2 years and waiting

How many of those had a publisher holding their toes over the fire and a fixed budget? Besides the key part you're missing is "first estimated".

 

I'm actively involved every month since R7. I already feel like I'm getting what I paid for. I've never had the chance to be this involved in game development.

Personally I can go till R50... just hope wipe cycles get longer (5-6 months).

 

Yes

 

This game's budget has no cap or newly reset launch date (that they've shared anyways). Think about that for a minute and truly ask if that's always the best thing for any creative project. I mean, it's not like every other creative project in any other medium doesn't face budgets or deadlines...and I would argue in some cases (or even most) limitations can spawn truly creative ideas.

I think the root cause here is communication and expectations and the confusion around that. We have open development and open-ended development. Is SotA the former or the latter or both?

 

Please do so.

 

The dev team has never told us they don't plan to keep developing until the apocalypse, and therefore they may simply milk this thing out until the end times. Think about that for a moment. We could all be dead, our grandchildren's grandchildren wondering when the true launch date is and will they be alive to see it....then BOOM the end of the world, and we're still in pre-alpha!

Look, I don't like waiting any more than anyone else. But do we really have to speculate on things this much? If your feedback is "the devs don't communicate enough" ok, fair enough. But if your feedback is "when the devs gives us a date they should keep it" well I'm sure they're not in the business of giving dates they can't keep...which is maybe why they stopped doing that?

Does any of it matter if they make a great game?

Btw, how long was UO in development? Anyone remember? Cause I'm pretty sure that will give you a few answers about what's going on here.

 

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online
It was started in 1995 and released Sept 1997

 

I wonder if that game had any bugs?

Also, I wonder how large the team was? I believe EA had deeper pockets than Portalarium, but I'm not sure.

 

If we go back and review stories I'm sure we could piece it together. What I do remember is hearing that EA pushed it out the door when the devs wanted another year to work on it. The result was a pretty rough few months. It took 6 months just to get the lag under control. That much I remember pretty clearly.

 

Whenever or not SotA is a MMO is irrelevant, it shares similar infrastructures so I'm going to compare it to an MMO development.

Lets put in some perspective:
World of Warcraft (one of the biggest MMO around), took a team of 60 people 4 years to develop.



... And you're annoyed that a game PITCHED in Kick-Starter is taking a team that's roughly half the original WoW team more than 2 years to develop?

And that's not even considering that WoW is a grossly-simplified version of UO.

Production costs are higher these days. For one thing, artists now have proper salaries.

 

No.

Once you learned to wait for the return of the Duke, no amount of waiting will scare you.

 

I only played UO for the first few months. Maybe two, I can't remember. It was really bad, and I never played again because of the lag, bugs, exploits, and poor design choices.

 

Oh yes the exploits.. many stories there.. those took more than 6 months. The lag did get better eventually.. just so you know. But there was stuff like people being able to steal objects through house walls for example.. so someone might come home and find their house cleaned out. Which was also a risk if you carried your house keys on you because they were lootable or could be pick-pocketed. Thief would follow you home and bam.. empty home. Oh bugged water tiles.. pick one up and put it on the roof of your tower and fish from that tile.. so many to choose from. I imagine UO was quite the learning experience in regards to human behavior.

 

Compare it to Pathfinder Online's progress...

Personally I'm just shocked they still call it pre-alpha. I have played betas that were far less content complete than SOTA is. I think it's at least time to call it alpha.

 

I do remember the lag when it first released, and the exploits.

 

That's funny. I once said this game is being made not for us, but for the next generation of Lord British fans.

I'm not condoning or condemning. The fact that there's such a wide spectrum of opinions and expectations means there is a communications gap. I'm perfectly fine with a completely open-ended development model. We are, after all, getting monthly releases. But I'm also fine with something more well-defined and time/feature bound.

But what was pitched? That's debatable and thus this discussion.

 

I didn't miss that at all. I have found my senior developers are very good at knowing how long a feature or product will take. And most environments there have been business drivers for deliverables, so there are consequences to missing targets.

Delays are more often due to changing business needs and requirements (which are often quite justified), not because software developers couldn't accurately estimate time. I find that perspective to be a cliche and not aligned with reality. The major projects I've been involved with that missed dates was almost always due to changing in direction of the product or the product being more of an R&D effort than a classic development effort where the design was more conceptual initially.

 

Even when the product hasn't even been designed yet?

 

My company develops products that do things that have never been done before. Our software (and hardware) folks can still be in the ballpark.
This game started with Unity, which was supposed to be a groundwork that would allow the rest to be built rapidly. Right? Or did I misunderstand that part?

 

Not only did your early departure cause you to miss out on one of the greatest MMORPG of all time, it now seems that you are upset that the SoTA team will not follow in UO's footsteps and rush the game out the door before it is ready.

If that does not make you stop and think, I do not know what will.

Cypher Black