Can we please end the monthly release cycle?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Mimner, Apr 1, 2020.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Mimner

    Mimner Avatar

    Messages:
    152
    Likes Received:
    494
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Seriously guys, I don't know if Chris is going to make it through the end of the year if we keep putting him through this. He's already had to go to urgent care how many times this year? And didn't the doc say it was work related? How about if we just let the dev team work until they have something worthy of releasing? This will reduce the number of times they have to go through the head ache of merging to live, and the game will stay more stable for us in the meantime.
     
  2. Bedawyn

    Bedawyn Avatar

    Messages:
    791
    Likes Received:
    986
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Agreed, but really, it's not the players forcing them to do this. When he announced last summer that they were going to try a tick-tock schedule, most people supported it. There's even a thread elsewhere nearby with influential players urging a quarterly schedule. Yes, there will still be a noisy minority who complain if they don't get tons of fabulous new content every month. Nothing we can really do about folks like that except ignore them. It just needs Chris and the rest of the team to buckle on their shields and do the ignoring.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2020
    Cyin, Gravidy, Sentinel2 and 2 others like this.
  3. Toular

    Toular Avatar

    Messages:
    661
    Likes Received:
    631
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Quarterly releases with monthly patches would be much better. No new features or changes in the monthly - just bug fixes. If the monthly rewards needs a patch to roll out, then perhaps that needs to be redesigned a bit.

    And of course, frequent QA updates so the next release can be hammered on and dropped a few times to see what breaks.
     
    gtesser, Gravidy, Ostvel and 7 others like this.
  4. Helverian

    Helverian Avatar

    Messages:
    73
    Likes Received:
    54
    Trophy Points:
    8
    The problem of big releases is that you have to make a longer qs testing phase.

    This smaller releases are coming from the agile software development. I am also working about 10 years developing software in 1 up to 4 week long sprints / inkrements.

    Now i am developer for an online shop. Sometimes we release features or bug fixes 3 or 4 times a week. Its faster and better then only to deploy every 2 weeks... As faster you release as faster you can get feedback if you are working in the right direction
     
    Mhtic likes this.
  5. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

    Messages:
    6,194
    Likes Received:
    12,076
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    He's putting himself through it. No one has said it needs to be kept, plenty have asked for the strategy to be rethought.
     
  6. macnlos

    macnlos Avatar

    Messages:
    442
    Likes Received:
    1,310
    Trophy Points:
    43
    SIGSW, that is the only way to describe what Chris is doing to himself.

    Seriously. Get on stream, tell the truth, admit where you are at and what you can do. Put together a reasonable plan for the quarter given the resources and constraints you have, then go to work. Chris... You are the CEO, you are in charge. It was Unity... It was some developer/choice from before... It was the orbit of the moon... None of that matters. It is your company, it is your product, it is your choice and your responsibility. Try this on for size:

    Dear community,

    Currently SotA is a playable game but there are problems. Technically there are these xxxx issues with the game that are hampering it. From a reputation stand point there are these xxxx problems. From a player base stand point we are not where we need to be, we have XXX active players and average around XXX concurrent players. We have bare bone operating cost of XXX and we have a revenue stream of about XXX. To make this game viable we need to address all of these items and in this order.

    1. Fix the critical bugs
    2. Address the repetitional issues
    3. Identify the foundational issues with the game that need to change to make it viable (Unity??? Other core systems???) and determine a cost to do so.
    4. Sell the foundational changes and come up with some creative way to finance it (source it, borrow it, whatever)
    5. Create a delivery schedule that is realistic and start working on it.

    That's pretty rough but if it was me, that is what I would do. But hey, I'm in the cheap seats here.
     
  7. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,678
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    While we're on the bandwagon of bugs that receive no attention, there's a Linux bug where, while using mouselook (right mouse button), the cursor reappears whenever a UI element (like a container window, combat hotbar, etc) appears or disappears. This is a severe bug causing control issues and has been around since before persistence (more than four years). It gets absolutely no attention. They shrug it off by saying that it's a Unity issue but the bug was introduced when they implemented reticle mode.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2020
    arcdevil and Black Tortoise like this.
  8. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

    Messages:
    3,333
    Likes Received:
    11,010
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Washington, DC
    You forgot the Chinese New Year in that list...
     
  9. craftymethod

    craftymethod Avatar

    Messages:
    1,133
    Likes Received:
    2,001
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I wish Chris all the best health! Oracle knows the importance of his health on the projects shoulders!
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2020
  10. AoiBlue

    AoiBlue Avatar

    Messages:
    406
    Likes Received:
    319
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    I think if they do point releases with less major changes every month and major releases every 3 months it would work out better.

