Why no release dates?

[S.Dust]

Is there a reason DE can never give a concrete release date for any of the updates like EVERY OTHER GAME? I'm actual curious why is it that this game is the only game that just goes some time next week or some time this year/month rather than actually give a concrete date that players can expect.

[rand0mname]

So we can not complain about DElays then nothing is released on a release day like in many-many other games.

Edit: come to think of it, I like “next week” much more then “roadmaps” and broken promises.

Edited May 15, 2019 by rand0mname

[peterc3]

3 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Is there a reason DE can never give a concrete release date for any of the updates like EVERY OTHER GAME? I'm actual curious why is it that this game is the only game that just goes some time next week or some time this year/month rather than actually give a concrete date that players can expect.

Players demonstrated they cannot be trusted to deal with instances where the date slips due to unforeseen problems.

[S.Dust]

Just now, peterc3 said:

Players demonstrated they cannot be trusted to deal with instances where the date slips due to unforeseen problems.

Expand on this please give me some examples.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

Because when your design ideas come from throwing darts at a dart board blindfolded, its hard to predict when you are going to hit the dartboard.

That and they release far more frequently, and are willing to release far more "beta" content than other developers.

And who cares - the only thing releasing specific deadlines would accomplish is to have the deadlines set far enough out that they are meaningless.

 

[FlusteredFerret]

6 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Is there a reason DE can never give a concrete release date for any of the updates like EVERY OTHER GAME? I'm actual curious why is it that this game is the only game that just goes some time next week or some time this year/month rather than actually give a concrete date that players can expect.

They already give a release date for everything...

 

 

 

...Soon™

Also DE aren't the only ones who do this. I play a few other F2P MMOs and the devs (or rather Community Co-ordinators) are pretty much the same about new content releases.

 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

1 minute ago, S.Dust said:

Expand on this please give me some examples.

As he said, and there's really not much else to it, players get agressive over hype. It's not by chance that primed soon is a meme. Release dates just promote crazy levels of toxicity from bored and entitled players, and puts unnecessary pressure on DE, affecting their product negatively.

I wholeheartedly agree we are better off without them. And players are already lucky as heck they even tell approximate times such as "next week" or "fall/xmas".

[S.Dust]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)Tucker D Dawg said:

Because when your design ideas come from throwing darts at a dart board blindfolded, its hard to predict when you are going to hit the dartboard.

That and they release far more frequently, and are willing to release far more "beta" content than other developers.

And who cares - the only thing releasing specific deadlines would accomplish is to have the deadlines set far enough out that they are meaningless.

 

Who lied to you what do you mean far more frequently we out here in a desert begging for a drop of that content. 🤣😂

[Rekkou]

5 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Expand on this please give me some examples.

This thread is already an example. Even when it doesn't exist, players like you still nags about it. What are you gonna do if they have a release date but then missed it? 

[S.Dust]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

As he said, and there's really not much else to it, players get agressive over hype. It's not by chance that primed soon is a meme. Release dates just promote crazy levels of toxicity from bored and entitled players, and puts unnecessary pressure on DE, affecting their product negatively.

I wholeheartedly agree we are better off without them. And players are already lucky as heck they even tell approximate times such as "next week" or "fall/xmas".

I feel like not having a release date causes the same effect but worse with players waiting and waiting with nothing in sight. How do you get toxic over having information?

[mrrobotto67]

Back in the day, DE used to give exact days on the content drop date BUT normally it got DElayed for whatever reason (and players got overly pissed) so now, they just say "next week" or something like that. Is like a way to manage the Hype. (I remember one time an update topic got to 90+ pages LOL)

[peterc3]

1 minute ago, Rekkou said:

This thread is already an example. Even when it doesn't exist, players like you still nags about it. What are you gonna do if they have a release date but then missed it? 

Excuuuuuse me. You promised X thing would come this Wednesday and it is 12:00:01 AM on Wednesday in this time zone that not DE's time zone. How dare you DE!!!

[S.Dust]

3 minutes ago, Rekkou said:

This thread is already an example. Even when it doesn't exist, players like you still nags about it. What are you gonna do if they have a release date but then missed it? 

The point is they shouldn't be missing deadlines they set for themselves every other game meets them and if they miss them its never by much or better yet if they dont know when they will have something ready or how long it will take should they even be telling us the playerbase just to get us hyped and then have us wait.

Edited May 15, 2019 by S.Dust

[Loza03]

Because game development is hard and unpredictable, especially when your project was never expected to last a year so you didn't clean up some technical debt.

Every single game in existence has experienced the exact same things we get with [DE]lays. But instead of delaying the game, it's shipped anyway because the Publisher set a release date. People complain about the bugs despite [DE]lays, not realising that the bugs we get aren't the big ones usually.

Stuff like this:

 

Is what happens with release dates.

[Sajochi]

Remember Spectors of the Rails? Remember The War Within? The amount of pure vitriol and toxicity when those didn't launch on exact dates were the final nails in the coffin. Now we get a soon or next week when they're close to being done. 

 

[Tsukinoki]

17 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Players demonstrated they cannot be trusted to deal with instances where the date slips due to unforeseen problems.

