancy logos, then those projects will most probably have the (unfair) advantage of a laxer community to almost everything they do (wrong), as that opensource perception will remain in their users.

Now the other side: Because Razbam started as a traditional studio with a central entity name, a cool name that really does sound grandiose, I find myself sometimes singing "RAAAZ-BAAAAM" to myself when I would do random chores totally outside of DCS away of the computer while not even thinking about DCS; a company logo, sort of the basic corporate business model face, it makes things looks more official and authoritative, did I mention grandiose, while still it's just a studio and not as over-the-top as the mega corporations, while employing people that are hundreds of times more passionate, rich in legacy, down-to-earth, etc than any "get-rich-fast no-morality employee" (half of that is the perception by outsiders) working for profit hungry conglomerate. However it's again half true, the employees of the mega corporation conglomerates aren't that bad as they are viewed by the (certain) public, still it is true that in a lower-profit industry it's the passion and genuine interest that drives people to work so it at the same time true by some extent, which would have been a good advantage, but the corporate model perception cancels that out, instead of getting more respect, it's the opposite, less, well that doesn't make sense right, it doesn't seem fair right.

This across the board customer expectation/perception ofcourse isn't Razbam's fault originally, ofcourse not, this societal perception originates from the big corporate business and the PR side of it, traced back to the authoritative structures, the old kings and castles, medieval families and monarchs, that had their mottos and shields and flags, and all the bling to make it seem royal and godlike.; It has been responsible for the idea in the general society that everything great and everything big can only come from a big corporation, they can provide on-time updates, fast tech support, armies of babysitters, but behind it is a big mad industry with stress, overtime, all kinds of human problems, health, morale, satisfaction, etc, it's hardly reflecting normal civilized life, and as more and more businesses provide more and more basic life services the more customers are dependant on these giants, if one of them lacks the established pace, they'll immediately notice, but it will also drastically impact their practical life, it's dependency. On this last note, DCS is an entertainment product, it's not a basic need of life, so that should be taken into account by the community.

The problem for Razbam is that, promises were made, hype was made, all the corporate PR was made, while using the corporate model image, so customers get the idea to expect something big big big, and if hype is not realistic then it ofcourse, as it should, has an opposite effect later on the way back, that's why the company sort of has to expect the backlash and walk into that risk with knowledge of the consequences.

This swings it into the customer favor in this case, when promises are made, and when it's about getting Early Access finished.

But it's not like black-and-white, I don't agree being so doom-gloom about a few weeks, so exaggeration can discredit the valid stuff; but more than 2 months is starting to be on the side of "hmm, what's cooking" and not a doom situation, 4th month would be more serious, over 6 months would be doomy, because traditional, down-to-earth and passionate non-profit-hungry employees tend to want to work less hours a day, have other hobbies and interests, and generally have a slower paced life style, unlike the big big corporations, at least that's the idea if it's necessairly in Razbam but if they do work as long maybe they should think hiring more employees, there could be passionate people hiding out there that would be of great fit but it takes effort finding them!!!

Then posting specific criticism on unrelated videos/posts I think is not appropriate, a video is like a specific thread IMO, if it's a video about M2000C, then it shouldn't be valid to post talk and opinion about AV-8B N/A on it, among other things. I think this is sort of abuse to get message out via a shortcut, but this is kinda expected human behavior trying to find shortcuts for everything in life (well that bites back eventually, you don't want to turn into a robot), everyone's susceptible to it and it's easy to get unconsciously into such shortcuts and bypasses, because it's convenient, but here's a twist, I can see how it may partially go back to the authors, the company, a new video posted is like a heartbeat (a ping for submariners), as soon as the angry apples in the community detect what they percieve as a "heartbeat of life" from the company they will immediately respond with the most pressing issue on their mind that is big enough to in their mind override the topic rules, subconsciously even. While they may be indeed technically in the wrong, it's offtopic, it's also in a way the author's, the company's problem for not taking care of the said topic, and/or not providing enough appropriate heartbeats (in the appropriate sections) for that subject the angry apple and other customers are raising.