FD should increase size of the team developing ED

[MarkAusten]

The general rule also applies when revising project plans from the outset - double the workforce does not necessarily result in double the productivity and in practice the larger the work force the lower the cost efficiency.

Not everything can be time compressed and typically it involves cutting corners to at least some degree - that in turn can result in increased project risk and reduction in quality of output (even when done carefully). If the work force can be split into effective and smaller teams working on independent parts of the product then the productivity impact of a larger work force on a given project can be mitigated to a point.

As a general rule of thumb though double the workforce does not equate to double the productivity, and there are some things that will take at least X time regardless of the number of people you throw at the problem.

And hence the old saying that I trot out the after time with my bosses, "you can't get a baby in one month by making 9 women pregnant". Crude but usually effective. Somethings take time and there's little you can do about it.

Nope, you are wrong - in fact one very vocal KS backer stated that no one from 'those days' still plays

snip

And said vocal KS backer is totally incorrect. I'm still here and still playing.

 

[Mack Winston]

So that all being said, I think FD really should increase size of team developing ED - because we want more ED updates to be released more frequently. I hope they do. I hope that recent David side note about happening will really leave some impact on how much they can release a year.

Increasing the team size might actually *slow down* the speed of releases. Beyond a certain point, the cost of the dependencies between more team members starts increasing more rapidly than the extra code they can write.

 

[MarkAusten]

snip...

By far the biggest reason why Star Citizen is taking so long is they are taking the time to develop the tools, NOW, and get the SOLID FOUNDATIONS built so that everything created with it is easier, and most importantly, that it meshes well with everything else - in other words no spaghetti code. Anyone who knows about building and houses with subsidence will know that fixing the poor foundations of a domestic property will cost more that it cost to build the entire house and decorate and fill it with furniture. Sometimes it's cheaper just to knock it down and redo it.

It seems more and more likely that FDev have been creating on the fly, and apart from the cobra engine they created, a lot of the other necessary tools either don't exist or are rudimentary at best, it's about the only reasonable conclusion considering how long they take to produce stuff and how many things they break doing it. (IF you beleive they have 1/3 of thier available 313 staff working on ED)

snip...

Only to an extent. The foundations you built 4 years ago may not and probably will not support the system as it stands now unless the system only changes slightly. The game, like most software, does not stand still and the direction it has ended up going may no longer be supportable by the original foundations which predicated a different direction.

So things get harder to maintain, bug fix and enhance until the point comes when it is more effective to return to the foundations, the core mechanics, and do something about it (sound familiar?).

This does not mean that the original foundations were bad, just no longer sufficient in exactly the same way that the foundation for a 2 bedroom bungalow are not sufficient for a 10 bedroom three story house with ensuite bathrooms a kitchen with an area that exceeds the area of the original bungalow a "granny flat' and dog house into which the original bungalow has been extended.

The game is a dumpster fire that is about to crash and burn. Poor Leadership, feature creep, worsening finances, bad engine, poor network implementation. Tools?! what tools. Any thing substantial in SC has to be done manually. We complain about ED but at least we have a working game. No Man Sky is probably the example you are looking for.

Fortunately your opinion is just as worthless as mine.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

If one woman can produce one baby in nine months, then shouldn’t nine women be able to produce one baby in one month?

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

If one woman can produce one baby in nine months, then shouldn’t nine women be able to produce one baby in one month?

No but they can produce 9 babies in 9 months. And you don't want that.

 

[NeilF]

Development team size aside, my issue is the stuff that is being given the green light to develop.

For example, as I've posted today, I see little gain from offering yet more SLFs in place of actually more interesting things to do with fighters. And this has been the basic issue for me for the past 2+ years. Development effort being asigned to generally shallow bolt ons, or just yet more modules, yet more engineering, yet more generation ships, and yet more weapons...

If the game had been frozen two years ago as regards weapons, modules and engineering etc, and had effort instead been dedicated to more involved gameplay as regards what you could do with those assets, I'd have seen that as potentially a far better outcome. And I bet the Thagoid invasion could have been a far more engaging experience for it!

So even if FD increase their development team size for ED, until there is some major change of ethos in their desire to actually move the gameplay mechanics forwards, it all seems rather pointless to me - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Requirements?p=6958178&viewfull=1#post6958178


Ultimately? - It's not how big it is! It's what you do with it!

 

[IndigoWyrd]

No but they can produce 9 babies in 9 months. And you don't want that.

Some people learn from their mistakes, others have more than one kid.

Or Babies: The world’s most common STD.

 

[NeilF]

No but they can produce 9 babies in 9 months. And you don't want that.

Your maths is all out... Actually, they could produce anything feasibly upto around 72 babies in 9 months!

 

[Han Zulu]

In conclusion I think none of that even means anything about size of the team. We just discuss actual output. And it is quite obvious that most of us would like to have more ED in a year. So that all being said, I think FD really should increase size of team developing ED - because we want more ED updates to be released more frequently. I hope they do. I hope that recent David side note about happening will really leave some impact on how much they can release a year.

And consider two other famous games right now, No Man's Sky, small team, cranks out huge updates several times a year, vs Star Citizen some 400 people large development and can't get the core mechanics stable enough. Sometimes, larger is not better. It's all about focus and doing things smart. Frontier has the right size team, I think, it's more what do they focus on to develop.

 

[SP_Predicador]

And consider two other famous games right now, No Man's Sky, small team, cranks out huge updates several times a year, vs Star Citizen some 400 people large development and can't get the core mechanics stable enough. Sometimes, larger is not better. It's all about focus and doing things smart. Frontier has the right size team, I think, it's more what do they focus on to develop.

