SI I Applaud You

[ricki.bertolino]

You must kidding me?! The critisicm is well on spot and deserved!

Criticise them is one thing; constructed criticism are deserved as problems are well know. However call them idiots, tell them that work blindfolded, state that this is the worst football management on earth ever created and other harsh and offensive comments are not acceptable IMO.

The are all unfair comments; I'm sure these people work very hard to bring the game at the level that is now and at the level that will be in few days. You can call me fan boy or a**kisser; I'm only a guy that works in their same field and I get very annoyed when people can't appreciated how difficult and time consuming is release a bug fee software.

EDITED: BTW, by offensive comments I mean the one that are through out the whole forum (and they are lots). I don't mean you personally.

[Michael Osmann]

SI have received some very harsh criticism over the last month or so due to all the activation problems and bugs that have been plaguing many peoples games, I myself was quite annoyed but I think its fair to say that even with all the abuse and fans complaining (well within their rights) about the games flaws SI have been very professional in their responses, Im sure Miles and co were working non stop around the clock to fix the activation problems (which they eventually did) and to be ready to release a second patch on the 18th just over a month after the game was released is a pretty mean feat if you ask me, so for that I stand up and applaud you SI. Miles should be proud that even though the game had some teething problems at the start there is still hundreds of thousands of people completely addicted to this great game that he and his team have created.

Criticise them is one thing; constructed criticism are deserved as problems are well know. However call them idiots, tell them that work blindfolded, state that this is the worst football management on earth ever created and other harsh and offensive comments are not acceptable IMO.

The are all unfair comments; I'm sure these people work very hard to bring the game at the level that is now and at the level that will be in few days. You can call me fan boy or a**kisser; I'm only a guy that works in their same field and I get very annoyed when people can't appreciated how difficult and time consuming is release a bug fee software.

SI do deserve all the criticism they're getting. They hitted the fan big time.

I can't even play the game. My game freezes at the beginning. SI havent even replied my problems.. ah yeah asked what's my dxdiag. Tried with 2-3 threads asking what's wrong.... still waiting and a whole month has passed now. I've never criticised SI before and bought every FM games since CM1 but god this game is soooo frustrating

[ricki.bertolino]

SI do deserve all the criticism they're getting. They hitted the fan big time.

I can't even play the game. My game freezes at the beginning. SI havent even replied my problems.. ah yeah asked what's my dxdiag. Tried with 2-3 threads asking what's wrong.... still waiting and a whole month has passed now. I've never criticised SI before and bought every FM games since CM1 but god this game is soooo frustrating

I'm really sorry for you. And again, I agree with you about they deserve criticism. But I stand to my point: they don't deserve to be abused.

[baker.simon]

At the end of the day the authentication issue was a disgrace. How does the fact that 50% got it working over the 1st weekend deserve applause? or even if 90% got it working over the 1st weekend, does that deserve applause? What about the thousands who were let down?

Does the fact that the game was so inadequately tested that it needed a patch on release day deserve applause?

CLAP CLAP CLAP

Jesus, no wonder Miles & Co dont post as much with rays of sunshine like you about!

[Jimbokav1971]

I'm sure we've gone through this before in other threads.

On Thursday night, when the activation servers were turned on, 8 out of 10 people were able to authenticate first time. We will call this "Period 1"

There was a 4 hour period on the Friday where 3 in 10 people trying were able to authenticate due to the issues previously discussed (back of manual code font and denial of service attacks). We will call this "Period 2"

For a 20 hours period on the Friday, 8 out of 10 people were able to authenticate first time. We will call this "Period 3"

By Saturday, this had risen to 9 out of 10. By the Monday, it was way higher than that. We will call this "Period 4".

The last figures I had from a couple of weeks ago showed 450,000+ unique people activated and playing the game.

