Then let's rephrase the question:

What do you intend to have ready for 1.6?

To be clear, since we are on the monthly (or roughly monthly anyways) release schedule we don't sit back 6 months in advance and plan what will be in each and every release.

I can't speak for every team on the project but at least for us here on True Grit we have a plan for the order in which we want to do things and we have an estimate as to how long each will take. So if someone in the company asks when feature X will be out we can say "about release Y." However in reality we work on features and then release them when they are done.

So when you ask what the purpose of the 1.6 release is, being honest, the purpose is to be a release that can carry the things that are done out. When we finish features we move them from our teams branch to the main DUST branch and they just go out with the next release.

TL;DR: 1.6, and all our monthly releases, serve the purpose of allow the devs to release whatever features/fixes/updates/etc. that are ready at that time.

Pretty sure it goes something like this:



SOURCE

One month = 4 weeks
A few weeks ~ 3 weeks = almost the next release

Don't forget scheduling Sony QA

To be clear, since we are on the monthly (or roughly monthly anyways) release schedule we don't sit back 6 months in advance and plan what will be in each and every release.

I can't speak for every team on the project but at least for us here on True Grit we have a plan for the order in which we want to do things and we have an estimate as to how long each will take. So if someone in the company asks when feature X will be out we can say "about release Y." However in reality we work on features and then release them when they are done.

So when you ask what the purpose of the 1.6 release is, being honest, the purpose is to be a release that can carry the things that are done out. When we finish features we move them from our teams branch to the main DUST branch and they just go out with the next release.

TL;DR: 1.6, and all our monthly releases, serve the purpose of allow the devs to release whatever features/fixes/updates/etc. that are ready at that time.

Could you tell us what the next 4 items on the blacklog are for true grit?

No dates, no expectation on when we will have them, but what are the next 4 items in order on the list?

To be clear, since we are on the monthly (or roughly monthly anyways) release schedule we don't sit back 6 months in advance and plan what will be in each and every release.

I can't speak for every team on the project but at least for us here on True Grit we have a plan for the order in which we want to do things and we have an estimate as to how long each will take. So if someone in the company asks when feature X will be out we can say "about release Y." However in reality we work on features and then release them when they are done.

So when you ask what the purpose of the 1.6 release is, being honest, the purpose is to be a release that can carry the things that are done out. When we finish features we move them from our teams branch to the main DUST branch and they just go out with the next release.

TL;DR: 1.6, and all our monthly releases, serve the purpose of allow the devs to release whatever features/fixes/updates/etc. that are ready at that time.

This is your problem FoxFour and CCP, how can you possibly run a successful business without a clear long-term strategy? Setting clear goals for 6 months, 12 months, as well as 2 years in advance is one of the most basic principles of running an effective business and anyone in any well run company will agree.
Without a clear vision for what your want your product to look like in 1 year from now you are unable to prioritize what to focus on today. I guarantee that if you took an honest look at your work process that you you find it massively inefficient due to many people constantly starting and stopping projects because there is no leadership or set goals to keep people on track towards a clear long-term vision.

When you say you "work on it until it's done" what does that mean? Until what is done, and by whom, and how does that person choose what to begin working on in the first place, and how can you tell when a started project should be put aside because a more important project needs to be worked on? These are questions that every member of your team asks everyday and no one has an answer for, therefore it makes your entire process as a business massively inefficient which breeds the constant anger you experience from all of us (your customers).

I'm going to give you a very important tip which comes from a desire to help my fellow man and not hate. Please read the book "Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness" by Edward Lawler and take its principles to heart.

Thank you, it would be great if you could acknowledge that you have at least read this post, even if you disagree with it.

Last time they did this we got Incarna.

Also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People
was a better read for the simple fact its all tiers and out of workplace applicable.

Just think of it as building road between two cities and the land between is completely unknown. You know the destination you don't know the path of getting there yet until you build the road going towards there. There are going to be some dead ends, some rough and bad roads and some nice and smooth ones or detours that take longer than expected.

And my point is that you need to know exactly where your destination city is, it's exact coordinates, latitude and longitude so you always know what direction in which to build your road. As well as know exactly what your detestation city looks like, right down to the placement of the lampposts, so you know when you've arrived in the correct one. At this point CCP knows nothing about where they hope to arrive in a year from now, 2 years from now, or 10 years from now, which means absolutely nothing guides the day-to-day operations of building their road.

And my point is that you need to know exactly where your destination city is, it's exact coordinates, latitude and longitude so you always know what direction in which to build your road. As well as know exactly what your detestation city looks like, right down to the placement of the lampposts, so you know when you've arrived in the correct one. At this point CCP knows nothing about where they hope to arrive in a year from now, 2 years from now, or 10 years from now, which means absolutely nothing guides the day-to-day operations of building their road.

Well there's that problem of expectations.

The first thing is that towns can grow really fast. spring up along the way and either vastly change or go ghost town by the time you finally get the road out there.

