History and Parts Pack and Free Update Delayed

[Lein Armweek]

3 minutes ago, Lein Armweek said:

The only thing you're doing is targeting the devs and pressuring them when they did a good thing. I'm getting tired of saying this, but would you complain about the bugs if it released on the 21st too? Better to take time to do things than rush it

You are right, I would complain cus I expect more and within the time. Because I'm a paying costumer. 

[Chel]

'Conformist attitude'  

Haven't you realised that they're delaying this to fix some issues that would've been problematic to the players? They're helping us by squashing some bugs and glitches. They're not just delaying this to be mean, they're doing it for a reason to release a better product. 

[Lein Armweek]

24 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

'Conformist attitude'  

Haven't you realised that they're delaying this to fix some issues that would've been problematic to the players? They're helping us by squashing some bugs and glitches. They're not just delaying this to be mean, they're doing it for a reason to release a better product. 

[snip]  We want them to have done that before the 21st .  Then on the 21st they should have delivered a finished product to us. Giving them all our support when they did not accomplish is not a good thing. That's why we complain and express frustration. And will continue to do. Remember how your teacher gave u a star when u did your home work? Remember how u got bad [snip] when u did not do your homework? This is the same. We are the bad [snip]. Get it? 

24 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

'Conformist attitude'  

Haven't you realised that they're delaying this to fix some issues that would've been problematic to the players? They're helping us by squashing some bugs and glitches. They're not just delaying this to be mean, they're doing it for a reason to release a better product. 

Do u study or go to work daily? Try to show up late tomorrow call in late several times. Try not finishing your school paper in time. Tell me how it goes. 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Gargamel
Portions Redacted By Moderator.

[Chel]

2 minutes ago, Lein Armweek said:

We want them to have done that before the 21st .  Then on the 21st they should have delivered a finished product to us.

SQUAD employs around 20 people. Sure, they have the backing of TTI, but TTI doesn't manage the game. SQUAD does. They've managed to release KSP not only on PC, but also on console as well. Do you know how hard it is for a small company such as them to do that? Running two versions of the game at the same time? Be thankful they didn't abandon it, and by delaying to, you guessed it,  they're showing that they're working on it and finalising the product to make it better for us, the players. 

[Lein Armweek]

1 minute ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

SQUAD employs around 20 people. Sure, they have the backing of TTI, but TTI doesn't manage the game. SQUAD does. They've managed to release KSP not only on PC, but also on console as well. Do you know how hard it is for a small company such as them to do that? Running two versions of the game at the same time? Be thankful they didn't abandon it, and by delaying to, you guessed it,  they're showing that they're working on it and finalising the product to make it better for us, the players. 

That may be, but that's not what Squad is telling us. That's what u assume. And one more thing, since the game is listed  on psn or Xbox store... means we do not care to much about excuses.. do we? Kind of that's not my problem! That's their problem to solve and within time. Squad should be happy we complain here and that we don't take it to Psn or Xbox complain board. Last time they had to deal with them things did not progress to well, remember? 

[Gargamel]

Right.

We've asked you guys to not aim your frustrations at fellow members.   They are not the target of your angst.   Continued attacks on your fellow users will not be tolerated.  

[Vanamonde]

More posts have been removed. 

Some people are angry. Other people are angry that those people are angry. How about everyone takes some time to calm down? This thread will be re-opened tomorrow. 

[Snark]

14 hours ago, Lein Armweek said:

I want them to accomplish within the given date. And want them to stick to it rigidly to that date and and release the product with out problems.

Well, sure.  That would be great, I can see why you would want that. It's nice to want things.

However, that's not how software development works.

(Disclaimer:  Since I don't work for Squad, of course I have no more knowledge of their internal processes than you do.  However, I have been shipping software for a living for a quarter century, at a variety of companies large and small, and in my experience the basic process works pretty much the same everywhere.  So I'm reasonably confident that the following explanation is applicable here.)

Developing and releasing a software product is not like mowing a lawn.  If I have a lawn that's 900 square meters, and I know that I can mow it at, say, 0.5 square meters per second, then it's pretty simple to do the math and figure out how long it will take to mow the lawn.  Just divide the amount of work to be done by the speed at which I can do work, and there's the answer:  in this case, it'll take me half an hour to mow.  Maybe plus or minus a smidge due to random factors, but I can pretty accurately judge how long it will take, especially if I've mowed the lawn many times before and understand the factors involved.

