PC 7DTD - Will it ever leave Early Access?

Don't get Roland wound up. If TFP were working on a .x update for a month with one person part time, while 99 percent of the resources were working on A17 - Roland likes to pretend that month of work/time belongs to the .x update NOT the A17 work
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Thank you, finally some inside information on the A16.4 work. You were inside, right? RIGHT? :smile-new:

Honestly, even if you are right, who cares if someone evaluates the development time of A17 to 9, 12 or 15 months? Whatever it is, it will be too late in the eyes of dozens of 7days junkies in need of a fix

Gotta soften my rant: I can't really fault first time posters to come here and ask if the project is abandoned or late or something. They don't follow the project closely, don't see developers posts with information ... The same can't be said about regulars complaining about the same stuff again and again.

And even if they were right about it being a mistake it is too late now. TFP has made a BIG patch aka lots of changes and now that can't be fixed by just releasing. They have to finish the stuff, polish and debug it to a state that is at least playable by bug-hardened people who don't mind half-broken stuff

 
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Don't get Roland wound up. If TFP were working on a .x update for a month with one person part time, while 99 percent of the resources were working on A17 - Roland likes to pretend that month of work/time belongs to the .x update NOT the A17 work
I would love for TFP to release an A16.5 update tomorrow that slightly changes the title screen menu. So Roland can get on his high horse and preach that you just received an update and .x updates count! Then in August he can say you guys just received an update 3 months ago!
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I think it is significant that TFP doesn’t do little fluff updates just to be able to say that they update often. They do what needs to be done as their work flow demands it. They aren’t withholding anything to torture the fans. They are working in the way they have come to know works best for them and causes the least disruption to the save games of their players. The fact that you have to wish that TFP would do a meaningless update and that I would then spin it for PR purposes is a nice backhanded compliment of the dev’s integrity. They don’t need to waste time and energy just to placate the impatient.

I think my horse is normal and yours is just so low the relative heights throw you off...

 
I think it is significant that TFP doesn’t do little fluff updates just to be able to say that they update often. They do what needs to be done as their work flow demands it. They aren’t withholding anything to torture the fans. They are working in the way they have come to know works best for them and causes the least disruption to the save games of their players. The fact that you have to wish that TFP would do a meaningless update and that I would then spin it for PR purposes is a nice backhanded compliment of the dev’s integrity. They don’t need to waste time and energy just to placate the impatient.
I think my horse is normal and yours is just so low the relative heights throw you off...
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I agree, I mean its not like 7dtd is the only game I own. If i get bored waiting then I just play some other games and come back to it. Then when I come back I get a ton of new content to try, all the new mods that are expanded using the new features, etc

 
I think it is significant that TFP doesn’t do little fluff updates just to be able to say that they update often. They do what needs to be done as their work flow demands it. They aren’t withholding anything to torture the fans. They are working in the way they have come to know works best for them and causes the least disruption to the save games of their players. The fact that you have to wish that TFP would do a meaningless update and that I would then spin it for PR purposes is a nice backhanded compliment of the dev’s integrity. They don’t need to waste time and energy just to placate the impatient.
I think my horse is normal and yours is just so low the relative heights throw you off...
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Honestly, I dont mind the wait.. Especially if we get bandits in A17 :) I was just calling you out for pretending their .x updates require anywhere near the full resouces of the entire team. We both know that during those last few .x updates most of the team was working A17. So it should definitely be counted towards A17 dev time, not A16.

Also I just wanted to Raz you up a bit because I love u, in a non sexual way.

Nice comment on my horse by the way. Im gonna tuck that one away and use it at work sometime ;)

 
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I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but since you don't know how many people are working on this game, and you don't know what the feature/change list is for A17, how can you make any judgement as to if it's taking too long to develop? Everyone would like to have been playing A17 for months, but it's not just a few minor tweaks, and there aren't hundreds of people working on the game (probably not even dozens.)
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I read later in this thread that apparently they're re-writing the engine, and that explains things for me, which in this case would be the "something else".

I'm also not trying to be a jerk or anything, I was just a curious like the OP.

 
Honestly, I dont mind the wait.. Especially if we get bandits in A17 :) I was just calling you out for pretending their .x updates require anywhere near the full resouces of the entire team. We both know that during those last few .x updates most of the team was working A17. So it should definitely be counted towards A17 dev time, not A16.
Also I just wanted to Raz you up a bit because I love u, in a non sexual way.

Nice comment on my horse by the way. Im gonna tuck that one away and use it at work sometime ;)
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AFAIK we are not getting bandits in A17, however it appears they are working on the animations and other features they will use, so its not like they are ignoring them.

Then again that could be one of their surprises. it's really the AI thats the hardest factor. It has to be right before they will really work.

