Jump to content

PZ updates (?) / development


taha

Recommended Posts

I posted something similar like 2 years ago but somehow "disappeared".

 

I think I'm waiting for this game to be finished since 2013. Or 2012.

I remember playing a tutorial with about couple - husband and wife trying to survive the first day.

 

After that, every couple of months, I came back and check to see if they finished the game, only to find out more "features" were included and even more are "working on".  5 years. Five.

 

If you check the forums, you see the same people defending the developers. You see people like me, coming and posting their frustration / disappointment about the slow development, only to have their posts deleted or buried under "optimistic / lovely" posts from fanboys.

 

There is no ETA.

Is like you are going to a baker, give him money to make a cake, and when you ask: "when is my cake going to be ready?" he answers: "I don't want to tell you" while stuffing your money in his pocket. This image shows in front of my eyes, each time I discover another "PZ update" e-mail in my inbox. It's infuriating, especially because nothing of relevance is updated.

 

I get it. You need to pull out "updates" every once in a while otherwise people will start asking for their money back, and THAT would bankrupt you. But at least drop the self-awarding-optimistic-pat-myself-on-the-back tone in the "updates" because there is nothing to be pleased of in those e-mail. Is just another spit in the face to your customers.

 

 

 

I wonder how long this post will last til it gets deleted. Maybe I should post it on Steam too.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Updating the forum software just doesn't seem like it has the makings of a grand conspiracy to silence the opposition, particularly when we've kept an archive up.

 

 

It's over at theindiestone.com/community

 

Otherwise I have the same conversation every day so let's tldr it: you went to that Baker knowing that they didn't do ETA, yet somehow you were still able to eat the majority of this non corporeal cake, even well it exists in a state of both being complete and not complete at the same time. That's that's why it's called Alpha funding / Early Access. Having something incomplete and experiencing its development as well as having some say in it is the whole point.

 

Refunds just don't work the way you think they do.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, taha said:

I posted something similar like 2 years ago but somehow "disappeared".

 

I wonder how long this post will last til it gets deleted. Maybe I should post it on Steam too.

 

2

You replied to two similar topics but never made your own about it, so at least from what I can see, no threads have been deleted.

The problem is that archived posts* won't show up in search results via the forum software because it moves them to a separate database table.
Stuff like this constantly contributes to the thought that we're deleting criticism. They can, however, still be found via Google (use site:theindiestone.com/forums "search keywords here").

https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21671-npcs-and-vehicles/
Mentions that his post has been deleted too. Again, archived:

https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/8794-thoughts-from-a-sceptical-fan

 

 

Other topic you replied to:
https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21599-developers-wake-up/

 

We switched forum quite a long time ago. You would have had to make that topic sometime in mid-2013 for it to be on the old forums that EG linked.

 

 

With that said, you are right. The development pace is slow. You have every right to be disappointed about it and it is absolutely understandable.

Every time a focus shifts, it's for the better of the game, though.  We have about doubled the team size last year. Certainly not out of boredom.  

Lemmy has recently responded to a similar post, which I think says everything that can be said, and has been said time and time again, whenever the topic arises:

 

https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23437-seriously-no-non-player-character-survivors-in-single-player-mode/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-268138

 

*: Posts that are not pinned, have been replied to in two months, have less than 200 posts, and less than 10000 views.
Settings seemed a bit overly aggressive so I've now changed it from 10000 to 2000.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, taha said:

I posted something similar like 2 years ago but somehow "disappeared".

 

I think I'm waiting for this game to be finished since 2013. Or 2012.

I remember playing a tutorial with about couple - husband and wife trying to survive the first day.

 

After that, every couple of months, I came back and check to see if they finished the game, only to find out more "features" were included and even more are "working on".  5 years. Five.

 

If you check the forums, you see the same people defending the developers. You see people like me, coming and posting their frustration / disappointment about the slow development, only to have their posts deleted or buried under "optimistic / lovely" posts from fanboys.

 

There is no ETA.

Is like you are going to a baker, give him money to make a cake, and when you ask: "when is my cake going to be ready?" he answers: "I don't want to tell you" while stuffing your money in his pocket. This image shows in front of my eyes, each time I discover another "PZ update" e-mail in my inbox. It's infuriating, especially because nothing of relevance is updated.

