The refrain about not having the full picture yet doesn’t make sense from a development standpoint

[abrocator]

I haven’t heard this from the developers, but some people on the forum have said in reply to the claim that these updates don’t make sense:

• The developers also predicted that it wouldn’t make sense yet. The thing is that we need more updates in order to properly judge the content.

But that doesn’t make sense from a development standpoint:

• The world toggles proves that these code changes can be hidden from us by the developers. So we don’t have to see all the incremental updates unless they want us to.
• If they don’t have to show all the incremental updates then it goes to reason that they can delay showing us all the changes until it makes sense
• Then we can properly judge the larger update

So what’s the point? There could be many reasons, and I won’t bother to get into the cynical ones.

• Maybe it’s just for wider QA (bug spotting)?
• Maybe it’s to appease our need for updates (maybe we tend to get antsy as soon as there has been two weeks since the last update)
• ?

 

[Theukon-dos]

See, the issue I have with that philosophy is that we may not have the whole picture, but we still have enough to make predictions.

 

We have planar damage, we know how it works, and we can infer what exactly it's trying to do. I don't see how later content will suddenly invalidate any critisicm of the systems we have here and now. Because it's not a problem of having nothing to use the systems on, it's a problem of the systems being bad. 

Like, if I gave you an unlabled box. But the box sounds like a duck, smells like a duck, and is from Big Al's Duck Farm, then you can be pretty damn confident that it's a duck

[sudoku]

Their release schedule has been pretty consistently the same for much of DST's life cycle, and a big change to this could cause a lot of disruption to the groove they have developed over the years.

So I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and holding them to their word that it will make more sense once we get the third and supposed final update. At the end of the day do i think they personally should have just waited to give us the 3 updates at once as a huge mega update? Yes, but at the same time, it doesn't really hurt to put these betas out and give players something to play with while giving feedback, even though i ultimately still think that the feedback is less valuable since we dont have the full picture.

 

[Dextops]

15 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Like, if I gave you an unlabled box. But the box sounds like a duck, smells like a duck, and is from Big Al's Duck Farm, then you can be pretty damn confident that it's a duck

man has never heard of imposter ducks in his life

[Mike23Ua]

Klei has this absolutely horrible track record of starting something & then abruptly ending it.

They Started Ocean Content- Stated there WOULD be more ocean updates (Aka Waterlogged Part 2) and then abruptly discontinue ocean content updates.

Klei creates Moon Glass & shows concept arts of Moon Glass supposed to Mutate mobs and make normally peaceful mobs go hostile (nothing ever came of that and Moon Glass is mostly an afterthought.)

Klei adds Pirate Raids & Pirate themed hats, weapons and content- Then abruptly buried it into obscurity.

Klei Starts an Awesome new content Arc called Return of Them, Add two Lunar Horrors to the game (moonrock Pengul & horror hound) then abruptly discontinue these mobs saying they don’t fit the direction they want to take the game.

My point is that I’m not holding my breath out for ANYTHING to make sense anymore.. now I’ll just judge content ONE update at a time..

[sudoku]

12 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Klei has this absolutely horrible track record of starting something & then abruptly ending it.

Thats how it is when time becomes an element they have to work around. Some things end up on the cutting room floor, while other ideas end up never coming to fruition.

The pirates though.. such an awesome idea with so much potential. But again, i think time was the enemy, one update just wasnt enough development time to fully do justice to the idea.

 

 

[Cassielu]

Klei has been a bit of a credit breaker in this area in recent years, often throwing out an interesting concept and then abandoning it, sometimes even worse as if it were designed by two designers at odds with each other, mess up the new content with a later game update, such as Wurt and Ocean fishing, Ocean fishing and Trawler, RWYP and banana bush. So I'm deeply disturbed by this "full picture" stuff, but I guess we have no choice but to believe it again.

btw, Two Rift updates are much better than before, and at least we're getting two Rifts instead of another unnatural portal lol

[firoborn]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Klei has this absolutely horrible track record of starting something & then abruptly ending it.

They Started Ocean Content- Stated there WOULD be more ocean updates (Aka Waterlogged Part 2) and then abruptly discontinue ocean content updates.

Klei creates Moon Glass & shows concept arts of Moon Glass supposed to Mutate mobs and make normally peaceful mobs go hostile (nothing ever came of that and Moon Glass is mostly an afterthought.)

Klei adds Pirate Raids & Pirate themed hats, weapons and content- Then abruptly buried it into obscurity.

Klei Starts an Awesome new content Arc called Return of Them, Add two Lunar Horrors to the game (moonrock Pengul & horror hound) then abruptly discontinue these mobs saying they don’t fit the direction they want to take the game.

