Denak Kalamari
Intaki Liberation Front
Intaki Prosperity Initiative
634
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Posted - 2013.11.21 12:30:00 -
[1] - Quote
All the respec and BPO removal whine aside, there has always been cries out to add some much needed features, fix bugs and other similar stuff. Yes, some of these features definitely need to be added, or in some cases overhauled or fixed, no question about that. The thing is, it isn't always that simple.
Unlike the impression I get from many of the people around these forums, I have much faith in CCP, and I am confident they can finish the vision they have had for several years now, and continue supporting them in their endeavors. I too want some features added and some fixed, some overhauled. But have you considered how much effort these fixes, improvements and other content adding actually requires?
To actually implement a new gun for example, it has to first go through discussion by the design team most likely, with a few ideas thrown around about its mechanics, its intended role on the battlefield and maybe some concept art done by the art team. Then you need to start consulting with the coders to figure out how to code the gun, what kind of damage model it will have, what range, bullet dispersion, rate of fire and all the other fine tuned mechanics. Once these are set and the art team makes a final design of the gun, next follows QA testing. Which means testing it in their test server again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again ad infinitum, making some tweaks to the gun and then testing it again and again and again and again and again and again until they finally decide it will be ready to be released to the public. Even then, there is deemed for a few bugs to go through, or something that you could not possibly predict, to go wrong. Then we move on to the bugfixing part.
First you have to actually know the bug exists, which is usually dependent on the players themselves. With the information given about this bug by the players, next they will have to go through lines and lines of code to find out what is causing this problem. And it could be as minor as one mistyped letter or one number too much. Then they will have to figure out how to fix the issue, and go through lots of QA testing again to see if the issue was actually fixed, and if new issues popped up while trying to fix the code.
Then when the public has started using the gun again, they start crying that it's owerpowered and needs more tweaking. Here comes the QA testing once again, tweak the gun countless of times and test out the new results, then releasing it to the public once again to see if they got it right this time. From the first idea thrown around about the new gun to the point where CCP, and the DUST community at large are mostly happy with the end product, it's been many, many, many months.
Yes, I recognize that these issues might not be applicable to all cases, nor do I claim to have any actual experience in game development in a big company like CCP. But my point is that something as simple as fixing a small bug or adding a small feature might not be as easy as a normal consumer would perceive it to be. Call me a CCP fanboy all you like, I'm just throwing out my logic about how game development works.
TL;DR, you're not worthy enough to comment anything useful to this thread if you don't read the whole thing.
Grahisha of ILF // Writer of Thoughts of a Clone Soldier // Latest entry published 17/11/13
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