So apart from a 4 hour period, the vast majority authenticated first time, some second time, etc. Those who didn't were mainly sorted out by the FAQ on the forums, and others pointed towards SEGA customer services, who dealt with a few hundred enquiries.

Again, as Matt says, that's not acceptable for those that did have issues, but the statement that the vast majority of the 200,000 or so people who bought the game in that first weekend were able to authenticate without any problems is true - when you are dealing with the volume of sales that we did in that first weekend, and have a 80% success rate, that still leaves far too many people who have had issues, but if a large amount of those people are shouting about it, the problems can seem worse than they actually were (and it's still not acceptable that anyone had problems).

And here is my issues with statistics that I hinted at earlier in the thread.

If your figures are to be believed, (and who am I to doubt you), then what you are showing is a % of the volume during different time periods that did/didn't have problems.

What you are trying to do with them however is use them to justify something else entirely, hence my comment about "lies, damn lies, and statistics".

If someone failed to activate their game in period 1, and then failed to activate their game in period 2, and then failed to activate their game in period 3, but eventualy managed to get their game activated in period 4 then they are tallied as a success in period 4. That certainly does not suggest that they activated first time.

I would suggest that many of the people who you are classing as activating first time actually have also failed to activate in other periods.

Also, what your figures ignore is the footflow involved in these different time periods. I wonder what the number of failed attempts was in Period 2 when compared to the other periods. It's not as if the same numbers of people attempted to activate their games at any given time.

You can make 1 set of figures tell you just about anything you want if you try hard enough Miles.

If you are still interested in talking stats, then tell us how many failed attempts there have been and how you calculate these figures.

Certainly nobody was counting the guys who could not get through again and again and again on the phone and I doubt that anyone was counting the number of times that me and many people like me were told that I was not connected to the internet, (because the server was down), because the server was down and they couldn't!

So actually your figures don't tell you anything of the sort Miles.

Your figures tell you what you want them to tell you.

The starter of this thread needs a reality check and so do some of you guys at SI & Sega. Every year it's a different issue and while SI has a reputation for producing the best football management game on the planet, it has also gained a reputation for pretty appalling customer service over the past few years.

As you guys are into stats I will tell you another.

A happy customer is likely to tell 3 people that they were happy with their service.

An unhappy customer is likely to tell 10 people that he was unhappy with their service.

Last stat from me. 78.57% of statistics are fabricated:D.

[Kickballz]

Very unfair. I have to take it that you are one of those perfect people that never make mistakes

How ridiculous lol

You can call me fan boy or a**kisser; I'm only a guy that works in their same field and I get very annoyed when people can't appreciated how difficult and time consuming is release a bug fee software

I agree it is difficult and time consuming but since you claim to work in the same field - do you think software should be released when it is ready? or do you also release software and expect nobody to mind that it is unfinished because it's difficult? Claiming "it's difficult and time consuming" dosen't cut the mustard as far as consumers are concerned, and that applies in EVERY field.

I'm really sorry for you. And again, I agree with you about they deserve criticism. But I stand to my point: they don't deserve to be abused.

What abuse? I see criticism but there is no abuse in this thread, so your point is redundant.

[ricki.bertolino]

The starter of this thread needs a reality check and so do some of you guys at SI & Sega. Every year it's a different issue and while SI has a reputation for producing the best football management game on the planet, it has also gained a reputation for pretty appalling customer service over the past few years.

Your opinion. Personally I always been very happy with SI customer service and how they managed problems and help me troubleshooting. I had the unpleasant experience to have to deal with EA customer service and compared to SI it was a disgrace.

Issues will always be in this field; in an ideal world everything should go perfect, but in IT this is never the case. What it counts is how a company act to solve problems.

Then again, I guess you are the perfect one, never had problem with customers, always make them happy, never made mistakes. More power to you.

[Miles Jacobson]

Jimbo - I'm not trying to justify any of the issues that were had. I have stated many times, and in my post above, that they were unacceptable, and have done the same in interviews in much more "public" places than these forums. We're not trying to hide behind anything, and I have also apologised publically many times to those people who did have issues.

