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How long do you want major patches to be?
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
How long would you like major content patches to be? For example. The latest patch just released and we have a new raid, new dungeons, new content etc. How long would you like for it to stay?
Personally I like a 4-6 months between major patches so that my progress feels relevant during alonger time.
What do you think, how long between major patches (Not expansions etc, just new major pve/pvp content.
Personally I like a 4-6 months between major patches so that my progress feels relevant during alonger time.
What do you think, how long between major patches (Not expansions etc, just new major pve/pvp content.
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Btw, artificial grinds for various rewards, cosmetic or otherwise, do not count as content. From my experience there is only a week's worth (10-20 hours) of normal-difficulty content in most content patches. Hard raids that take time to prog through last another few weeks. And then people just spend 2+ months grinding old content for gear or cosmetics, or doing everything again on alts, until the next patch hits. So even for people who are looking to experience everything on multiple classes, I think a content patch would only last for 1-2 months if you took out all of the needless grinding.
And I don't think any MMO developers (Intrepid included) are capable of putting out a decently-sized content patch every month. So I think you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who wants slower content releases in AoC, even if Intrepid rushes out content as fast as possible.
People might want higher-quality content, which takes longer to make, but they'll never ask for less content.
DLC will not cost anything more than the normal subscription.[2][3]
Because of the modularity of a lot of the systems that we're working on, it's not too hard to iterate and implement new things... We're planning on going on a quarterly/ monthly cycle to continue to push out new content.[4] – Jeffrey Bard
The quarterly cycle for the big content is good for us and then, as you said, those modular components to our mechanisms in the game allow for us to introduce smaller content patches that can be seen in real time in the world.[4] – Steven Sharif
We don't intend to a wordsmith around future charge for DLC content. As a subscription model, that's part of the agreement between us as a Studio and you guys: That there will be regularly scheduled updates and chapters; and that subscription is what allows you to access that content.[5] – Steven Sharif
If one patch focuses on group content, with a small amount of crafting, raid, PvP and naval combat, then the next patch should focus on PvP, with a small amount of the rest, then raid with a small amount of the rest, then crafting with a small amount of the rest etc.
In any cases, I think I will like AOC, and obviously it won't be like other mmos, I will just adapt my way of playing according to how I want to interact with the server's content & progression. If I was stuck in the "themepark" mentality (the way I understand themepark at least). I would not be here °°
1 "new town+ castle"
New hunting zones
New bossess
One new World Boss
Some classes should get new abilities
Changes to abilities when necessary
Higher lv cap
Higher gear sets
1 new feature
New char creation options + 2 appearance change coupons.
It sounds like there will be some kind of "story quest" to help players get acquainted with the world and get people invested but not sure all that will be tied to this. Assuming they will use this to introduce players to big new features/content, I'd like it if they gave us updates about every ~2-3 years with the exception of the first one. I'd hope these updates wont be that big and more of a fancy way to advertise an new feature. I don't think we should start on our first major update until they have taken the time to fix everything and fill out all the systems we have at launch.
This is where I think GGG do a fantastic job with PoE.
They aim for a 3 month release schedule for major updates (but also have expansions in the mix) but don't put a hard date on it until they are certain they can hit it.
This way the developers have a fairly general window of when the release should be, and while there is always preasure in any job to get a peoduct out, they keep a good amount of flexibility for qhen issues arise.
Set a schedule and stick to it. If say 6 monthly, then not 6, then 8 then 5 months. Keep it 6.
I completely and totally disagree qith this in literally every sense.
Release content when - and ONLY when - it's ready.
If it's ready in 6 months, release it. If it needs 2 more months, then wait. If it's ready a month early, release it early.
I completely fail to see why players would ever put sticking to a schedule above releasing content when it's ready. It makes absolutely no sense at all.
Patch notes - major or minor ones as often as needed and as extensive as possible. I remember the notes from Mythic for DAoC were frequent and very detailed and I loved it.
If you are speaking of new content as often as Intrepid feels comfortable and not rushed.
Formerly T-Elf
As far as balance passes go. I think there should be consistent minor tweaks with maintenances that are totally unconnected to content updates. No one wants to wait three months for a blatantly overpowered gear setups to be toned down, nor does anyone want blatantly underpowered classes to stay that way for months. Well, out of spite maybe, but not out of concern for healthy gameplay.