Software development... doesn't work like that.  For two reasons:

• You don't know for sure how much work there is.
• You don't know for sure how fast you can work.

Software development is full of unavoidable unknowns.  Discoveries happen along the way-- by which I mean, unexpected and unforeseeable things that pop up, which can balloon the required work unexpectedly, and/or slow down work unpredictably.  Yes, you can estimate how long a thing will take, if you're experienced in the biz-- but you simply can't predict it precisely.  Cannot be done.

The way a typical software release goes, is like this:

First comes the planning phase.  You scope the work (i.e. decide what you want to do, what features to implement).  Your various technical staff estimate how long it will take to develop, test, etc.  And you come up with a planned release date.  Depending on your business objectives, the work can drive the schedule or vice versa-- depends on the project.  (For example, you may decide that it's feature driven, i.e. "We know what we need to release, so first we'll work out the time taken and then we'll set the release date based on that."  Or, alternatively, you may decide that it's schedule driven, i.e. "We know when we have to release, so we'll scope the amount of work and the feature set so that it'll fit in the time remaining.")  Whichever way it is:  once you've got that scoped and scheduled, that pretty much lays out your intended roadmap.

Then comes the implementation phase, and here's where the hilarity ensues.  I said that it's not like mowing a lawn.  A better analogy might be, it's like building a road-- through uncharted hostile territory, full of predator-infested jungles and disease-infested swamps and smoking volcanoes and possibly giant earthquake fault lines.  You're a road-building company, you have plenty of road-building expertise, and you have a pretty good idea of how fast you can build a road when conditions are ideal.  But since you don't know the territory at all until you've been there, unpredictability is unavoidable.  You may have it all carefully planned out, and you think you'll be done with the job in four weeks-- and then, three weeks into the job, there's a tornado that wrecks all your construction equipment, or a giant sinkhole opens up in the ground, and suddenly you have extra weeks to deal with.

It's always been that way, and it will always be that way.  Software companies know this, of course, and to the degree that they can, they develop coping strategies for that unpredictability.  There are two main coping strategies, and that depends whether you're primarily feature-driven or schedule-driven, as discussed above.  Basically, when Reality™ rears its ugly head and kicks you in the teeth, and suddenly there's a delay of some sort, you have pretty much two choices:

• Cut features.
• Slip the schedule.

You'll note that I did not include "Wave a magic wand, sprinkle some magic pixie dust, and somehow fit a suddenly increased amount of work into the same amount of hours", because that's not possible.  That's not how it works.

So, to go back to your comment,

14 hours ago, Lein Armweek said:

I want them to accomplish within the given date. And want them to stick to it rigidly to that date and and release the product with out problems.

...you're asking for three things:
 

1. Provide the specified features
2. Provide them at the target date
3. Provide them at a high quality bar

...And you can't have all three.  That's not physically possible for a company to guarantee.  Sure, they might get lucky if nothing pops up, but in my experience something always does.  Of the three things you want, you can have any two.

• You can guarantee shipping on time at high quality... but then you can't guarantee the features, because you'll have to cut stuff when discoveries happen.
• You can guarantee the features at high quality... but then you can't guarantee the release date, because you'll have to slip the schedule when discoveries happen.
• You can guarantee shipping all the features on time... but then the only way you could do that would be to ship crap, because something's gotta give, and if you're not giving the engineers any more time and you're not letting them cut any work, the only remaining place is to just push it out the door before the (lengthy) QA process is really done.

I've oversimplified somewhat, here.  There are some other knobs the company may be able to turn, but those depend on circumstances.  For example, in some cases you can make things happen faster by throwing more money at the problem.  But that only works if you actually have the budget to do that, and even if you have infinite cash, there are some processes that can't be hurried.  Some tasks happen faster if you put more engineers on it-- but others don't.  For one thing, some tasks simply can't be "parallelized" well, due to the nature of the technical issues involved.  (The old "nine women can't have a baby in a month" problem.)  For another, some tasks may be outside of your direct control-- e.g. if you're releasing to the console, and you have to wait for an external company to certify you, and that external company delays things.