Exactly this.
The number of players who rage on this forum and on reddit when a date slips is stupid.  And DE just learned to stop giving hard dates.

16 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Expand on this please give me some examples.

A few times in the past DE released a "Hype Site" with things such as "Coming in X days..."
An example would be "Sanctuary", which can be found here.
It was on a stated 7 day timer, with new info every day.
Once the timer was up and the update didn't drop immediately people just suddenly raged.and screamed about "The lies" that DE was telling and about the "DElays" that they were going through.

DE had the update up 2 days later.
And for those 2 days?  It was hell.

And this happened for basically every single thing they released a hard update time, or a hype site for if DE had to push it back even a day people just raged at them for it.
And then there were the people raging at 12:01AM in their timezone on that day that the content wasn't released....

So eventually DE just stopped giving hard dates.  It was better for their sanity, and apparently a lot of fans.

Edited May 15, 2019 by Tsukinoki

[Chipputer]

Just now, S.Dust said:

I feel like not having a release date causes the same effect but worse with players waiting and waiting with nothing in sight. How do you get toxic over having information?

It's a quirk within the community of many free2play games, not just Warframe.

The second a release day hits you will have people who will immediately start hounding the developers (and other forum-goers) at approximately 00:01 on the day of the update-- often times not even within the same time zone so they're a day ahead of the developers.
Say they find a bug that actually breaks the game and they're trying to squash it before release. These same people will get even more antsy and now you've also got players who weren't already hounding you getting upset.
Say it doesn't release that day? You get a relatively loud minority of players crapping all over the effort the developers are making because they forget that they're not delaying the content because they want to.

DE has learned that it's better to give an estimate than it is to give a concrete date, as a result.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

4 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

Who lied to you what do you mean far more frequently we out here in a desert begging for a drop of that content. 🤣😂

simply because you don't consider the new things they constantly add to the game good enough for you, doesn't mean its not new content.

 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

1 minute ago, S.Dust said:

I feel like not having a release date causes the same effect but worse with players waiting and waiting with nothing in sight. How do you get toxic over having information?

Ask entitled players. As a planner myself I like release dates, and we kinda have them on consoles (tho less and less), but as pointed out by others sometimes things don't go as planned, and DE's focus is on quality and not unfinished products rushed out just to get more money.

But sadly some players, which I find to be the worse kind of player scum, want updates and content for yesterday, and start complaining heavily and raising storms if there's even a one day delay. And most of the time these people manage to rally high amounts of other such people creating a huge stink in the process. All for nothing. And just to complain that updates are buggy after DE releases them.

These people are why we all don't deserve it. Sad as it is.

[peterc3]

6 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

if they dont know when they will have something ready or how long it will take should they even be telling us the playerbase just to get us hyped and then have us wait.

The thing is, the players routinely develop selective amnesia when they get shown something they really like. It is shown on a DevStream, said to be a WIP and then when it doesn't show up in the game the next week, regardless of what DE said, they treat it as forgotten or a broken promise.

This is entirely on the players.

[Rawbeard]

22 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

like EVERY OTHER GAME?

because unlike EVERY OTHER GAME they want the content to be in a launchable state instead of just rushing S#&$ out the door, you primitive.

[Zimzala]

6 minutes ago, S.Dust said:

The point is they shouldn't be missing deadlines they set for themselves every other game meets them and if they miss them its never by much or better yet if they dont know when they will have something ready or how long it will take should they even be telling us the playerbase just to get us hyped and then have us wait.

Wow.

Entitled much?

It's a game, not banking software with regulatory requirements and laws for consumers.

It's Art, it gets finished when it gets finished, the people at DE are not your game-making-robots.

Players hype themselves, this never ends, they blow everything out of proportion and then rules-lawyer over each detail - game developers are not to blame for that, the people being unreasonable can only blame themselves, the rabid-gamers are NEVER satified.

Seeing people that know so little about how the real world works make these proclamations is funny and sad.

[S.Dust]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

Ask entitled players. As a planner myself I like release dates, and we kinda have them on consoles (tho less and less), but as pointed out by others sometimes things don't go as planned, and DE's focus is on quality and not unfinished products rushed out just to get more money.

But sadly some players, which I find to be the worse kind of player scum, want updates and content for yesterday, and start complaining heavily and raising storms if there's even a one day delay. And most of the time these people manage to rally high amounts of other such people creating a huge stink in the process. All for nothing. And just to complain that updates are buggy after DE releases them.

These people are why we all don't deserve it. Sad as it is.

You say that but we have never had a near perfect launch of anything they take forever and it still comes out with problems. Being honest if they cant give a date I would rather just not know something even exist.

[Zimzala]

Just now, S.Dust said:

You say that but we have never had a near perfect launch of anything they take forever and it still comes out with problems. Being honest if they cant give a date I would rather just not know something even exist.

Then don't read about it.

[Rekkou]

1 minute ago, S.Dust said:

The point is they shouldn't be missing deadlines they set for themselves every other game meets them and if they miss them its never by much or better yet if they dont know when they will have something ready or how long it will take should they even be telling us the playerbase just to get us hyped and then have us wait.

That's not a point at all. You're just demanding a release date because you hope the deadline will make them rush the development just because you're being impatient.