Quality Assurance

[SKILL_SHOT]

I cant be negative anymore or gord will boot me.....so Im just going +1 to everything now.

 

[DarkAkatosh]

Sick of the bugs? Then stop buying new content. You vote with your dollar.

 

[Bass Mummy]

For me, the bugs are a pretty minor issue as long as they don't occur all the time. Weird stuff happens on real tables, too, so I just look at it that way. Don't get me wrong, I do hope that eventually all the bugs get ironed out, and most of the major ones do during the beta process.

I was playing a Pirates of the Caribbean a couple weeks ago and I had to tilt out twice in half an hour because of the ball getting stuck in various places.

What bothers be the most in Pinball Arcade is missing posts and plastics on the playfield, things not animated properly, blurry textures, lights not being in exactly the right spot on the playfield, and just tables not looking the way they should in general.

 

[noneed4me2]

I love FS's TPA but I gotta side on the "lack of QA" side as I help beta test on android and issues that are clearly gamebreaker's are still present in Dr dude and FP that were pointed out yet FS decided to release it in its unfinished state. This not the first time this has happened so I gotta wonder what's the point of beta testing if the developer doesn't take advantage of a dedicated community of enthusiasts who are patient and willing to work towards improving and finishing a product. And it's pretty clear that FS is aware of these problems just from reading enough of these threads. I just dropped 45 bucks on the ps3 version and already own all of them on android. Had I known how Dr dude and FP would turned out released on android I would've voted with my wallet. I will no longer buy incomplete or non-functioning tables.

In the end my only desire is to see FS succeed and keep releasing new tables but since they are small they should use these forums as a tool to really get a solid game release out there with better followup on fixing new and old issues. I would rather wait an longer time if it means having a fully working game.

 

[shutyertrap]

love the coleco. Too bad those controllers crippled your thumbs.

I couldn't find the Intellivision screen shot unfortunately. Remember when in the adverts for Coleco where they'd show what the other two versions of the game looked like? You have no idea how bad I wanted the ColecoVision. There's a tragic childhood story of mine about it that I can share later.

 

[Tabe]

I couldn't find the Intellivision screen shot unfortunately. Remember when in the adverts for Coleco where they'd show what the other two versions of the game looked like? You have no idea how bad I wanted the ColecoVision. There's a tragic childhood story of mine about it that I can share later.

Here ya go:

Tabe

 

[neilpinbot]

Yeah I used to have a Coleco, spent hours playing Bounty Bob

 

[DopedToInfinity]

After TZ, STTNG, AFM + Genie I really thought things were getting better. I just hope this double cock-up on Dr Dude (Multiball cam stuck on mix master) & Firepower (end of game bug) is a one-off.

 

[Sinistar]

Well, the number of Vita's Sony sells in a year is equivalent to the number of iOS devices sold in three or four days. So its not surprising that iOS (and android) are a priority.

Here's the thing though , The PSVita userbase is much more fertile territory to build a audience , than your Ipads, simply because it is starved for games , I was on my sister's Ipod phone , it had about 16 games stored on it , and how can The Pinball Arcade covet a market where they are buried in a glut of videogames and apps ? Where they are lost among literally thousands of flavor of the month games and apps. On Vita , they are competing against PSOne classics , and maybe 20 odd PS Vita games , really easy pickings , but the quality is not compelling .

 

[Sumez]

This reminds me of when games were released for Atari and ColecoVision, and the result would be this...

And they'd cost the same too.

Still impressive for hardware designed to only make Pong variations (Atari 2600)

 

[MWink]

I just thought I'd chime in and agree with the quality over quantity crowd. I would rather have fewer bug-free tables than a bunch of buggy ones. I also want to say that I take a VERY dim view of companies that employ a release now, fix later (if at all) approach. I will quickly stop buying any products from a company like that.

I know it probably won't happen but I think FarSight should take a little time off from making new tables and concentrate on fixing the old ones, as well as the UI issues. On the one hand they won't be making money on tables if they're not releasing them but on the other hand I won't spend money on buggy tables.