 
I read later in this thread that apparently they're re-writing the engine, and that explains things for me, which in this case would be the "something else".
I'm also not trying to be a jerk or anything, I was just a curious like the OP.
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No worries. My point was that if I don't know how many hours of work need to be done and how many people I have to do it with, I can't tell if getting finished in a year is too long or really quick. And frankly, predicting how many hours it'll take to program something is a Dark Art in itself :smile-new: .

 
To the OP
No.
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...and a lot of us are OK with that. It isn't finished, but it's finished enough for me to get hundreds of hours of play out of it, which is something I can't say for most finished games I've bought.

 
Well it's been 10 months since Alpha 16 was released. If it wasn't for Joel posting youtube videos I would think the fun pimps had abandoned us.
Back before alpha 15 we received new alpha versions roughly ever 6 months or so. Then there was a poll after Alpha 16, take longer for a bigger content release or keep at current pace. I have a sad feeling that with the vote for the longer time period we will still be awaiting alpha 17 release past the 2019 new year. If I had know that we would be seeing no patches at all to fix exploits and bugs between the big releases I would have voted to keep the same pace.

In conclusion, I feel the fun pimps are letting down the community by not doing some minor patches to squash the exploits and small bugs.
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Who moved my post here? No where in my post was I curious about leaving early access and it was about the next Alpha release. Most of my comment was pointed towards going from shorter alpha releases to longer Alpha releases.

As the game sits it's so long between Alpha releases now that I got bored of the game without any added content.

 
It was a joke. Your nick... My comment... =)
But yeh. Stuff that other people have said.
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D'oh it was late when I posted and half asleep!

I just wanted to make sure you didn't think I was complaining about the update. Don't get me wrong though I love this game and I respect the hard work Joel and the other fun pimp staff does, and I have mad respect for Roland too for all the work and responses he puts into the community, it must be rough at times, keep up the great work guys.

 
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Don't get Roland wound up. If TFP were working on a .x update for a month with one person part time, while 99 percent of the resources were working on A17 - Roland likes to pretend that month of work/time belongs to the .x update NOT the A17 work
I would love for TFP to release an A16.5 update tomorrow that slightly changes the title screen menu. So Roland can get on his high horse and preach that you just received an update and .x updates count! Then in August he can say you guys just received an update 3 months ago!
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Hear, hear. Patch-updates are not the same as Alpha updates. But don't you dare say that! Meanwhile, A16 experimental came out almost a year ago..

 
As the game sits it's so long between Alpha releases now that I got bored of the game without any added content.
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And? If the game was completed and out of alpha you'd have same issue. Pretty much every game has that issue. So if you get bored just go play something else for a bit and then come back to 7dtd.

- - - Updated - - -

Hear, hear. Patch-updates are not the same as Alpha updates. But don't you dare say that! Meanwhile, A16 experimental came out almost a year ago..
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Patch updates are the same when they are meaningful. The point is to avoid doing what ark did and having constant updates where 95% of the update was adjusting numbers of the previous update and then adjusting them back the next update

 
And? If the game was completed and out of alpha you'd have same issue. Pretty much every game has that issue. So if you get bored just go play something else for a bit and then come back to 7dtd.
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Patch updates are the same when they are meaningful. The point is to avoid doing what ark did and having constant updates where 95% of the update was adjusting numbers of the previous update and then adjusting them back the next update
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No, I don't count updates which introduce a brickload of new features/mechanisms on the same scale as point-release patches which fix some bugs/erros (Alpha-patches do the same thing btw). With such a long development cycle the feedback-loop gets stretched to a point where it's usefulness can be questioned imho.

 
... With such a long development cycle the feedback-loop gets stretched to a point where it's usefulness can be questioned imho.
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I get your point, but keep in mind that you're only seeing the community feedback cycle, not the internal one.

Another factor to consider here is that A17 is on a different version of Unity. It's entirely likely that a lot of what they've been working on can't just be copied over to the A16 branch with the older version of Unity. With a small team, I don't think it'd be a good use of resources to double-implement fixes.

 
No, I don't count updates which introduce a brickload of new features/mechanisms on the same scale as point-release patches which fix some bugs/erros (Alpha-patches do the same thing btw). With such a long development cycle the feedback-loop gets stretched to a point where it's usefulness can be questioned imho.
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Well, there is the time between A16.0 and 17.0 (1 year now) and there is the time TFP had to develop A17.0 (Rolands number, maybe more if they used less and less of the developers for each point release).

If we look at it from a "customer" point of view, the first number is the right one. If we are asking for the development time, obviously it would be that second number. Problem is, we aren't real customers for alpha releases, our only claim is for version 1.0.

And finally if we want to know if it is too long, then we would have to compare it to some ideal. I don't think you have the expertise to specify that ideal. I don't and I studied that stuff. But don't let that hinder us, lets speculate:

1) Is the usefulness of the feedback we give so important that they would need to change their development cycle for us?

