CMBN and CMFI receiving 3.0 Upgrade

[Steiner14]

Steiner14 I actually kind of agree, though I love the series and I'm more than happy paying for new features but paying for better load times or turning the music off??

Just like me.
I'm not very price sensitive when it comes to CM. For example, if they would offer decent development, I'd happily pay USD 15, 20 or 30 USD for an upgrade. I think USD 10 is too low anyway for a decent upgrade. That's the price of one fast food menu. A simulation company in a niche market should not aim for customers, that run away if the upgrade costs an additional Big Mac.

Let's take the explanation why they didn't include tank riders serious and let's assume they didn't know when they announced the v3 upgrade for FI or BN, how many tanks would be affected and how long it would take per tank while already in the midst of the development they suddenly were hit by surprise that it takes a certain amount of time per vehicle. It's absurd, but let's assume they already had forgotten everything since CMRTs development and they suddenly recognized that tank riders will not make it in:

But how did they treat customers when they noticed it? Weren't they silent for months? Although everyone expected tank riders for FI and BN.

How could a small customer-friendly company have dealt with this "surprise"? Explained the sudden problem to it's customers while offering something as compensation!

For example, since the engine can handle flames, they could have broken their rule and added one flame unit for each side. No big TO&E work, just take a german unit from CMRT and add one for the Western forces.
And since triggers are present, they could have offered one or two new scenarios, containing the new flame unit(s) and making use of triggers. They could have also adapted a few of the factory scenarios to make use of the new triggers.
With the benefit, that new players, who come in with v3, would see and experience the most advanced status of the engine.

How much work would it have taken, to include a lousy flamethrower unit and adapt a few scenarios and communicate with the community not to have wrong expectations?

Customers (not fanboys which are always happy, no matter how badly customers are treated) would have registered the good will and with a fair compensation for not including an important feature would nevertheless be staisfied - and probably most loyal customers would have continued to buy the upgrade. Just because they recognize the good will.

And to strenghten the impression of the good will, they could have included a little surprise, an easy to program enhancement of the engine. I'm thinking about something like the unit data window from CMx1. Ofcourse without data, but the data easily to fill by modders.

Since CMRT needs a patch anyway, the whole process of testing and recompilation must take place anyway. So including a small feature update to bring the engine to v3.1 would have cost not much development wise, but would have pleased not only BN + FI customers, but would have hugely positively surprised CMRT customers, too.

And if fixing a bug takes so long, that is usually reason for a developer to beg the customers for pardon - on the BFF clocks are running backwards: the customers shall be glad if bugs get fixed after four months or for not being fixed at all because fixing bugs uses precious resources! (anti aliasing not working in movie lighting mode, for example)