As the title says, I remember that porting those locos over to TSW 2 had a terrible effect on sound (I know the mix is just plain wrong) and I also know that it was referred to being one of the things high on the priority list to fix, however there hasn't been any word since about the status of these sound updates. Any news regarding this? The sound really breaks the immersion and fun with those locos. (Specially now with the brilliant sounds of the 101):
My last stand is that it's finish and queued for quality acess. At DTG there was a backlog that has now been removed according to the last roadmap. Sam said sometime in the next 8 weeks because there are a lot of bug fixes waiting for approval
I understand the need for QA and that it is not easy to quickly add resources with the knowledge for that role, but nevertheless, this is a management failure - management knew the load to be generated by planned releases and should have planned for the resources to be available in a mission critical function. To have Adam and his team doing exactly what we all want and then see it sit in limbo for multiple weeks is incompetence at the managerial level. As Sam recently pointed out, at one time we would have been unaware of these efforts and introduction of the Roadmap (long may it continue) allows us more insight, but management did not think through the implications of giving the punters more information and failed to react accordingly. To be fair, most companies fail in this area - errors happen, it is recovery which differentiates the winners from the losers.
Personnel are not like bringing on additional office supplies or inventory for a short-term need. What you are suggesting is that DTG have hired a bunch of QA people and then sack them after six weeks. They don't operate that way and I don't blame them: it's the kind of callous treat-people-as-things management that only an MBA could love.
Great point, I have learned when the MBA’s come into a company, there goes the company.... much better to work with companies run by entrepreneurs rather than those “managed” by MBAs. Just an observation over 26 years 9f being a consultant. That being said, I am very hesitant to call any management team “incompetent” without knowledge of what the main steering currents are that the management team is trying to comply. With respect to Q&A, usually have seen short term hires to be counter to quality.
I am not advocating short-time hires, just as I abhor the craze for outsourcing mission-critical functions (all too common with the MBA mindset - corporations like to do that rather than spend money actually training workers) - simply stating that the need for a larger QA team should have been foreseen - they could, for instance, have done some cross-training in Adam's team, so they could have switched to QA to break the log-jam. No point in his team racing ahead with mods, which will then languish for weeks or months. That sort of thinking separates the competent from, since you do not like 'incompetent', shall we say the less imaginative. And to repeat myself - it is how they recover from adverse issues that differentiates.
I would say if they cannot afford more people on QA team - they could do "closed beta" programm and all of these issues will be reported by ours - core fanbase..
From a business point of view what is being held up is non-critical free updates. The delay in QA is just because the products that make them their money, the new releases, have had extra QA time above what was planned for. It’s not a lack of planning that has caused the issue but the desire to release working content. Something had to give way for all extra unforeseen work and it was the least time sensitive work that did. The result is that some updates will come out later than planned, and that won’t even raise an eyebrow within the company. New DLC being delayed may have led to some extra meetings but the delayed updates not so much. If the backlog is sustained or grows then they can have a discussion about either hiring more staff or doing fewer updates to old content but it will probably turn out that neither course of action is needed because the backlog will get reduced in time. At least they are telling us there is a backlog in the QA process so we have a greater understanding of what the delay is.
There also is this little bug thing which has blown most business plans and schedules for the past year and a bit all to heck.