VU 14.3 Creature Issues

So... there were severe issues:

Then VU 14.3.0.1 release notes said:

I wondered what "adjusted" and "updated" mean:

:
Then VU 14.3.0.2 release notes said:

Given it has been "updated" and a few days later "greatly updated" one can only conclude that "updated" does not mean fixed and issues persist.

Considering these are issue that cause players to loose money why is there no public announcement that no-one can miss before playing? Simple letting players know that a feature of the game is not working as expected and they potentially loose money when using it? And simply announcing when it's finally fixed?

The updates and working hard to fix the issues is for sure appreciated but nevertheless this is yet another complete fail in communication. And I simply don't get it at all, because proper communication is at least as cheap and easy as shitty communication.

 

For a real cash economy, the proper lack of communication certainly is a major factor into why the community in general does not (seem to) trust MA when they make statements.

That is (in my opinion, anyway), absolutely killing in case you are trying to cater to a niche market, and trust lost is extremely difficult to get back. I even dare to say it's a major factor in the extremely low retention rate we see.

 

There were two issues this VU which caused panic and fear of loosing money by the players.
1. Smaller buggy hitboxes.
2. Constant server crashes/disconnects.

#1 was mostly resolved a few months ago when they changed it so that you do not loose ammo or decay when shooting into the air or into dead mobs. At the core this means that you do NOT loose money by missing a smaller hitbox. (now in reality you will loose some ped do to extra decay, but this is negated by issue #2)

#2 A lot of people have complained that they are loosing peds because they have 1/2 or 3/4 killed mobs when the servers crash. Decay, Ammo, Skills, etc... get rolled back a few minutes when the servers crash, so these do not cost you peds. (not 100% sure on this but I also think you keep your loot)
I am 100% sure however that Skills (have gotten the same unlock 2x times in one night) Weapon Decay (finish a run blade is dead about back to service center and servers crash, when I log back in I have enough left on my blade to kill another mob) and Armor decay (Consistently for the 5-6 days after the VU during the server crash issues my armor/fap decay was 3-3.5ped per run where it is 7-8ped during normal conditions)

You can speculate about loot all you want, but my personal experience during this time is that it was as 'stable'(dynamic?) as any other times I've hunted with runs ranging from 80-100% tt returns each run.
I just finished the ambu chain from start to finish 2 nights ago(took me 25 days), so the last several days were in the VU crisis period. During the entire mission I looted 2-3 esis, one of them during this period. During the entire mission I looted 1 maniquen(no shopkeepers :( ) and it was during this period. And I had 2x 1040ped runs with ~60% tt run, neither of which were during this 'crisis' period.

In my opinion, the bugs suck. It's a lot more difficult to play with constant crashes and things changing. But we should focus on that, and not pretend it is 'costing us money' because its not. In fact it saves us money because we are not able to cycle as fast and therefor can not loose our % to the devs as fast as we would during 100% operational periods.

I do have faith however that these changes are for a purpose. And I have no problem accepting there will be bumps in the road as we progress towards that future.