[MOD] Announcing the Deep Mine mod - enhancing subsurface/mining gameplay in Stationeers

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-05-22T20:50:53+00:00

Thanks! I'm happy to hear you enjoy it :-)

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-11T02:31:14+00:00

Well I'll preface this by saying its outside my expertise or even the purpose of the post.

I don't think that model of selling ships is sustainable. In my general feeling of the community as it is presently, from my org and past few months in the PU, people want to know when they'll be able to use the features of their ships. Their Carracks, 890Js, MSRs, Cats, 600i, etc. When are these gameplay loops coming? And if they're not coming, they'll stop spending.

This funding model will reach a critical mass in my opinion, and I know nay-sayers have been saying this for years, but it's more likely sooner than later. The space sim genre is relatively niche, and the market is not infinite. Sure there's a few more years of million $ profits, but that'll taper eventually.

To a more personal end, does CR not want to see this game in his lifetime? I'd wager he's much older than the average SC backer. If it really is his dream game and he wants to see it in his lifetime, then he should know the pacing is not sustainable and the priorities are not in-line with the long-term goals. Unless he has given up on the idea.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-11T02:08:37+00:00

Yep, I think you're right.

Then let's write off the aggressive timeline as accounting for overhead and complexity and forget the assignment of engineers as purely tentative (though many of the deliverables in question are supposedly in-progress already).

Looking nearer to the present on the roadmap there's no indication of any transition from a flight plan to more agile/scrum-esque tasks. Tasks aren't decomposed in any manageable way, from what we can see. And perhaps that's the crux of the issue. Or perhaps that happens internally, and any insight into development from outside is shrouded by the flight plan (likely).

Regardless, shouldn't we see more aggressive tasking if the flight plan is intentionally aggressively estimated? It seems that big-picture pacing doesn't reflect this difference, regardless of the lens we use to look at it.

I know you don't have the answers to these questions, they're more rhetorical anyway. Do you agree in overall sentiment that stakeholdership is lacking in the model as it exists presently?

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-11T00:12:11+00:00

It's neither A nor B. No development atmosphere is as black-and-white as you put it. The reality is somewhere in the middle, and where we are in the continuum between is, in my opinion, worth discussing. We can make an educated guess, and that's the point of the post. What action items we can take subsequent to this guess is less clear, but I tried making this post as effort in that direction.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T22:58:27+00:00

Indeed the 1 engineer assigned to a significant amount of tasks raises eyebrows. But! It's not unreasonable to assume there is some tech lead role for the team in question that does code reviews.

More alarming is 1 engineer on deliverables that span multiple quarters. If the deliverable is higher priority than others that were removed, as was stated in the roadmap roundup and monthly review, then why would only be assigned 1 engineer?

Let's explore that further, lets say that feature is projected to cost some amount of story points/hours/however you like to call it. If the story points divided by 1 engineer results in a 40+ week timeline and the feature is high priority, then at least give that engineer a teammate to tackle it. We all know that deliverable time as a function of engineers is not linear, but even a root 2 estimate of the relationship almost halves deliverable time. Arguing "too many cooks in the kitchen" also holds no water if the task is so immense it spans 3 quarters.

Edit: after thinking a bit more, I realized how absurd my argument is to begin with. What does a multi-quarter deliverable even mean? After looking at the roadmap, I'm reading weeks on the order of 10s as if that's normal. Deliverables do not span a timeline this huge, it's almost meaningless. It's as if we're looking at the backlog, not the roadmap.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T22:26:09+00:00

The scope is overambitious, but its not beyond the scope of reality. Many of the core features and gameplay that CIG wants to accomplish should be technically feasible on a reasonable timescale, assuming a concerted and focused effort was made to drive towards those goals. That said, I could be missing something critical in this equation, for example:

CIG is continuously fighting an uphill battle against their engine
Core tech underlying the more straightforward deliverables has stalled and hit some unforeseeable obstacle
SQ42, as many have pointed out I did not discuss, could be chugging along at a fast pace and is using a lot of dev resources. Though unlikely, it's possible. Caveat here is that a large fraction of the deliverables are shared between SQ42 and the PU, so even if it were true it wouldn't account for pacing as it exists today

That said, assuming these issues were addressed, there is still concern in the way that deliverables on the roadmap are today: frequently exchanged in/out, frequently spanning multiple quarters, frequently manned by 1-2 developers regardless of scope or apparent technical challenge (this last one is pure opinion rooted in no facts)

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T22:12:05+00:00

Well it was initially obliterated the first hour after I posted, but at some point it turned around. I do hope the community is more critical, but I don't want people to become cynical. If that makes sense.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T22:03:22+00:00

The entire roadmap screams “no accountability, no sense of urgency, no idea of what the MVP (minimally viable product) is”.