2) I would assume our feedback is most relevant directly after release of mayor and point versions. How does that get diminished by a longer "ice age" inbetween? Because of frustrated players leaving? Won't they be amply replaced by all the new players emerging every experimental release?

 
Sorry for my late reply, but I'm gonna copy-paste a rather extensive (and well-written) message I found on the Steam forum. Many thanks to Doctor3D for his analysis, he expresses exactly what I've been experiencing.

"I wish they would go back to the early access model where you could play the game as they make changes - I'm sure I'd have a lot more to say and play it a lot more if I could provide some actual feedback on the game as they are working on it. Health bars for example - the moment they would have put that code in the game and EA players tested it - they would have got immediate feedback on whether it was accepted by a majority and what they liked or didn't like about them - but now - they will have had so many changes to the game since A16 game out that any real focused feedback on each and every change is going to impossible.

Using health bars as an example (just as an example, because there's so many changes) it takes at least some amount of time for a person to code those, art for them, tweak them, etc - so if they go through all of that - only just to possibly have them removed or completely revamped later on - then that's just a waste of time. Instead - they could have started putting them in and we applied feedback immediately and they could make immediate (one-time) changes as we tested it.

Sleepers back in A16 - if we could have had true early access to that as it was being implemented we could have certainly provided better feedback - instead they will have to backtrack and rework those as well. There not even 'broken' they are just badly implemented and very simple things (while they were actively focused on them and everything about them was fresh on the dev's mind) could have made them better (such as frequency, placement, quantity per building type, etc)

So while they may argue that giving us early access and allowing us to provide feedback AS things are being made slows them down - I think, in the long run all the backtracking, removing and re-editing after months of work that they have had to do since they stopped giving us more frequent insights into the game (A14-ish)- is slowing them down further in the long run and the game (while still great) won't reach the heights it could with solid player feedback.

They drop a huge gigantic amount of content on each update now and say something to the effect of "It's like a new game!!!" - which to me, is the opposite of what I want. I don't want a huge, gimongous amount of content that changes things all at once - the feedback on it is chaos and nothing can get balanced or implemented as well. There's too many things that needs tweaks since A13\A14 - far too many - some are so small (in comparison) that it's not even worth mentioning at this point - but it could have been worth it - while they were actually physically doing them.

Personally, I just look at this game as Early Access in name only - it doesn't hold true to the spirit of what early access actually means. I have not been able to actually see and play the game as it develops - just huge drops of content at a time - with a chaos of feedback to sort through.

Radiated zombies is another big one that bothers me while I was siting here thinking about their process. I personally don't like how they are implemented - I think there are too much of them. I think they break immersion. They make looting simple houses a chore with low reward. I think they do have a place in the game - but how they are used now is excessive. (to be fair though, this is a fairly simple change - but if you balance the entire game around their implementation then changing just them makes things out of wack)

But, it's fruitless to even have a discussion about them because any discussion related to ANYTHING in A16 will just eventually lead to "Well, a lot has changed in A17, you'll just have to wait and see - we don't even have X anymore but now have Y - so just wait until A17 comes out"

Because the game has changed so much from A16 - to A17 - any feedback on A16 is futile and they likely don't even care to look at it because A17 is "Like a whole new game!!!111"

This proven cycle will repeat when A17 releases (i fear) - The most commonly thing they work on will be technial issues - game crashes, duping, glitches and various exploits - once they get it stable enough - they move right on to the next release and most of our feedback regarding the actual gameplay and how fun it is never even gets heard. If you start providing it - then it's right back to the "Well, in A18 we're going to do Y now so maybe X will be better.." or the other side will be "If you don't like it just mod it"- I don't know it's just silly ho that's supposed to be in any way constructive to making the game better in the long run and certainly doesn't save any time.

I prefer to play this game and offer feedback as its being developed. I don't want to just play and play and play until I completely burn out on the game. I want to enjoy the finished product and I want to help realize what it could be (As the Early Access mission statement states) - so I'll play it again in A17 - drop what little feedback I can manage to get through the chaos and that'll be that.

Once they start really working on bandits - (which is a HUGE feature IMO) I think if they just start working them out and don't let us actively play against them as they are being made to provide any critique - they will be a huge letdown. There are so many things you could do to them to make them 'appear' better than they really will be (this is Unity we are talking about). Even immersive-wise - things like bullet whizby sounds as they fire at you - will really add a lot. It would be trivial to add or at least consider such things WHILE they are making them and that is their focus - but drop a patch 5 months after the fact and all they are going to focus on is things like trying to fix them running in place or getting stuck on the meshes, etc. We have become bug testers more than anything else - we shouldn't have to only do just the bad, unfun parts like bug reports - there should be feedback as well."

 
"I wish they would go back to the early access model where you could play the game as they make changes"

This is the Early Access model....

"We have become bug testers more than anything else"

That's what playing an Early Access game in Alpha/Beta development is all about. Testing bugs.

It's the entire point of doing it in fact.

 
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