Originally Posted By: Sobek
Facts? What facts? I see a lot of opinions on how broken DCS is, i don't see a single fact.

I'm sorry, but at this point "DCS is broken" is a fact, and the evidence for it can be found easily depending on how the statement is framed. Not 100% broken, I'll give you that, but broken nonetheless.


Originally Posted By: Sobek
And to return to the topic of the thread, i see a lot of people who don't know the business end of a console trying to tell me how much ED need to go out of their way to include a third party campaign when all they need to do is push it in their repo and create a shop entry for it.

I don't need to know how to code in order to comment whether a thing is broken or not. I don't need to know how to fix a car in order to determine that my vehicles is running funny. Your statement in bold is an assumption. It may well be true, but so is our statement/assumption about ED having to divert resources. Since you have been talking about "facts," then where is your evidence that ED did nothing to help the campaign creator?


Originally Posted By: Sobek
Originally Posted By: - Ice

Ah yes... because just anyone can make a campaign, test it, and put it up for sale by themselves. Are you serious?

Anyone can make a campaign, yes. Not anyone can make a campaign that doesn't suck (i probably couldn't), but that is a different matter. I don't get what the big deal is? You think the step from making missions to making campaigns suddenly requires dark magic?

Make a campaign, yes. Make a campaign that you could actually sell and you'd think people would buy, well, that's a bit more complicated. Doing THAT and having ED actually put in in their store....

Plus you're missing the point. It's not about "making" the campaign that's the issue, it's going from start to sales WITH or WITHOUT ED support is what we're talking about.

Originally Posted By: Sobek
Originally Posted By: - Ice

"Sometimes" is different from "almost guaranteed."

Hence why i think your statement is an exaggeration. We'll probably have to agree to disagree. I'm not inclined to spend hours to make a statistic of how often campaigns get broken and i assume you feel the same.

Exaggeration? Maybe slightly. Saying "sometimes" is skewing it the other way, but more than "slightly." I may be off a bit when I say "almost guaranteed," but you're way off if you say "sometimes."

Originally Posted By: Sobek
Originally Posted By: - Ice

Where exactly are you looking at for "credits"?

There's two frames at the end of the promo video, one states that the campaign was created by Ranger79, the other states who made the video.

And where are the "credits" for the modules?

Stating that the campaign was made by Ranger79 is like saying the modules were created by Belsimtek/RAZBAM/etc. Just because they've not explicityly stated ED helped out does not mean ED did or did not help out. Point is: You're putting too much faith into that one frame.

Originally Posted By: Sobek
Originally Posted By: - Ice

And here I am thinking "it shouldn't have happened in the first place, it should've been caught pre-release of the patch." I guess it's just me, huh?

People shouldn't have to die of starvation every day either and yet they do.

Going off tangent there now. You're really comparing software development with starvation? Ha!


Originally Posted By: Sobek
I've spent enough of my time testing software vital to the security of car passengers to know that it's not financially viable to test to the same standards in lines of business where human lives are not at stake. The amount of work necessary to ensure that software is virtually bug-free (which even the software i tested wasn't, btw., but at least we made sure that the risk of catastrophic failure was miniscule) is enormous.

Knowing the realities of software development, i don't find it hard to accept that even important aspects of the software get broken from time to time, as long as they get fixed afterwards in a timely manner.

Sure, getting software "virtually bug-free" is a big ask. But making sure campaigns and tutorials don't get borked each time a patch comes out? That should be basic stuff. I'll give them leeway the first few times it happens, which in my experience was the Beta phase of DCS A10C. However, when it happens and keeps on happening much later, it's a different matter altogether.

Again, I LOL at your comparison of "broken campaigns and tutorials" with "car passenger security."


Originally Posted By: Sobek
Originally Posted By: - Ice

It is indeed an interesting question, one that I think should not be investigated. But I fear ED will test this limit in the near future.

Why not? I would very much like to know if there is some sort of contingency plan if, perish the thought, something should happen to a campaign dev and he can't maintain it shortly after release, for example.

Again, you're missing the point. It's not about a campaign dev stops supporting his product due to personal, RL concerns; it's about a campaign dev having so much trouble from ED and their patching process.


Originally Posted By: Sobek
There is always some big milestone on the horizon. When you develop for DCS, you need to accept this reality (it's not like it's all bad, i'm sure devs are quite happy that they get new features as opposed to MSFS, e.g.) and deal with it best you can. There is no 'just sit this development step out and then everything will work out itself'. The only way this can ever 'work out itself' is if there was such a steep increase in revenue that ED could increase its QA department tenfold and 3rd parties could establish their own QA departments with testers on a payroll, but i don't see that happening.

You must have a very broad definition of "big milestone." Also missing the point between "alpha OS" and "a more stable, mature OS in continued refinement."


Originally Posted By: Sobek
There's freeware campaigns of varying quality on EDs file exchange that ED has had no hand in except a moderator unlocking the uploaded file.

Yeah, these FREE campaigns are simply uploaded to a server and done. Are you saying that this was the same for Ranger79's campaign? No testing by ED at all? No requirements or quality standards imposed and checked by ED?

Ranger79: Hey, I've made a campaign that I'd like you to put in the official store and sell for me.
ED: Sure, upload it and we'll put it in the store. We won't check it or anything. We won't see if it's even worth selling. We need the extra revenue so anything is welcome, really.


- Ice