[JCrowe]

eehh ... don't be too hasty; it's hard to judge when the facts are not all in evidence. The company could have good reasons for its policy: legal exposure, bureaucratic protocols, employee work concerns, etc. On a basic level, it might not be a very efficient use of Aaron, Bob, Joe & Sally's time to "monitor" every forum that carries mention of their company’s products, and responding to each signal of distress fired into the electronic night of cyberspace.

In any event, a ticket has the advantage of giving them lots of specifics and a "live" example on which to work. Not always the case with complaints taken off a forum, unless they reach out to the individual complaining, and, more-or-less ... set up a ticket. In which case, you might then discover that the solution to complainant’s problem is very simple, and you just spent an hour of a developer’s time to fix something a minimum-wage lackey could have solved off an answer chart for $3.99.

Regardless, it's clear that the game needs a lot of rework, and those kinds of changes aren't something they can run on the fly. Consider the modest improvement between versions 1.01 and 1.05 - and the fact that it took three (if not four) weeks to bridge that small gap and do the little that it did. And they still have AI work, unit rebalancing, the aforementioned multiplayer, and (in my opinion) rework of some unit mechanics. (Stationary nukes, visible subs, sea spaces exempted from bombardment, ‘moving-target’ infantry … take your pick.) None of this is an easy fix.

So, might as well send a ticket and a list of comments for fixes, upgrades, and alterations. It might be a while in coming, but honestly – would a major like EA give such suggestions the time of day? (No. No they would not. See “Legal Dept.”) It’s kinda neat to be able to participate in a meaningful way on a work-in-progress, even if it does mean playing guinea-pig. Those opportunities don’t come around very often.