You had me at "yes"
I'm a sucker for agreement [sad]
Thanks Edward game development, community management and game publishing all wrapped up in a nice complicated (but ultimately wonderful!) little package Lewis
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I'm a sucker for agreement [sad]
Thanks Edward game development, community management and game publishing all wrapped up in a nice complicated (but ultimately wonderful!) little package Lewis
As a software developer myself (though not in the games industry) I can tell you that any seasoned developer is a pessimist when it comes down to time estimates. Unfortunately usually not pessimistic enough. Most seasoned developers will put in time for unforeseen issues and their project managers usually put an extra dollop on top of those estimates, but the reality of it is that when you are doing something new, something you haven't done before it will almost always take more time. Because you will run into issues that you've never had before, which take time to analyze/debug and the time that takes can be highly unpredictable.
Ed wont stop employing people until it reaches "Ed's 38"
I accept all this, but if the pure statistics suggest you are always under estimating, surely you add more on to your estimates as a matter of course?
Ed, since exploration is at the back of the bus and things are running behind schedule, please take one bit of advice from me to Sandro:
PLEASE do NOT shortchange the exploration improvements in order to stick to releasing in 2018!!!!!!
If you guys are so far behind that you find yourselves cutting exploration scope, DON'T! Just delay the Q4 update into 2019 instead. This is a pivotal update for a lot of players and it absolutely CAN NOT get the Multicrew treatment.
As much as it pains me to say we've waited four years for this, we can wait longer if we have to.
Ah, but there is usually a budgetary cap for projects. And making project estimates that wildly exceed the budget cap is a big no-no in development. And most of the time the biggest mismatch between project estimates and actual time required comes from an uncontrollable source, i.e. the customer. They either didn't specify their needs correctly or change their mind during project execution.
This is why software development is moving towards Agile methods, where solutions are incrementally implemented (and if need be designed) with the customer given fixed points in the development cycle to examine the intermediate results and if need be influence the development process. This however doesn't come without it's cost for the customer as any changes or additional features requested will incur extra cost. This cost can be the removal or scale down of other features (in order to keep the agreed upon schedule) or the addition of more time/budget to the project (with a delay in the delivery date). The advantage of this method for the customer is of course that he/she has greater control over the end product and isn't confronted with nasty surprises at the end. The advantages for the developers is that they have greater control over the development process and have a bigger chance of actually implementing what the customer needs i.s.o what the customer thought at the outset what he wanted (these are not the same things usually).
Completely Agree. I would prefer to wait and get the full treatment.
You have my Longsword +2
Definitely. Exploration deserve a good & complete flesh out.
Anyway, we'll have the atmospheric planets in 2018 DLC so it will give us a bone to chew until then
I'm sure it already is delayed beyond Q4 at this point. Q3 in October - 6 months of balancing patches and then possibly out May next year
This is a helpful post, thank you.
Definitely. Exploration deserve a good & complete flesh out.
Anyway, we'll have the atmospheric planets in 2018 DLC so it will give us a bone to chew until then
Yes, Atmospherics in the DLC, or ED 4.0
Please Ed, don't think for a minute Mengy could be some sort of a community speaker (even if he might think so, he never was. For the record: me neither btw... not that I'm totally disagreeing with his comment). Other than that, reassuring news! And now I need to reveal the mystery how 'nice', 'complicated' 'little' and 'ultimately wonderful' possibly fits into one and the same single cocktail... Well played!
There are (or should be) no individuals that speak on behalf of 'the community'. I bought into a game designed by a professional game designer, the 'game they want to play'. Focused Feedback is great for gathering ideas (I've put forward a few myself) and testing whether the designers' concepts would be well received but ultimately I put my money down to buy what Frontier decide is best, based on the decisions made before I paid.
I would like to know what's planned for the future, the big picture. I'm sure I'll have an opinion on the details of how it could be implemented but without that big picture plan there is little any feedback can be constrained by so it doesn't interfere with other (as yet unannounced) features & tools.
There are parts that are secret & perhaps some of major plot points cannot be revealed without spoiling a surprise twist somewhere along the line, but a basic outline of currently planned features would be very helpful to mitigate the wilder speculation & ideas put forward & give some scope to work within.
Please Ed, don't think for a minute Mengy could be some sort of a community speaker (even if he might think so, he never was. For the record: me neither btw... not that I'm totally disagreeing with his comment). Other than that, reassuring news! And now I need to reveal the mystery how 'nice', 'complicated' 'little' and 'ultimately wonderful' possibly fits into one and the same single cocktail... Well played!
Is he not allowed to voice an opinion? Especially a reasoned one? eg: I'm (also) more than happy to wait (until next year) for the Q4 update if it means doing it properly... *confused*
Could not agree more.
Loose lipsh shink ships. They were probably Russians dressed up as devs
There must be a ton of Russian spies in Cambridge, hoping to find details on the Panther Clipper
Well I for one am not happy to wait!
Waiting patiently or otherwise is the game they play over at Star Citizen, Not here!
NMS are updating and improving their product regularly and with good quality gameplay enhancements, ED is falling behind.
Waiting patiently or otherwise is the game they play over at Star Citizen, Not here!
NMS are updating and improving their product regularly and with good quality gameplay enhancements, ED is falling behind.
So, let's get this straight.
A budgetry cap is already in place for a project or some amount of defined work / effort.
THEN
An estimate is calculated that gives the cost of that defined work.
BUT
That defined work has not been defined or even scoped! So how credible is the estimate?
AND
One can infer that if the estimate does NOT wildly exceed the cap then that cap will be increased. So is it a cap?
Software development in nutshell.
It's called WDD.
Wish Driven Development.