steve said:
You could call me an ungrateful piece of shit if I did NOT PAY for this product... but I did. $119 + shipping.
$119 is a raging steal. Show me any controller for $119 that comes even close to the Thor's Hammer - evilcontrollers.com, voodoocontrollers.com, gamermodz.com, or any of the other shops out there. Our pricing is based on the market. I still feel that we are putting out products with more value than any other mod shop. Even without releasing any new driver updates for 3 months. (you don't get ANY driver updates with the other guys, except gamermodz, and he charges $25 apiece for an update, and that's for JUST rapidfire - absolutely no macros or glitches are available on his USB upgradable controller)
steve said:
I have a BS in CS, I know how long a few lines of coding takes to write and test.
Then you should know better than anyone how much work it takes to test and release a product that supports all Windows operating systems. 'A few lines of code', for your information, is in the ballpark of 10,000 lines of code (for the microcontroller code, the custom preset editor and some modifications I am working on for the hidbootloader.exe program). Add hours and hours of debugging and testing (albeit not all boring, many of those hours are spent in matches of COD:MW2
) and you've got a lot of manhours to put this product out.
Part of what takes me so long is that I don't have an infinite budget for this - I don't charge for software updates - which means I don't make any additional operating revenue from the 2,000 or so Viking customers that I can put towards software. If I were gamermodz charging $25 a whack for every single game, I'd have an extra $100,000 (each customer paying for two drivers). Hell, I could hire a full time programmer at that price. He charges $25 for just rapidfire - I guess I should charge $200 for the custom editor?
steve said:
Actually I do expect them to make presets when a GOOD idea comes along. I purchased a controller with lifetime presets... I guess that means the same presets will sit on the "download drivers" section for a lifetime??
Specifically which features or drivers are missing that you want?
steve said:
I said they have shit for support. If you've been around here long enough you would notice the support has gone in the toliet. There hasn't been a damn preset since NOVEMBER!
Hmm... that's strange, we added more features to 'The Works' driver on January 23rd, 2010. But yes I don't blame you, 3 months and no new drivers. As explained above, I've been putting my limited personal resources towards getting the framework for the custom driver editor set up, and trying to control costs so I don't have to gouge customers or go back on my word of free software updates for life.
steve said:
The fact remains... when this controller first came out, OD had great support for customers and made presets accordingly. I followed this controller from when it was first announced on acidmods and thought the idea was awesome and praised it to friends... who actually bought as well.
Once this thing starting selling really well... FROM OUR WORD OF MOUTH... all the support went to the shitter.
OD if you aren't going to write the presets we want... then let us write our own. Give us control of the controller we paid good money for!
You know as well as I, that as soon as I release a software development package, all the other mod shops will steal my hard work.
I'm sorry you're not happy. If you look at any major company (creative labs, microsoft, ion drums, logitech) - then you should know that some of those companies take literally years to put out driver updates for malfunctioning products that people pay a hell of a lot more than $119 for. We've all had a PCI card, a video card, and audio recording card or some other hardware in our computer that didn't work due to terrible driver support.
I've only been in business since July of 2009. Cut me some slack lol. In any case, your complaint is well timed, I'm spending some serious coding time this weekend on the custom editor project. I've got the framework for the custom driver editor basically completed, and it looks to be working over the spectrum of Windows operating systems, so now I've got a great framework that makes it easier for me to add new features.
You've got to admit you're being a little naive in your expectations. If you have your BS in CS, I would challenge you to develop your own mod chip for XBOX 360, complete with software and all the custom features, in three months' time.
So, if you're not too mad with us, please stop by the custom driver editor discussion thread (I'm opening a new one tomorrow for the new version of the custom editor) and let me know the features you want the most. I swear to God, I am working on it!