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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sean DonCarlos" data-source="post: 94741" data-attributes="member: 152">If consoles were the "red-headed stepchildren of FS's dev team", why is FarSight is going through the trouble of developing a PS4 version, for which they are among other things going back through 35 tables and adding dynamic lighting and generally upgrading them visually, at the expense of a large portion of the artists' time? If FarSight didn't want to bother with consoles (and given the headaches the PS3 and 360 have caused, you couldn't really blame them if they had decided to give up on consoles), why the talk of XBone? Why not cut your losses with the 360 and just announce that the 360 version is being abandoned due to circumstances beyond FarSight's control and that players will receive credit for however many 360 tables they have on another platform of their choice? Why Ouya, of all things?The point is, FarSight is not behaving in a manner consistent with consoles being a second-tier market for them.As much as I'd like it to be otherwise, fixing bugs is not always financially viable. Fixing bugs requires developer time and resources. If the expected return from fixing bugs is less than the cost of fixing bugs (including PR/marketing considerations), then it makes financial sense to not fix them, period. By the way, this is almost always a management decision. Most actual programmers can't abide knowing their software has an unfixed bug.Take Bethesda's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Renowned software house, AAA title, with a budget I bet FarSight could only dream of. There are eighteen hundred unfixed bugs, even after installing the last official update, and several hundred more if you have the Shivering Isles expansion pack installed. These bugs range from game-breaking (and save-file-destroying!) down to minor nuisances. If you want to get really nitpicky like we do here and call minor art issues bugs as well, then Oblivion has seventy thousand bugs. All of these bugs have gone unfixed by Bethesda; code-minded individuals of their fan community eventually created an unofficial patch to fix the vast majority of them.Granted, Oblivion is much bigger and more complex than TPA, so there is much more that can go wrong. On the other hand, Bethesda has far more resources to devote to bug squashing than FarSight. Yet Bethesda deemed it unnecessary to fix their bugs, with the result Oblivion is known as a notoriously buggy game. They still sell it...quite a bit of it...on Steam. As far as I know (mostly from Bobby's interview with Pinball Magazine), it sounds like sales of TPA are up, too. So it might not make sense for FarSight to devote the time and resources it would take to squash every last bug.The consoles don't have betas because the console manufacturers have made it difficult to have betas, and it is both time-consuming and expensive to do updates on consoles. Also, it's not like the iOS testers are driving the bus and we're getting everything we want. It just so happens that a few of the suggestions made hit the sweet spot in terms of being sensible, easy to add, and easy to test. Many more are rejected because they are impractical to implement in the time available, or because it would adversely impact the other platforms' builds. (One of my own suggestions was delayed indefinitely because of the problems it would pose for the PS3!)If having regular updates is important to you, you may want to migrate to PC when the Steam release becomes available. Then you can have 360-quality visuals (at some point improved to PS4-quality visuals, even) with the mobiles' update schedule. That's what I'm doing with the 360, since no one seems to know if FarSight will be able to self-publish on the 360 or not, and rather than howl at the moon and froth at the mouth over how much it sucks that I can't play anything past Monster Bash on the 360, I've decided to actually do something about it and move to PC.Should we have to move off our platforms of choice in order to get what we want? In an ideal world, no. But this is not an ideal world, and sometimes we have to realize that we can either continue to tilt at windmills, or we can move on and use our time and energies more productively elsewhere.You're right, they haven't responded. And I had forgotten when I posted that the PS3 lead developer is the one lead dev who for whatever reason does not actively participate in these forums. So I'll graciously concede you the point, at least on PS3. And actually, iOS had the same problem of being "ignored" on the forum up until a few months ago, even with the beta, until there was a rotation of personnel.The only thing I can tell you is that FarSight is under zero obligation to participate here at all, so as much as we might like to tell FarSight to drag the PS3 dev in here by the nose, it's not really our place to do so.Also, I believe this particular issue may have been recently fixed. If it has, I'm not sure if it will make the v2.15 update or not, given the PS3's submission time.Well, as it turns out, I don't give a crap about PS3 updates and fixes, having never owned one, so we're even. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> And taking a totally-unscientific approach and using the TZ backer tournament participation to estimate the relative size of the userbases, it turns out iOS has about 10 times the number of active players as PS3. Therefore, it makes business sense for FarSight to devote more attention to iOS. Whether they actually do or not is not something I have information about.And no, not everything has been fixed in iOS-land. Ask any iOS player what s/he thinks of Cirqus Voltaire. (Although it is somewhat better-behaved than it used to be, as long as Neon Multiball doesn't come up.)This will infuriate you further, but iOS at least has had proper release notes since May. I'm not sure about Android or PS3, since I do not have either of those platforms available to me.The Table Master Issues Lists are mine, not FarSight's. I created them in response to a discussion that happened after one of Bobby's audio interviews with Jeff Strong for two reasons: A) to clean up bugs reported in this forum and get them in one place, so that FarSight does not have to cover the entire forum looking for bugs, which they do not have time to do, and B) to give the members a one-stop place to check if the bug they just encountered is known and (if I know myself) what its status is and if there is any workaround in the meantime. The lists are not a replacement for FarSight's internal bug tracking systems nor are they meant to be. And yes, iOS is overrepresented there because it's the only platform I have that I play TPA on (the 360 is so far behind it doesn't really count), and so I can verify reported bugs myself, which gets them on the list faster.If you, or anyone else reading this, have problems with the master lists or see that "your" issue(s) are not on there - I am human and do occasionally miss some, even big ones like the pink lighting - send me a friendly PM. Do give me 3 or 4 days to respond and/or change the lists. It's a volunteer effort for me, so anything at all going on in real life generally takes priority over it.While I (obviously) disagree with most of your opinions, thank you for presenting them in a way conducive to intelligent discussion. And yes, I do agree that a chorus of angels here singing FarSight's praise would be both excruciatingly boring to read and completely useless in terms of improving the game, so we'll always have room for an advocatus diaboli. The reason I tend to defend FarSight more than most people is that I have worked with code and software development in both a professional and an amateur capacity for 18 years, so I have some idea of why some things are the way they are, even if we'd clearly prefer them to be otherwise.You, on the other hand...do you intend to do anything on this forum other than vacuously support any post that appears to you to cast FarSight in a negative light? If you're not going to add something substantive to the conversation, there's really no need for your posts.</blockquote>

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