[johnny gaijin]

the FAQ says it's supposed to be free so why does it cost $3.95?

[Caine Hazen]

As has been discussed before on this, production costs went up an unforseen amount for 04 season, and it wasn't feasable to release this as a free release. 

Its worth the price though.

[Xicidis]

This is a 6 month old post. But it still applies. If your FAQ says that the product should be free, and you don't change it, then charge people, isn't that false advertising(After asking my father who has a doctorate in law, he says it's more like Bait and Switch. He also said it was a very "Shady business practice" if I remove the colorful language he actually used.)? It's been months and it still says that. I was going to start getting the season 4 missions, but I think that it is unfair to tell people that it shouldn't cost anything, and then charge them.

[Deliverator]

I agree with this, someone should have gotten that FAQ page squared away LONG ago, like... 8-10 months probably.

[lurkeroutthere]

The following post explicitly represents my own views only and not that of Catalyst, the Shadowrun Missions team, the Demo Team, or pretty much anybody but myself. On the whole people better qualified then I will likely get around to responding but I shall say this.

The problem with doing something like the FAQ update is ideally when you update it you want said update to be as inclusive as possible. There is a lot of ground to cover and some significant changes to be made after mulling them over. Then while I'm not making excuses FAQ updates are basically done on a time donation basis by the campaign admin and the writing pool who have their own time constraints in their own lives. The focus of the missions team has been on getting missions out the door as well as other products served up for Shadowrun. Also calendar wise we're just coming off the summer con season where many of the writing and administrative staff pull double duty to make the big conventions work.

So yes while we would like to update the FAQ, it will definitely get done eventually, there is a time investment issue.

Further based only on my observations there is no intent to deceive, at the time the FAQ was written the intent was to release it for free based on previous seasons expectations of costs.  Obviously that has changed but there is no way you could have been tricked into paying for the module believing it to be free. Your father and you may choose to see it as a shady business practice, I can only assure you that it is more a product of deciding to add more art, more maps, and more things to the end product. If you remain convinced that there is some deep conspiracy I can only suggest you might look elsewhere for it.

[KarmaInferno]

Pedantic note: Technically "Bait-and-Switch" only applies if one product is advertised, but when the customer goes to buy it he is told that product is unavailable and gets pushed to buy a similar but costlier product.

Similarly, "False Advertising" is inapplicable because there is no intent to deceive.

It's a simple oversight. There is no malicious intent involved.



-k

[Paul]

Regardless, we need to get that fixed. Thanks for pointing it out, we're working on getting that corrected.

Paul

[Xicidis]

Don't get me wrong. I love Shadowrun, and I am very happy with Catalyst Games for how they have continued the game. 

"It's a simple oversight. There is no malicious intent involved."
I can't agree with that. A simple oversight would have been fixed. You would only need to rewrite that one paragraph, or even add a small note after it explaining that it changed and why. After 8-10 months it has to have been brought up before. This post proves that, and it can't be the only one.

"Obviously that has changed but there is no way you could have been tricked into paying for the module believing it to be free."
I know that I wouldn't have mistakenly paid for it, but I could have if I had a big order and didn't notice it. I've ordered 6 sourcebooks at once before from battlecorps, and I could have missed it among the others. The reasoning is "Oh well, its only $4 who cares." is what most people would think. $4 isn't that much, and if someone wants it, they'll gladly pay for it. I know I was going to order all of season 4. But, the thing that made me go check it out was the "first mission free" thing. I'm not going to order it anymore though. I don't like when businesses do things like that, so I won't support it. However, when the FAQ is changed I'll more than likely go and order all of season 4. So, I guess the question is, is my business (and the very few people that think like me's business) worth taking 10 minutes to change one paragraph in the FAQ?

[KarmaInferno]

Of course, it really does need to be fixed, but there is a difference between "haven't gotten around to it yet" and "Ha ha let's see how many people we can trick".

At most you can accuse Catalyst of being lax in their updates. They're not intending to deceive.

Remember that this is a company that is YEARS behind on some of their errata updates.


-k

[Deliverator]

Errata has to do with a lot more work than adding a little _{*the first mission of season 4 is no longer free due to unforeseen circumstances} would literally take the web admin 30 seconds. So since this has been brought up before, it should have been fixed. They don't seem to have trouble updating the main page on a regular basis, and while doing that they could have easily jumped down to the FAQ and snapped in a sentence to say its not gonna be free sorry instead of making more excuses.

I like the guy who came forward and say "Yes, this is a mistake, we need to rectify it." That would have been a satisfactory response to this thread, that is if it actually got rectified. That is all he was seeking was for someone from catalyst to say "Hey we screwed up. We fixed it. Thank you for pointing it out and we are sorry for any inconvenience, we hope to keep your business in the future" Done, how hard is that?

[FastJack]

Errata has to do with a lot more work than adding a little _{*the first mission of season 4 is no longer free due to unforeseen circumstances} would literally take the web admin 30 seconds. So since this has been brought up before, it should have been fixed. They don't seem to have trouble updating the main page on a regular basis, and while doing that they could have easily jumped down to the FAQ and snapped in a sentence to say its not gonna be free sorry instead of making more excuses.

I like the guy who came forward and say "Yes, this is a mistake, we need to rectify it." That would have been a satisfactory response to this thread, that is if it actually got rectified. That is all he was seeking was for someone from catalyst to say "Hey we screwed up. We fixed it. Thank you for pointing it out and we are sorry for any inconvenience, we hope to keep your business in the future" Done, how hard is that?

The line is in a PDF file. So you're going to have to re-write the original document, then send it to the layout guy (the guy that's also working on all the other books) so he can make sure it all still "works" and then process the document. After that, you need to upload it to the server.

A lot more than "30 seconds". Do not assume that because it seems like a minor change that there are procedures and other things that would prevent this from being more than a minor change.

[Deliverator]

Or you could get pre-authorization to edit the first sentence to a new sentence and then go in, edit it, and upload it to the server... 30 seconds... Its not like he is changing the meaning of a rule, or rewriting a paragraph, its one sentence at the beginning of a section that could easily be changed with a quick cut and paste. As long as its still two lines of text it doesn't change the layout.

I am just saying this is a PR nightmare and should have been fixed as soon as it was noticed. Excuses are like assholes, everybody has one and they all smell.

[Paul]

A corrected PDF now exists, it's just a matter of getting it replaced on the server. (IE, this minion doesn't have such access, nor should I)

So, still WIP, but not much longer.

Paul

[Deliverator]

Thank you Paul, I appreciate your candidness and quick action. You are a credit to the staff.

[JM_Hardy]

The website's being a bit of a pain, but I have a workaround up, with hopes to have a more direct route soon. The FAQ on DriveThru and the Battleshop had been updated a while ago; I apologize for not getting the website link corrected. So things are addressed to a degree now, and will be addressed better once the ftp site stops yanking me around.

Jason H.