My point is that I’m not holding my breath out for ANYTHING to make sense anymore.. now I’ll just judge content ONE update at a time..

remember how the glass statues of the chess pieces was supposed to be something but nothing came out of it? because i do

[Captain_Rage]

1 hour ago, sudoku said:

Their release schedule has been pretty consistently the same for much of DST's life cycle, and a big change to this could cause a lot of disruption to the groove they have developed over the years.

So I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and holding them to their word that it will make more sense once we get the third and supposed final update. At the end of the day do i think they personally should have just waited to give us the 3 updates at once as a huge mega update? Yes, but at the same time, it doesn't really hurt to put these betas out and give players something to play with while giving feedback, even though i ultimately still think that the feedback is less valuable since we dont have the full picture.

 

Imagine getting a much anticipated huge, juicy, update after a long hiatus just to find it full of game-breaking glitches. I prefer the current rolling schedule.

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, firoborn said:

remember how the glass statues of the chess pieces was supposed to be something but nothing came out of it? because i do

My friend constantly bugs me about this, ahah. Maybe one day.

I'm still waiting for the Shadow Chess Piece drops they said they'd do. They're supposed to have unique drops each, not just the Dark Sword/armor!
They were even listed in the code for a while, only to be removed quite a bit later. I wonder how much bugging it'd take to get them to revisit those... hhmm...

[zVince]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Klei has this absolutely horrible track record of starting something & then abruptly ending it.

They Started Ocean Content- Stated there WOULD be more ocean updates (Aka Waterlogged Part 2) and then abruptly discontinue ocean content updates.

Klei creates Moon Glass & shows concept arts of Moon Glass supposed to Mutate mobs and make normally peaceful mobs go hostile (nothing ever came of that and Moon Glass is mostly an afterthought.)

Klei adds Pirate Raids & Pirate themed hats, weapons and content- Then abruptly buried it into obscurity.

Klei Starts an Awesome new content Arc called Return of Them, Add two Lunar Horrors to the game (moonrock Pengul & horror hound) then abruptly discontinue these mobs saying they don’t fit the direction they want to take the game.

My point is that I’m not holding my breath out for ANYTHING to make sense anymore.. now I’ll just judge content ONE update at a time..

I've been thinking about this today, how the updates (at least after the New Reign arc) are so impactful in terms of potential content, yet incomplete at the same time. It's as if they require extra content to become complete or viable.

An example is the "Reap What You Sow" update, which I personally found incredible, but at the same time, there was potential for more items and structures related to that theme (we haven't had any further changes related to that update since then).

Since Klei is a very community friendly company, I'm sure they will listen to feedback and improve with each update.
 

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

Imagine getting a much anticipated huge, juicy, update after a long hiatus just to find it full of game-breaking glitches. I prefer the current rolling schedule.

It really saddens me how common that part in particular is considered common place these days since they know they can just fix it later and people will still line up to throw their money at broken products...

And some companies don't even reach the fix it later phase...

[Dreadle]

My own conclusion is they were simply marketing an unfinished product, accompanied by sugarcoated promises meant to mask its shortcomings.

[Catteflyterpill]

2 hours ago, -Variant said:

My friend constantly bugs me about this, ahah. Maybe one day.

I'm still waiting for the Shadow Chess Piece drops they said they'd do. They're supposed to have unique drops each, not just the Dark Sword/armor!
They were even listed in the code for a while, only to be removed quite a bit later. I wonder how much bugging it'd take to get them to revisit those... hhmm...

What was the moonglass chess piece content that was supposed to happen? As well as the unique drops? I hadn't heard of it, but it seems really interesting.

 

 

[Antynomity]

10 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Klei has this absolutely horrible track record of starting something & then abruptly ending it.

They Started Ocean Content- Stated there WOULD be more ocean updates (Aka Waterlogged Part 2) and then abruptly discontinue ocean content updates.

Waterlogged part 2 was never going to be a thing, I don't know why you keep spreading that like it was confirmed information.

[gamehun20]

The more ocean content we got actually it's called moon quay

[D_Good_Fellow]

13 hours ago, abrocator said:

I haven’t heard this from the developers, but some people on the forum have said in reply to the claim that these updates don’t make sense:

• The developers also predicted that it wouldn’t make sense yet. The thing is that we need more updates in order to properly judge the content.

