No, srsly. Guys I think You need to work on this because this became a funny and comic thing. Just make sure of the state of build or game and give exact release date. What is wrong with You??? Why Paradox and many other RTS and 4X games developers do not suffer from such delays on delays? Just be sure on the state of patch, then give a release date. It is not hard, but You will avoid such ridiculous always on delays things.

I said it elsewhere before that I thought this project is a huge ambition. Things got in the way, like covid. But frankly with me sometimes liking the game, the community interaction and sometimes not really feeling it - because a good play through is so dependent on random settings I couldn't figure out consistently - I have to say product development was rather badly done. If that were to happen on this scale in a firm where I work, heads would be rolling. Let's just be clear game development is not easy, can be wrong, but can be improved if you sometimes change the lead developer(s). Probably about time here now. 

I disagree about grumbling in silence.  I definitely prefer a more communicative v. less.  They probably shouldn't have given an exact date (if they thought it would be ready on the 28th they probably should have said "end of October/beginning of November".... but maybe they expected to be/were finished last week and were just QAing it when they found the big bug, sometimes the unexpected delay is bigger than the cushion you have given yourself.)

That said, some people will like communication less and prefer to think they aren't doing anything than to hear about their setbacks.

You are game studio.

You spend a month making a patch.

Testing looks good. No problems for quite a while.

We are ready to release! Give them a date.

Internally people play patched version. 

Find horrific bug that outright breaks the game that somehow got missed (this happens so often if you have deluded yourself that its unusual then stop being deluded).

Make hard decision. Release with game breaking bug that the players will drag you for eternally or delay patch and anger the short sighted fools. Ok this isn't really a hard decision.

Promethian wrote:

You are game studio.

You spend a month making a patch.

Testing looks good. No problems for quite a while.

We are ready to release! Give them a date.

Internally people play patched version. 

Find horrific bug that outright breaks the game that somehow got missed (this happens so often if you have deluded yourself that its unusual then stop being deluded).

Make hard decision. Release with game breaking bug that the players will drag you for eternally or delay patch and anger the short sighted fools. Ok this isn't really a hard decision.

Why are You calling some gamers "short sighted fools"? Isn't this toxic?  The point is, to be sure of the state of build or game. To put exact date when U sure that U have stable and good build without major bugs. Why are u defending the, knowing that they delays everything for years now? It wasn't   a first time that this happened, its a broken system in management with systematically delays and failed deadlines. Prob. not enough testers to polish product well. It is hilarious now that they even delay the patch after so many delays of a game and beta's. That's the point. Do Ur communication on what  U are fixing and what is in the plans, but do also tell the exact release date when U sure that build is ready.

Chosen_One wrote:

Promethian wrote:

You are game studio.

You spend a month making a patch.

Testing looks good. No problems for quite a while.

We are ready to release! Give them a date.

Internally people play patched version. 

Find horrific bug that outright breaks the game that somehow got missed (this happens so often if you have deluded yourself that its unusual then stop being deluded).

Make hard decision. Release with game breaking bug that the players will drag you for eternally or delay patch and anger the short sighted fools. Ok this isn't really a hard decision.

Why are You calling some gamers "short sighted fools"? Isn't this toxic?  The point is, to be sure of the state of build or game. To put exact date when U sure that U have stable and good build without major bugs. Why are u defending the, knowing that they delays everything for years now? It wasn't   a first time that this happened, its a broken system in management with systematically delays and failed deadlines. Prob. not enough testers to polish product well. It is hilarious now that they even delay the patch after so many delays of a game and beta's. That's the point. Do Ur communication on what  U are fixing and what is in the plans, but do also tell the exact release date when U sure that build is ready.

Oh, gamers are 100% "shortsighted fools" XD
You have no idea what really goes into game dev, huh? Bugs, glitches and faults in code can come up anywhere, at any time and it is 99% impossible to predict it.
Anything from "If we have a player have 67 units in this particular pattern, and then move one straight to the south, it causes a gamebreaking bug" to "By the 86th game will the loading button suddenly disappear due to information cache being overloaded."
The point I am making is, that you are never able to see beforehand exactly when a product will be finished and problem free.
And delays are inevitable because, well you can't predict certain circumstances and if it is discovered in time before release they might require some time to be fixed.

the ONLY way to be 100% sure when release will come, (and keep high quality) is to have the game ready WAY ahead of time, and then wait until release.
That is the only way to do it, and that is unrealistic for most game devs. ESPECIALLY in the 4X genre.

Tnecniw wrote:

Chosen_One wrote:

Promethian wrote:

You are game studio.

You spend a month making a patch.

Testing looks good. No problems for quite a while.

We are ready to release! Give them a date.

Internally people play patched version. 

Find horrific bug that outright breaks the game that somehow got missed (this happens so often if you have deluded yourself that its unusual then stop being deluded).

Make hard decision. Release with game breaking bug that the players will drag you for eternally or delay patch and anger the short sighted fools. Ok this isn't really a hard decision.

Why are You calling some gamers "short sighted fools"? Isn't this toxic?  The point is, to be sure of the state of build or game. To put exact date when U sure that U have stable and good build without major bugs. Why are u defending the, knowing that they delays everything for years now? It wasn't   a first time that this happened, its a broken system in management with systematically delays and failed deadlines. Prob. not enough testers to polish product well. It is hilarious now that they even delay the patch after so many delays of a game and beta's. That's the point. Do Ur communication on what  U are fixing and what is in the plans, but do also tell the exact release date when U sure that build is ready.

