A place to list burning questions/concerns people would like addressed by Joppa (or any other devs) in upcoming news letters:
-"Estimated" timelines for future reveals. (In particular Bard, Necro and possibly reveals on racial differences).
I find the class/race reveals to be a really important (burning question) to me in order to fully envision how I want my character to exist on Terminus (even if it changes in the future). I "personally" find it difficult to get excited about being in this developing world without an avatar I can really relate to. Class/Race speculation can go a long way.
Anyone else have any questions they would like to see addressed in the newsletter?
I think all of us would like whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline. Maybe not dates but the philosophy of how they will test. No less than X months between pre-alpha and alpha. Maybe a lot more. No less than Y months to conduct alpha. Maybe a lot more. I fully understand that the information VR feels can be given may be a null set and I do not quarrel with their judgment or have reduced hope for the game because they feel more information would be counterproductive.
While estimates for what will be included at release are surely very premature - saying they are shooting for X starting areas or Y classes, or Z races to test in alpha is by definition less premature. Though this too may be neither feasible nor desirable at this time.
dorotea said:I think all of us would like whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline.
While this is true...
dorotea said:No less than X months between pre-alpha and alpha. Maybe a lot more. No less than Y months to conduct alpha. Maybe a lot more.
THIS will most certainly be read by a small but very vocal percentage as
"They promised X months between pre-alpha and alpha"
And
"They promised Alpha would only be Y months"
They can't give ANY timeline.
I would think they could say is "once W,X,Y,and Z are completed a debugged to our satisfaction we will announce Alpha". Right now we don't even know what they are actually working on... yeah Project Fairthale... and what they say about that is a vague "everything" so.crafting, gathering, all classes, all races, does that include Bard and Necro? Climate? REALLY everything or "well, we didn't mean Necro"
Zorkon said:dorotea said:I think all of us would like whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline.
While this is true...
dorotea said:[/bloc
No less than X months between pre-alpha and alpha. Maybe a lot more. No less than Y months to conduct alpha. Maybe a lot more. kquote]
THIS will most certainly be read by a small but very vocal percentage as
"They promised X months between pre-alpha and alpha"
And
"They promised Alpha would only be Y months"
They can't give ANY timeline.
I would think they could say once W,X,Y,and Z are completed a debugged to our satisfaction we will announce Alpha. Right now we don't even know what they are actually working on... yeah Project Fairthale... and what they say about that is a vague "everything" so.crafting, gathering, all classes, all races, does that include Bard and Necro? Climate... REALLY everything or "well, we didn't mean Necro"
hmm sounds like a complex agebra equation with all those letters :) , any good probabiblity mathematicians around?
Yaladan said:Zorkon said:dorotea said:I think all of us would like whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline.
While this is true...
dorotea said:No less than X months between pre-alpha and alpha. Maybe a lot more. No less than Y months to conduct alpha. Maybe a lot more. kquote]
THIS will most certainly be read by a small but very vocal percentage as
"They promised X months between pre-alpha and alpha"
And
"They promised Alpha would only be Y months"
They can't give ANY timeline.
I would think they could say once W,X,Y,and Z are completed a debugged to our satisfaction we will announce Alpha. Right now we don't even know what they are actually working on... yeah Project Fairthale... and what they say about that is a vague "everything" so.crafting, gathering, all classes, all races, does that include Bard and Necro? Climate... REALLY everything or "well, we didn't mean Necro"
hmm sounds like a complex agebra equation with all those letters :) , any good probabiblity mathematicians around?
Naa, these are string, not numeric variables.
dorotea said:If they don't feel they can say with a high level of confidence that the gap between pre-alpha and alpha will be X months or less they shouldn't say anything at all about it no matter the disclaimers. I agree.
And as a half assed programmer myself I don't see how they could have any idea. Expecially before PA5 even starts
1) how many problems are even going to be found 10? 100? 1000?
2) How much time will it take on any of these to even find the problem some will be quick no brainers, but others could take days, weeks or months to even track down. (Multiplied by the possible values in #1)
3) the same time frame for item 2 applies to actually finding a solution to each problem once they identify the cause. (Including the multiplyier) some are simple a typo, others not so much, and can require taking a step back and doing a full rewrite of blocks of code.
Even in an example I read about on an out of align Shield on one race... the solution is not likely just "move the shield up" is the problem the mount location of the shield? The mount point on the kennematics (do they call them kennematics in game programming?) of the character model? Or even the restraints allowing the kennematics to invert themselves.
