Fact is the game has a lot of flexibility and potential but core parts of the model have big problems, problems recognized from the get go, yet nobody seems to have been working on even possible fixes, and this after more than a year. What we have had is numerous (appreciated) bug fixes and a lot of tinkering at the margins. The problem with tinkering at the margins is that they can only fix so much and the time spent on them is wasted as long as the core isn't fixed. The fact that so much time and effort has been spent on tinkering tells me that the core is inviolate for the foreseeable future and that is frankly a waste of potential and a disappointment.
Well, directly post-release the focus was on bug fixes and gathering information to make the first major changes. The approach has its merits and its flaws. The good part is that there are far fewer bugs, the bad part is that there are also fewer major changes, changes that could after that only be made over time.
While it is true that a game of this scope can't be tested fully prior to release, the various underlying mechanics can be tested in smaller scenarios. Why there's f.e. no Blizzard scenario Army Group Center to validate the Blizzard rules makes little sense and goes a long way to explaining why even glaring problems weren't spotted until well after release.
Who said the potential problems of something like the first winter penalties were not spotted pre-release? There's a big difference between not spotting a problem and not fixing it in a way that works due to a lack of data/no decision on what kind of damage the first winter should do. As to testing smaller scenarios: we did a lot of that.
However, in the end, it comes down to rather simple things, maybe even math: a new version every week or two, or even every week, with new things that needed to be tested, with a handful of testers, and a part-time programmer+Gary. Post-release, the same situation applied. The bottleneck was initially the amount of things that needed to be tested, post-release the bottleneck was probably only having a part-time programmer who spent most of his time on bug fixes, with Gary doing a thing or two as well. You can only keep making significant changes with a full team backing the effort. Whilst the testing team was still there, in this genre the "programming team" usually consists of just 1 or 2 people (and in WitE's case that person, Pavel, was mostly busy with bug fixes) so even if something can be tested and even if everybody is aware something might not be working properly, it takes time to program, test and deliver.
Trust me, all of us would've liked to improve the game more, both pre-release and post-release, but with the means available to the developers and the testers, it just wasn't possible. That doesn't mean you've been playing a beta for a year, it means that with a small team developing a monster game, there are some serious limitations to what can realistically be done.
I gave up on WitE a while back and will be extremely wary about buying WitW.
The question for Matrix is how many other customers (that is, guys who spend their hard earned money on Matrix products) feel the same way, even if they have by now been discouraged from voicing their opinions here?
One question that every customer will probably ask himself is: does this game deliver what I thought it would deliver after reading about what it should deliver according to the developers? In WitE's case, my answer to that question is still: mostly, yes.
There might be many unhappy customers, although I don't know how many, and I can see why a number of people might be frustrated about some game mechanics not working.
Heck, I've had prolonged periods where I had enough of flaw X or Y myself, but it's still a playable game, even with its flaws.
WitW will probably share less with WitE than you might think, and I can assure you that the tester team will try to keep as many of the flaws of WitE out of WitW by reporting it if something is wrong. At least with WitW, there is still room for changes.
In the end, a lot of it comes down to what Gary wants the game to look like. It's essentially his game, so in the end his design decisions decide what the game will look like. We now know that something like the 1:1>2:1 rule was probably a mistake, but at some point in the development process, it seemed to be a good idea. One thing to keep in mind is that WitE was in development for years. WitW will presumably take a shorter time to develop, which means there's less room for things that were a good idea once but are no longer a good idea to sneak into the final product.