Oh, gamers are 100% "shortsighted fools" XD
You have no idea what really goes into game dev, huh? Bugs, glitches and faults in code can come up anywhere, at any time and it is 99% impossible to predict it.
Anything from "If we have a player have 67 units in this particular pattern, and then move one straight to the south, it causes a gamebreaking bug" to "By the 86th game will the loading button suddenly disappear due to information cache being overloaded."
The point I am making is, that you are never able to see beforehand exactly when a product will be finished and problem free.
And delays are inevitable because, well you can't predict certain circumstances and if it is discovered in time before release they might require some time to be fixed.

the ONLY way to be 100% sure when release will come, (and keep high quality) is to have the game ready WAY ahead of time, and then wait until release.
That is the only way to do it, and that is unrealistic for most game devs. ESPECIALLY in the 4X genre.

Yeah, when it happens once in a while it is okay. But when it happens all the time with even DLC for ES2 which came out years ago and for last year with Humankind, every Beta delays and release date delays and now patch release day delay I say, that there is something wrong and they need to work on it. No less no more. Gamedev is hard. But business overall is a harsh place. Company's need to fight for their audience. And keep a good coms with its audience. But all time delays is damaging for reputation. They say that they need a week to fix that patch, what was the issue just to tell about that patch in first place with safe date? Why U even defend them for ongoing for more than year delays of everything? I say that their decision to delays beta's, date of release and even patch in matter of 1-2 days before that date is unprofessional and very frustrating.

Why are you capitalizing "You"? Is Amplitude God?

Anyway, I agree with others that using Paradox as your first example completely undermines your argument. Srsly!

What's the point of this thread? They have made an announcement. All the information is there. They are communicating in the forums.

Melliores wrote:

Please let us not mention Paradox as an étalon/benchmark of  releasing good quality DLC and patches on time. The latest DLCs for Europa Universalis and Surviving Mars were littered with game-breaking bugs and could not be squashed for weeks on end even after multiple patches.

A lot of other studios are experiencing issues with delays due to working remotely. I agree that the communication can be handled better but a delay was to expected seeing on how many things they are working, including the Stadia and Mac versions.If anything, it is better for the Stadia users as they will be able to catch up with the rest of the platforms this way. :)

How about Valve Software? They patch their products rather quickly. Even several times a day if necessary, even if it's just one fix.

DrunkenChoko wrote:

Ok so I think we all need to cool down a bit around here.

Yeah there is a delay, yeah that's on us, sorry.

We can't just remove the offending code and push a build because sadly we're not selling humankind on Itch.io, there is validation, on all of the platforms, that the game work. Those validation take time, and we don't want to have different patch online between our platform (the exception being stadia, which is another system entirely, so in this case we allow ourselves to have some difference because there is much more development involved porting the game).

Also while we have automated testing we also have internal and external QA (our internal QA are the one responding on your bug report on the forum).

I know a delay is shitty, I know that we announced a date, trust us, you play humankind some hour in your week maybe, we work on it full time, we are the first people that want the update to go live.

Again, keep your cool, it's just a game in the end.

We understand this. But the main point here is just to announce a date when You guys sure. So You could entirely skip this damaging delays. We would love to see news regarding the work You have done even without exact date, just make some blogs bout them and when You are ready to release set a date.

Regarding PDX example, I only play Stellaris. And maybe they have major issues on other projects. But with Stellaris, as a 4X realtime huge game I see they made a correct approach. They never delayed anything IIRC. And most patches was good. It is IMHO. And it can be wrong for many of You.

DrunkenChoko wrote:

Ok so I think we all need to cool down a bit around here.

Yeah there is a delay, yeah that's on us, sorry.

We can't just remove the offending code and push a build because sadly we're not selling humankind on Itch.io, there is validation, on all of the platforms, that the game work. Those validation take time, and we don't want to have different patch online between our platform (the exception being stadia, which is another system entirely, so in this case we allow ourselves to have some difference because there is much more development involved porting the game).

Also while we have automated testing we also have internal and external QA (our internal QA are the one responding on your bug report on the forum).

I know a delay is shitty, I know that we announced a date, trust us, you play humankind some hour in your week maybe, we work on it full time, we are the first people that want the update to go live.

Again, keep your cool, it's just a game in the end.

You are talking about certification process, but to my knowledge pushing updates to SteamPipe are near "instantaneous". What prevents you from making public beta branch builds there weekly?

Sublustris wrote:
You are talking about certification process, but to my knowledge pushing updates to SteamPipe are near "instantaneous". What prevents you from making public beta branch builds there weekly?

I think we are preparing a beta branch build for the patch.

Provinding you with a beta branch weekly ? I don't think that would be a great idea, the game while in dev break quite frequently, I don't know exactly why we don't do it (I'm not the one taking those decisions) but I think providing you with a beta that is 1 out of 3 times completly broken might be the reason...
Plus we don't want to spoil you the little addition we make with the bugfixing too soon !

Well it's not like you have only one branch where all untested and unreleased changes pile up before you push them out. Like, when I look at each individual patch in release notes for your games, they do not strike me as being so indivisible to be broken into several independent chunks, that could be deployed to your players sooner.