Avallo Kantor
965
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Posted - 2015.11.06 18:53:00 -
[2] - Quote
deezy dabest wrote:GM Archduke wrote:Ahoy! We mentioned this before - on multiple occasions and threads actually - that we will not hint, comment on or discuss possible future changes, release dates etc. at all until we actually have something to announce/talk about. No more Rouge weddings  We can understand that this is not ideal either, and we do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We do not want to seem distant or like we do not care - we're here, we're communicating, we care - but we do have strict internal policies about the above. I like how they think that announcing something was the problem with the Rouge Wedding. It certainly had nothing to do with saying they would be abandoning console after repeatedly saying they were laser focused on the PS3 and everything had a 10 year road map. There is a difference between speaking and doing a complete double back on everything that was said to get people to stick around. I suppose learning from the past is not all it is cracked up to be when you learn the totally wrong lesson.
To counterpoint,
The issue, if one is to believe CCP, is that incomplete announcement information is the issue. Speaking as a developer of software code is a tricky mistress and often times simple things takes weeks while more complex issues can be resolved with only a few clever lines of code. For any substantially complex piece of software (which games are a part of) it can be... difficult to give anything more than a week or two out of certainty on time tables. This doesn't mean such time tables do not exist, it is just that they can be... wrong.
Things once thought to take two weeks could easily take two months instead. Bugs can crop up that defy reason, and the combined efforts of several brilliant programmers can often weave gorgon knots that become a Lovecraftian Horror. This is to say nothing of those attempting such tasks with lesser skills.
Normally this is combed over by having releases set far apart. Why development on a game takes years. It hides and obfuscates this process from public eye. However once you announce something publicly it is set and stone, more or less, and by that point it better be ready.
Most things that get release dates either do so to 1) Over eager marketing, or 2) A team who is certain their current product is 'releasable' and only needs CR, Testing, and QA work. (Which in itself can take weeks to months to half a year depending on the scope of a project)
CCP, as far as I can tell, is developing the code for the next hotfix / patch right NOW. They are working toward an end goal and may have vague numbers of completion, but nothing close enough to be release ready. Because of this they can't promise anything simply by dint of not knowing how long the remaining effort will take themselves.
So they don't say anything. (Which in itself has proven to be a problem) They don't say anything because they can say nothing. Features may yet be cut in the interests of feasibility, and things may yet make it in. It's not a matter of being malicious or deceitful so much as it is one of not knowing what you can get done until you do it.
For CCP the rogue wedding was everything in that process going wrong. They showed something too early to be able to promise any actual release or progress on, and did so in the worst way possible. Their lack of details (hopefully due to lack of technical know how on it's feasibility) made it seem like our worst fears realized (potentially no character move over, progression that seemed more like a old school MMO class system, and a lack of current features)
Ultimately their lesson learned was to only say what they know they can do, and with their small team and what effort they can reliably put out, that often means only knowing they can do it once it is ready to go.
"Mind Blown" - CCP Rattati
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