    Basically, new assets and major changes should be on the quarterly primary release, while minor changes should be monthly. Weekly should be bugfixes, and daily should be critical bug fixes (if necessary).
     
  11. Skutter Luchnyk

    Skutter Luchnyk Avatar

    Messages:
    35
    Likes Received:
    32
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Chris needs a healthy life as well.
    Please go to quarterly.
     
  12. Numa

    Numa Avatar

    Messages:
    2,891
    Likes Received:
    5,620
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Breaker's Landing
    Underlying health conditions are the last thing you want to have for the duration of this pandemic. The Catnip team was lucky to go for the remote workplace model when it did in hindsight.

    Now please have realistic and healthy work schedules. Most of us are under lockdown anyway - we're not going anywhere :)
     
  13. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    I'm largely onboard with the idea that quarterly releases aren't necessarily needed. The problem is that a lot of problems are caused because they're aiming for releasing features every 30 days exactly, instead of 30 + 1-10 as needed. That, and some specifics things like bards maybe just need to peculate for much longer.

    Release things when they're ready.

    Sometimes deadlines exist for a reason, like other teams having dependencies of you finishing what you're doing... or a non-refundable venue was booked for an event, and the date is immovable. None of that exists here.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2020
  14. Stellos Hayford

    Stellos Hayford Avatar

    Messages:
    42
    Likes Received:
    65
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Make no mistake, a very small minority, and a very stupid minority at that, would wish anything less than astounding success for Chris and the rest of the team. Most of us write so passionately, because we feel so passionately about the project. Sometimes there's tough love, and passionate critique, but for the majority of us, it's still love for the project, and the people who are making it happen. It's important for Chris and the team not to consider them as petulant demands, but rather, very strong feelings about the game we'd like to play going forward, and it's important to keep that in perspective, and take it in their stride as best they can. All the people who love and are deeply invested in this project hope Chris gets well soon, and just to remember, that although there's thousands of voices, and that can be maddening, please try not to get overwhelmed by it. They're only players who love your game.

    So if I may be so bold as to assure the team. In general, we love you, we adore you, we love your project, we want to continue playing your project, but we all have our own, very -passionate- and -differing- views about what we think should be done. And what we'd each like to see very soon. Please try to remember that, when it feels like hate. It's not. That said, I made a rash, and utterly inconsiderate comment in one of my posts that I'm about to remove. Get well soon, Chris. I apologise for saying ******* things at times when I'm most put out. <3.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  15. AoiBlue

    AoiBlue Avatar

    Messages:
    406
    Likes Received:
    319
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    Yes, additionally, they may want to separate features into major/minor.

    Major features should come quarterly, minor features supporting the next major feature should come monthly. This eases up deadlines, ans minor features can be easily delayed if they don't make deadline.

    This is sometimes called a "Tick-Tock" schedule after how a clock's mechanism works where only so many cycles of the smaller mechanisms will turn the larger mechanisms. Both AMD and Intel use it for their products, and it has been proven very effective at reducing the overall negative impacts of deadlines on both team functionality and product quality. It is good from both a human and commerce perspective.
     
  16. Earl Atogrim von Draken

    Earl Atogrim von Draken Avatar

    Messages:
    6,331
    Likes Received:
    12,109
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Quarterly would get my vote as well. Or at least bi monthly.
    Of course they get my highest respect for not missing a beat so far but come on Chris, you need some free time as well.
     
    Numa likes this.
  17. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    As for my health, I discovered my health problem last week and forgot to tell people. This is one good thing that came out of the quarantine. My fish were running out of frozen blood worms. Normally I just buy these from Petsmart or Petco but I figured I would just order a BUNCH online. While shopping for them on the websites I kept seeing all sort of warnings for allergic reactions. Turns out 20% of people are HIGHLY allergic to Blood Worms! Who knew. The symptoms matched mine perfectly, even down to my eye that would swell shut and turn red and look infected. That is what happens from touching them and touching my eye without washing my hands first. It also was what was causing my extreme, almost asthmatic like sinus and throat problems. I figured that out last week and haven't had any issues since! They still get their frozen blood worms but I'm just super careful with them now.

    As for quarterly releases, I'll bring it up with the team. I was actually in favor of changing our release cycle but no one else on the team was. I'll see if opinions have changed now.
     
    Bedawyn, Mimner, Mishra and 10 others like this.
  18. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    2,470
    Likes Received:
    27,551
    Trophy Points:
    190
    Gender:
    Male
    Wilfred likes this.
  19. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,678
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Frozen or freeze-dried?
     
  20. Xiones

    Xiones Avatar

    Messages:
    215
    Likes Received:
    276
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Location:
    Dark Side of the Moon
    Chris just needs more Devs to take the work load off.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.