 

I get it. You need to pull out "updates" every once in a while otherwise people will start asking for their money back, and THAT would bankrupt you. But at least drop the self-awarding-optimistic-pat-myself-on-the-back tone in the "updates" because there is nothing to be pleased of in those e-mail. Is just another spit in the face to your customers.

 

 

 

I wonder how long this post will last til it gets deleted. Maybe I should post it on Steam too.

 

Just my two cents. But this Dev team is really small for such a big sandbox Zombie game like this, I really think they did great in those 5 years. That said if you feel this way about this game, I don't recommend you Back Star Citizen that has a Dev team of 400+ and have been in Alpha for this long also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Lightning Flash said:

Am I the minority when I think they need to double or even triple their team's size? I know they did it recently, but more people would definitely help get the game done a lot quicker with more people tackling a task.

Sadly this is not always the case. A lot of time can get wasted bringing new members up to speed on the code base, teaching them the existing teams coding guidelines, practices, and work flow. Its somewhat easier for large projects if there is specific teams for various tasks: asset creation, engine code, game logic etc...and for when the code base is more broken up into 'black box modules' (ie: the code is more modular, other team's members don't need to worry about how each module does things, only the data input/outputs for those modules). I think PZ's code is mostly vary integrated and not modular except in a few areas where they use 3rd party libraries (having only really looked at the lua and not the java side this is just a guess).

I know personally prefer to work in small teams as it makes keeping a unified vision of the project much easier.

 

As the old proverb says, "too many cooks spoil the broth"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

As the old proverb says, "too many cooks spoil the broth"


Might also be worth considering that TIS has multiple kitchens since I think that other than the original UK-based TIS team (3-5 people?) just about every member of their team lives in a different country.

This probably means that there is only one person working on a certain feature at any given time as I imagine it would be a pretty big pain to have 2 people work on the same thing at the same time over different timezones only communicating via skype.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Lightning Flash said:

Am I the minority when I think they need to double or even triple their team's size? I know they did it recently, but more people would definitely help get the game done a lot quicker with more people tackling a task.

Will be broke in six months if they did that. The games sales will never conver a team the size of Obsidian, Klein, or even Hello Games. Though the team has basically doubled in the last year.

 

So slow and steady it is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Svarog said:


Might also be worth considering that TIS has multiple kitchens since I think that other than the original UK-based TIS team (3-5 people?) just about every member of their team lives in a different country.

This probably means that there is only one person working on a certain feature at any given time as I imagine it would be a pretty big pain to have 2 people work on the same thing at the same time over different timezones only communicating via skype.

CaptianBinky, Lemmy, Batspinx and RingoD in Britian. Pandora/Sasha is also in Britian (?)

 

Bitaboon in Australia

 

TurboTuTone in the Netherlands

 

RJ in France

 

Connall in Scotland

 

EP and Mash in different regions of Canada. As am I

 

Rathlord's in the US

 

Yuri and Stas as part of General Arcade I'm a tad fussy on, but lets go with "Russia."

 

Not totally sure where CrisW is.

 

Not everyone is full time, solely focused on pz or a dev in the above list.

 

So yeah. It makes life interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/9/2018 at 1:48 AM, taha said:

 

There is no ETA.

Is like you are going to a baker, give him money to make a cake, and when you ask: "when is my cake going to be ready?" he answers: "I don't want to tell you" while stuffing your money in his pocket. This image shows in front of my eyes, each time I discover another "PZ update" e-mail in my inbox. It's infuriating, especially because nothing of relevance is updated.

 

I get it. You need to pull out "updates" every once in a while otherwise people will start asking for their money back, and THAT would bankrupt you. But at least drop the self-awarding-optimistic-pat-myself-on-the-back tone in the "updates" because there is nothing to be pleased of in those e-mail. Is just another spit in the face to your customers.

 

I dont get your analogy at all.

 

The Baker is like "Hey we are going to bake the greatest cake ever, but you need to pay upfront and is going to take a long ass time to make since we want to make it good, you are going to receive small pieces of the unfinished cake and see if you like it, here is a picture of how the cake is going to taste like, are you in?" and you were like "Yeah, give that shit".

 

So five years in we have a cake that has been baking adding flavors, creams and other shit ontop of it, but each thing they add to the cake is a layer that is beneficial to the final product and by the end you end up with the completed cake.

