Would you want Squad to confirm release dates such as 0.22 all the time?

[Jarnis]

Date reveal 24-48h in advance is just good customer service, lets people to sort out some free time. Of course such an announcement should be made only when everything is pretty much ready to go and chance of slip is zero.

[stringyquark]

I'd have to say no, I've been losing my mind going for a magic midnight release with the date posted in the weekly. Now that I know, I may have to call in sick tomorrow, not good for my career prospects.

[The Destroyer]

I hope it is out in 10 hours, that's when I wake up

[omega-envych]

I do want to see, when it's coming. If it's gonna be tomorrow. That would be a hit for me every time!

[MadHorse]

soonâ„¢ is enough information for me.

It's done when it's done.

[TMS]

A day's notice is really appreciated. They should maintain that practice.

[Apophis775]

I think I'd like knowing 2 or 3 days before it, and if they aimed at fridays/weekends...

[Snillum101]

Release dates are (imho) usually the trappings of larger companies seeking to build hype and preorders for an upcoming title. I think they often seem to provide unwelcome or unrealistic restrictions to the development process like with Rome 2 Total War which seemed to be released in an unfinished state to comply with a pre-set release date.

I'm not sure if it really fits with KSP to have mini release dates for updates but that's not what's happened really. We've just found out the day before the update that we're getting an update

[icemasterpt]

I selected yes, but only with 1 or 2 days to go, like they did today.

[okbillybunnyface]

Exact release dates aren't really very realistic in the software engineering world. There's just too much uncertainty. A great deal of what you develop as a software engineer has either never been done before or hasn't been done in the way you're doing it, so it's very difficult to foresee all the problems you might encounter. The further away from release you are, the less accurate any sort of prediction is likely to be.

[boolybooly]

No I just want to know when its ready to play, telling me before is useless to me, just disturbs my train of thought.

Hype is the enemy of fine motor control.

[Johnman]

Only as a short-term announcement, such as this one. Long-term release dates are more trouble than they are worth.

I prefer to have updates on progress and make an idea of my own without the the devs putting themselves in a difficult PR position. When they said they had entered experimentals, for instance, we all knew it was imminent. Yet no promises were made and no promises could have been broken afterwards.

So yeah, something like "Next monday!" or "Tomorrow!", it's OK. Anything more serious than that is not worth the potential drama in my opinion.

[Silentbamper]

A release date is not enough.

sure they told us the 16th.... but they didnt tell us when on the 16th...

I dont want a release date... I dont want a release hour...

I want to know the exact second we can all crash their server downloading the new version.

Thats my man bitches XD

[theSpeare]

The way they did it for 0.22 was perfect.

As many people have already stated it's problematic for software developing to state a release date.

What they should really carry on doing is finish the version release, then announce that they are releasing the next day. It's pretty simple, and pretty effective.

[Kulantan]

I suspect the update is done and finalized as we type. However they need to load it to Steam and it will patch at the Steam update time. So I would suspect they'll be doing this most of the time from now on.

[TheJoseph98]

Well... gonna play BTD5 while I wait for the update, XD

[TheNewTeddy]

No. Not unless accompanied with a time. Otherwise people just F5F5F5F5 "midnight where I am or where they are? Oh neither maybe its sunrise...where I am or where they are? oh. none of that either... maybe its office hours? Well one of my friends starts at 8am, another at 8:30, another at 9, and another at 9:30, so it is it 8 where I am, 8 where they are, 8:30 where I am, 8:30 where they are, 9 where..." you can fill in the rest

[PwnedDuck]

Yes. By some magic, clearly, I am mature enough not to freak out if the announced date were changed...

[HeadHunter67]

"midnight where I am or where they are? Oh neither maybe its sunrise...where I am or where they are? oh. none of that either... maybe its office hours? Well one of my friends starts at 8am, another at 8:30, another at 9, and another at 9:30, so it is it 8 where I am, 8 where they are, 8:30 where I am, 8:30 where they are, 9 where..."

That's what I dislike, too. A legion of people who think a release date means the product will be available at midnight - GMT, or their local time at the latest. Why do they DO that?

To me, at best, a release date means the product will be available at some point on that date - possibly very late in the day, but almost certainly NOT at midnight.

GUYS! That date was just the release date of the full ksp weekly......

I know, right? Nowhere did they actually explicitly say "0.22 will be released on 10-16-2013", people just assumed that because there was a date below the video. So if it doesn't come out today, all these people will feel like a promise was broken, even though one was never made, because they may have misinterpreted something they saw.

THAT is exactly why announcing release dates is a bad idea. And that's the problem with allowing speculation in the first place. People discuss their wishes, those wishes become an expectation, that expectation morphs into an implicit "promise", and when that "promise" is unmet, those people get angry and alienated because someone else didn't give them something they wanted - even though there was never an agreement in the first place. I know forums want to encourage open discussion, but this has happened time and again in so many other places. Fair Warning.

Edited October 16, 2013 by HeadHunter67

[Godot]

It depends ...

if they are sure (with a probability of maybe >= 80%) that they can deliver the game at the announced date (or earlier) then I`m all for announcing it.

They should be rather conservative with their announcements however, rather taking worst case scenarios instead of best case scenarios

(after all, if they release an update earlier than announced it will be a pleasant surprise ... in contrast to, when they will release an update later than announced)

[TUFOM]

At least to know week of release would be nice. =)

[Comrade Jenkens]

I don't mind it being announced one day in advance but I think that they shouldn't try to fix deadlines too much as I think the games quality could suffer.

[Torham234]

I voted no. There is no need to confirm release dates on experimental builds.

But looks like the opinion is very balanced on this one!

[Crown]

Lol

I think it's funner to see all the people asking for dates. And it's more exciting (and flexible for Squad) if they do things like today.

Where anyone is freaking out. Economic breakdown because of KSP release.

edit: It's kinds like those rope pull games on social network sites. But regardless who wins the pull/poll Squad's going to do what they think is right. And even without a published release date, they are under very high pressure. Because thousands of players want to be the game better than ever before.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Crown

[Guest]

It's nice to have this kind of announcement, though it'd also be nice to know what "16.10.2013" means to the Squad. I think they're somewhere in America, but what time zone is it exactly?

Anyway, I like the announcement. It gave me some time to square away the stuff I keep in Gamedata in preparation for the update, as well as finish up whatever I'm doing now.