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I added two decks, everything works as promised.

frozenwastes wrote:Wow, this is terrible.

I wrote Apple's customer support suggesting that they re-evaluate the approval of this app in their store and remove it until it actually functions. The worst is for some people if they add a paid-for deck, the whole app stops working.

Privateer sh** the bed on this one.

Functionality isn't really what the approval process is about.

After playing with it on my iPad, I would have to say the quality control of their packing team seems to have followed them into their app/contract monitoring department. Multiple crashes, couldn't see a card pack I bought--and really the entire design doesn't strike me as a touch device--looks like the menus were designed for a mouse/click. Really strange.

You know it's bad when the Matt Wilson is telling people not to buy it . Shame, it's a solid idea.

AgeOfEgos wrote:You know it's bad when the Matt Wilson is telling people not to buy it . Shame, it's a solid idea.

Where and when did Mr. Wilson say this?

Platuan4th wrote:

AgeOfEgos wrote:You know it's bad when the Matt Wilson is telling people not to buy it . Shame, it's a solid idea.

Where and when did Mr. Wilson say this?

On the PP forums - I assume this is what he is talking about.

"I think right now, though, it's probably a good thing if you hesitated buying, at whatever price. "

http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?117609-Official-War-Room-release-information&p=1576137#post1576137

Which is a little misleading, but then he had a smiley - so I don't think he was being serious.

Wilson also made this post;

Why wont anyone answer the refund question? The product doesn't work and those that have spend money to buy the decks would like to have it back until there is a real product to buy.

This is an important question, so I'll step in to answer it.

Currently, we do not have a mechanism in place to provide a refund. However, in the event that we cannot address the current bugs and bring the ap up to a reasonable level of its intended functionality within a reasonable period of time, then we will make sure that customers are refunded and are investigating how to do that right now. But, you have to give us more than 24 hours. There are bug issues that will be able to be addressed quickly, and as someone noted above, there are issues that will require a subsequent review of the ap by Apple which will not be an insignificant delay. Our first goal is to achieve the intended functionality that we expected to experience upon release.

I personally apologize that we are unequipped to deliver your immediate satisfaction, but please know that this is our most urgent and primary focus.

This situation will not be resolved overnight and the complete solution may take up to a few weeks. For now, we must humbly ask for your patience as we work to get this done.

The phrase "Our first goal is to achieve the intended functionality that we expected to experience upon release", that is, to actually deliver what was promised, is... disconcerting.

Edit: forgot to mention, "the complete solution may take up to a few weeks"(!), there are some words that'll get folks buying now! Heh.

Anyone who bought on an iOS platform has Apple customer service to go to bat for them atleast. My friend got his money refunded after buying a deck rendered the program useless by emailing Apple customer service.

Steamforged has a very nice, very in-depth video review of the app running on an iPad. Really shows off what war room does terribly but also what it does very well. Some of the criticisms are quite minor like the app icon and a list breakdown and some are very major issues like the list creation, the long load times, and the less-than-intuitive layouts at times. Still, the review as a whole makes me wish I had an iPad, after seeing it in action and knowing ahead of time where it's downfalls stand I would probably get the full version despite the issues.

http://www.steamforged.com/gentlemen-you-cant-fight-in-here-this-is-the-war-room/

I've been critical of the app, but full props to PP. They're actively engaged with their fan base and seem to be pushing hard to get things fixed in the background. My copy is already working better, evidently due to some server-side improvements.

It's definitely not perfect, but they appear to be on the right path...

Valete,

JohnS

So today at the local store, a couple people had the app on their devices. On one person's latest iphone, it crawled and gave errors when a paid-for deck was accessed. On an older asus android tablet, it sang. On another person's latest iphone, it was also perfect.

I can't seem to spot any rhyme or reason why it's working great for some and poor for others. I thought the whole point of Apple's approach with iOS was to give a consistent user experience.

frozenwastes wrote:So today at the local store, a couple people had the app on their devices. On one person's latest iphone, it crawled and gave errors when a paid-for deck was accessed. On an older asus android tablet, it sang. On another person's latest iphone, it was also perfect.

I can't seem to spot any rhyme or reason why it's working great for some and poor for others. I thought the whole point of Apple's approach with iOS was to give a consistent user experience.

This is why companies usually launch on one platform (typically iOS) and then localize to others. Making an app work on all markets across the majority of devices is a herculean task and these are the possible results.

Hmm, glad I held off on buying any decks. I'll keep an eye out for updates on this one.

AduroT wrote:Buggy as all hell too, with a garbage list builder.

Me: I'm gonna buy an Errants UA!
Warroom: Sure, which unit would you like to attach it to?
Me: My Errants? No, wait, can I attach it to my Choir?
Warroom: You sure can!
Me: Uh... Ok?

APP like you've got a pair!!!

Kalamadea wrote:Steamforged has a very nice, very in-depth video review of the app running on an iPad. Really shows off what war room does terribly but also what it does very well. Some of the criticisms are quite minor like the app icon and a list breakdown and some are very major issues like the list creation, the long load times, and the less-than-intuitive layouts at times. Still, the review as a whole makes me wish I had an iPad, after seeing it in action and knowing ahead of time where it's downfalls stand I would probably get the full version despite the issues.

http://www.steamforged.com/gentlemen-you-cant-fight-in-here-this-is-the-war-room/

Yeah, great video review, thanks for posting the link.

I can see why people are angry about this release, especially given the positive feelings everybody seemed to have about ibodger before.