Look, it's not just me saying this.  It's a well-known, industry-wide phenomenon.  A few references, if you're interested:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141124220757-117728303-quality-cost-time-they-say-pick-any-two/
• https://rapidbi.com/time-quality-cost-you-can-have-any-two/
• http://kevinharrisarchitect.com/iron-triangle/

The three-way tradeoff applies to pretty much any project, not just software development.  However, software development, by its inherent nature, is more unpredictable than a lot of other fields.

 

To bring the conversation back from generalities to this release here:  Squad has already been really, really transparent about what this release will contain:  they've announced features, they've provided a fairly detailed look at them.  That pretty much boxes them in:  they can't cut features to speed things up, because then they'd have angry torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mobs beating on the doors.  It's also the case that this is a console release, which has a large and pretty much un-budgeable chunk of red tape on the end where they need to go through the console manufacturer's certification process-- any delay there would be outside their control.

We don't know exactly where the hold-up happened, since they haven't announced that (nor is there any reason why they should, of course).

But the fact of the hold-up?  Par for the course.  This is perfectly typical of software development and release, and speaking as a professional software developer with decades of commercial experience, I gotta say that thus far, at least, I see nothing untoward here.

14 hours ago, Lein Armweek said:

You know why? Cus I'm paying money.

You are?  Could you explain?  I'm a bit puzzled, because if they haven't released it yet, then you haven't bought it yet, yes?  Which would mean you haven't paid them any money yet, so of course they owe you nothing there.  Am I missing something?

Of course, if you do buy a thing, and then it doesn't perform as advertised-- e.g. doesn't do what it claims, or has terrible quality-- then of course as a customer you'd be perfectly reasonable to be angry.  (As, indeed, has happened in the past with KSP console release-- there were tons of problems, and players were justifiably upset.)

However, that's not what's happening here.  As far as I can tell, you're not angry about the quality of a product (because you haven't actually bought it yet).  If I am understanding you correctly, you're unhappy because you have expectations that aren't being met.  But if, as I discuss above, those expectations are unrealistic, then of course it's hardly the company's fault that you've chosen to have such expectations.  So what is it that you're so angry about?

[Nostu]

Listen, some people (like me) are just angry at the fact that we have waited a very long time for this update (or just any update to fix the broken state of the console game that we have right now). Some people have said earlier that the problem could be with Xbox and PlayStation with releasing it but if that was the case how did Xbox and PlayStation let them release the previous update that has TONS of game breaking bugs. I'm glad they are testing this DLC before releasing it (finally) because I swear they didn't even bother testing the other update we got back in the summer of last year. I just really hope at this point when they release the update that it doesn't have too many game breaking bugs, because honestly we've really had a bad year of gaming with all these AAA title games. I'm pretty sure that's why I'm getting heated with all this stuff happening and I've been taking it out on the devs and that isn't right. So take your time devs (just not months please) so I can build some cool Saturn rockets of my own. 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Nostu

[Lisias]

17 hours ago, Lein Armweek said:

It's a good thing to be delayed? How does this logic work? 

No. But it's way worse launching without the needed requirements met.

Doing the right thing is not the same as doing things right.

Sometimes, you just can't win the battle. All you can do is to choose the less painful/costly way to lose the battle, and live to fight another day.

So, yeah. It's a "the right thing" to be delayed if the launch is doomed (see Challenge). 

Perhaps setting up the launch date was a mistake, but it depends on what really happened - a last minute update on the console firmware would demand a full recertification (see Anthem problems on PS4),  and this is completely unforeseeable . 

Real life talks louder than any reasoning.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Lisias
Fixing a probable contradiction on the argument

[sicko kerman]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Well... [snip].... about?

I think he means he payed for the game but idk I just walts on into this forum every now and then just because people get really mad lol it's like just go play KSP or something 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Gargamel
GIANT wall of text removed from Quote.

[Jebediah Kerman Jr.]

22 minutes ago, sicko kerman said:

lol it's like just go play KSP or something 

It would be nice if I could just get the full KSP experience. I live in fear of command seats and EVAs because of bugs that have not been fixed (what kind of life is that?). I've decided not to play KSP again until they've released the update; there's nothing new I can do anyways, living in fear of command seats and EVAs. I guess I'll just binge Portal 2 for a couple of weeks.

[Lein Armweek]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

And you can't have all three.

