The Crystal Ball

Ataros said:

Psychologically the only reason for people's disappointment (and whining) is a gap between too high expectations and reality. I would not expect that much from the upcoming patch till I witness a beta.

I do not remember Luthier saying or promising the above. I think he said they hope or trying to get these results or working on these features. This is very different from saying we will get something or promising something especially in Russia.

At least 50% of whining here happens because of too high expectations which are everyone's own personal responsibility imho.

This is over-simplistic, and draws wrong conclusions.

Who created the high expectations? Users only? Of course not.

Who created the initial feature-set? Users only? Of course not.

Products routinely do not deliver what is expected of them - especially at first. But a gap as wide as this one, where many features were simply missing or non-functioning, needs addressing properly. ...not just a latent 'we're kind of sorry' tacked-on to ,uch later posts about subsequent patches.

To put it all down to the psychological whimsy of end-users is silly, and patronising. It is also removes the factual component, which is harder to explain away (i.e. the missing/half-working features).

The two recurring themes in all apologist arguments are: 'respect' for the devs, and 'we're all human' i.e. cut them some slack. Plenty of slack has been given, and taken...enough knicker elastic to stretch round the world.

Far too many excuses are made on behalf of the devs. This is why concrete details are needed, not diluted promises and yet more high expectations.

I'd trust the dev process a lot more if, for example, we were told 'there's a whacking great memory leak that needs fixing, yadada yadada', *not* stuff about banjos and 50% improvement in graphics architecture which then slowly morphs into ifs, buts and a slow shrug of the shoulders...

Ben/Falstaff