Also the lay of the land is completely unknown there may be a canyon and there is not enough of the right kind of materials to build a bridge across. Mountain gets in the way and either option takes long time to circumvent. When is just one of those things you cannot reliably predict years ahead of time when the road is unpaved and territory unfamiliar by doing something most other games would cringe at the mere thought of trying to replicate. I mean I had high hopes for Star Citizen until space players asking about any ambitions about surpassing eve and the developers began to cringe at the mere thought. CCP is crazy at times.

whatever they have planed, its being pushed back

Look, CCP isn't the only company in the world that has tried to build a product that is difficult to build over long period of time, this has been done many times successfully, by many companies and the process on how to achieve success is easy to learn about. Have your read the book "Management Reset" and do you or anyone at CCP hold an MBA?

Of course every obstacle imaginable comes up when taking on a long-term project, which makes it even MORE important to know the precise location of where you hope to arrive, so that you can always correctly reorient your efforts when a tornado blows through your work-site.

Please give yourself and the people at CCP more credit, don't make excuses for why highly intelligent people have failed at completing their task, recognize past mistakes, correct them, and move forward. The people at CCP are intelligent enough to implement this process of accurate long-term goal setting, and when you make excuses for dead-ends and massive inefficiencies along the way you are insulting your own intelligence and not holding CCP accountable for any of their actions.

Dammit you beat me to it.

A single product?

I am sorry but most companies build brands not products. I mean who still is using an iphone 1?

The process is the important part, whether you're referring to a single product, building a brand, or building a company. CCP does not have the correct process in place in order to achieve efficient, long-term success.

If you have a legitimate disagreement with the ideas I've stated, please, by all means respond with a logical counter-argument, but please don't insult your intelligence, my intelligence, and the intelligence of everyone on these forums by trying to derail the conversation into snarky meaningless questions.

Usually when is generally less helpful in comparison to how much, unless you answer to a bunch of quarterly reports and people who have no idea how your business runs.

How much is a far better measurement on how quickly you will get to the next city.

Also there needs to a paradigm shift on nurturing a business because the old system is beginning to prove its lack of robustness in far tougher times. Reset the Reset. While I may not hold an MBA, I have been thoroughly taught and executed several Airspeed events at my previous workplace. Airspeed worries about what is wrong now then short 1-2 month sprints on correcting. Evaluating, then starting over on new wrongs or some wrongs.

This process within 1 year shutdown 3 rivals, and saved my previous employer 20 billion over 10 years, all unplanned consequences.

Yes, and "Management Reset: Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness" written in 2011, is entirely about eliminating the old ways of doing business. It encourages the process of rapid short-term reevaluation and being able to adapt to an ever more rapidly changing world. However, that does not mean that companies should not plan for the long-term. A company should have a 2 year plan. However, they recommend that if necessary, sometimes it is best for a company to scrap or completely change that 2 year plan.

But without long-term guiding principles and goals, you work in a vacuum never being able to tell when you've spent enough time on one task and should move onto another.
I highly recommend reading it or other books that cover a similar topic, if even for your own personal knowledge.

Plans are a lot different than visions are. The world is littered with Trade Shows where companies show off products that give a vision of where the company is heading without a detailed roadmap.

Look at the auto industry. If you go to one of the large auto shows, they are filled with concept cars that will never get made. They are not roadmaps saying that "we will have this in two years" but they show off technology and styling that the company is aiming for. It gives people a glimpse into the possible future and gets them excited for things to come.

Then you're going to agree with me that sharing such plans does far more harm than good.

Ok.

Anyway, the disconnect is that people are evaluating CCP's internal processes based on extremely circumstantial data; the implication that no one at CCP has an MBA is... well, actually exactly what I expect to see on a forum on the internet.

Example Long-term goals that we know exist:

- Create a meaningful, complex, compelling, and enjoyable gameplay experience centered on FPS mercenary ground combat in the New Eden Universe

- Tie this ground combat in meaningful ways to EvE whereby players in each branch of the universe can interact with the other.

- Create an integrated economy between Dust and EvE with as little NPC market activity interaction as possible.

- Generate revenue through microtransactions in a F2P environment in ways that are in-line with company values (i.e. do not alienate large portions of the playerbase through P2W)

Example short term goals that we know exist:

- Balance vehicles and AV weaponry

- Improve the NPE

- Complete the racial suit and weaponry inventory

- Improve core gameplay mechanics and system performance

- Make Faction Warfare a more meaningful experience

..... the short term goals are in line with the long term goals. I'm sure CCP has much more detailed lists, feature by feature. Community portals are monitored for issues, bugs, and feature requests and feedback. These items are brought into the design process and integrated, shelved, or executed based on aforementioned plans, priorities, and development capacity.

The community team attempts to work expectation management into the community, but threads like these show that is sometimes a lost cause - everybody wants everything right now.