How about releasing updates more frequently ?

[Javin]

As a professional software dev, I'm actually surprised at how OFTEN Squad seems to be releasing. (Looks like roughly quarterly from what some people in this thread have been saying.) More releases than that would be a very, very bad idea. More releases leave you with two binary options:

a.) Have to spend time with every release making sure there's no game killing bugs, or

b.) Release untested code that could chew up people's savegames, or make changes that can't be rolled back after introducing game killing bugs

Additionally, there's the actual process of PHYSICALLY RELEASING the code. Compiling, packaging, uploading, etc. May not seem like much, but you could lose 1 FTE per release with the physical process of releasing alone. With a team of 10, that's a 10% reduction in man hours each time a release comes out. (This is a very, very bad thing.)

I haven't gotten into the mods yet, either, but this would also mean that modders would have to constantly be making updates to their mods to stay current (a problem that plagued Minecraft/Bukkit) and constantly work around code that may later be made obsolete.

I'd far rather see much more stable, "completed" but rare updates that actually fix bugs, and add new content than getting a release just for the sake of getting a release, or getting a release that may cause more bugs, but fixes a rare bug that only affects 0.5% of users, or fixes some bug that isn't a game stopper that you can work around.

[Dre4dW0rm]

This is still alpha version of the game, not a full release, and there's obligation to release a finished product at some point.

Look at yourselves people, this is a suggestions thread, and I posted one "politely", yet you aggresive bunch (with some exceptions of coz) must jump on people like there's no tomorrow.

People do quit, and I know at least 30+ who were tired of crashes, and taking a long time getting them fixed.

As to the release schedule, and long waiting: look at space engineers, they are releasing updates to fix issues in a matter of days, new features every other week, big changes every few months. This is a good approach, as people can keep playing and know that the fix is just behind the corner.

It's bad idea to throw a lot of changes at once, as you can never test the product yourself in 100%, and small unexpected bugs which may be show-stoppers, will not get fixed for a long time (yes, 1-3 months is a long time in such case, as products get forgotten quickly). Making small fixes and releasing them (even for trial) to community is a good thing, and since it's not a finished product, you can't expect it to be fully stable for any kind of modding. In fact, it's the community that is responsible for the fact that they don't release more often, because your mods will get broken! Yet again, it's not a finished product, so what do you expect.

LOOK, how many mods have already been made, .... to fix the game!!! people wouldn't do it if they hoped for faster access to fixes.

I'm not talking about releasing big sets of new features, but about fixes, and tweaks to make it more enjoyable!

Edited January 22, 2014 by Dre4dW0rm

[Dre4dW0rm]

Want more updates? How about investing a few hundred thousand dollars (or a couple million pesos I guess) into the development of the game? Just play it and be happy it exists. If my games fan base started demanding updates more often, I would give them a link to my PayPal donation account. Though as it stands, my games fan base has been waiting for so long that they stopped caring about how long it would take... *sigh*

£20 is not exactly a free product, so your argument is completely wrong.

[Dre4dW0rm]

that's a lot. I've seen a lot of games that never received any updates or support at all after release. Or if there were updates they were put up for sale as the next DLC or sequel, at roughly the same price as the original.

It's not a released product, early access, alpha, beta, test, pre-release - got it?

[leptoon]

£20 is not exactly a free product, so your argument is completely wrong.

That's why you get updates in the first place. Want them faster? Pay to hire another developer. Nuff said.

[Superfluous J]

Look at yourselves people, this is a suggestions thread, and I posted one "politely", yet you aggresive bunch (with some exceptions of coz) must jump on people like there's no tomorrow.

I do not see how my reply was any less polite (or even "polite") than your first post.

For reference:

There are set, necessary time sinks when releasing an update. It takes about 2 weeks of non-development time to do that. Right now, they do (say) 3 months of development, 2 weeks of testing and finalizing. If they released every month it'd be 2 weeks of dev, 2 weeks of testing and overhead. You'd almost cut the progress by half!

No I think they're doing it right currently.

look at space engineers

Space Engineers is much earlier in development than Kerbal Space Program. As software grows, dev cycles lenghten. KSP used to get updated quicker. Minecraft used to have weekly updates. Space Engineers' dev cycle will lengthen over time.

they are releasing updates to fix issues in a matter of days, new features every other week, big changes every few months.

Also, when you have a very short dev cycle you get more bugs, which you then have to fix in a matter of days. KSP has no bugs that I know of that stop me from playing the game.

small unexpected bugs which may be show-stoppers, will not get fixed for a long time (yes, 1-3 months is a long time in such case, as products get forgotten quickly)

If a bug was found that stopped the game, they'd release a patch. None have been found so they have not.

I think you are mistaking disagreement with vitriol. I'm not shooting your idea down because I don't like you or something. I just think they're doing it correctly. I think a lot of others who have replied to you have similar feelings in this regard.

