Concerns about Unreal Engine upgrades and Scope Creep

I'd like to share some concerns I have about the development. We recently had the upgrade from Unreal Engine 5 to 5.1 and from 5.1 to 5.1.1 - and according to Steven during the last live stream this was a "big endeavor" he explained that upgrades like this can be a headache due to all the custom changes they have for networking/backend and all that and this upgrade took them 6 weeks plus all the weeks that they now have to spend bug fixing after the upgrade.

6 weeks, for a team the size of Intrepid's, that's easily over 1.5 million dollars of development cost and that's also over 11% of a development year.

and this is not taking into consideration the time spent bug fixing, so clearly upgrading engines is not something simple, with that said, we already have an announcement for Unreal Engine 5.2... so should they be upgrading again? wouldn't that be considered scope creep? What if after UE5.2 comes 5.2.2 or 5.3, 5.4 ?

Intrepid was originally planning on delivering the game on UE4, when we backed AoC our expectations was for UE4, they already got the upgrade to UE5 and all the amazing tools it brings, back when they did this upgrade, we were told this wouldn't significantly push a release date since supposedly it would make the development easier, and while I do believe this, it's now almost 2 years after alpha 1 and still no roadmap for alpha 2, and we are still doing 6 weeks engine upgrades.

I believe Intrepid should lock a build and just move on, and after launch, they can take the time and do more upgrades. I would hate to see them get stuck in development limbo trying to keep on with all the latest tech and delivering nothing, the "game will be ready when it's ready" shouldn't go on forever and keep getting pushed due to new tech that originally didn't even exist and wasn't part of the plan - I believe that would be the definition of scope creep, and it's the same thing projects like Star Citizen is doing. What are your thoughts on this?

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Mag7spy

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

Scope creep exists no matter what. UE will always have updates. The devs will have to decide what features are worth it for their custom part of the engine vs foundation.

This is the correct take. Other people are like they need to have all the features (right away) without fully understanding development.

Like i said before let the dev's worry about what they need to develop the game lol. If they need input on features that is what feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

Caww

AoC needs to stay relevant while in development, otherwise, they will launch yesterdays tech and be outclassed by any other studio that bit the bullet and maintained a steady upgrading process.

Liniker

Mag7spy wrote: »

Like i said before let the dev's worry about what they need to develop the game lol. If they need input on features that is what feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

@Mag7spy what you are doing is white knighting, and this is detrimental for any project - so we should not express concerns and only provide input if the developer ask? Steven himself tells the community to share any thoughts and concerns about the project so why are you trying to shut down and dismiss other people's concerns? X.X

Arya_Yeshe

Mag7spy wrote: »

feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

Objection!
There's plenty of IT people around here and a few, like myself, have been in the gaming industry (simulators in my case).

Tyranthraxus

Might be imagining it - but I seem to recall a VERY difficult and long conversion process for the 4.23 UE to 4.25 or 4.26. Like almost a year's effort; It might be a good idea to stick to a certain iteration.

HOWEVER, I know that IS wants as-modern of a game as they can make - and the conversion from 4 to 5 certainly seems to have been worthwhile, given the animated-motions difference.

Scope creep is a different matter, though; Scope creep is where more features are added - and SS has maintained that the roadmap is fairly concrete; He doesn't want to be adding previously un-planned features to the game.

Terrifying_Truth

In general, upgrading a version takes minutes, but problems may come up when there's custom assets, referenced assets outside the project, third party assets and other stuff like that; things like these may simply stop working!

Every project is it's own thing tough, the project's engineer guy has to foresee things like these years ahead.

Gospell1

I don’t understand anything about updating the engine, but I will express my opinion, if the update of the engine delays the development of the game even for 1 day, then to hell with it. For me, graphics are not important in an MMO game, only content. I was ready to play on ue4 too, they made ue5 in the game,great, but it's better to invest now in releasing the game

Voxtrium

Gospell wrote: »

I don’t understand anything about updating the engine, but I will express my opinion, if the update of the engine delays the development of the game even for 1 day, then to hell with it. For me, graphics are not important in an MMO game, only content. I was ready to play on ue4 too, they made ue5 in the game,great, but it's better to invest now in releasing the game

what if by being able to finish those graphics earlier the devs have the ability to spend more time cultivating the gameplay?
Think about creating resource spawns

Mag7spy

Liniker wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Like i said before let the dev's worry about what they need to develop the game lol. If they need input on features that is what feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

@Mag7spy what you are doing is white knighting, and this is detrimental for any project - so we should not express concerns and only provide input if the developer ask? Steven himself tells the community to share any thoughts and concerns about the project so why are you trying to shut down and dismiss other people's concerns? X.X

This isn't white knighting its being realistic, what you are doing right now is white knighting.

You are free to quote, but at what point have hey asked for feedback on how to develop the game from a technical perspective?

You are effectively mixing up asking for feedback from what players want from a game and feedback on the technical part of development. I'm guessing we are not on the same page if you think everyone should be saying how they should approach the development of their game. What do you know about developing with unreal engine or udk I'm curious?

Based on the answer we can go more into depth on this c:

Mag7spy

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

Objection!
There's plenty of IT people around here and a few, like myself, have been in the gaming industry (simulators in my case).

That leads to my second part, if you are objecting to "feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game" have they asked for help in their own development or what do you know about their development issues have they told you?

If they answer is no to either or, how are you suppose to give a supporting answer when you are not aware of the issues they have? It is exactly why my point is let them do what they do as professionals they can make the correct calls and choices.

