Kigurosaka Laaksonen
DUST University
Ivy League
32
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Posted - 2013.10.30 15:39:00 -
[1] - Quote
This is a thread of mine from the Eve Forums. I didn't notice any rules about duplicate threads across forums for different games, and we all know Eve and Dust aren't really connected at all anyway, sooo.... 
The current release schedule for Dust is roughly one content update per month. Its essence is listed below, as I understand it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 Named major content expansions are planned for once a year release
- The current expansion is Uprising
- As I understood previous to Nullarbor's post here, major content expansions are roughly to match Eve's once a year named major content release
Minor patches and content updates (nerfs/buffs) are planned for roughly once a month
- These patches are named for their expansion and their order of release, so that the patch released on the 7th month after the major expansion would be named as follows. --Uprising 1.7--
What are your thoughts on this release schedule?
So far it seems to have produced rushed, buggy, forgettable, and sometimes late patches. It's literally a quantity over quality approach that is reflected in game play. New patches intended to fix bugs introduce a whole host of bugs, sometimes serious.
Uprising 1.5, for example, completely broke in game voice coms for many players.
Further, the balance efforts made each patch are largely wasted. Consider the 1.6 buff to Heavy suit HP. Currently, the only Heavy frame in the game is Amarr. The other races are excluded from this balance pass because they don't exist. When Caldari Heavies are introduced, will their base HP be sufficient? Will Amarr HP levels be in line with Gallente Heavies? Will Minmatar Heavies be able to field a better armor tank that Amarr Heavies and is that acceptable or not? How will the new Heavies interact with infanty? with vehicles? We can't answer these balance questions because Dust is missing that basic content.
The result is that once a month patches, which are too frequent in the first place, waste effort trying to balance a game that's missing half its content.
- Once a month patches for the sake of once a month patches is unsustainable. It produces poor quality patches.
- All four racial variants of basic light, medium, and heavy dropsuit frames and vehicles need to be released as soon as possible.
- After all the basic content is in game, a slower, steadier patch schedule could focus efforts on higher quality patches. |