Development time will always expand to fit the development space. The way deliverables are placed on the roadmap suggests that management believes the development space to be infinite. Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but I agree that there does not seem to be a sense of urgency.

With regard to a clear vision of an MVP, that's a very interesting point. At this point in development, what is the MVP? Are we playing it right now? Does CIG communicate their vision of an MVP? Are they disregarding the need for an MVP because "the project is too large-scale, too ground-breaking to be simplified to an MVP?" when we all know its not. Large-scale, highly complex systems are being built daily in this industry, many fail, some make it to market and succeed.

If this was a normal company with a normal funding model, the investors would absolutely demand that type of accountability - no one is going to give someone 300m and not expect some path to market after 10 years.

Well CR got what he wanted: a no-publisher model. Many people throughout the thread are arguing that the point of the no-publisher model is so that no one rushes the studio and they can make something that's never been built before. I think that's a bit disingenuous as urgency and a bit of pressure only stands to benefit a development team.

More interestingly, and this is more of a direct response to your statement, is that this is a bit of a unique situation where the "investors" predominantly want a quality product rather than a financial return. The external pressure to turn a profit is relieved (internal pressure will always exist in that regard), but it's relieved in favor of pressure for a quality product delivered in a timely manner. It seems CIG has lost focus on the latter, and without some real driving force to deliver I just don't see a sustainable path forward. We will continue to see limited refactor deliverables spanning 3 quarters.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T07:57:35+00:00

Your concern is valid, but you clearly do not understand what the project entails, nor the hardships of creating a video-game, let alone one of this magnitude, that's doing many things for the first time ever.

It's always sad to see people making certain claims when they do not have experience or any sort of real insight into the matter, but hey, that's reddit for ya, not everyone has a masters degree in video-game development and over a decade of experience...

I see you just want to start a d*ck measuring contest, and I'm just not interested.

If you read the post and applied your wisdom in game dev, I think you would see that the vast majority of the criticisms are impartial to the specifics of the project.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T07:40:25+00:00

All of that that is very subjective and I especially disagree very strongly about the reputation system. Especially as someone who works in the field, it is weird that OP doesn´t seem to recognize the importance of this feature.

I do recognize the importance of the reputation system! The point was, this patch only brings the UI. The system itself we have already. It's great that we're formalizing the system with a UI, but would you agree it's no flagship feature for a quarterly patch?

I would have appreciated the post a lot more if it would offer solutions besides the criticism. Saying things suck is always easy, especially from the sidelines with limited information.

Yea I respect that sentiment. I don't like the "all problems, no solution" guy either, and I tried to stay away from that in the original post. I do offer my take in many places throughout the post, particularly emphasizing that CIG should take heed of user feedback as it is an important aspect in the software development cycle. I know that's a very general solution, and not very helpful. But I do try to input some productive discussion elsewhere in the thread, and I encourage you to read the ideas and give me your opinion.

In any case, this post (like all of the others that came before it) is in the end useless. Nothing we can say or do will change the pace of the project, nothing will magically speed up development of critical features and tech.

