first thx @luke-turbulenz for the answer
but on the other way you lose a lot of people from the other side if you wait to long for updates^^ atm the balance is too much for the player where want big updates. As example we see so many units as artwork but we have only 2 ingame, as example you can add some from the other units as example the smasher unit. since a long time i wait for this unit. i think it is not so much work to add the unit to the game. and it is a good midway between both sides
hey @luke-turbulenz,
at this point I might be on side of @Saint_X. You spoke about balance to carry “weekly / monthly” players and “the real followers”. Don’t you think the value of comments of those who keep on track all the time (instead of the feedback of those who join monthly) is much higher? Those people identify themselfves much stronger with the game. Those people are much more ambitious to contribute feedback. They develope proposals partwise, that even you dev’s didn’t think about before it was posted in the forum…
You might consider a change in thinking about it. I don’t think weekly / monthly checkers can contribute by far as much as the “active” community. I see your concern, but out of the current point of view and like @Heurazio proved on steam feedbacks, you lose the active part of players because of too less content in too long time.
Even in unstable ways it is good to discover new. Additionally I think the feedback of active players is far more valuable.
Till the next big patch (because it’s a big feature wrap up) active people might stay with you. But if afterwards content releases again take that long, you might lose strong feedback givers. Furthermore the amount of posts on steam and other forums with complaints of too less new content will increase. That could be too negative publicity…
I really hope you don’t experience that since I really like the game and want it to be as big and successful as possible. But this can just be reached if the public image contains more dynamic, more advertisement, i guess.
I already thought of supporting a team in creating a fan website for boundless. I think things like that really create good publicity, because gamers are so amazed by the game, they want to go further - support it and scream it out into the world, how nice it is. But this is not working, if you can just write about dev posts. If you want to catch interest, you need screenshots, videos, statements of own gaming experience. So that’s why noone really was motivated to really start it yet…
So far…
PS: I read this unqualified comment from @UmbraVictus about Blizzard Games. I really wonder what games and studios he considers to create far less buggy / unbalanced games then the Snowstorm Studios. I play their games since warcraft 2 and have to say, all of their games were @ release faaaaar ahead of other publishers. Of course balancing in Online titles always is an issue, especially after releasing updates with new content. But where is that not the case? The perfectionism, the artwork, the community interaction of Blizzard made me and Millions of others their fans. Considering them as a good example for bad releases makes me realize how far away from a realistic world he lives 
Wonder what his original post was, that was deleted by @Squidgy . Sorry for mentioning that in this detail, but I felt hurt in a way 
Hi @Smoothy
I’m not sure the term real followers is correct. Either way the players who don’t post in forums are giving us feedback in other ways. But please do not get me wrong, the feedback from the forums is vital and shows us if we are on the right track.We should look at ways we can improve it to keep everyone happy.
It is interesting because this topic is now shifting from new features to more content. As a developer they are two different things. But in order to get more content you need the system in place and that’s what we are working on at the moment.
What would you call the fan site if you got it going? 
@luke-turbulenz, yeah, “real followers” might not be the right therm. I was already doubting the therm when I wrote it, but in the short time, i could not replace it in a better way (guess cause of lack in vocabularies, since english is not my mother tongue). I mean the people who track the developement day by day (like me, if I have the time). I think we refine more (in quality and quantity) of the input you give us, so I guess we can contribute better feedback with higher value.
People who check the game rarely might not even know all those discussed topics in the forum. We already had giant discussions and know the decisions. So the “long time followers” at least won’t repeat asking / suggesting things already debated.
I can’t say there is such a hard shift. I think in this topic both is requested. People like to see new features ingame to test them. But the last month there were a few big updates that really gave testing playground. Just the features to test were “shallowly” analyzed in a few hours and later extensively discussed in the forum. So of course they also demand more. Especially because so many neat features are mentioned the last weeks. You devs test them all the time and give us feedback and we players cannot lay our hands on. I guess that is frustrating for some. On the other hand many can imagine that you get even more feedback, if you release those features to public. And that feedback you can implement already within next udate steps.