Really?  Are u sure this is true? So most of the time you do a transaction your either get it late, in poor quality or you just leave the features you want out??? Where do you get this theories? I read Phillips Kotlers entire library a can't not find what you are talking about. 

42 minutes ago, sicko kerman said:

.  That's not physically possible for a company to guarantee

Off course this is not true. It would not be possible for branding to happen if this was the case or a newspaper. Guarteeing it is often one of main features. Hahahahahahhaha 

47 minutes ago, sicko kerman said:

.  That's not physically possible for a company to guarantee

Off course this is not true. It would not be possible for branding to happen if this was the case or a newspaper. Guarteeing it is often one of main features. Hahahahahahhaha 

[Lein Armweek]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

angry about?

You name dropped Wikipedia there, talked about the real world while at the same time accommodated Nash gametheory to fit your opinion argument. [snip] You better  quote if you are not sighting own opinions or people here may think you actually studied this things u are saying. 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Vanamonde

[Benjamin Kerman]

49 minutes ago, Lein Armweek said:

And you can't have all three.

@Snark @Lein Armweek I think you might find this relevant: http://thecodelesscode.com/case/154

@Lein Armweek I see that you don't quite understand the difference between software and hardware, and it has been attempted to be explained several times by several people. I'd recommend that before you make statements like 

49 minutes ago, Lein Armweek said:

Quote

[Snark] And you can't have all three

Really?  Are u sure this is true? So most of the time you do a transaction your either get it late, in poor quality or you just leave the features you want out?

I'd recommend that you do software development for a while. I've worked in software, Snark has work in software A LOT, but you're coming in here and making statements about how 'these things are totally possible just do it right', to which I will direct you to this humorous image in a futile attempt to defuse the situation: 

[Vanamonde]

A bit more content has been removed from this thread. Please keep things on-topic and leave politics for other forums. 

[Gargamel]

As previously stated by Vanamonde, Please stay on topic.    Off topic posts have been pruned into their own thread.  This thread is for discussion of the Release (and delay there of) of the DLC for consoles.   Please stay on this topic. 

[Lein Armweek]

We should have a party for console when release is here. Hook me up on psn the day of release those interested. 

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Lein Armweek said:

Really?  Are u sure this is true? So most of the time you do a transaction your either get it late, in poor quality or you just leave the features you want out??? Where do you get this theories? I read Phillips Kotlers entire library a can't not find what you are talking about. 

 

Since you studied laws, here are the keywords: "software limitation of liability".

I can't be fully liable for my software if it relies on other people's works that limit their liability. And it's impossible to ship a product without third-parties works embedded nowadays. 

This would lead to the Software Industry on its knees.

I remember an issue on VisiCalc being used on engineering and borking due a flaw on Applesoft's float point routines. Something about a bridge collapsing or almost collapsing, I don't remember.

Anyway, VisiCorp wasn't considered liable because the error was caused by a third party, Apple, that wasn't considered liable because they subcontracted the thing to Microsoft, that wasn't considered liable as they never intended to ship a product to be used on Engineering but to be used on homebrew (as we call nowadays) software.

It's a chain of thrust: or the whole chain is liable, or none of them is. Otherwise no one would afford the costs of a single software product. 

 

 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Lisias
Tyops!

[Chel]

Thread's open again, yay? Hopefully this won't devolve into a fighting mess like the last time? 

[Djjosh8488]

It would be cool if the console version was released as a Beta then everyone could help out identifying bugs then a while later the official release.

[Chel]

Console version as beta? What platform is the release going to be on then 

[Lein Armweek]

11 minutes ago, Djjosh8488 said:

It would be cool if the console version was released as a Beta then everyone could help out identifying bugs then a while later the official release

You don't want that I promise, have you seen the amount of bad stuff Rockstar is getting on online rdr2?  Just it is actually. Better for both not to deal with a beta. 

[Chel]

RDR2 and KSP are different communities, and while the first console version was terrible, it acted like a beta to make Enhanced Edition. They learned from their mistakes and issues

[Lein Armweek]

You think this update should have been a beta? BTW what's the thing in the update you people are looking the most forward to?  I saw something that looked like a soyuz. That's Awsome. 

I really just want it not to in any way ruin the existing game. 

If that's means the update could never come out, that's a good deal if it means the current game is staying intact and working. But I know it's gonna be releases and gonna be fine, just saying if that were to happen.