I am not really fan of dates given to the public, it puts unnecessary pressure on the dev team to break the sim more than fixing it. You guys have created a marvel but please please, don’t ridiculously push updates that would break the sim, look at the Bing update that was mostly likely in preparation for the UK update and now broke the sim with anger from users and third party developers.
I appeal that you guys hold on the update until it thoroughly tested, you can invite some of as volunteer with your Q&A team to help on the testing, this will help us to avoid these issues.
Also, I don’t agree of giving deadlines to the public, this really puts up a lot of pressure over the dev team and I know you want things to be rolled out, but it is fine if you have deadlines, as long they are internal and not publicly communicated, it can be enough to just say, “You can expect an update during March or April for example” . Also with giving public deadlines, you are upsetting people when things don’t go well and you will need to postpone, I think this is doing harm more than good though.
But this update has already been delayed twice. It was suppose to come a month ago. They announced that it’s not ready yet as they’re still fixing a few issues. And now that all the testing is done and everything looks good, they locked the deployment date.
The best thing here is, to have an Insider programme that anyone of us can join and opt in. That way we get early updates weeks before the scheduled date, and we get to experience the new features and to test if there are any bugs.
Internal testers can only do so much. They have limited combinations of hardware and software and there’s no way to test every single scenario available. The best way to test real life scenarios, is to get real life users to test it for them.
The reason why their update breaks something else could be because they don’t have the same environmental scenarios as the users and the third-party developers. A good analogy would be: You can have a patient to be cured to perfect health inside a hospital where it’s sterile, but once they go out into the open, the patient can get exposed to other things that will get them sick with something else.
So let us join an insider program to test it for you. Let us be the shield and wall that protects the general public. We’re willing to get hurt, so that other people don’t.
I totally agree with that and that was why I was saying, they shouldnt give deadlines to the public.
However, the insider program is the solution. As it looks their Q&A only happen on vanilla version with no third party or so ever, otherwise how did we end up with the Bing CTD drama?
Bonjour à tous,
Simulateur formidable - mais:
1 Mise à jour du monde par Continent tous les 6 mois par exemple.
2 Correction de tous les bogues par des mises à jour périodiques. (par semaine par exemple)
3 Communication de délais lorsque la correction est effective.
Je vous remercie.
According to the Code of Conduct, you must use English when posting on the forums. The one exception is the #multiplayer category, where you can use any language to help you find users to connect with.
If you cannot read English, the forums provide a handy feature that translates posts into your native language, you can use this feature by clicking the translate button under a post.
If you need help converting a post from your language to English, try using Bing Translator, the same service used by the forums.
One of the best things MS-Asobo did to turn around the really rough and tough days following launch was to establish clear and succinct communication. From development to priority, and even acknowledging and integrating user desires (very Agile), everyone from the Mod Team to Developers to Management had a part in making sure the messaging was clear, consistent and available. Kudos. I don’t miss an opportunity on other game boards to point out how this is a model to aspire to for other developers whose products I use.
To that point, suggesting that dates be suppressed is a step backwards. It’s not designed to punish anyone. It’s a measurable milestone. It doesn’t mean that it won’t change, it’s simply an expectation. If there are valid reasons to delay, such as the case in UK World Update, the communication process which fostered trust is the best way to deliver that message clearly and rationalize why.
Sorry but I don’t agree it is a step backwards. If you don’t expose deadlines to the public, it doesn’t mean that you are not transparent. In fact is, setting these hard deadlines, it would just make people upset more than exited. Let’s take an example now, if they decide to delay again the UK update that is set to come on Tuesday, what would be the reaction from the community? I bet there will be a group that understand that and in the other hand, there will be another group that will be disappointed.
My point is, also that doesn’t necessarily change the roadmap, for example instead of giving a hard deadlines, they can just give a release window when do we expect the release.
You need to read up on Agile Development model oof Software creation.
Since launch, MS-Asobo had been operating on two-week “Sprints” to deliver additional high priority fixes and additional features, as defined by both their internal roadmap, and also later integrated user input/voting to prioritize certain features.
Having declared an initial relative stable state, they reduced the cadence of the Sprints to 30 days instead of two weeks around end of November, to allow more development time. So the idea being bandied about by others that things are “rushed” is already contradicted there.
Then finally they made the decision to split Scenery and Core Sim Updates into separate tracks. One would have approximately a quarterly schedule annually, and the other would be more frequent as better mapping and sat photography became available, along with a selection of which cities to render in Photogrammetry and as well as handcrafted POIs, which are both time and labor intensive.
So keeping to a schedule and naming dates isn’t imposing additional burden on anyone. If people are anxious, that’s honestly an individual problem. It’s a sim, not a life and death situation.
This is not about the agile development and I see that they have their two weeks sprint. My point is again, I would refain from explicitly communicating hard deadlines to the public. I am not saying they should hide this or that or they should ditch scrum and switch to kanban, I don’t care which agile methodology they use. What I am trying to convey here, setting expectations that can’t be met due to unforeseen issues. Again, I see really no problems of just communicating a release window instead of deadlines. However this is just my opinion, others might agree or disagree
But they are not hard deadlines. They’re all “expected release date”. This shows transparency that they are working towards achieving those goals. These expected release dates are all speculative. And MS-Asobo has been clear on what they communicate with us through their frequent development updates. If these dates can’t be reached for whatever reason, they’re not going to stick to it. They will announce that the update will be delayed from the initial expected release dates. Just like this UK update.
They also announced that the testing has been completed and it’s looking promising, so they locked that Tuesday date because they’re confident that the update is ready for deployment. Which means the build is done, the testing is done, and it’s just a single push of a button that will deliver them to the general public. If there’s any delay on Tuesday, it’s most probably server technical issues with problems of deploying to the general public. Not because the update is unfinished or untested.
And what’s the alternative. I can entertain your idea. Let’s say there’s no communication whatsoever, no publicly release dates being communicated to the public. When an update is ready, WOOSH! Everyone gets an update by surprise out of nowhere. What difference does it make? If the build being released is broken. It’s still going to be broken whether they communicate the release date or not.
Nobody is pressuring them to deliver on publicly released dates, as @CasualClick said, if people are anxious because of hard deadlines, that’s an individual thing. I know I don’t. And as I said before. Deadline isn’t the issue. You could have a full year of developing and testing a patch update, but if they don’t let us in as insider to test them in our real life environments, there’s always going to be something that’s broken.
The insider piece is certainly one way of co-locating the customer and developer closer, as per Agile principles. I think that will require more structure similar to Windows Insider Rings, but more importantly, they probably need to stand up a Cloud environment separate from General Population to accommodate the back end weather, maps and AI traffic. Then there’s the additional complication of the licensing, which we know can toss a monkey wrench into the authentication process in Production today.
I’m the “public” ( & insider) , everyone should be entitled to the same information published by the dev team.
“the public” some people have a false sense of self-importance.
It is indeed very refreshing to see these companies (MS & ASOBO) so willing to share status updates/timelines, etc. with everyone. Information is king today. Let’s face it - that’s one of the primary drivers of social media. Except in very rare instances should it ever be considered wrong to keep the public informed. Withholding information usually leads to distrust. Disgruntlement can be lived with but distrust is nearly impossible to overcome.
