Online File Will Not Download

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by mikev

...This was slowly killing a league that is currently in it's 23rd season and has been around since OOTP5.

I don't think that this would be able to kill a league since the "manual" procedure of years past still works perfectly. Hang in there and keep your league going! OOTP 2006, with it's downfalls, is still just the beginning of what Markus has planned for us. My NDA prohibits me from detailing any specifics, but please know that there were more than a thousand items that came up after release that Markus is intent on improving for the next version. This specific feature just happens to represent an error in judgement where a feature got into the game without any testing prior to implimentation. If Markus hadn't thrown it in, we wouldn't be discussing this right now.

Now, please don't read this as meaning I expect you to buy 2007's version just to get this working right. I am only stating what has been stated before, in that OOTP 2006 was the the beginning of a new era of OOTP. A complete rewrite of the game brought with it the inevitable baggage of bugs and shortcomings. With the three patches, the game has become stable and, other that differences of opinion on certain areas of output and results, the game works...period.

The game will continue to work for your league as far as importing and exporting, no different from previous versions. Unfortunately, this particularly ambitious little feature will need some real testing, which we plan to do very soon with the beta testing crew.

[joshuaaaaaa]

The issue is that for all the time they spent developing and playtesting this game it has some major holes. Is it a quantum leap past V6? No question, and it has a bunch of hella-nice features. And the frustration is that there's always a "what's going to go wrong next" feeling about every release. We can't do uploads/downloads correctly, we can't sign scouts, we don't have team vs. team record, etc., etc. Big or little, these things show the signs of a half-assed, rushed-out, lets get money from the masses product.

I posted something in tech support a while back about things being ignored and the response was "Hey, we're busy. We have a couple of pages of these to handle. You should be patient. Heck, you should have been there 2 months ago when we had 5 pages of tech support questions."

So, my question is....Why the hell are you releasing a product that requires 5 pages of tech support questions and a further 1 1/2 pages 2 months later and lord knows how many now?

I don't expect perfection from the game, but Markus' track record is pretty bad in this area. It shouldn't take 4 releases to get something "mostly right."

[Brian the Stunt Bum]

The real question isn't why you release a buggy product by why you arbitrarily decide to stop supporting it even when all the guys are not fixed.

[joshuaaaaaa]

"All the guys are not fixed"? Are you trying to make eunuchs of us all?

And the answer is that they have to rush to release a buggy version of 2007.

[mad0die]

Nothing at all against Montoya who is not being paid to support this game or moderate this forum (I don't think), but the thing that OOTP has needed since OOTP6 and something that I really hoped they'd get with SI, but obviously didn't is a paid QA team. Somebody who is paid to take the testing and support of this piece of software seriously. OOTP needs it. We deserve it. Shame on SI for not providing it. Markus coding this in his garage and releasing it on his own is one thing, but this game has moved way beyond that business model. Unfortunately, the testing and support has not.

My online league is in it's 20th season now and we are still going strong, but everyone in there knows that we will never move past version 6.12. It seems like that was the last truly stable "online" version of the game. Everything since has added stuff that while neat, just did not apply or did not work well in an online setting (generalization I know). Those of us who are dedicated online-only OOTP players are truly feeling left behind.

[joshuaaaaaa]

I have no gripe at all with Montoya, who has been put in the position of being an apologist for the company because of their slow attention to tech questions.

And yeah, there should be people on payroll testing this game, who eat, drink and breathe OOTP until its right.

[joshuaaaaaa]

And I'd pay $10 more for a program that works out of the gate. The current versions cost me more than that in Pepcid.

[bibs]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

"... It may have been best if Markus had just saved this feature for the next version, rather than let it be "tested" by the users and dropping it in on a whim. ...

You could make this arguement about huge portions of OOTP 2006, but it got released anyway. This was nothing more than business as usual. The OOTP model has always been to focus on single player and give minimal support to online. There is certainly no beta testing of the online game, SI has relied on the community for that.

[f.montoya]

Since the discussion has moved beyond "Online File Will Not Download", I'll bow out here. I wish your leagues the best guys, as I too run an online league but please know that even I haven't moved my league to this version due to various issues.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Since the discussion has moved beyond "Online File Will Not Download", I'll bow out here. I wish your leagues the best guys, as I too run an online league but please know that even I haven't moved my league to this version due to various issues.

Thanks for listening. You should start billing SI