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December 6th; what's new?

This thread has me shaking my head. I’m a software engineer that has been designing/developing enterprise software for 20 years. I can’t claim to have any game developing experience outside of any personal projects.

There’re a few things I would like to comment on based on my experience working in the software development industry.

This product is still a work-in-progress and NOT a polished final release and this fact has been made abundantly clear. Issues are to be expected.

I agree that the latest patch wasn’t the best, that being said, I seriously doubt that it was Stormhaven Studios’ intention to push away their player base.

I do believe that the clients, aka the players, are the best resource the development team has at their disposal to gather feedback about the game. However, changes shouldn’t be pushed out to the live server before being tested first. Content changes should be tested by the players using the test server to iron out any issues before releasing to the live servers especially since the players are paying to play. Patches should improve the game and not the other way around.

I understand why the current financial model is being used. Servers aren’t cheap. Even if Stormhaven Studios happen to own their servers there’s still overhead cost. Then there’s the development team’s salaries so on and so forth. Charging for the game with a subscription helps mitigate those costs.

As for the upcoming holidays, the Stormhaven Studios team are entitled to a rest and time with their families. It’s not easy being a software developer. It’s stressful and you can easily find yourself burnt out. Especially if the team are continually sprinting in their development cycle. A burnt-out team is a less productive one and runs the risk of losing developers.
 
Yeah I would venture to say the entire community is ok with the devs take like two weeks to spend time with their family lol.

You can handle no patch’s for that time. I believe in you.
I venture to say the post of the community member you responded to shows your contention false in and of itself, making it an odd position for you to take. That the post came to receive more likes than your own further supports a variance of opinion on this rather than uniformity of view.
 
This thread has me shaking my head. I’m a software engineer that has been designing/developing enterprise software for 20 years. I can’t claim to have any game developing experience outside of any personal projects.

There’re a few things I would like to comment on based on my experience working in the software development industry.

This product is still a work-in-progress and NOT a polished final release and this fact has been made abundantly clear. Issues are to be expected.

I agree that the latest patch wasn’t the best, that being said, I seriously doubt that it was Stormhaven Studios’ intention to push away their player base.

I do believe that the clients, aka the players, are the best resource the development team has at their disposal to gather feedback about the game. However, changes shouldn’t be pushed out to the live server before being tested first. Content changes should be tested by the players using the test server to iron out any issues before releasing to the live servers especially since the players are paying to play. Patches should improve the game and not the other way around.

I understand why the current financial model is being used. Servers aren’t cheap. Even if Stormhaven Studios happen to own their servers there’s still overhead cost. Then there’s the development team’s salaries so on and so forth. Charging for the game with a subscription helps mitigate those costs.

As for the upcoming holidays, the Stormhaven Studios team are entitled to a rest and time with their families. It’s not easy being a software developer. It’s stressful and you can easily find yourself burnt out. Especially if the team are continually sprinting in their development cycle. A burnt-out team is a less productive one and runs the risk of losing developers.

All MMORPGs not in maintenance mode are works-in-progress. It is of course not the intention of Stormhaven Studios to drive away their players seeing as they are the sole source of ongoing revenue in a subscription only model. Intentions don't always pave a road to a destination universally seen as desirable.

The developers should be able to enjoy the holidays with their families. Everyone should. Entitled is another matter. Many people must work through holidays. Many more don't have weeks of time off during them. This is not a matter of entitlement but choice that one can argue the prudence of.
 
All MMORPGs not in maintenance mode are works-in-progress. It is of course not the intention of Stormhaven Studios to drive away their players seeing as they are the sole source of ongoing revenue in a subscription only model. Intentions don't always pave a road to a destination universally seen as desirable.

The developers should be able to enjoy the holidays with their families. Everyone should. Entitled is another matter. Many people must work through holidays. Many more don't have weeks of time off during them. This is not a matter of entitlement but choice that one can argue the prudence of.

I agree and I should have been more specific as to what I was trying to convey.

Yes all MMORPGs not in maintenance mode are works-in-progress, however not all MMORPGs are on the same stage of development. You mentioned “maintenance” which is one stage, there’s also “release” which this game isn’t at yet. This game is currently in “beta” which tells me that some, if not all, the core systems haven’t been fleshed out yet.

You’re also right that “entitled” may not have been the correct word to use, and that many people must work through the holidays. That being said, I should have stipulated that even though Stormhaven Studios will not be releasing any new patches during the holidays until the new year, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they wouldn’t have a skeleton crew on hand to deal with any major/critical issues that may arise.

Without further information, I’m assuming the development team would have a skeleton crew during the holidays as this would be the prudent approach.
 
No one said we aren't working. I work nearly every day and will be taking my laptop with me on vacation in case of emergencies. Others on the team continue to work daily. The goal here was to get the servers into a stable state so there were minimal fires to put out over the holidays. It is very difficult to enjoy your time away from the computer when a fire is raging.
 
I'm happy to support the team in enjoying the holidays. Alot of us still need to play to flesh out what we think the game needs or not instead of knee jerk reactions. Saying that this is still in beta isn't right either as if it was in beta this would be the game with the least amount of bugs ive ever seen. I do agree we need a ton of more content but that I am willing to grow with the team. From what I've heard the memory leak that we have sounds very much like what final fantasy 11 dealt with on its release. If I am correct it was an issue in that game where changing of gear lead to the leak and I remember them talking about it in their "We are vanadiel" series of interviews.
 
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