Title is the TL;DR.
We essentially have no way of tracking progress now. Sure, we have a basic "patch notes" list with the newsletter each month, but we have zero way to check those against what's left to be done and try to figure out how far away we are from Alpha.
We have no timelines: short term, medium term, or long term.
What are the goals for the next 3 months? The next 6 months? The next year? How long until the next milestone, and what is that milestone? What is the milestone after that?
The drastic slowdown in communication hand-in-hand with the loss of the alpha tracker is TERRIBLE for transparency with the game's development. We're at the point where all dev streams have essentially stopped. There's no more public Q&A. We went from a 30 - 60 minute stream twice a month to a 5 minute update for the first time in months, with no PA stream since May, and essentially nothing slated for October except another VIP Q&A and the monthly newsletter. Non-VIPs are in the dark. I don't understand how we have 10 multipage threads on the front page arguing about the art style while this is going unaddressed.
I can understand you guys don't want to spend precious development hours scripting, recording, and editing video. But please, at least have someone write down "we did X and Y this month and still have Z left to go, we expect to finish that by such-and-such month." Please give us some info regarding timelines, deadlines, milestones, whatever.
Thanks,
Heebs
Heebs said:Title is the TL;DR.
We essentially have no way of tracking progress now. Sure, we have a basic "patch notes" list with the newsletter each month, but we have zero way to check those against what's left to be done and try to figure out how far away we are from Alpha.
It isn't like that Road To Alpha tracker actually showed anything useful. It stalled at 4/22 completed for what, 2 years? What they need is a real tracker that actually shows what is being done, what needs to be done and in what order all that is happening. But, that would require VR to have a qualified project manager and I highly doubt anybody is actually doing that.
Very true. I for one, am wondering what on earth is going on. Talk about ghosting! Yes, I know they said there would be a slow down in comms, but not a total stop from all sources, surely this is too much (or too little actually)!
Given the current situation I think they should give us something we haven't had in a long time. And when we did it was invariably wrong.
A timeline showing estimated time to alpha, beta and release. I won't mind at all if it comes with some spin claiming that it would have taken twice as long without the change in art style (which may actually be true for that matter).
Heebs said: Some sort of targets would be nice. Like what are they even targeting for Alpha release? 1st quarter of 2025? Sometime in the year 2030? I get they can't give us an exact date, but at least give us an idea. Month, quarter, or year.
VR has always been very reticent to give even vague deadlines/timelines for things for fear that when they miss it people will come back and say "but you said it was going to happen" when actually they didn't. Remember Brad's statement in early 2017 that Alpha would start in 2018? And we're now in Oct 2023? Or that racial actives would be 'up next' in development back in 2019 and we've seen nothing on it? Even now when VR wants to announce something they first announce that soon they make an an annoucement of something that will be coming up soon. Alway soon, used so much it's now a meme.
Vandraad said:Heebs said:Title is the TL;DR.
We essentially have no way of tracking progress now. Sure, we have a basic "patch notes" list with the newsletter each month, but we have zero way to check those against what's left to be done and try to figure out how far away we are from Alpha.It isn't like that Road To Alpha tracker actually showed anything useful. It stalled at 4/22 completed for what, 2 years? What they need is a real tracker that actually shows what is being done, what needs to be done and in what order all that is happening. But, that would require VR to have a qualified project manager and I highly doubt anybody is actually doing that.
Vandraad said:Heebs said: Some sort of targets would be nice. Like what are they even targeting for Alpha release? 1st quarter of 2025? Sometime in the year 2030? I get they can't give us an exact date, but at least give us an idea. Month, quarter, or year.VR has always been very reticent to give even vague deadlines/timelines for things for fear that when they miss it people will come back and say "but you said it was going to happen" when actually they didn't. Remember Brad's statement in early 2017 that Alpha would start in 2018? And we're now in Oct 2023? Or that racial actives would be 'up next' in development back in 2019 and we've seen nothing on it? Even now when VR wants to announce something they first announce that soon they make an an annoucement of something that will be coming up soon. Alway soon, used so much it's now a meme.
I was in Vanguard alpha and this is actually the main reason Microsoft dropped their support. There were no deadlines and therefore little accountability. Staff were nonchalant with Microsofts investment, basically using the office as a hang out as the years rolled by. That wasn't the only contributing factor to the games demise but it was a major one.
I see the same lack of urgency in VR development. Can you imagine having pledged $500 10 years ago and still not testing a single alpha! Seems objectively insane to me.
Here is an alpha tracker example addressing ViNL. Now, I am not saying they weren't doing anything during that time. I'm just indicating that the alpha tracker wasn't really showing progress and may have been hurting them more than helping.
JANUARY 2023 (indicates the last actual progress on ViNL implementation)
Network Overhaul: In Progress UPDATED
What it is: Development of a custom network solution to enable performant player concurrency and server-side calculations on the required scale of an MMORPG.
• Character data and group persistence architecture revamp completed. Work is ongoing on supporting cross-zone communication and custom zone borders.
• Key post-ViNL functionality still pending includes:
• NPC pathfinding across zones.
• Local Weather Profiles.
• Dynamic Entity Spawning Systems (Pets, Adds, Event-driven Spawns).
MAY 2023 (last alapha tracker that I could find)
Network Overhaul: In Progress UPDATED
What it is: Development of a custom network solution to enable performant player concurrency and server-side calculations on the required scale of an MMORPG.
• Finished another optimization pass related to our rendering systems and ViNL’s memory allocation. In our Pre Alpha tests, we continue to see solid uptime for the server across the 24 hour session, and we noted another average FPS improvement of 10-15 FPS for our players.
• Key post-ViNL functionality still pending includes:
• NPC pathfinding across overland zone borders.
• Local Weather Profiles.
• Dynamic Entity Spawning Systems (Pets, Adds, Event-driven Spawns).
RedGang said:I was in Vanguard alpha and this is actually the main reason Microsoft dropped their support. There were no deadlines and therefore little accountability. Staff were nonchalant with Microsofts investment, basically using the office as a hang out as the years rolled by. That wasn't the only contributing factor to the games demise but it was a major one.
I see the same lack of urgency in VR development. Can you imagine having pledged $500 10 years ago and still not testing a single alpha! Seems objectively insane to me.
Yep. I pledged over 7 years ago now (which is where my older opinions on the race/class matrix we debated about in the other forum came from - compared to what it was, it's much better now). I have given up on "tracking" the progress of the game and just simply pop in now and again to see where things are at. Not having even an estimated release date, but having so many people pre-purchase the product is what technically makes this development a form of vaoprware. I still fervently believe that they "intend" to complete the project, but we already know that it won't be what has previously been advertised (just based on the graphics changes alone). Unfortunately, good intentions and great effort don't always create a finished product.
At this point, the only thing I am really concerned with in not having a tracker, or even as estimated release date, is that I dropped money on upgrading my PC about 5 years ago and I will absolutey want to do so again when the game finally releases... It could use an upgrade now, but I am waiting on a release date, because I don't want to update it now and have the game release 5 years from now (which is possible). :(
With that said though, Alpha testing is supposed to bench test performance of clients using multiple hardware/software specs - so a lot of these pre-alpha tests are likely going to be irrelevant for anything other than server side and balance parsing since the pre-alpha tester's hardware and software won't be what is used by people 5+ years from now. Client-Server bug testing is going to be wild. I fear we still have a long way to go.
Add: This could be why they 'dumbed down' the graphics... (assumption).