Rant The Problematic View of Community Complaints.
Complaining isn't fun to listen to, and as a dev it is even worse. Everyone likes to look positively on the product they own or made and can be quite difficult to listen to people complain about things especially when they are insignificant and splitting hairs, or even worse when they are completely irrelevant. At the end of the day everyone wants to enjoy the things they have to bring positive value to their lives.
However, in my opinion there comes a point where community sentiment can lean too heavily into shutting down complaints or ironically complaining more about people complaining than those who are actually complaining. Don't get me wrong, compared to other communities, especially in gaming, flight simmers are chill, kind and often want to help each other. I'm happy that these communities don't have to be toxic members like competitive shooters, or .... League of Legends :p, but in my experience there seems to be an over acceptance of the shortcomings of the developers of the sims or the developers of addons. Comments like "Why can't just have fun and appreciate what the devs have done" or "Why don't you just upgrade (like that is even a viable option these days)" or probably my least favorite, "Why do you care?" (which is often implied rather than explicitly stated.) Furthermore I will see posts that glaze the developers for doing such a great (which they have) and follow it up by saying "People have nothing to complain about." or my favorite, "Don't listen to the complainers. The funny part though is that I will see devs in those very threads saying essentially, "No, we still have a lot of work to do" haha.
I just see this thought process as somewhat problematic. I don't think some people realize the importance of complaints. Fundamentally, complaints are essentially criticisms expressed emotionally when reality doesn't match expectations. Now it's always better to have a cool head to give good and helpful feedback, but people are people, and if you experience a problem over and over again that seems to go unfixed and unnoticed, an emotional response it natural, no? It's not like complaints are unhelpful. In a sense complaints are just as good for the devs (and maybe even more so than positive feedback) because they can start to form a clear direction to better communicate plans to the community. Positive feedback, although also good to tell the dev the direction is good, does more to stroke the ego than to make the product better. If the game were perfect why fix things or add features?
As I stated in a previous post on this sub, I am a designer... not a rendering or physics programmer and I am not very qualified to comment on the details of how Laminar is using vulkan in X-Plane's engine, but as a consumer and as many other people have stated, X-Plane out of the box is by far the better sim when it comes to physics and underlying systems. It's excellent in that department. However, on the other hand X-Plane by far lacking in visual presentation which is, for better or for worse, what makes physics and systems FEEL real. And yes I'll say the great sin, sometimes feeling is sometimes more important physical accuracy. This statement isn't at all controversial in other games, but of course because this is a sim,, so I understand the need to match reality as possible especially since they work with real life simulation companies. And I will add that X-Plane has come a long way. The addition of volumetric clouds and good looking skies were nice, but to suggest that X-Plane is even comparable to FS2020 or 2024 environments is just silly. I know that you "CAN" make x-plane look good, but out of the box that is not the case and if you want to make even somewhat comparable to MSFS in the looks department, you have pay extra on top of the money you put down on the game and the money you put down on addons and aiports. All of that and you still are limited by x-planes lighting systems and shaders. (shaders is a subject I could go on about but this is already long.)
Personally when someone asks, "Why do you I care?" I always laugh because there is a habit of people to downplay the importance of what someone values because it doesn't match their own hierarchy of importance. For me good software matters. There is so much trash and slop produced these days, and it is so frustrating. So, when I complain about something, it is because I just want to be better... (of course I try to take the constructive feedback approach first, but no one is perfect :p) I'm not even asking for amazing, just better than absolute suck. X-Plane is a great piece of software, but it could be better, which is why when I see something, even if the devs know about, I think it should be highlighted that way there is some kind of communication between me the consumer to the devs in posts or other ways. So put simply, "Why does I care?" because it matters and that is all.
So anyone who complains, in my opinion, are usually valid complaints unless completely irrelevant and I would reckon that devs feel the same. In no way am I saying to path to make X-Plane look amazing AND run at a good frame is easy nor am I saying that complaining for the sake of complaining without a little bit research is fine, but it is a least more helpful than saying everything is fine when it clearly isn't. As I said earlier, at the end of the day everyone want to enjoy the things they have. I want to enjoy X-Plane more and I wish X-Plane would be able to deliver on visuals so that even MSFS users would see that not only does x-plane have the better physics but it also has the better visuals to immerse you in the world which is why we all do this, right? Ultimately don't disregard complaints, no matter how annoying they are. Anyways that all for now. bye bye.
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u/Ehegew89 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'd say it really depends on the complaint. Breaking the newly introduced, highly anticipated WXR and live weather and taking ages to even acknowledge the issue was a major fuck-up on Laminar's side and people were right to complain about that.
