What does "feature complete" mean in this context?

[DjVortex]

The announcement thread for the Trailblazers update mentions that it's "feature complete". Perhaps unintentionally this has caused a great deal of concern and confusion.

Most people are interpreting it to mean that "this is it. This is all you get. We will not be adding any new features to the colonization feature, ever. What you see is what you get." In other words, besides some minor numerical adjustments and bug fixes, no new features will ever be added and the colonization mechanic will never be enhanced. In other words, it's useless to even suggest new features and improvements (such as a "cancel" button) because they will never be implemented.

I myself, however, suspect that this was just a case of poor communication, poor choice of words. I suspect that what they really meant was "this update has all the features we planned for it, we didn't leave anything out that we had planned", and it does not mean that they will never, ever, during the entire lifetime of the game, add any new features to colonization in the future.

I would really like for FDev to clarify what they meant with those two words.

 

[ruifo]

Probably it just means that colonisation was lanched "complete", in orther words, launched with all its features availible at once.

And probably being lauched "complete" does not mean all features are already "completed". In orther words, all features availible at once are not yet fully developed, because it is in Beta phase, and lots to be fixed still.

 

[DjVortex]

Probably it just means that colonisation was lanched "complete", in orther words, launched with all its features availible at once.

That's what I'm thinking too, but a lot of people are interpreting it as being "final", in other words, no new features will ever be added to it in the future.

 

[Factabulous]

Most people are interpreting it to mean that "this is it. This is all you get. We will not be adding any new features to the colonization feature, ever. What you see is what you get." In other words, besides some minor numerical adjustments and bug fixes, no new features will ever be added and the colonization mechanic will never be enhanced.

Yes that is correct. The forums are not the game designer (this seems something people struggle to understand despite it being that way for 10+ years now).

They're probably all working most of the time on Vanguards now.

 

[tomalus]

It means theyre not going to change anything except tweaking numbers.
No undo button,no moving nothing,no additional controls over stations etc.. It is as is.

I am fine with the design,just find it too grindy and buggy.

 

[DjVortex]

It means theyre not going to change anything except tweaking numbers.
No undo button,no moving nothing,no additional controls over stations etc.. It is as is.

Are you a representative of Frontier, or have some kind of insider info? How do you know this?

The question in the thread title is not for the players, it's for FDev. I'm asking them what "feature complete" means in the announcement.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

They're highly unlikely to answer directly (come back in six months and you'll have an indirect answer, of course). Get yourself a really popular Youtube channel where you can get them to do personal interviews with you if you want them to talk to you directly.

In terms of the last thing they released as "feature complete" - Odyssey:
- there were various bug fixes and interface tweaks
- a few extra concourses (megaship, fleet carrier) did get added later
- as did a couple of extra surface mission types
- later features (Thargoid War, Powerplay) then made use of what it added to extend their own feature set
- and it also got some later rebalancing as part of the Engineering rework

But it's worth remembering also what the context of "feature complete" was for Odyssey - it was in comparison to Horizons, where the originally intended features had been gradually rolled out over two years. Major things like engineering, passenger missions, etc. weren't in what you could buy with Horizons on day 1.

So that's how Frontier have historically used the phrase: it's not that it's going to be static for all-time and never receive even minor changes, it's that they don't consider there to be any major components missing on release day that are planned for later addition.

 

[_Flin_]

Feature Complete usually means:

• all the intended features are part of the release
• From there on there will be bugfixing (higher priority) and change requests (lower priority, unless large impact. Like "we have 1000s of large stations without economy".)
• Bugs will usually be prioritized like this
  • A priority: crashes or features not working (like colonizations not being possible)
  • B priority: impacts on gameplay/performance without workaround
  • C priority: cosmetic effects or impacts on gameplay with workaround (e.g. FC loading bug)

 

[Greasetrap42]

Stated differently, I believe it means all features they were developing for the update were released. There are no more features for Trailblaizers that were being developed and scheduled for release. It is not a staggered release with more features scheduled to come.

Edit: I fully understand the confusion though. They used an industry buzzword that often does mean the feature is completed... meaning it is done, final, that's it. Don't ask for anything more because it is done. Bugs will be fixed, anything else will be billed as an extra. It depends on the industry, and maybe location. Possibly language translation too. In software development I think it just means all the intended components have been included, not necessarily completed. Comparing to other industries this is confusing.

 

[DjVortex]

In software development I think it just means all the intended components have been included, not necessarily completed.

Yes, in software development it means what you first described. Quoting wikipedia:

"Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version."
"A beta phase generally begins when the software is feature-complete but likely to contain several known or unknown bugs."

In other words, a "beta" has all the features planned for the release (ie. when the software goes "gold"), but in no way it implies that further features won't be added after the release.

But given how much confusion this has caused (many are outright stating that it's useless to even hope for improvements to the mechanic because "it's feature-complete"), a clarification from FDev would be really nice.

 

[PilotB]

The history of releasing things and moving on to the next thing is what we're basing the unlikely to be anything other than what you see. In 5-10 years you might get more but in the near term. What you see is likely what you get and anything else would impact their roadmap. You can hope for more you just seem unlikely to get it.

 

[Greasetrap42]

But given how much confusion this has caused (many are outright stating that it's useless to even hope for improvements to the mechanic because "it's feature-complete"), a clarification from FDev would be really nice.

Generally I don't like it when people use industry specific buzz words. Often times they aren't even industry standard, the meaning is company specific or has an altered meaning. Or sometimes just person-specific. I find buzz words like these are often used by sales/marketing/communications people when they want to sound professional and "in-the-know". It is also an easy way to say things sounding technically specific but actually somewhat vague. Politicians often use buzz words, allowing leniency on interpretation.

When I am dealing with actual project specifications and quotes I find buzz words sometimes come up, but if its not all made explicitly clear then things go bad.