Thralls Can No Longer Be Brought Through Loading Screens?

The reason that more people are not acting in a passive aggressive manner is that there was a notification that this update was coming and Test-Live servers are a thing. This bug appears to be extremely rare and limited to specific individuals and varies even on how to produce the issue based on load-screen. The fact that they didn’t come upon this bug in testing is therefore not surprising.

Test-live client is open to my knowledge, you have every ability to contribute to the testing of patches before they go live and report your findings if there are problems. If more people did, we would have more opportunity to find bugs and errors prior to full launch.

These games are a community in an of themselves, and if you want a better product, contribute to it by playtesting on the test-live servers, having constructive input and flagging bugs.

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I am the consumer that pays for the products and services Funcom provides. I am entitled and so are you. If we all collectively quit spending money on Funcom products, because of extremely poor service in return for our payments, then there is no CEO. No Funcom.

This isn’t the government that can take our money through taxes. It is 100% our choice to pay them or not. Yes, they can also get investors to feed them cash, to try keeping things flaoting through rough waters, but ultimately if they can’t keep players/payers happy, their source of revenue dries up and they die, or get rolled into some other company like Tencent.

I’ve worked for a lot of technology companies. Some of them doing billions of revenue a year. We treat our customers with respect and don’t stuff glaringly unfinished products at our clients and call it completed product. Just one case of that would be enough to lose the faith of even long term loyal clients. I had clients like Google, Wells Fargo, Boeing, Costco, Chevron, Facebook, etc. They don’t put up with half baked product releases. I’ve had clients like mom and pop retail stores and individual consumers. They also don’t put up with it.

The choices are many and if the product and service provider is dropping the ball, they can’t expect to keep the loyalty of the customer base. There needs to be accountability. Someone at a high level had been reamed for the way this release was handled and maybe they had to fall on their sword to Rui or the board of directors, but they aren’t the primary source of cash flow for the company. We are.

So tell me, what is wrong with expecting more from Funcom and Rui? I had no problem arranging meetings between my CEOs and clients for apologies when there were serious product or support failures. That is part of their job. The buck stops here kind of role.

Maybe there is some unspoken rule in the gaming world that products don’t have to be good and they are only banking on a one time purchase from clients, but I don’t believe that. If they want loyal clients, they need to earn them.

My loyalty is pretty much on the fence right now. I love this game and strongly supported this company, but the updates and DLCs are getting sloppier, which makes me question that loyalty. I’m pretty sure I am not the only one noticing the trend.

So, does Funcom care? If no, they obviously have no need to respond.

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You are absolutely right about Testlive. Testlive is all I play and am constantly reporting issues I discover. I really wish there were more on Testlive.

This particular bug is really not the big issue at all. My comment was really about the whole update and the many bugs it introduced, which were discovered in the very few short days it was up on Testlive, before a lightning quick rollout to live, without addressing the bugs at all. This I consider a huge failure to the community.

So when Ingasis was warning people to tone down their passive aggressive behavior, it triggered me a bit, because that behavior was earned. If forums aren’t a place to express the frustration we feel over this update, there where? Just quit paying and walk away?

So I wrote my piece to ask Funcom for skin in the game (heh heh).

Yeah. Voting with the wallet is how capitalism and free markets are supposed to work, although they usually fall short of that.

My point is not that we shouldn’t be upset about bugs or have a certain sense of entitlement as customers. My point is that demanding an apology from a senior executive is the same kind of pointless bullcrap that companies pull on their customers, but in reverse.

I don’t give a dime about some VP or CEO telling a lackey to write some sincere-sounding corporate-speak document. What I care about is the real quality of the product.

Unironically: good on you and your CEOs. Reminds me a tiny bit of the time I spent working for Amazon. There’s a lot to criticize, but one of the good things is that if a customer shoots an e-mail to Bezos, there’s a very real chance that Bezos will get it sorted out.

But even though that should be a norm in a better world, it’s not the norm right now. So my choice as a customer is to tilt at windmills or demand something more practical, such as Funcom getting their act together. Or I can vote with my free time and my wallet and go do something else. Of those three options, I value the Quixotic one the least :wink:

Yeah, I’m guessing that’s why EA is going out of business. And Ubisoft. And Bethesda. And… you get my point :wink:

And it’s not just them, either. Look at what Facebook, Google and Amazon can get away with. It’s the golden rule: he who hath the gold, maketh the rules. The more power you have, the more you can get away with.

Please don’t get me wrong: I don’t condone that, I don’t like it, I don’t think it should be that way. I just don’t think that loudly demanding an apology is going to accomplish anything.

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You may be frustrated, but this is a specific thread regarding a very specific error/bug. There’s a number of general feedback or venting threads that deal with overall perception of the update.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with having an opinion of a product you purchased, but adding comments to a thread about a specific issue conflates the purpose of the thread and may make it more difficult to assess the nature, breadth and impact of the bug.

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Again, this is fairly far off track with my intention of reporting this one bug; but if you’re looking for proof that Funcom does work to resolve issues or problems, then consider the following: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-pc-game-launches/

"Sometimes everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and Exhibit A is 2001’s Anarchy Online. When it launched, some players found that the product keys shipped with their discs were invalid, while others were billed twice for the same registration fee. Crashes were common, servers were often down, and once they were actually in the game, players found there were areas of the world they couldn’t even access. Naturally, Funcom’s customer service staff were overwhelmed.

Sometimes, however, the worst beginning can still have a happy ending. Funcom spent months fixing Anarchy’s problems and offered free trials in an effort to win back fans. The sci-fi MMO is still chugging along today."

Funcom has supported a game that had a massive launch release issue for two decades that still persists and has a very small solid core community. They are active on Reddit and their own Forums.

It’s simply not reasonable to ask Funcom to have a completely polished AAA update for an persistent open-world multiplayer survival building game. This is the same for Rust, Ark, 7DTD and a host of other similar genre games. 7DTD for example right now has a base-nuking forge bug that blows everything up in about a 50 block radius.

There are so many variables that can occur that there’s no realistic way to account for all possibilities that may occur with this style of game. I would certainly like scheduled patches, but it’s sometimes not reasonable to do that either, as who knows how long it will take to tackle an issue?

It’s not some unwritten rule, but I think that your expectations are a bit excessive considering the size of the studio, nature of the game and simply logistics. And saying anything other than ‘we hear you, and working on the issue’ isn’t going to get them anywhere. Engaging with everyone who is griping means less people working on issues or working on bugfixes.

I wish you luck regardless if you decide to depart the Exiled Lands.

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100% agreed. The testers haven’t ever leveled a 60 or played without admin rights. Patch had 5 days on testlive. Total joke. Should be re-branded as FUcom not Funcom.

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It also means getting embroiled in endless arguments and taking the risk that someone might take something you said as an official promise that has to be fulfilled. Really not a good idea.

That sounds appalling. Can you provide any source for that?

For general discussions about the game, please stick to the corresponding sections and/or threads, ideally while remaining constructive.
This issue has been relayed to our team and they’re trying to replicate it on their end using (most) of the information provided in this thread. Since the thread has one again derailed from its intended use, we’ll proceed to give it a lock.
Thanks.

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