EVE General Discussion

You don;t seem to understand what the release cycle actually is. The cycle merely opens the doors for longer projects to be finished without some arbitary dead line.

For exsample:

Dev team to EXE proudcer: Hey EP.. we have an idea for how to fix structures, we think this new idea will be excited and we can easily build on it, and make newer cooler things for the players

EP: Thats great, tell me more!

Dev team: well.. we will need about 18 months to make and get it working while messing wiht the old code, we will also need 6 months to untangle some things from the old pos code so we can cleanly remove it. The total time is going to take two years.

EP: ah... no sorry thats too long. We have this expantion coming in 6 months, i need stuff for that. i can't have your team tangled in 2 years worth of work with no rewards, it will make doing the expantion harder

Dev Team: but this can be an expantion! it will imrpove the game!

EP: no, sorry that is going to take way too long.


The new cycle:

Dev Team: EP, we have this idea for fixing and replacing pos!

EP: Thats great! Tell me about it

Dev Team: it will replace pos's with a new system we think we can expand on.

EP: Awesome, how long?

Dev Team: We need about 18 months to get the whole thing started, then we will need 6 months of ground work to untangle old code so this will all work.

EP: So two years?

Dev Team: Yes.

EP: Well.. you don;t have any other projects... do it. if its done faster we will release it when it finished

Dev Team: Excellent! thanks!


What you and other STILL Fail to understand is the release cycle does not dictacte what a dev can do, merely they are windows to drop stuff when they are done. You are seeing a lot of small things because some teams are working on little changes, others on large changes. But CCP is in a mind set that unless it is dropping this year, you wo;t hear about it. So Fozzie sov has taken a year of devlopment to work, plus whatever concept they have been doing. In the past they would of done all of it as one large patch, jump fatige, new system for sov capture, and whatever the hades phase 3 will be. The way they are doing it now it can be digested easier, messed with, and if someting is broke or unfinished we don;t get a "crap.. tis si the main feature for this expantion... release it anyway." Like so many in the past have been:

PI
FW
Dominon Sov
POS'
Contacts
Alliances
Corp Tools

ETC.

That was the problem. The new cycle works perfectly for eve. The issue is people are still thinking of it as some arbitary needs to be done by x. thing. Like if one relase is small then it sucks. but thats not how it works. Big fixes take time, in that time we get alot of polish and minor repairs. Building up to big repairs. Where as, thouse big repais in the past would be broken or incomplete due to time consttraints.

Patence young ones, the release cycle has only been on for a year, bleeding some people off is not a bad thing, IF when all is said and done more people come. Only tim will tell once the big fixes are complete. We shoudl have a better picture in 2016 is my guess