[leptoon]

The point is, asking for faster updates isn't going to get you anywhere. If you want major features added to the game more quickly, you need to take matters into your own hands. Go learn how to code with Unity and apply for a job with Squad. Tell them you'll work for food but be careful not to drink the water!

[SargeRho]

This is still alpha version of the game, not a full release, and there's obligation to release a finished product at some point.

No, there is no obligation to release it, actually. It's alpha because the devs say it's alpha. If they said "That's it, we're done.", it'd be done.

Look at yourselves people, this is a suggestions thread, and I posted one "politely", yet you aggresive bunch (with some exceptions of coz) must jump on people like there's no tomorrow.

Not really, no.

People do quit, and I know at least 30+ who were tired of crashes, and taking a long time getting them fixed.

...and most of them come back with every update. If they are tired of crashes, they haven't understood the concept of "still in development".

As to the release schedule, and long waiting: look at space engineers, they are releasing updates to fix issues in a matter of days, new features every other week, big changes every few months. This is a good approach, as people can keep playing and know that the fix is just behind the corner.

Earlier in development.

It's bad idea to throw a lot of changes at once, as you can never test the product yourself in 100%, and small unexpected bugs which may be show-stoppers, will not get fixed for a long time (yes, 1-3 months is a long time in such case, as products get forgotten quickly). Making small fixes and releasing them (even for trial) to community is a good thing, and since it's not a finished product, you can't expect it to be fully stable for any kind of modding. In fact, it's the community that is responsible for the fact that they don't release more often, because your mods will get broken! Yet again, it's not a finished product, so what do you expect.

How is the community responsible for them not releasing more often?

And 1-3 months in the development cycle of an indie game is nothing. Most indie games take several years until they are considered finished.

LOOK, how many mods have already been made, .... to fix the game!!! people wouldn't do it if they hoped for faster access to fixes.

Wrong.

I'm not talking about releasing big sets of new features, but about fixes, and tweaks to make it more enjoyable!

Fixes that need to be tested, and themselves fixed.

[plainawesome]

The game dev's are working very, very hard on this game. And with a staff of only around 10 people, it's going to take some time to dream up some new features, code it in the game, and upload it on the servers. Especially when there is a big, game changing feature implemented (0.18 the new era (that was a biggie) , 0.19, rovers, 0.22, career mode with science experiments (that was also a biggie) and 0.23, with a lot of work on the career mode aspect on the game). I will be nice and tell you this, just enjoy the game as it is, let the updates roll out as fast as they want to, but other than that, just play the actual, current version of the game.

[Skyler4856]

Can a mod close this

[vexx32]

Aww, now I want to know what happened!

Same. I'm surprised that happened.

This was back before we had the experimentals test team and the QA team overseeing releases and bughunting before the public gets a hold of anything. Before that, Squad would release an update, and we'd just play it. I forget exactly when it happened, but back before 0.14 or so; a few versions before that, I think; there was a release that had a really bad game-breaking bug in it. I'm not sure how it evaded notice (since at the time the devs would often do a bit of playtesting to try to iron out such bugs), but the end result was that the forums were swamped in angry people wanting to know if it could be fixed and when it would be fixed and so on and so forth. It only went on for a few days before the devs managed to get a hotfix out (though, it must be noted that back then there was no Steam version and no patcher), and as a result everyone tried to download it at once. From memory, I think that actually caused the servers to crash for a bit due to the overload. It was a bit of a nightmare scenario, really. I imagine the moderators back then had their hands quite full. Once the hotfix was spread around, everything sort of calmed down.

I think that was actually the primary reason that the devs decided to organise the experimental test team, to better test for such bugs, in an attempt to ensure that the general public would not get their hands on a version with similar game breaking bugs again. Far as I can see, it's worked better than they ever expected; there's been no such incident since. They even created a second testing team, to help the decide what features will work well with the game and so forth -- that's the QA (Quality Assurance) Team; it's their job to make sure that new features work as well as they can in the first iteration, and I believe they have to bugtest specific features as much as they can before the experimental tester group gets their hands on any of it. The QA guys get new feature builds pretty regularly, IIRC, whereas the experimental testers only get builds in the week or two leading up to a new release, if I recall correctly.

But yeah, long story short... if it was too much shorter, a lot of people would be pretty upset every few releases when a game-breaking bug slips through the net. It takes time to chase down and eliminate bugs, and Squad have figured out that 3 months usually gives them a good amount of time to both code new features, and fix bugs with both new and old code.

Now, as I see it, this thread has pretty much lived out its short life. The current update cycle length is as it is for a reason, and unless you yourself have been involved in a similar project, I really don't think you have the experience necessary to rationally doubt the developers' judgement on this. As such, I think I'll close this. Have a good day, everyone.