KSP Weekly: That Pale Blue Dot

[RW-1]

I'll see your Blue Dot and raise:

 

"In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead."

 

It's definately been like BTPOTA lately ...

[Caelib]

On 11/14/2016 at 10:14 AM, Terwin said:

How many major Software improvement projects have you managed where you knew a) how long it would take, b) what features would be included, and c) the bug count was reduced or maintained?  I can guarantee that unless you worked for NASA where millions of dollars are spent on every line of code, that number would be zero.

It is a bad idea for *ANY* software company to announce any new or upcoming features before those features are packaged up and ready for delivery.  If they do, then in short order they will learn the hard way that some problems are unfeasible or down-right impossible, and it is not always easy to tell the difference between those and a '5-minute fix' : http://xkcd.com/1425/

I work for a software company so my experience is that you have a feature roadmap and 3 - 6 months out, you know what you're going to build - you just don't have an exact date pinned on it.  This community has never been harsh or unreasonable at timelines - I am simply asking to see a plan or goal for the game other than [null reference].

If you don't have that plan or communicate it to your customers, you aren't going to have a company for very long.

Edited November 16, 2016 by Caelib

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, Caelib said:

If you don't have that plan or communicate it to your customers, you aren't going to have a company for very long.

Caelib, I don't mean to single you out, you just happen to have the most recent post on a sentiment that I'd like to address. 

It boggles my mind that various people, for various reasons, seem to think that Squad owes them anything other than the game in it's current state when they bought it. They have my money. They most likely won't get any more of it. It is not a profit-driven mindset that makes them keep doing stuff for us. 

Everything that Squad does to improve the game is a gift (except for the console bugs. Those need fixing fast). Everything. From the free content updates to maintaining this forum, and everything in between. Heck, even the Weekly Updates, as they're now called, are something that Squad doesn't have to do. 

Squad owes us no communication on future plans. Sometimes they're nice enough to share some. But they're certainly under no obligation to do so. 

The fact that Squad continues to give free updates, and hold contests that give away plushies or free copies of the game, or interact with the community at all speaks volumes about how much they love the game. And also how much they care about the community. 

So maybe be a little less demanding, and a little more grateful? 

Again, I'm not trying to single anyone out, just wanted to address a general sentiment that I disagree with. 

[Terwin]

14 hours ago, Caelib said:

I work for a software company so my experience is that you have a feature roadmap and 3 - 6 months out, you know what you're going to build - you just don't have an exact date pinned on it.  This community has never been harsh or unreasonable at timelines - I am simply asking to see a plan or goal for the game other than [null reference].

If you don't have that plan or communicate it to your customers, you aren't going to have a company for very long.

It sounds like you are in an established market vertical with professional clients.

As opposed to using a 3rd party platform pushing the envelope of what that platform is capable of supporting, and supporting a user base that will push and pry for any bit of information and then cry bloody murder if any of their assumptions are proven incorrect.

At my current employer and my last employer we did not announce any feature that was not developed and at least in testing, other than the occasional 'yes we will support both the current and new versions of Related_Product once the new version is released' or 'yes that is a bug, we hope to have a fix for you soon'

At the employer before that, they did promise new things before even telling the dev team about them, and after doing that for a while the company was in such dire financial straits that all the managers who knew what was going on jumped ship or otherwise transitioned out of leadership roles until the new CEO was a spread-sheet guy who would not promise anything not supported by his numbers(previously COO).

 

Anyone who is on the cutting-edge and makes specific promises about the future will get burned in short order.