 

I dont know how you pull the vehicles update out of their asses since that shit is crucial, i fucking hate it but is a much needed feature in the game, same goes when the TV/Radio update came out and made the world feel a little more lived in and not that static, giving actual lore to the game, the final piece is always going to be NPCs, they are the make or break of the game and for them to work, they need vehicles in first, then animations and then NPCs themselves.

 

Also i never seen deleted topics in this forum, actually i saw one similar to this one like a week ago and its still there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

Also i never seen deleted topics in this forum, actually i saw one similar to this one like a week ago and its still there.


Third I've seen this week. Maybe it has something to do with it being spring, people come out of their hibernation caves and the first thought is "Wonder what's up with that game I bought before the ice age"

Or maybe I should feel really sorry for the mods, idk, been away for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Lightning Flash said:

Am I the minority when I think they need to double or even triple their team's size? I know they did it recently, but more people would definitely help get the game done a lot quicker with more people tackling a task.

As I have been checking the progress from time to time for years, it looks like they sped up a bit some months ago hiring new people and now the development moves much faster. Of course the current image of the game is a result of years, not months and IMO the 'years' period was too much "another lazy mondoid" or maybe DIY instead of outsource. Now, for a quick look, the progress looks better, but customers who left the game for a while and come back to see the progress are often disappointed. Just my point of view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

Yeah same here, but from what i recall they never outright deleted criticism of the game in any of the forums.

Thinking he neans similar topics rather than deleted topics.

 

Between the three forums, there's generally one or two a day that go off on similar tangents.  You eventually get used to it, though I just wish it wasn't often the same people and that they'd paced themselves a bit ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/03/2018 at 3:06 PM, EnigmaGrey said:

CaptianBinky, Lemmy, Batspinx and RingoD in Britian. Pandora/Sasha is also in Britian (?)

 

Bitaboon in Australia

 

TurboTuTone in the Netherlands

 

RJ in France

 

Connall in Scotland

 

EP and Mash in different regions of Canada. As am I

 

Rathlord's in the US

 

Yuri and Stas as part of General Arcade I'm a tad fussy on, but lets go with "Russia."

 

Not totally sure where CrisW is.

 

Not everyone is full time, solely focused on pz or a dev in the above list.

 

So yeah. It makes life interesting.

I live in Britain and occasionally meetup with Lemmy, Captain Binky and RingoD if anyone's interested.

 

No, it's fine, I've just got something in my eye. :cry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One, drop the cake analogy. It doesn't work in the slightest.

Two, like I love to bring up in these things, AAA studios have hundreds of employees and they still deliver games with long development times that are buggy, exploitable or missing content.

Two fun examples of games I liked that were incomplete or buggy on launch:


- Call of Duty WW2: Three year development cycle coming off of an already launched game running on a refined engine. This means Sledgehammer had a working game with mechanics beforehand with a game engine that has been playing CoD since CoD4. Not only was the game almost unplayable at launch, it has been four months and paintjobs still haven't been added, they JUST added emblem editing and they are finally adding in content that was planned for Day 1 (flak gun event). If you played the basic no-exo mode in Infinite Warfare, you'd know that WW2 is just that with a WW2 skin on it.

- Fallout 4: I love Bethesda, and I am a total fanboy, but my god do we let them get away with a lot of stuff. According to Todd Howard, planning and pre-production of "Another game" (which we now know as) Fallout 4) was done in 2010. While Skyrim was being finished with DLC in 2012, they were already starting up the production of Fallout 4.

Now I see these massive studios that have definite deadlines, massive budgets and less than fully ambitious games (though Fo4 is still fun for me), and then I look at Indie Stone. These guys are working hard on a truly ambitious game. I don't think we will see the caliber of game we will get from these guys from anywhere else. This is it. This is pretty much the last one.

Then I see more simple games like Stardew Valley. The dev of that game, with some help, took four years of eight hour-seven-days-a-week work in order to get that game out the door, and it doesn't even deal with a fraction of the variables and tracking of PZ or even multiplayer yet. The Fun Pimps have been keeping their game 7Days2Die in Alpha for years and are finally getting some kind of minor NPC work in while finally refining their skill trees, and they are working in a stable Unity engine!

Development here ships out weekly updates with little bits of news, as well as test builds. The time is going fine. Maybe I just see development times different than anyone else, but I am not going to keep an Indie studio to the same power and output as a AA studio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...