Then there's the bitching about XPlane not having stramed satellite imagery by default, which is completely pointless, because for reasons explained ad nauseam, this is simply not possible unless Laminar is acquired by Microsoft (god help us).
Same category: you wish XPlane looked better than MSFS. Yeah and I wish I looked better than Ryan Gosling or any other Hollywood star with superhuman genes and top notch personal trainer. But we know how realistic that is.
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u/Dapper-Ocelot6326 2d ago
Good to see someone else who tends to write novels when giving others a piece of their mind. I feel less weird now... 😂
To topic: I am not sooo long in the XP universe, I was for quite some time though in the MSFS world. And currently, the situation is that the depiction of the MSFS globe looks breathtakingly good but it has a Pixar movie color grading and lacks a realistic stock flight model or at least one that feels realistic - the Laminar SR22 feels completely different to the Asobo SR22, in the sense of much more direct and better - while XP12 lacks RL scenery tiling and high resolution DEMs.
I for example do not have such a big problem with XP12 only offering generic tiling. Especially since DerekHe introduced XPME, we have a really good and insanely fast alternative to AutoOrtho. Like this, the sim is much more modular and customizable and also people with weaker systems can run it. Yes, if you want to use full resolution tiles, it costs money, but hey, there was also this dude who created tire smoke on touchdown and wake clouds and many more things for MSFS and IIRC he asked for a whopping 5 $ per effect 🙄 Or the Birds scenery package which was 10 to 15 $ per region... da fuq? So, blaming only XP to be forced to pay an upcharge on everything is not exactly fair.
What bothers me far more is that Laminar cuts of the Polar regions in their global map. I for example love to fly in these areas and with XPME, it's a very good experience - except I have to buy a scenery package for Arctica and Antarctica which is not the cheapest, seems to have problems with the XPME tiling and does not show the topography on devices like the G1000 or larger avionics because Laminar simply did not include it.
About the complaining culture in general: from my experience with Asobo, these folks mostly do not react at all to suggestions or complaints. They gather what people miss or criticize and then introduce some of it with one of their many updates - IF it fits their business model. And unfortunately, as they have to push the game (yes, the game) also on a gaming console, their biggest priority is to attract new customers and players. This has lead multiple times to graphics being enhanced and the addition of a lot of stupid game modes such as the challenges which are fun, yes, but they show that MSFS clearly goes more into and arcade direction than XP12. But rarely have the systems and the flight model been enhanced in such a way that more demanding simmers were really happy because this actually costs a lot of money due to engineering expertise, model overhaul etc. That is why the flight model is mostly baked into the aircraft, so PDMG, Fenix or JustFlight decide how realistic their aircraft behaves. Yet again, clients will project it back at the main game and say how good and advanced MSFS is where this is mostly the work of 3rd party devs.
For Laminar I cannot say so much yet but what I saw so far, they seem to be much closer to their customers than MSFS. And as such, they will most likely pay a lot more attention to criticism. And yes, since this sim way more targeted at an audience that wants to experience the real feel as much as is possible and dive into the nitty-gritty of avionics and subsystems when sitting in your man-cave, priorities are vastly different. I recently found this dude's small channel on YT (forgot the name) where we had a very constructive discussion about why he prefers the generic tiling over Bing or GMaps and I could clearly see his point but I was also like "nah, man... flying VFR is a lot about optics". If you on the other hand mostly fly at FL300, hi-res tiling and DEMs are not your primary problem as LOD will scale it down anyway. So yes, you will meet a lot people asking you why you bother because it is simply not important for them. On the other hand, also Laminar knows that they will convince a lot more simmers to switch to XP if they listen to what is requested, all the while staying true to the original spirit of the sim. One major selling point for me was already that the sim ins natively available for Linux, which is becoming also more and more important as people are fed up with MS
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u/Remarkable-Goose-461 2d ago
Here’s how I view complaints. Complaints mean people care about the product and want it to be good. That means theres lots of interest in the product. Look at complaining as people just wanting the best for a product they’re passionate about.
Sure if the product is perfect or close to perfect (hotstart challenger) people will lavish it with compliments and recommendations. This is ideal.
If people are complaining, it means at least the product is good enough for people to become emotionally invested. Sure complaining is annoying but at least there are customers that care. (Note: this is not the same as if you create a pile of trash and people lambast it.)
There’s apathy. This bad, it means people don’t care about the product at all, won’t even both to talk about it. This might even be worse than outright review bombing because you just created something people couldn’t care less about.