Ummm, name is not fix. I have many ideas, but in the end it’s decision of the team who will run it. I could tell you in pm - too many eyes could steal the good ones just kidding, if you are interested I can write you pm, but there is nothing decided yet. Also it seems a bit like people who wanted to start it, lose there motivation to do it…
there’s another consideration other than crash-stability of the game/servers, often as a feature is being developed the ‘data’ required and it’s layout change, and we rely on… basicly being able to wipe our local dev worlds constantly a lot of the time to deal with the data changes wtihout wasting a load of time on migrations. But if we pushed a release with an unstable (data-wise) version of a feature, we’d then have to waste time on migrations when it changes, or equally waste time (it does take time.) to wipe the worlds even more frequently.
thx @Squidgy
But you safe the time for testing / bug finding and you lost not so much commuity.
I think it should not be to hard to add at least every month a small update.
at th moment i have no motivation to spend again 300 hours for a big building or to make a fane page like we planned a long time ago.
last time i showed in the steam reviews boundless had a positiv statistic, now only balanced.
So since there is now a dedicated topic about the state in which new features should be released I want to come back to the devlogs.
I see that you are about to release quite a bunch of new features, so I’m curious, and want to ask, when we’ll be able to read/see more about them (cause, you know, someone has to provide us with new leaks, now that @ben is gone 
)
Also a big shout out to you for being this active in the forum on a Sunday!
How does that differ from the stable & experimental servers we have now?
The feature is that everyone gets a kitten.
can it be that you do not want to understand us?
or did you only read the half of all post ?
i mean a experimental server with new feature for testing.
but I’m too tired to do a better explain sorry
I think he definitely understood
You suggested a server setup of 2-3 servers… 1 stable, and 2 experimental for testing… which is exactly what we have currently!
The standard version of the game on steam is the stable version which has 1 server… the beta ‘testing’ version has 2 servers.
no this is not what i mean and say
its 2:37 i need some sleep 
Quite sure (as his edit confirms) he’s talking about “update frequency” on the servers (e.g. 1 representing every “stage” of development. The 1 server is “stable”, the 2 server is “semi-stable” [like the current testing server] and the 3 server is “instable” [e.g. live development like mentioned in the other topic]) and not about “concrete numbers of server” …
As you said there are ATM 3 Servers but TBH on all 3 of them are extremely outdated versions of the game (at least if i trust the devs spoilers). There should be much more to show and discover right now like:
to name only some (which are IMO somewhat “independent” from other features).
Question out of interest: Why are all people here so focused on numbers (this is bothering me for quite some time) ?
That is exactly what we have now with the testing branch of the game.
Are you asking, instead, for more frequent updates to that branch? Otherwise, it’s not clear to me how it’s different from what we’ve got already
Test results from the test server are in! It’s unfinished and unstable. Here is a list of 99 known issues from hundreds of “test” players. It’s impossible to know what bugs are just unfinished and what is infact a bug. /eyeroll
Um, that’s a little hypocritical, as this whole topic, regarding frequency of updates and number of servers, is all about numbers!
It may have been what he meant to say, but wasn’t what he did say… hence the responses from both myself and @nevir and the following confusion! I wasn’t about to speculate on what he meant to say as we all know that speculation and assumptions aren’t necessarily a good practice on forums.
I love how everyone has suddenly become an experienced developer! That aside, I seem to remember that many of the creatures are linked in the approach being used to create them … and I don’t just mean one single creature. All creatures will have multiple variations, both in model, textures, biome related textures, special abilities, even AI and behaviours (disclaimer: ‘AI and behaviours’ is an assumption on my part here!). So no, they’re not wholly independent from other features… nor are they as simple to create and implement and you both believe and make out. Additionally, I’m not sure how much extra gameplay you’re expecting to get out of 1 creature being added to the game… there have already been complaints that the current stuff to test only takes 2 hours to get through… you think a single creature will give you a whole lot more? Interesting.