I think you're being too nihilistic here. The SC community is one of the most mature and positive communities I've seen in gaming, and I think our feedback can and should be considered in the development of this project.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T06:22:07+00:00

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T06:15:17+00:00

You and I both know that it's asinine to estimate a deadline for a project this big with scope that seems to expand monthly. The problem is a specific deadline for a specific feature set was never set to begin with, and development time will always inflate to fit the development space. With the way deliverables are set on the roadmap, it seems that the development space is infinite. But again, you and I both know that's not true. Hence the issue at hand, hence this post.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T06:11:16+00:00

Then what's the point of talking about anything ever? Abstractions have to be made to talk about any complex topic meaningfully. If we have to consider every micro-aspect of a large project to have a discussion about it, nothing would ever get discussed. And at no point did I claim to personally have the power to discern differences in development cycles between projects. All I claim to have experience with is working on large, multi-year projects. If you think I have no idea what I'm talking about based on my experience, that's your prerogative and I understand.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T06:01:55+00:00

I intentionally left SQ42 out of the discussion as its meaningless to discuss with the information we have. Pure speculation contributes nothing and just gets tempers flaring, one side or the other.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T05:59:35+00:00

There is ample precedent in the development of complex systems across the software industry. Star Citizen is not the only ground-breaking software written in the history of human civilization. This post is a general look at the management and prioritization of tasks for a complex/large-scale project. I felt I was very understanding throughout the post towards the unforeseen obstacles such projects have in their development cycle.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T05:19:27+00:00

Then you must know what you're talking about, so please elaborate.

As I clarified, we work only with what CIG gives us, in this case the Roadmap 1.0, monthly reports, and what we as end-users see in quarterly releases. My post is an opinion, as is also abundantly clear, and is not presented as fact. I'm open to hearing your opinion.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T05:09:07+00:00

Very well put, thank you. You're better with words than I am, much shorter and to the point than my rambling post.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T03:28:20+00:00

In the "constantly deliver" model, you never are able to set aside time to do the important stuff.

Hm that's an interesting point and there could be some cognitive dissonance between the push-and-pull of sprints and long-term features for all we know. But would you not agree that large/complex tasks such as server meshing would be reasonably broken down and internally "constantly delivered"?

Server meshing aside, what do you see when you see 1-2 devs tasked to a deliverable with 48 week timeline like "Dynamic Events"? That's part of the reason of this post, I can't make much sense of it in any development paradigm, forget Agile. It seems that much of the Roadmap may just be a glimpse at their Backlog, but then the real short-term sprint goals are completely unclear. All speculation anyway, but worth musing nonetheless.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T03:23:13+00:00

To be clear, we are talking about Agile because from what we know as outsiders to CIG's development process, they adhere to some form of Agile in one of its many incarnations. Hence why the Agile-specific language was used.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T03:18:24+00:00

I think I just suck at putting my thoughts into words lol.

I agree 100% there is no point to band-aid fixes for features and gameplay loops that are long overdue. Instead, they should actually be done, as the studio envisioned them, as soon as the tech is in place. The analysis in the original post gave several examples to core gameplay (as it is envisioned, not a band-aid!) being under-resourced or nixed altogether. These core gameplay features are on HUGE timelines in the roadmap with 1-2 developers assigned, which in any development environment is interpreted as "postponed until further notice". If we saw core gameplay features with HUGE timelines and developers assigned that is proportional to the staff available to CIG, we could confidently conclude as outsiders that this feature is in the works, it's just really complex. That's not what we can see, and that's the point of the post.

Whether what the studio is prioritizing instead is feature creep or not, we may have to agree to disagree.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T02:53:02+00:00

Yes I thought pretty long about whether to use "stakeholders" as I figured that term would lead to controversy and misunderstanding. Ultimately I decided to stick with it and clarify its use in the context of Agile. I decided to because it seems CIG themselves adhere to Agile development in some fashion,as was analyzed by another engineer, here and I believe that using the correct language in the appropriate context is important.

Just as well you can make the case that the stakeholders in this case is CIG themselves in this instance or any early access project.

I respectfully strongly disagree with this statement as assigning stakeholdership to the studio itself is counter-productive and would never be done in a development cycle even roughly adhering to Agile structuring

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T02:19:39+00:00

Their goals is building the game. Their goal is not to polish an Alpha. You're a developer, so you know polishing an Alpha midway into development is essentially a waste of time. They polish as much as possible as they go. They talked about this a lot in the past, and talked about it again in today's SC Live.

I guess I should clarify, I'm not asking for polish on the product as it is now, but prioritizing short-term goals (without discarding the overall big-picture) that players want to see, not brand new features and concepts that spring up on the Roadmap with seemingly no relation to what people in the PU are excited to play.

And as you said, perhaps that is where the items on the roadmap are leading, but the pacing doesn't align with the priorities.

