Newsfiend
09-30-2009, 04:20 PM
The problem is that we keep getting told that x or y can't be implemented because it would take too much development time, and that there's not enough resources to do it.
I get that, totally. While I don't know EQ intimately, I do know online games and this is one of the most common themes across them all.
Community: "Why can't you do X?" Development: "Time and resources, we would do it but we don't have enough of either." Meanwhile... Marketing: "Hey look! Nifty new THING! With THING your game will now have +10 Awesome!!!" Community: "Err... next time can you ask first? I'd trade THING for X and consider it +20 Awesome." It's a hard balance. Development teams of all sizes do a lot of work and typically have very short schedules to do it all. They have to answer to the needs of multiple requests for their project; internal and external requests mind you; and sometimes it's not so easy to explain why certain items were put on the schedule and others were not.
I'm not trying to be an apologist, those are the realities the EQ team (and all development teams, even outside of gaming) are up against; but it's good to remember that when we are discussing the end result of their hard work.
How about this? When Zat's back in the office, I'll sit down with her and get a clear idea of all the things you guys would like the team to work on (more bank space, epics 3.0, etc.) and start to find out what the score is on the realities of any of those. I won't promise a full report back to you on each and every item with reasons why it is or isn't being done in whichever time frame, and I won't create a sunshine and rainbows wish thread where you can list all of your desires for me to peek into. There are plenty of threads here for me to mine and get a sense of things, and then I can look internally with Zatozia and see what's what.
From there? Who knows?
[Edited to add a quote for increased relevance, and also to get this in just one font]
More... (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=156078&post_id=2300340#2300340)
I get that, totally. While I don't know EQ intimately, I do know online games and this is one of the most common themes across them all.
Community: "Why can't you do X?" Development: "Time and resources, we would do it but we don't have enough of either." Meanwhile... Marketing: "Hey look! Nifty new THING! With THING your game will now have +10 Awesome!!!" Community: "Err... next time can you ask first? I'd trade THING for X and consider it +20 Awesome." It's a hard balance. Development teams of all sizes do a lot of work and typically have very short schedules to do it all. They have to answer to the needs of multiple requests for their project; internal and external requests mind you; and sometimes it's not so easy to explain why certain items were put on the schedule and others were not.
I'm not trying to be an apologist, those are the realities the EQ team (and all development teams, even outside of gaming) are up against; but it's good to remember that when we are discussing the end result of their hard work.
How about this? When Zat's back in the office, I'll sit down with her and get a clear idea of all the things you guys would like the team to work on (more bank space, epics 3.0, etc.) and start to find out what the score is on the realities of any of those. I won't promise a full report back to you on each and every item with reasons why it is or isn't being done in whichever time frame, and I won't create a sunshine and rainbows wish thread where you can list all of your desires for me to peek into. There are plenty of threads here for me to mine and get a sense of things, and then I can look internally with Zatozia and see what's what.
From there? Who knows?
[Edited to add a quote for increased relevance, and also to get this in just one font]
More... (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=156078&post_id=2300340#2300340)