But that doesn’t make sense from a development standpoint:

• The world toggles proves that these code changes can be hidden from us by the developers. So we don’t have to see all the incremental updates unless they want us to.
• If they don’t have to show all the incremental updates then it goes to reason that they can delay showing us all the changes until it makes sense
• Then we can properly judge the larger update

So what’s the point? There could be many reasons, and I won’t bother to get into the cynical ones.

• Maybe it’s just for wider QA (bug spotting)?
• Maybe it’s to appease our need for updates (maybe we tend to get antsy as soon as there has been two weeks since the last update)
• ?

 

I posted about this in a different thread, but at the risk of repeating myself I think it's important to note that the "development standpoint" isn't the only standpoint at play here. The release schedule is almost certainly being influenced by a number of other things including marketing, labor distribution/availability, and publishing requirements.

As far as I can tell, DST's main moneymaker is curio sales. The content in these updates is free, so the best way for it to turn a profit is for players spend money on the promotional curios that accompany them. Each update is therefore also a marketing campaign, so three updates is probably much more profitable for Klei than one big one. (To be clear I don't hold it against Klei for letting marketing/profitability affect their game or release schedule. The game very much has to be profitable for Klei to support it in any capacity.)

DST is also only one of Klei's games, so it's very likely it's release schedule is balanced in relation to their other games for both marketing reasons and to allow appropriate development time all around.

What's more, companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony probably have release requirements from their hardware. Mandatory console release dates was actually one of the given reasons for the release state of Taking Root iirc. 

"Wait until you see the full picture" is probably a qualification rather than the intended feeling of the release. It's very possible that the developers are genuinely hesitant to make major changes to features from Taking Root or Terrors from Below based on player feedback when the players genuinely don't have the full picture, but that just highlights the developmental problem with releasing the updates this way: feedback is significantly less useful when the players don't have the full picture. 

[abrocator]

2 hours ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

The release schedule is almost certainly being influenced by a number of other things including marketing, labor distribution/availability, and publishing requirements.

That falls under the “cynical reasons” that I didn’t go into.

Good points.

[Theukon-dos]

3 hours ago, D_Good_Fellow said:

What's more, companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony probably have release requirements from their hardware. Mandatory console release dates was actually one of the given reasons for the release state of Taking Root iirc. 

I belive you're right, but it's because they had already committed to a release date before hand. console makers really don't care if you update every other week or every six months. But they do want developers to commit to a release date ahead of time, and Klei had commited to one before the beta even launched, making the idea of delaying the update not really feesable.

 

But, this also means that any future updates wouldn't have this problem, so long as Klei had the foresight to realize that a Beta may need more work than anticipated. 

[Mr Giggio]

It took 4 years in often updates to finally refresh all the characters, between small updates and new features/content, like eye of storm event and CC arc.

For a game as cheap as DST is u guys SHOULD have a lil bit more of patience. It really gives for us way more than the money we did pay for it. And it happens because Klei loves DST as much as us. 

Be patient. Be considerate. They are doing their thing. Thats all.

[abrocator]

14 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

For a game as cheap as DST is u guys SHOULD have a lil bit more of patience.

Ask them to close the beta if you don’t want feedback.

[Catteflyterpill]

4 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Ask them to close the beta if you don’t want feedback.

Feedback is essential, but it's pretty obvious that a lot of people in the forums can get pretty rude or inconsiderate with how they offer feedback especially with controversial/heated topics. At the end of the day, we're all within our right to do that. But it's just demoralizing to devs and the playerbase which is counterproductive to the health of the game. Constructive criticism should be constructive. 

[D_Good_Fellow]

35 minutes ago, Catteflyterpill said:

Feedback is essential, but it's pretty obvious that a lot of people in the forums can get pretty rude or inconsiderate with how they offer feedback especially with controversial/heated topics. At the end of the day, we're all within our right to do that. But it's just demoralizing to devs and the playerbase which is counterproductive to the health of the game. Constructive criticism should be constructive. 

There's definitely a lot of bad faith posts in the forum all things considered; DST is a very complete game out of the box so becoming furious over free optional updates is silly. Posts angrily threatening to quit playing the game or personally insulting Klei are definitely out of line, but I don't think that's happening in this thread. Criticism, even harsh criticism, is fair play. Expressing that one didn't enjoy past updates and using that as reasoning for doubting future ones seems like very acceptable beta discussion to me. Truthfully, that information should be more valuable than harmful to Klei.

[Mr Giggio]

9 hours ago, abrocator said:

Ask them to close the beta if you don’t want feedback.

U r just proving my point here. Trying to be more considerate wont hurt.

[abrocator]

4 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

U r just proving my point here. Trying to be more considerate wont hurt.

Show me where I’ve been inconsiderate.