But while they should have waited to release this to clean up the bugs, its seems like people are ignoring that PP has a good record of working to fix issues with their games, so why wouldn't the same be true of this product?

I think given time, they will get like 95% of the problems fixed and all this hoopla will be just a memory. So personally given PP's track record, if I played Warmahordes I would feel confident about putting the money into the product now knowing that they will eventually get it there.

A lot of the things I hate about Warroom are not the bugs, but the lack of features. The list builder not removing options you can't take, not accounting for theme forces, ect. They've said that's working as intended. It's stuff that their app you have to pay for doesnt do and which they currently have said they don't plan to implement, but which the old free app did.

I have to concur with AduroT; the biggest issue isn't really the bugs in the long term (because if those don't get fixed the app simply goes away, and PP and Tinkerhouse can let the lawyers deal with the problem), but the material that was intentionally omitted.

As I've seen people mention on the official forums, the things just reeks of bad design. The interface isn't just clunky, it's built in a way that defies reason.

Lack of list validation is a prime (but by no means the only example): it's a feature that doesn't look like it was left out for a particular overarching philosophical reason... but because this app is basically shovel-ware at the moment, and list validation would require contextual mechanics that they didn't want to invest in.

Seriously, as of right now, this this is basically a stripped down version of Gatherer, except, of course, to get the functionality of that free resource, you have to pay... $60. Uh....

The lack of list validation is what gets me. I understand that a large part of War Room's existence is for the virtual card deck and the references built in to the app, but if you're going to allow list-building, at least enable validation! But currently, if you're building a theme force with War Room, it doesn't restrict anything, and the points reductions at certain levels don't get factored in either, making it practically useless. I might as well down at my desk with a pen and paper to work out my Karchev theme force.

Personally, I also feel like there should have been some progress in the 5months since the supposed March release; I know the app was delayed, but it really looks and feels like Tinkerhouse simply stopped working on it altogether in the last few months, and pushed out a sub-par product. Matt Wilson himself has posted several times on the PP boards, and while he was very polite and civil, I'm sure heads are rolling behind the scenes somewhere. For PP, this is a clusterf***.

Mr. Grey wrote:The lack of list validation is what gets me. I understand that a large part of War Room's existence is for the virtual card deck and the references built in to the app, but if you're going to allow list-building, at least enable validation! But currently, if you're building a theme force with War Room, it doesn't restrict anything, and the points reductions at certain levels don't get factored in either, making it practically useless. I might as well down at my desk with a pen and paper to work out my Karchev theme force.

In addition, some tiers like Bad Seeds and Zerkova's 2nd version are outright missing units(all Cygnar units for Bad Seeds and Vanguards for Zerkova) that they can take because it's not something that is regularly available to the faction at large.

I want a phone based list builder and this isn't that. I don't need phone based cards and rules references. I have, y'know, cards and a rule book for that.

It's interesting to see some of the back-traffic about things; I came across this older FAQ, from when the app was expected in the spring,

whicken wrote:

The Happy Anarchist wrote:I have heard that it was said on a podcast that it won't be able to handle Theme lists such as iBodger or ForwardKommander do - and that instead it won't restrict based on FA or points and it will be up to the TOs to check the lists.

That seems highly unlikely - if so, it would be an embarrassing misstep. (Although, it may be worth noting that easily the most complicated part of iBodger was maintaining the theme forces.)

That's whicken, as in the creator/author of iBodger, by the by. The following also came up, and I think it's the real explanation;

whicken wrote:

garwjenk wrote:It was confirmed on lost hemisphere, that you get cards for each theme force with the requirements and benefits of each on the card. The reason given was that it was done to cut down on programming, as they plan to release lots of theme forces.

Yeah, just listened to that. I'm speechless, honestly.

I think there is really no doubt that what we've been seeing the last few days is a consequence of both an inexperienced developer, and a desire to cut down on costs. And it's cost them in the long run. List validation is another level of programming, that would take it beyond a simple data storage and retrieval app, and it's clear they didn't want to invest in that.

As an aside, I suddenly find myself unable to post on the PP forums: are they just really buggy, or do the moderators yank people's posting privileges without notice?

Platuan4th wrote:

In addition, some tiers like Bad Seeds and Zerkova's 2nd version are outright missing units(all Cygnar units for Bad Seeds and Vanguards for Zerkova) that they can take because it's not something that is regularly available to the faction at large.

I want a phone based list builder and this isn't that. I don't need phone based cards and rules references. I have, y'know, cards and a rule book for that.

Yeah, I didn't even mention the missing/incorrect cards. How hard is it to get the cards correct in your official app when you presumably get the card files directly from PP?

I'd love it if whicken was able to release iBodger again, fully updated. As you said, I have cards and rulebooks; a phone-based list-builder, however, would be wonderful. I'd pay for a new version of iBodger - set the price at $15 and watch the profits roll in. War Room will never see my money, though.

Am I missing something--or is the lack of Bluetooth support by design? If so, that makes the use of iPads at conventions/larger tournaments a moot point (Unless you actually purchased a data plan for your iPad).

AgeOfEgos wrote:Am I missing something--or is the lack of Bluetooth support by design? If so, that makes the use of iPads at conventions/larger tournaments a moot point (Unless you actually purchased a data plan for your iPad).

The number of technical problems they are dealing with is... large. Bluetooth I honestly don't know, right now my impression is they are working on 3G/4G support. My guess is that BT was never intended to be supported, given the staggering amount of corner cutting the app shows.

Might want to post to their "roadmap" thread, they might do something about it... maybe.