Why has Pinball FX3 become so bad supported?

[overall_fanatic]

For me, supporting Zen Pinball since the Beginning and the very first table pack included, I became a little bit angy & sad when I see the only 1 single table pack came from Zen Studios in over a year. This is Williams Vol. 6, before that it was Vol. 5 already released in December 2019.

Never before there was such a delay in releasing new tables and even no information about new plans and releases!

What's going wrong? Even patches are not coming or coming slowly and delayed - my point of view is coming from Europe and the PS4. And yet we have still no single information about next steps with new PS5 and XBox and what will be with the big supporting community with "old" consoles ect.

Also: A lot of times I have problems with online servers from Zen in the last year - eg. High Scores, logging in ect.

For me - Zen was a good and quick releasing company with good comunication to the buyers and fans of pinball.

But -sadly- this has changed a lot in 2020 to this day!

[M!chel]

Your answer lies in 'the year 2020'.
It was a tough year.
Let's forget it, and hope 2021 will be better for all of us.

[KieferSkunk]

For me - Zen was a good and quick releasing company with good comunication to the buyers and fans of pinball.

But -sadly- this has changed a lot in 2020 to this day!

I work for a games company (not this one). I can tell you from experience that even the biggest companies are facing huge challenges in keeping up with release schedules, support, maintenance, and keeping everyone paid and working, because of the pandemic. I'm willing to cut Zen quite a bit of slack for this whole last year - it's not easy to coordinate a team of engineers and finish projects while everyone's working from home.

[Casio]

As bad as 2020 was it takes a matter of five minutes from someone working in the team to give us some sort of confirmation as to what is going on.

Alas they wish not too..

In my opinion this forum has been lacking since the sacking/loss of barbiebobomb.

[KieferSkunk]

Just consider the possibility that some of the employees involved might be dealing with sick family members, or could even be sick themselves. Having seen that in my own workforce, it's definitely a possibility. Not that I have any proof or inside info, and I am not defending Zen outright. Just trying to see things from all angles.

[M!chel]

This forum might be a little bit dead.
The Zen guys are more active on Discord. That's maybe why a lot of people miss a lot of information.

[Turtle Power]

Now, that is what I like to hear!!!!

[overall_fanatic]

This forum might be a little bit dead.

But.... Just a little bit

Discord

Never heard of it. Or friends of me either.

For good communication with users (and customers!) my point of view is you have to use established and already used ways or at least otherwise tell users when you switch to other platforms.

Yes - Home Office can slow down a lot of projects in buisness life - but specially software developers should have not so many problems with it like other companys?

[KieferSkunk]

Oh, trust me, it's a big challenge to do all your software work at home, 100 percent of the time. There are family distractions, the fact that most kids are stuck doing distance learning and need extra care. Sometimes you don't have a sufficient internet connection to handle sending and receiving large files. The distance learning stream takes up a lot of bandwidth and interferes with your ability to be online. Your spouse is stressed out with all the extra work they have to do with taking care of the kids at home full time, so you need to step in and help more than before. Etc.

Plus, many devs are getting just plain burned out working at home. It's a real thing - you'd think working at home would be a lot easier and more relaxing than being in the office, but it's been shown many times that (a) you tend to just go straight from bed to work, and work longer hours, because of there being no commute. Sounds good at the start, but it leads to burnout if you don't keep it in check. And (b), often your home setup isn't as good as that at work, even just in the way you sit in your chair or have to turn your neck to look at your screen.

All of these things will slow you down and hurt productivity. As I said earlier, I work for a games company myself, and I'm seeing this first-hand both for myself and many of my co-workers.

There may be other reasons why Zen is taking such a long time with updates, but don't accuse them of just being lazy in the pandemic. Nobody likes what's going on right now, but act in good faith here.

[Wambie]

Then again they could have a high percentage of personal working on the next gen platform.....Pinball FX

[overall_fanatic]

Yes, that's right. Questions about further support for FX3 and "old" consoles unanswered in the past - and now they are talking about "Pinball Royal" reboot for new consoles.....?! I think this is more the fact than any discussion about the pandemic. The truth seems to be that they want a total new game ... and have still worked on this project.

OK, we will see if this is the right way for Zen.... not so many new hardware sold (and even available).... and this new game & tables has to be fully paid from the beginning...

[Boulderdash]

.... I became a little bit angy & sad when I see the only 1 single table pack came from Zen Studios in over a year. This is Williams Vol. 6, before that it was Vol. 5 already released in December 2019.

Let me get this... You get angry because other people (a team of developers) do not provide you with fresh entertainment?
That is what makes you angry? And what exactly is your contribution?

[overall_fanatic]

You can read? Then take a look to post 1. You'l find the answer. I'm sure! Definitely maybe. Otherwise you may tell us your contribution? But exactly, please.

[KieferSkunk]

Let me get this... You get angry because other people (a team of developers) do not provide you with fresh entertainment?
That is what makes you angry? And what exactly is your contribution?

Speaking for myself, the main issue isn't so much the lack of new entertainment. It's the lack of engagement. Lack of communication of any sort. It's the fact that we, as paying customers, have almost no way to let the team know about game-breaking bugs and issues that severely diminish the quality and value of this product we paid for. It's the fact that Zen is still actively selling content in all the digital stores the game is available on without giving us adequate support for it. They haven't even said they don't plan to continue supporting it.

And from the looks of things, they also take absolutely minimal effort to monitor or moderate their own forum, nor moderate their subreddit (I saw how one of their outspoken users was a real asshole to another person, and Zen did nothing about it).

This is what makes me upset. I agree with the person who said he felt abandoned. And I'm not inclined to support Zen at this point. As I said in another thread, there's only so much benefit of the doubt I can give before it becomes ridiculous. My comment above about giving them a break kinda doesn't apply anymore.

[KieferSkunk]

With all due respect, Linne, why do we only hear from you once a month? And why did it take FOUR months to get a set of really minor bug fixes out onto consoles (e.g. bumpers in Medieval Madness) when they'd already been out on PC that whole time? I know it doesn't take anywhere near that long.

Let alone the fact that there are still several game-breaking bugs that to my knowledge haven't even been acknowledged - the worst one being the Mix Master turntable in Dr. Dude, which makes that game basically unplayable when it stops working.

It's understandable if the bug that causes that is so hard to find or fix that it's taking a while, or even that you might consider it not worth fixing. Just TELL us what's going on.

The fact that we only hear from you once a month and it's nearly always some form of "We'll look at that", "We're working on new stuff", or something else that is generally boilerplate, is what's driving your fans away.