I was answering a specific point which was being doubted, and showing that the point made was correct. And it still is, however much you don't want to believe it.

[Jimbokav1971]

You're right that I don't believe it so we will just have to leave it at that.

Thanks for replying anyway.

[ricki.bertolino]

How ridiculous lol

I agree it is difficult and time consuming but since you claim to work in the same field - do you think software should be released when it is ready? or do you also release software and expect nobody to mind that it is unfinished because it's difficult? Claiming "it's difficult and time consuming" dosen't cut the mustard as far as consumers are concerned, and that applies in EVERY field.

What abuse? I see criticism but there is no abuse in this thread, so your point is redundant.

Yes, softwares should be released when ready. Despite that, no tester team on earth would be able to catch every single issues with a software.

Personally in every application I've worked with (and I do Web Applications to be clear), I always had to iron out bugs that came out during pilot weeks. Unfortunately, the amount of testers dedicated prior a release it is always greatly inferior to the number of users that will use the application.

In stand alone applications (like FM) you also have to consider all the possible different hardware configurations that different users play with. It is infeasible for any tester team to possibly test the game for every possible configuration.

If this is true for web applications (which are not as complicated as games) I can really imagine how this is true for games like FM.

I honestly wish that people with no programming experience would understand this, but I know that it is unrealistic.

And about abuse, I didn't mean in this thread, just across the board in the past week (I've been reading lot of posts). Nothing about you.

[Black Sam Bellamy]

Miles - who performance tested this game before release ? Did anyone ?

Four minutes to make a substitution on a high-spec PC.

You must have expected a backlash surely ?

[Nomis07]

Why is this thread still open? Every other similar thread has been closed almost immediately. The only reason I can think of, is the fact that SI have responded, but surely that should be done in separate sticky thread. It seems unfair on other users who have had their positive threads closed, to maintain this one as a soapbox for SI employees.

[homerjnick]

Activated it on Friday morning first time and haven't had a problem since....

[daylight]

I may have missed something but how can anyone tell if a person activated there game 1st time,I mean I clicked what must have been a thousand times and got the same "not connected to the internet" then after 13 hours I got through and got the game registered,are you guys just counting that 1 time I got through as my 1st time?

I am not trying to be sarcastic maybe just pointing out a big flaw in the way the numbers were counted the 1st weekend.

[Kickballz]

ricki, it is clear that this is just an argument of degree. When you say things like "I honestly wish that people with no programming experience would understand this" it is actually quite offensive. We already know this - nobody is expecting it to be bug free.

[Miles Jacobson]

Miles - who performance tested this game before release ? Did anyone ?

Four minutes to make a substitution on a high-spec PC.

You must have expected a backlash surely ?

Seeing as it's your first post on the forums, I would presume that you haven't posted in tech support asking for help with that issue? It is likely to be something at your end - it's certainly not a common problem, and hopefully someone in the bugs forums or tech support forums will be able to help you.

Why is this thread still open? Every other similar thread has been closed almost immediately. The only reason I can think of, is the fact that SI have responded, but surely that should be done in separate sticky thread. It seems unfair on other users who have had their positive threads closed, to maintain this one as a soapbox for SI employees.

It was on OK thread until the bickering started. Will close it after this reply.

I may have missed something but how can anyone tell if a person activated there game 1st time,I mean I clicked what must have been a thousand times and got the same "not connected to the internet" then after 13 hours I got through and got the game registered,are you guys just counting that 1 time I got through as my 1st time?

I am not trying to be sarcastic maybe just pointing out a big flaw in the way the numbers were counted the 1st weekend.

As I said, for 4 hours, very few people could authenticate. We are still able to get the stats though, per ip address, with the exception of people who tried online, then went via the phone route, for which we just have a "failed online" stat.