But they haven't - they've said little or nothing on the issues that most people are keen to hear about.

There are 2 issues here. The first one is the technical reasons for the delay of the patch. Nothing the devs do or say here will change any aspect of that. The second issue IS completely a communication issue - the discontent has built over the last 2 months precisely because people aren't being told anything despite repeated (polite) requests. My only assumption is that the devs have continually thought that the patch was just around the corner, and therefore that there was no need to make statements. Unfortunately as the delay has stretched on and on that policy has run out of track.

Does anyone seriously think, given the state of the forums now, that a further delay of 6+ months would be accepted?

There will always be fans who are patient enough, but the vast majority will not. It's dangerous to make assumptions that COD's recovery would be inevitable no matter how long it takes to be put right. In 6 months time I dread to think what level of customer base they would have held on to. Once things reach a certain critical state it is likely to be impossible to recover.

For the patient ones, yes. If those 6+ months means that the game will reach a playable and good state for everyone, there will still be people, even among it's current detractors, that will come back. And they'll most likely look back at how it was at launch and laugh, and love that it's gotten as far as it will have.

I disagree with that it'll be impossible to recover. To give you one example: Funcom. In the MMO-world, you'd be hard pressed to find a company so universally despised as Funcom, apart from maybe SoE (especially among the people that played and loved Star Wars Galaxies). Through two games now (Anarchy Online and Age of Conan), Funcom has time and time again screwed people majorly, especially PvP'er's. Yet people are coming back to both games despite the fact that things has been horrendous, with a distinct lack of updates/new content, there's been system revamps that nobody wanted etc. Yet people still come back, even if it's just for a little while. And if the game is something they find interesting, they'll stay. Regardless of previous experiences with it.

The same will hold true here. When word spreads that the sim has matured enough, or when the level of tech on part of the customers' computers (which HAS been an issue for CLoD, regardless on how you look at it), people will start to trickle back. Will they ever have the same amount of players as they had box-sales? Only time will tell.

I agree. The most common issue of project teams is the excessive optimism. This is very much bound to the human nature, which cannot find strong motivations in long term plans and far away results.

I am not saying it is fine or good or bad. I am saying this is how the things probably are in my perception. If we judge if it is good or bad it would not change anything.

Each recent update thread shows that much more people do not like to hear updates like this example (made up by me):

Quote:

"We are still working on this, that and that but small issues with that and this prevent us from issuing a patch yet. We do hope that these small issues would not cause any major disaster when pieces of code are assembled and tested together. As the tests are not 100% complete unfortunately we can not give you any ETA ATM because **** usually happens in the very last moment as anyone working in the industry knows."

Majority of users criticise these kind of updates. That is why there is no update at all till patch is ready.

Exactly. When all they get is crap, no wonder they're not coming back for more. Hell, I don't blame them at all.

"when all they get is crap" sounds a little bit exaggerated. There are normally about 80% of "thank you for the update".

True enough, but while there's a lot of thanks, there's always some very vocal muppets about that does nothing but scream bloody murder regardless of what's being said.

The best thing would be if the devs announced that they'll be incommunicado until patch release.

There would be no more reason for moaning, as there is nobody listening.

And if some people really would leave......, that would make the forum only a nicer place, maybe to talk about what is already working and known workarounds for bugs.

But then, that's only me, dreaming :-)