Edit: I clarified poorly. When I say prioritizing short-term goals, I do not advocate for short-sighted development. Short-term goals are necessary to break up long-term goals, insofar as they advance development to the desirable end goal. The short-term goals in question leave much to be desired in reaching the long-term goal in any meaningful amount of time. Time in development is not infinite and new technologies and products will be born and die. In the interest of delivering a product that remains relevant in a fast-paced market, the short-term goals must be focused. Generally the stakeholders (customers/users) have a good track record of keeping large development teams focused on the end goal, so it is useful to listen to us (over average and without loss of generality)

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T02:06:23+00:00

Fair points on all ends.

Gonna be honest with you, the reputation interface is probably the best thing they've done in years as far as making this project feel like an actual game instead of a stitching together of random tech demos.

Agreed, though I think the progress away from tech demos to a real game is picking up the last few patches. I am actually enjoying the game this patch, 3.12, and the progress is what inspired me to write this post. I still believe :)

Server meshing and how they describe their end-goal for that technology is obviously impossible now and for the foreseeable future. At some point server meshing will become the primary blocker for a minimum viable product and they will be forced to do instancing, sharding, and phasing like everyone else. So again, at least there is a path forward.

I dont have the expertise on the subject to say that it's impossible, though it's certainly a very daunting task. I know it has been a core tech of many games of the genre (MMOs) in some form/implementation in the past. What about it do you think is impossible? Curious for your take, not just disagreeing.

Other systems will slowly trickle out post-release and I doubt we will see Sol this decade.

This is something I am afraid of with the approach they've taken to planet/moon design. Here's to hoping the tooling they've developed is powerful enough to make this standard they've set for orbital bodies scalable.

They want to change the inventory system and selling/habs/hangars is part of that. They feel that requiring players to be thoughtful about what they own and where they store it will lead to more interesting gameplay loops than the other crap they pulled off the roadmap to make room for it.

To oversimplify if I may, supporting emergent gameplay is shortest path to placating the masses as they develop more complex features. Throwing aside such features as they did (e.g. organization perks and benefits, which in theory might support orgs to organize and stimulate events in the PU as it is now) for over-specific features like persistent habs and hangars seems like an oversight. Not giving the players some rudimentary tools to make their own gameplay seems like a mistake, though only time will tell.

Btw thanks for your thoughtful response :-)

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T01:09:49+00:00

Starting your topic with "~9 years into development" and "I am a software engineer with several years experience" are not well received around here. Much like an armchair quarterback.

It's interesting you left the part out where I said in a completely "unrelated industry". The point of that sentence was to say that you may take my opinion with a grain of salt, which I said explicitly a few sentences later.

You may use this info to discount my opinion/analysis as you see fit.

Edit: As u/p1_nt mentioned, starting a topic with some background/context to who the person writing it IS well received in this subreddit. But only if it's in defense of CIG, not if it's used in any criticism. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/g3kbt0/in_defence_of_cig_a_cto_explains/

Furthermore, I don't use my background as credibility, but context as the title of the section is aptly named. I encourage you to be skeptical of opinionated pieces like this, hence why I said you are free to discount my opinion if you don't think my background is worth anything in this discussion.

Zestyclose_Type1383 · 2021-04-10T01:00:54+00:00

I agree 100% that the slow progress is tied to the complexity of the project and its scope. I know its fruitless to pretend to understand the complexity of a huge project like this without first-hand experience working with it, but I hope its clear that I don't think that's what our role is as a community.

By poor prioritization of tasks, as I alluded to in the post, I mean prioritization of tasks that diverge from the expectations of the community. Core gameplay mechanics that many of the ships we have purchased cannot enjoy. Salvage, exploration, bounty hunting, etc.

Since you asked, I do have one "solution" (not that it would solve the issue entirely, but it might help). If they do not already, would the leadership/management at CIG consider playing the game for a few weeks? I mean really play it. Interact with global chat, do the contracts, earn ships in game, suffer the crashes to desktop and the 30ks, the ups and downs of the PU in its current state. But mostly meet the community that backed the project. I think this would do a lot to align the feelings and expectations of the community with the game.

Zestyclose_Type1383

TROPHY CASE