I think a couple of very important points have also been missed with the now modified suggestion of 3 separate servers for stable, semi-stable and unstable releases…
Whilst I can see your point of view, and that you want to get back into playing this great game… and back at the level of playing that you used to… I agree with your sentiment of wanting to play more… but I’m sorry, I have to whole-heartedly disagree on both your approach to getting that to that goal and the amount of negativity in the posts. I’m also very eager for updates… lots and lots of updates!! But, being a developer myself (not a game developer though), I understand that development takes time. As a developer, I understand that you don’t want to just push out an unstable release that you know is going to fall over at some point, because you’ve not had enough time to test internally, as you’ve had to rush it out to placate someone stamping their feet and demanding it now.
We’ve been kept up-to-date with what is coming and why an update hasn’t been released over the last few weeks (yes I’m disappointed that there hasn’t been an update sooner too), due to it making sense to release a lot of related and inter-linked features at the same time to give us a more cohesive playing experience.
Anyway, I’ve waffled on enough… I have to go to work.
TL DR; Updates are coming, chill out, let the devs do their jobs and get ready to test some awesome content when it’s finally in an enjoyable state for everyone. EA isn’t always just about finding bugs… it’s also about testing content and providing feedback.
Have a good day all!
First of all … I’m an experienced developer as well (as well not games). I don’t know your company internal software testing / implementation process but most of the features “I” develop “most of the time” are somewhat “independet” from “most of the other features” … Okay there are a lot of “double quotes in here” because it’s never as independet as one might think and there are always things that interlink … but one unstable update in 3-4 months ? an other unstable update in 6 months ? My main problem is about the “time spans” that are between such updates. Yes of course they tell us most of the time why they delay (that’s one of the good changes i mentioned in prior posts) but it’s to often that things delay dramatically.
While everything you say is “theoretically” right, the problem itself is the frequency.
My point of view is more from a Agile (or [RAD] (Rapid application development - Wikipedia)) side if it comes to games and havily “user interactive” stuff.
This is the “final” creature you describe. Why not put it ingame “step by step” ? There is no “iteration” over features at the moment (at least not visible for players). For us as players features are one day not existing and the next day 100% existing. They might add “things” even if they are not “final” earlier ingame, to give us a visual example or a rough impression of the final product (prototyping). Yes, this might add up “some” extra effort but it’s something “visual” that people can play around with (even if it’s only for N minutes) and you can increase the update frequence. IMO a high update frequency is (mostly) good for EA games because it “keeps” the player base.
Theorem: Everytime a dev is able to test something (and it’s decently stable) it should be possible to release it as an “unstable” version of the game. (And i really can’t imagine that they need 3 months to get a first test running).
I agree with you that one as developer don’t like this thoughts but aren’t “cheap testers” (we) one of the reasons why one might choose EA ? And isn’t fast feedback one of the reasons to choose EA ? Features don’t need to be “polished” in the last detail and you can get your feedback in early stages of development and not in late stages where it’s really (mostly) expensive to change even small things.
To be fair we are all waiting for a long time now and we all accepted the “delayed release” because we want to give them the time they need. But i think it’s only fair that one should be allowed to ask for more frequent updates within the EA phase.
Can’t even provide “real” feedback at the moment (Look at all my posts and topic in the past … i really like to give feedback). This is one of the main reasons why i’m standing in for more frequent updates (and even if this is off topic now - more informations about core game play aspects).
This hole topic has IMO no “right” or “wrong” answer and there is no “perfect” solution. It’s all about balance and for me the balance was to long on “take your time”.
And please don’t get me wrong, the game looks really nice and i think the dev are doing a good job … but it’s just no good EA development (don’t get me wrong again - a lot of things have improved but it’s still far from perfect).
Neat, but I was asking when we’ll be able to read & see more about the new features, not what they are (as we already know that it’s pretty much portals, trading and XP).
Dont know about you but i prefer more finished features so i can truly test them, they also give more and i can give my feedback. Devs also sayd that updates come weekly, delays are expected.
It would be nice if they updated the game more frequently, who wouldn’t like it? But i give them theyr time and wont demand them to make things faster.