R F Gyro
ZionTCD
Legacy Rising
315
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Posted - 2013.01.14 14:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
It is frustrating looking at what seems to be nothing more than a big hole in the ground with some concrete and metal scraps in it. Especially if you've been sold the idea of a wonderful building with all kinds of facilities: dozens of floors, shops, offices, apartments, roof-top-gardens, heli-pads, etc.
It also seems to take forever for the foundations to be built. Surely it can't be that hard, can it? Day after day after day with little or no visible progress really wears you down.
That's where we are with Dust right now. The foundations are built; all the stuff CCP needs to be in place before they can start building the features we all want. What foundations are we talking about here?
* A solid, core online FPS engine & gameplay
* Production-quality PSN integration
* Production-quality Eve (Tranquility) integration
* Streaming updates
* Skills & fitting systems
* Microtransaction market that avoids Pay2Win
* Testing & QA processes
These foundations are all the things without which none of the planned features will work. The TQ migration was the last major element of this.
CCP have, as far as I can tell, now reached the point where they can add features in, a little at a time, during the closed/open beta, without requiring any major re-engineering work.
At some point over the coming months CCP/Sony's marketing people (based in no small part on feedback from us, the players) will come to the conclusion that yes, there are enough features in place to do the big marketing launch. With the foundations in place, that can be any time - there are no real technical constraints. They could introduce one new feature next month that everyone decides is earth-shattering, and say "sod it, lets launch". Or they might decide they need a dozen features taking a few months to build.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what they can build on these foundations. While it won't be perfect, I'm fairly confident many/most of us are going to like it. |
R F Gyro
ZionTCD
Legacy Rising
315
|
Posted - 2013.01.14 20:40:00 -
[2] - Quote
"sort of launched", maybe. That's kind of the point, really. CCP & Sony can now leave the definition of "launched" to the marketing people.
I expect them to use the "beta" tag as it suits them: they'll be saying to some people "its only in beta, we've still got plenty of time to add more stuff before we launch" and to others "its ready right now, jump in a give it a try".
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