The other thing that causes me to hesitate to try another Stardock product is that they haven't seemed to know how to fix their problems. Posting messages that things are fixed only to have users tell them "No, they're not" and then go through this same cycle over and over again, raising expectations, and them dashing them with failed results, really isn't very encouraging. I don't expect developers to be miracle workers, particularly in an environment as harsh as the PC gaming market, but I also don't expect them to start finger pointing at suppliers and customers when things don't work. At the end of the day, I expect them to STFU and deliver a product that works. And if they can't, stop making excuses and keep the nose to the grindstone until you have demonstrable proof that you've fixed things before taking credit for the fix lol. The old saying that "words, actions speak louder than" applies here.
There's some I agree with, and a lot of what you post I don't agree with, but I feel urged to respond to this bit.
(Game) developing seems to be something not a lot of people understand. You could still argue that "you don't care, I just want everything to work out of the box" which is valid in its own way, but not how real life works for the developers. There are a couple of things developers do when they face these problems. One is isolate 'the' (note the ''s) problem. Two is test the solution. Three, in case of Stardock, is getting the fix out there as soon as possible so that people can finally connect and start having fun.
One: isolating the problem is hard enough. They might have caught 'the' problem, they might have caught 75% of it. They might have found a bug that was there, but never the problem to begin with. After they fix it they check if the new code does what they want it to and if it does then it's generally considered fixed. But that does not mean there is not another bug that relates to it, or even a newly introduced one. Bug fixing generally is very narrow. You take one piece of code, change and check it till it gives you what you expect it to give, and then you test it and it is fixed. But that goes only for the piece of code they changed, it does not mean that all code of the game automagically (not a mistype) is bugfree for the rest of our lives.
Two: testing. Yes they do test. But you can't test every scenario of the game, you can only test for a certain limited # of users inhouse, which is not the same as 100,000+ users out there, and you can never have all the possible combinations of hardware ready to test the game on. Neither do you have the time for that. You test the game to a certain extend and if you find no problem you assume it is fixed. But there can still be one silly hardware configuration out there that does not work. You might call this a bug in the game, I call it the odd one out. You will never, never code software that will work on every combination of hardware/os/software out there. Neither should you want to. Games will be in development for 40+ years and cost about 50 grand a copy.
Three is getting it out there quick. I for one think this is a good thing. Sure, they might have only fixed 60% of the problem, but that only means 60% of the people with problems can play now. It does not mean that every problem with networking, or whichever part of the game works now. But why should they wait 2 months to have every network bug fixed, while most of us can already enjoy the working code before that? I should say that Stardock has stated they fixed a problem a bit too soon, which I reckon is a product of their enthousiasm of having more people being able to play. It might mislead people into thinking that no one will ever have a problem connection again. That's not realistic.
Apparantly you are someone who thinks they find one problem, apply one fix and everybody out there has no issue ever again. It's not that simple. But I still support them for atleast fixing part of the problem as soon as they can.