I also want to note that I'm not at all a fan of the new pricing scheme. The pricy and not very useful "Pro modes" were bad enough but forcing us to buy undiscounted table packs is seriously annoying. I feel like FarSight is starting to get a little greedy. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

 

[sixmillion]

I just thought I'd chime in and agree with the quality over quantity crowd. I would rather have fewer bug-free tables than a bunch of buggy ones. I also want to say that I take a VERY dim view of companies that employ a release now, fix later (if at all) approach. I will quickly stop buying any products from a company like that.

I know it probably won't happen but I think FarSight should take a little time off from making new tables and concentrate on fixing the old ones, as well as the UI issues. On the one hand they won't be making money on tables if they're not releasing them but on the other hand I won't spend money on buggy tables.

I also want to note that I'm not at all a fan of the new pricing scheme. The pricy and not very useful "Pro modes" were bad enough but forcing us to buy undiscounted table packs is seriously annoying. I feel like FarSight is starting to get a little greedy. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Absolutely, I too feel they are getting greedy. I would like to buy Firepower but do not want Dr. Dude. There is no option to buy just one. I don't like being forced to buy both when I don't want to. It is not about the $4.99, but principal for me. What if all companies started forcing us to buy two games at once. Enough already Farsite , get this fixed.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Absolutely, I too feel they are getting greedy. I would like to buy Firepower but do not want Dr. Dude. There is no option to buy just one. I don't like being forced to buy both when I don't want to. It is not about the $4.99, but principal for me. What if all companies started forcing us to buy two games at once. Enough already Farsite , get this fixed.

On the consoles, it's always been both tables in a pack or nothing. Such is life. Considering it costs me $15 for 6 hours of real pinball (which is a good deal), I have a hard time understanding people getting worked up about $5 for unlimited play of two tables, even on principle.

 

[xAzatothx]

+1 Sean

 

[xAzatothx]

only in Amsterdam huh

 

[Nik Barbour]

What kind of bar do you go drinking in?

Sorry mate - but if we ever go for a beer, I'm picking where we go.

 

[night]

only in Amsterdam huh

Yeah, what's your steps when you visit Amsterdam!

 

[McGuirk]

The bugs need to be fixed. It's part of the reason why we're all here, helping with beta testing on iOS and Android.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

The beer analogy is faulty: a TPA table is purchased once for unlimited use, a beer is gone after one use. I'm not knowledgeable about the expected number of uses of the other object.

Again, on the consoles it's always been both tables or nothing. The competition's even worse; for some of Zen's table packs it's four tables or nothing, at least on the 360.

Maybe if the tables were $10 each and packs were $20, I could understand being upset at having to buy the tables two at a time. But I can't think of a single table on TPA from which I haven't gotten $2.50 worth of enjoyment...yes, even Harley-Davidson. Perhaps it's because I play real pinball at $2.50 per hour and so TPA looks - and is - very cheap by comparison. But of course it's not the same.

As for the quality, again, if the tables were $10 each, or $25 each (I believe Timeshock! was $25 at release), we've have far superior grounds for kvetching. But TPA is a classic case of the fast/cheap/good triangle, and due to market forces, fast and cheap got selected. This is a pity - I'd rather have fast and good, and judging from some of FarSight's developers' comments here, I think they'd rather have fast and good too - but I don't think there's enough of us willing to pay what a beautifully rendered, perfectly bug-free table would have to cost to make it work from a business perspective. If there were, Silverball's kickstarter would have succeeded.

 

[brakel]

Corporations can't be greedy. That's something that you see posted a lot. Not just here but all over the internet. Greed is an emotion that corporations are not capable of. Aside from not-for-profit and non-profit corporations, corporations exist for only one reason, to make money. The ones that do this well usually offer products in high demand and they charge more than the consumer wants to pay but less than what they will refuse to pay. I bought one pro pack just to check it out first hand. I won't buy anymore unless they offer more features in the pro pack. Its not that I find the price outrageous, but just that I don't see a value in it for me. In this case its not that they have missed the price point, I'm just not interested in that product.