New Executive Producer's Letter, July 11

[Jessica Mulligan]

Fair enough, Jessica, thanks for the information.
You are quite right, the latest patches have been relativily worry free.

Could you maybe, just for our own entertainment, if nothing else, post all of the fixes in the patch, and not simply the ones you think we will find important?
You never know what we will think is important

Thanks again!

At the very least, we'll post some examples. I really don't want to post them all because:

A) Most of them are boring little notes about internal fixes that don't really affect the way you play;

or

B) Reveal details on hidden content pieces.

We'll still post examples, so you get a taste.

-Jess

[Jessica Mulligan]

Ok, I don't want to sound harsh, but....as usual, the end of the Executive Producer letter has a link to "discuss it" so unless I'm mistaken, you are expecting feedback, either good or bad. Usually, I try to give positive and useful feedback as much as I can, but not this time. Why? I'm shocked about the emptiness of the letter.

We already have had a nice lesson on software development in http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12565 with nice Gantt diagrams, and careful and detailed explanation of the patch process. Although some players may think that the average player doesn't care/want to know about it, others may and Xavier's article was good and fair enough.. once.

Hey, people were asking, so I described the process again.

The article also refers to questions that may arise, so let's ask a few:

* The article focused on the patch process, and bug fixes. This seems also to be the criteria in the 'in development' sections, where mainly all issues are related to bug fixes, ui minor improvements and translations. What are the features that we can expect before and after chapter 3/outposts?. I asked in an old Q&A. "will we see minor fetaures before outposts" and the answer I got was 'yes '. Does increasing the stack to 999 count as a feature?

No, but adding capabilities to a game system, such as the PvP changes that have been added recently, do.

* Do you consider cost-effective to add new content to the game for high level players, or are you focusing on having a stable framework/core game?

We need to have both. The trick is in balancing your resources between the two. That is the balancing act we're on today. I would estimate that we're concentrating about 50% of our effort to add/modify content and systems such as Chapter 3 and Outposts and the other 50% on stablizing and improving the core framework and tools.

* If, as one of the main conclusions of the article, the release cycle of a bug fix in a patch can go up to two weeks, is it unreasonable to state that the addition of new content will follow the same speed -- if the same Q&A criteria is applied to the addition of the new content -- ?

I believe I stated that we could reduce it to two weeks by throwing in plenty of bug risks. In reality, a decently tested patch takes at least 6 weeks from start to finish.

* How do you plan to streamline and reduce this?

I don't. I plan for us to continue using best of breed practices in the test cycle. That means if a test piece sails through Testing in two days, it goes in the game earlier than if we keep having to iterate on the test/debug/retest cycle.

It is almost axiomatic in this industry that few people remember you were late if the content is stable (and compelling to play, but that is another thread altogether), but EVERYONE remembers if it was buggy crap.

* With such a well thought and defined patch release cycle and awesome test team, can players expect a reasonable bug free implementation of outposts? (-- no need to answer this, kinda unfair and rethorical question --)

Yeah, it is unfair, but legitimate to ask, . All I can say is, we plan to get non-storyline content on the ATS and open it up to player testing, so we can find even more bugs.

As to when... ah, that is the question, isn't it? I know people really want to know the answer to that one. I'm getting ready to head out on a 10 day business trip and I've asked the team to firm up estimates while I'm gone. When I get back, I'll post a LONG post with a schedule with some details and a rationale for the development plan. Then we'll discuss it together here.

Fair enough?

[Jessica Mulligan]

LOL I would not be surprice if they nerf or take away something on harvesting.

Well, we weren't going to until you mentioned it, but now that you have...



(In case someone didn't get it: just joking)

[suib0m]

Thanks for the clarifications Jessica, your time is appreciated.

- Sui

[janta]

Well, we weren't going to until you mentioned it, but now that you have...

(In case someone didn't get it: just joking)

How about a nice cup of Just come and try your jokes on the french Forum ?

[alexrowe]

LOL Jessica thx for replying, nice joke and have a nice trip be safe.

[kruge]

Hi, Jess!

Thanks for your letter, *all* kind of information is *allways* welcome - that way all the players in the community that don't work in above hobby-level software development (unlike me personally) see that things are moving, even though they don't turn up on the server right away. Very good thing, that!

I just returned after a brief pause in playing Ryzom (no, I wasn't checking out "Willie or Wonka", I just took a break) and am really happy to see that, even though the servers look the same as when I left, things *are* under way.

Even more important: Finally Nevrax came out of it's cave and put some people like you, Jessica, on the community frontline - I myself felt a bit left alone before... Very good move!

So let me just use this post to say give a big welcome hug to all the "new faces" from Nevrax here in the forum as well to the new German support team (I really liked the folks from MDO - you're up against some big competition... ). Keep the communication lines up, since a well informed community defenitely is a happier community!

[morzyr]

How far off are we in time for outpost? seems there been lots of stalling.


Let me Quote. Posted some time in 6-7 march.
((But that won't restrain me from giving you some timeline indications (again, beware! That's far from being *real* dates, as development time and debugging time can vary according to the issues being reported. See A] for details) :

in 2-3 weeks, the first outpost features will enter an internal test phase.
if testing goes well, 2-3 weeks later, the first version will be introduced on the ATS.
Then will begin the lenghty process of the finalization of the outposts, before they can go live. The features will go through internal testing and be added to the ATS progressively, while we work with the ATS players on balancing. At this point, the success of the ATS will play a major role in determining schedules.))

True dates are hard. but as it seems now, we going for a more 2-3 months per stage insted of weeks. so what are we talking? 3 months more? again? cus what just what it have been since what posted what.

So a real Eta in the genral time of a weeknr , give or take , would be good. or even in what month you planing to get it live.

[trenker]

This repeated and verbose software development lesson feels patronising. I get the feeling you are trying to intimidate the community to 'shut up complaining about delays'.

My rejoiner is: You should have applied this wonderfull software development methodology from the beginning so that you would not have had to rewite half your code, aka 'Spring Clean'.

[vinnyq]

Trenker is on a gnomish posting spree =)