There is NO WAY they can predict all that before PA5 has even started.
@Zorkon - This forum was meant to simply list the topics that we would be interested in having the devs address. Dortea just made a comment about wanting to see estimated dates. If they do they do, if they don't they dont. What would you like to have them address this month?
Darch said:@Zorkon - This forum was meant to simply list the topics that we would be interested in having the devs address. Dortea just made a comment about wanting to see estimated dates. If they do they do, if they don't they dont. What would you like to have them address this month?
Something that would be actually be possible to address.
Zorkon said:I would think they could say is "once W,X,Y,and Z are completed a debugged to our satisfaction we will announce Alpha". Right now we don't even know what they are actually working on... yeah Project Fairthale... and what they say about that is a vague "everything" so.crafting, gathering, all classes, all races, does that include Bard and Necro? Climate? REALLY everything or "well, we didn't mean Necro"
Zorkon you are quite likely correct. My original comment was carefully limited to "whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline." and went on to specify that I was referring to "Maybe not dates but the philosophy of how they will test. " Despite these qualifiers I felt it desirable to add "I fully understand that the information VR feels can be given may be a null set and I do not quarrel with their judgment". Going on to say that any comments about what races and classes and starting areas are intended for alpha (something not even remotely suggesting that any dates or time periods be mentioned) "may be neither feasible nor desirable at this time."
In other words if your last post was intended to say "don't push them for more information" I don't see us as having opposing views here at all.
My first post was only addressing the part of your post I quoted where you were asking about dates. Yes you justified it with "If they don't feel" and then you went into othetways they cold possably word a timeline "X months between" but there is no IF about it. They have repeatedly stated they can't and for good reason give any kind of a timeline. So I don't understand why people would keep bringing it up even trying to reword to any other fomat.
The rest of my posts were trying to illustrate WHY they can't do times, of any kind.
But I would instead like to see the offer clear GOALS, and when they reach those they will move on. This will without a doubt give us a much clearer picture of where they are.
Gnome model =READY
Ogre Model = READY
Nero Class = incomplete
A testable version of Crafting= READY
A testable version of Crafting= incomplete
Etc, etc, etc...
Something like this would take nothing for them to update with the newsletter (change incomplete to READY) but would also show us progress and we could see it getting closer.
It's not a timeline, but for good reason they have said they can't do time lines (in any flavor)
Te rest of your suggestions, yes, all good. I'm up for any info we can get.
dorotea said:I think all of us would like whatever information VR feels can be given about the future timeline. Maybe not dates but the philosophy of how they will test. No less than X months between pre-alpha and alpha. Maybe a lot more. No less than Y months to conduct alpha. Maybe a lot more. I fully understand that the information VR feels can be given may be a null set and I do not quarrel with their judgment or have reduced hope for the game because they feel more information would be counterproductive.
While estimates for what will be included at release are surely very premature - saying they are shooting for X starting areas or Y classes, or Z races to test in alpha is by definition less premature. Though this too may be neither feasible nor desirable at this time.
They just released a Dev Roundtable about QA and Testing. I think one of Aradune's blogs mentions dates (or the reason for lack of them) too. It's quite a lot of info to read and listen to, but we have the time, eh? Hehe
I would really like to see more Race/Class info too.
Also more on what the early game would be like. Starter zones. Grouping or solo (grouping asap I hope. Even EQ had no need for grouping for quite a few levels). Tutorial or hints or pure sandbox?
Would love more on all the big topics: Death penalty, fast travel, trading, maps, contention and competition, interdependency, crafting, gathering, scavenging, questing, etc, etc, but to be honest, I can wait and I trust VR. I like to discuss these things, but more for the sake of discussing my hobby with like-minded (mostly!) people than with a view to actually prizing beans out of Kilsin's (or any dev's) hands.
I love the info they are giving us and feel I have plenty to be confident they are making good progress and producing a game I'm going to love.
Call me a fanboi *shrug* but I'm not stupid. I've been an RPGer for nearly 40 years and a software developer for over 30. I'd love to hear more because I'm interested, but I don't want VR to alter their development approach in any way just to 'prove' their progress.
@Darch that's not what you're asking for I know. It's a good idea for a thread, it just might lead to argument over why people's questions might be 'burning' I guess hehe.