“Sticking to the schedule” is how content comes out shallow, buggy, and incomplete
Big no
I also feel since AOC will have a dynamic world they could probably get away with longer time periods of releasing stuff but with how impatient gamers are we'll need smaller updates probably every 3 months or so.
Things like natural disasters cutting off parts of the world or a long winter or drought would be fun to deal with for a short period.
I strongly disagree. ESO's schedule is awful. Those developers rush out unpolished content that "fixes" what isn't broken and fail to fix bugs until they become "features". That game's pvp is a laggy mess and their pve raid scene is a clusterfuck of bugged instances and crashes that gets worse every patch. I played that game off and on for about 5 years, got like 1,400 champion points, completed all the veteran hard mode trials and dungeons, and got emperor three times before I quit. I played enough that I can confidently say that game has been going downhill due to lack of polish, lack of performance, and lack of server stability for a long time.
This. I stopped playing for a while.
I got back in a week ago and found two new updates.
I played a bit on the new content and I was sooooooooo bored with it.
Nothing challenging, just more story quests on a new corner of the map.
I was so bored I didnt even bother to play the new instances to farm an item I need.
Failure to scope out a deliverable and create a working plan, manage it while being sufficiently agile to adapt when things do not fall into place as predicted is one of many reasons not to be able to deliver on time.
Failure to plan, is planing to fail.
Don`t get me wrong, I am all for quality content and do not like to see rushed work like anybody else.
But from reading many documented failures or delays from other projects, they were, for the most part, inadequately planned and/or managed. There was an in ability to adequately define and quantify scope, sometimes unrealistic scope, or allowing for scope creep, not adequately anticipating review time, setting a task too great to be achieved with insufficient resourcing within the time set, or just out right inadequate resource allocation are just a few symptoms that lead to a project requiring more time.
Balance this against the harder quantifiable of customer gratification by timely new content vs quality only achieved by more time.
Plan well, manage the tasks, get adequately resourced and set a realistic time and there should be less reason to not be able to deliver.
You are making a ton of assumptions with one simple comment. You have no idea what IS is planning. What happens if they want to work on a 2-month update, followed by a year long expansion, followed by a 3 month update? What does your release-schedule look like then?
Ok, hold up. You want to both be agile AND stick to a rigid schedule? Make up your mind. Ludicrous. Sounds like someone who is taking business management classes and wants to apply their learnings in a public outlet... This logic works for internal measurements. Let's say a company wants to understand WHY a project is taking longer than their arbitrary deadline. They can review previous project deadlines and timestamps to counteraction against what is failing or bottlenecking the project.
I'm no genius (obviously), but I have managed enough projects to know how silly your paragraph is. You NEVER know the full scope of something NEW, something that has never been done before. Sure you can get a general idea, but sometimes things don't work as you want them to. Sometimes scope changes (I'm sure you can think of a handful of reasons why this would happen post-project launch). Sometimes you pivot and take a completely different approach. Attaching yourself to a PUBLICLY released schedule is not a good approach or business model. Be reasonable. If you want a good example as to why... Look at the most recent announcement by Margaret.
Saying something like "Every 6 months IS should release an update like clockwork" is absurd. Deadlines are nice to have. It is good to set a finish line and have a goal to measure towards. But every release and every project that IS works on will have different date ranges to complete adequately. Publishing a public "Every X months we will release content" is not sustainable.
Wanted to know how long people wanted patches to be. To give insight to IS
Correct planning should include giving yourself more time to finish a project if it turns out that the project in question needs it. If you give yourself a deadline for a project before that project has even started (which is what a set deadline is doing), then you have failed to plan for that project.
If an MMO developer were to set a hard schedule of content releases, they would need to have at least 2 patches worth of content finished and stored away ready to release on schedule. So in suggesting IS should do this, what you are really suggesting is that they should hold on to new content for 6 months before releasing it to us.
Less reason is not no reason.
Setting a hard deadline can only be successful if there is no reason to not be able to deliver, and that can never happen in the software industry.
Due to that, a hard deadline is not a good idea.
Very true
(I don't understand this question)
I have to say you both missed the message.
Also if IS builds their game right from the start they will avoid these issues.
If you had any knowledge of the development of ESO you'd know that the engine as well as the coding was garbage and is part if not all the reason the game has to be continually patched over and over for the same problems.
Also with both of your logics, you should be afraid of how poorly IS handled their BR but you only see what you want I guess.