I really wish i could find it strange, everyone has an opinion as far as gameplay and what people want that is good. But when everyone is suddenly a developer or think they understand their issues (without any basis to back it up) seems like a really bad direction. People will start complaining why aren't you doing this why aren't you doing this with engines, or saying they should use certain tools. Effectively it just leads to you trying to tell them how to do their job with most people not understanding really what they are talking about.

Mag7spy

Voxtrium wrote: »

Gospell wrote: »

I don’t understand anything about updating the engine, but I will express my opinion, if the update of the engine delays the development of the game even for 1 day, then to hell with it. For me, graphics are not important in an MMO game, only content. I was ready to play on ue4 too, they made ue5 in the game,great, but it's better to invest now in releasing the game

what if by being able to finish those graphics earlier the devs have the ability to spend more time cultivating the gameplay?
Think about creating resource spawns

If the developers think they will save a lot more time they would do it if its a tool they need.

Anything can be a what if though. What if people start have some reason to dislike something that happens and what if people start blaming it on how they develop the game and they aren't using the most up to date engine, and experimental features. Without understanding that wouldn't change anything.

Liniker

Mag7spy wrote: »

This isn't white knighting its being realistic, what you are doing right now is white knighting.

LOL I don't think you understand the concept of white knighting my friend

telling you to let others express their concerns and stop trying to dismiss others feedback is white knighting...? you can't just use the "No, You!!" card in any situation

Mag7spy

Liniker wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

This isn't white knighting its being realistic, what you are doing right now is white knighting.

LOL I don't think you understand the concept of white knighting my friend

telling you to let others express their concerns and stop trying to dismiss others feedback is white knighting...? you can't just use the "No, You!!" card in any situation

You are very much white knighting right now "LOL". I'll ask again at what point have they ask about technical help of their game, and do those people understand IS challenges and problems and how they are currently using UE5. You are stretching the use of feedback in a way i have not seen it being asked before but if you can provide context where it has been a actively asked thing I'd be happy to see it.

Feedback is now telling someone how to develop a game now while not understanding the studios issues, how their development works, or how unreal engine works?

I'm unsure what kind of job you have, but if it is technical enough I'm sure you can imagine someone coming up to you and not understanding issues and assuming what is best for your development / software and trying to start trains on the internet on what you should be doing would be quite patronizing.

I said it before, the developers know what to do with their own game the best when it comes to the technical challenges with their development and tools they feel are beneficial. If it is something that is good and not "experimental features" they most likely will use them after testing.

Having a bunch of people yelling on forums you should use these tools sounds innocent at first, but knowing the internet things can get skewed and anything used as a complaint to dislike something. Developers will know the new stuff out there, consumers being interested and saying its cool is fine. People saying they should be upgrading as much as possible is one example of what I'm talking about.

That is my piece on, but my following question will be is what concerns are people online suppose to be making. When we are talking about technical challenges since you seem to want to defend people making this claim in what my post is referencing.

Simply because someone has a concern doesn't mean its always warranted (granted I'm trying to see the concern you are talking about??)

Liniker

@Mag7spy Cool. I will just ignore your 7 paragraphs and continue to share my input about whatever I want - and if moderation doesn't want me to, they will let me know

Mag7spy

Liniker wrote: »

@Mag7spy Cool. I will just ignore your 7 paragraphs and continue to share my input about whatever I want - and if moderation doesn't want me to, they will let me know

Concern over their compatibility to develop a game sounds pretty silly based on what they have shown clearly knowing what they are doing. You can have concern if their ability to develop something, doesn't mean you are backing it up with any actual facts at the end of the day, leave it to the professionals.

RazThemun

I agree that staff must be increased if pushing these kinds of updates. If you want to do the updates in order to help with xyz, then you need the staff to play catch up on the setbacks of release time.

novercalis

Liniker wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Like i said before let the dev's worry about what they need to develop the game lol. If they need input on features that is what feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X

@Mag7spy what you are doing is white knighting, and this is detrimental for any project - so we should not express concerns and only provide input if the developer ask? Steven himself tells the community to share any thoughts and concerns about the project so why are you trying to shut down and dismiss other people's concerns? X.X

what you are doing is being a Karen, go get a snickers bar. He/She stated their opinion, nothing more, whether you agree with it or not. Just move on and focus on other conversation. While I agree with expressing concern, calling someone a white knight is cringe and pointless, other than looking to be a dick.

Liniker

novercalis wrote: »

While I agree with expressing concern, calling someone a white knight is cringe and pointless, other than looking to be a dick.

@novercalis So, you agree with me, but you wanted to leave a pointless comment for a discussion that ended days ago. Nice virtue signaling bro

You are awesome

Mag7spy

Liniker wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

While I agree with expressing concern, calling someone a white knight is cringe and pointless, other than looking to be a dick.

@novercalis So, you agree with me, but you wanted to leave a pointless comment for a discussion that ended days ago. Nice virtue signaling bro You are awesome

You literarily are being a karen and won't detail "your concern". Your own fault for throwing off the discussion. And also refuse to answer questions for clear reasons because they don't exist when I was talking about technical side of things.

Liniker

Mag7spy wrote: »

Your own fault for throwing off the discussion. And also refuse to answer questions for clear reasons because they don't exist when I was talking about technical side of things.

My friend what do I have to gain from this? you are not asking what is my knowledge in game development to have a positive discussion about this, you asked as a means to measure our online dicks and prove a silly point, and I have no interest in that

Here, let me help, you are the winner of this discussion! I lose, hooray! let's move on frand

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