And a good morning comment, too. It's snowed here, no-one made it into work, so I can post in peace...
I must say that this little stunt of Taldren's has certainly backfired. Were they trying to keep personal attacks on themselves? Were they trying to keep attention focussed on SFC? Whatever the motive, banning the Taldren Three (or now Four?) certainly hasn't been the best handled effort Taldren have done.
The fact is that, whilst these guys' collective manner was wrong, their core matter was largely correct. SFC is a brilliant, brilliant gaming idea. But what have Taldren done with that idea? SFC1 was playable out of the box, but SFC2 was a complete shambles. Who remembers the increasing interminable delays, or the cloaking farce? Yes, it was corrected in patches, but it was completely unplayable off the shelf.
With SFC 3, I don't think that Taldren have really learned their lesson. the game doesn't work right... I've yet to finish the Romulan or federation SP campaigns, because the game hangs in the middle of loading certain missions. Ships explode. There's a power drain bug. There are ghost enemies that don't exist that you cannot defeat because they are not there, so you have no choice but to forfeit and lose prestige. It's not as bad as EAW, but let's be honest, it's not a lot better.
Waiting for the patch, I've been playing a couple of Activision's releases, Soldier of Fortune 2 and Voyager Elite Force. Unpatched, these games are brilliant. I downloaded the patches for them, and in playing terms, they are minor tweaks, at best. Nothing like the substantial fixing that appears to be required for SFC 3. Which leads me to wonder what Activision really think of Taldren. Professional workers getting a workable game out on schedule, or amateurs getting a shambles out and hoping that patches can fix it? It's a democracy, so you guys decide.
Now, Taldren has compounded their failings by withdrawing almost completely from commenting on the Forums. I remember when SFC 2 came out, that Erik and Dave were posting in the forum all the time explaining what they were doing to try to get things right. I was impressed by how honest they were, and how hard they were obviously working to get things straight. They were talking about patches after the patches, and what would get fixed when... Excellent PR stuff.
And now what? I've posted complaining about certain bugs many times, offering to send my savegames in, even offering to be a beta tester when Taldren recently asked for them. What did I get in response? Nothing, nada, jack s**t, not even a postcard from the delta quadrant. What's up with that? Have they been replaced by imposters put in place by the Dominion? It sure seems that way.
I wanted the Taldren of old to succeed in making SFC2 the cracking game that it turned out to be. Now, I am starting to hope that the Taldren of today will go bust, and from the ashes a bunch of programmers will arise that will get SFC 4 out that will be everything that SFC 3 should have been. I'm really not seeing that Taldren care about the game the way they used to. Their PR efforts have really gone up the spout. What happened, guys? The cone of silence is supposed to be from Maxwell Smart, not the Enterprise.
They can ban me for saying this, but it's my honest opinion. And I think a lot of other people that have all three games sitting on their shelves would at least accept my point.