It is not a fair comparison doing that at the same level. Hello games just needs to produce a baby, while CIG, by the scale of the project, needs to produce 20 babies. So HG needs 1 woman and 9 months, while CIG needs 20 woman in the same time or less women and more time. Even not entering in issues of management and efficiency, that CIG can have, or problems with Sony for Hello Games to take decissions.

 

[Parmo]

Your maths is all out... Actually, they could produce anything feasibly upto around 72 babies in 9 months!

Well, if FDev's development team have women (and we know of one don't we?) then let's not put the question to the test!

However, the analogy as presented is not coherent seeing that women cannot produce babies by themselves.:O
Even if they use the Agile method.

I suspect the software / asset development teams in FDev are in a pertual state of organised turmoil - such is the norm for large teams: large teams are comprised of smaller sub-teams each with their designated but changing objectives. Shoving more people into this turmoil needs to done with disciplined care to not lower the productivity of said team or teams.

 

[Sneake Llama]

There have been lot of posts and claims that FD doesn't have 100-ish people team working on ED. While it has always contradicted by regular FD claims of having such big team for game, I think I realize now that discussion is not about how big team works on ED. We have what FD says us, and we have some assertments like FD being publicly traded company so they can't lie about that kind of information on regular basis.

However, I think it is not the point people try to make there, it just shows limits of Internet as discussion platform. Most of people claiming this seems to be saying such things:

* Game is not what I wanted it to be / what I expected it to be / I don't enjoy it - well, this easiest and in same time most hardest thing. If you don't like a game like at all at fundamental level, it really does not matter how much people working on it, is it. And while people associate bigger teams with "AAA game development", which most likely means scripted and fully voice acted and cut scenes galore, ED was never meant such game. No directly involved story line for everybody or any such developments, open world - do whatever you can do, and so on and so forth. Open world games are always this contraversional - people either love them or hate them. And sometimes amount of money spent on it matters, and sometimes it matters little. In the end, if you do not enjoy such games fundamentally, ED isn't gonna cut for you;

* Game updates are too sparse and not frequent enough - this is most subjective and in same time most honest opinion we can all give. I personally feel OK-ish with updates, but I definitely wish there was more "content" and more frequently. Some people say it is totally unacceptable, and some are fine with it. I certainly enjoy the game, so for me it is just wish that might get fulfilled some day. But if someone is waiting for new feature or improvement, I understand his unease about tempo of development;

In conclusion I think none of that even means anything about size of the team. We just discuss actual output. And it is quite obvious that most of us would like to have more ED in a year. So that all being said, I think FD really should increase size of team developing ED - because we want more ED updates to be released more frequently. I hope they do. I hope that recent David side note about happening will really leave some impact on how much they can release a year.

Ha. If Elite gave them a lot of profit, then they could.

But I don't see how this game is keeping their doors open anymore. Game isn't growing at rates that would justify a large dev team. The online store isn't that great, and I promise people aren't spending the kind of money there that other games with "loot" boxes to buy keys for do.

If this was true, they wouldn't have needed to to make other games. But they've said in their latest live stream that they have many other projects going on. They are hiring, yes, but Dav specifically said they may NOT be working necessarily for Elite.


I'm all for a large Elite team, but I don't think it makes sense financially.

I am actually more in favor of them stop working on this Elite and start working on a sequel...

 

[NMS]

I think the problem is quality and not size.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Your maths is all out... Actually, they could produce anything feasibly upto around 72 babies in 9 months!

Ehhh? How's that?

 

[dannysquid]

Are people assuming the last update was the work of 100 people? Presumably the bulk of the developers will be working on bigger things. The next, larger, update and more excitingly, whatever comes next. If you're going to do atmospheric worlds or space legs you don't do them in two or three months. And if you want to keep releasing things in the meantime you use smaller teams.

I admit there's some wishful thinking among the logic here.

And said vocal KS backer is totally incorrect. I'm still here and still playing.

Me too!

 

[Alteph Four]

I think its safe to say that judging from what has been delivered over the course of the years, and the bug squashing they have(nt) done that Fdev has given up on Elite and that they are simply milking it as much as they can.

As long as there are people who are willing to dump their money into this game, they will milk it.

Much smaller game developers are doing FAR more in a FAR shorter time frame than FD has ever done with this game just gors to show that it has nothing to do with the complexity of the work and everything to do with the leadership.

They need new leadership to make Elite the best space sim out there as the potential is there.

 

[dannysquid]

As long as there are people who are willing to dump their money into this game, they will milk it.

This year was all free wasn't it?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

This year was all free wasn't it?

Cosmetics I hear

 

[NeilF]

Ehhh? How's that?

Potentially 9 x http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com...ildren-delivered-at-a-single-birth-to-survive

 

[NeilF]

I suspect the software / asset development teams in FDev are in a pertual state of organised turmoil - such is the norm for large teams: large teams are comprised of smaller sub-teams each with their designated but changing objectives. Shoving more people into this turmoil needs to done with disciplined care to not lower the productivity of said team or teams.

Agreed...

But I'll say again, I'm more concerned about what is being chosen to spend development effort on, rather than the amount of development going on, and the number of staff there are doing it.

ie: If they could double the number of staff and double the type of content we've had over the past two+ years, for me that would basically be no improvement at all - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...eveloping-ED?p=6959234&viewfull=1#post6959234