One of the devs commented this week that they try to avoid Friday updates because if something goes wrong, it’s not fair to call people in over the weekend.
Nobody should be expecting a Friday release.
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I agree. Also:
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I do see that… 
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I wasn’t around at the beginning, was this something they claimed they would be providing to the community? It’s not typical in any industry I have worked in to report development progress to the end users before the product is complete or nearing completion.
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Yeah, as mentioned earlier, I’d like it on tomorrow just for timing, but it’s not particularly realistic.
What I’m hoping for is that they’ve prepared a bunch of information about about the smaller details (pricing, available options etc), as well as information on whatever kind of birthday event they’re planning, with a view to it being ready to push Monday-Tuesday.
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Actually it is an indicator they are getting close to releasing an update. let me explain in detail for those who are in question and my fellow guildie @SClayton will vett me on this.
Everything first enters testing when the community is working with the devs and testing. As they patch things or update code in testing then the date time is changed.
Once you stop seeing activity in testing completely and are only seeing it in staging, this means they are working on final tidbits that do not require user testing and will see regular commits. This is usally a very good indicator that they are close to pushing the updates public.
Once everything is rounded off and cleaned up to their liking it is then pushed to public which then would force steam and PS to update the game locally next time it is started…
So in fact since it has been around 8 days since the last push to testing and they have only been updating staging means they are close to release of an update. Now what is included we don’t know. One would hope that it is both anniversary and Sovereigns but we just have to guess at that because there is no communication and transparency from the devs and their planned timelines.
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LOL meanwhile most of the games I follow (Grounded, Industries of Titan, Evil Genius 2, Satisfactory, Cyberpunk to name a few) have regular updates and communication, even if it’s announcing a delay (see Evil Genius 2 and Cyberpunk).
And my entire industry of healthcare IT almost entirely revolves around reports of development and upcoming functionality from the 3rd parties (interfaces for insurances, etc.) to the main software providers/developers (one of whom I used to work for and they have 2 annual events where they invite tens of thousands of people to their campus to demo and discuss this new functionality to get feedback on it) to us actually communicating the info out to registrars, nurses, doctors, etc.
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You’re right but still we are all trying to read tea leaves here
Personally my suggestion would be monthly progress updates. What they’re working on currently and what they’re planning to do next.
When stuff is delayed, give a brief account of what’s taking so long. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes per week to compose.
People are pretty understanding, even if the reason for the delay is “my kid is sick” or “Luca accidentally deleted a bunch of code changes” or whatever.
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I’ve suggested this in the past. A handful of sentences would take <5 minutes of someone’s time and would give us an idea of what’s going on and what’s going to be going on.
A handful of sentences describing what is to come in the next few weeks, sure.
Would LOVE to see an overall plan and roadmap though, one that’s more updated than the current website even has, as I’m sure some of the stuff on the website has been scrapped or its idea/execution is completely different.
The hush-hush the devs have is not helping.
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I know it’s fairly common in game development, and a really nice perk for the clientele, but definitely not the industry standard. It looks like it has been heading that way for awhile now but we still aren’t getting that level of detail from triple A titles or console game publishers.
Would this level of granularity ease the community’s mind in terms of what is in the Boundless pipeline?
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Sure, here is a distillate of what I’ve seen:
Anniversary event with candles & cake and at least one exo.
Creative/sov update isn’t done, but will be soon. Don’t expect an update on a Friday.
Planet purchasing UI is all that remains of the creative/sov update.
What more do you want? Guesses at when it will be done?
The granularity point is important. One of the best ways to improve how communication looks is to communicate less granularly.
They could have ended creative testing and said “Okay, next update will be Sep 1”. Sep 1 they could say “Still not done, check back Oct 1” and then keep it quiet when they finish it on Sep 15 and just announce on Oct 1 and release Oct 5.
This would look better, and is likely closer to what you are seeing from othet companies, but it is less open and you get things much later than when they are done.
Is it better? I don’t know, and I’m not making a statement either way, just explaining that one of the best ways to ensure smooth communication in uncertainty is to reduce granularity and have controlled transparency.
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How about if every monday James posts “it’s not ready yet”
On the Monday when he doesn’t post that, we know to expect a release that week.
In any case I vote for the update to come out today.
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Ah yes, the canary method.
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I don’t think they’ve ever done a release this late in the day.
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But Boundless isn’t a triple A or from a console game publisher? It was (and by some considered to still be) an EA game. And from what I’ve seen, open and frequent communication is the standard with those.
The two events were more cherries on top instead of the main method of communication. The software company assigns some employees to work with hospitals/networks such as the one I currently work for. Those employees basically try to work hand in hand with us on any issues we can’t resolve ourselves and they pretty frequently will spill the beans on upcoming things that we can look forward to that will make workflows for our end users better/more optimized/more efficient/more compliant, and so forth.
plus we are supposed to get the new body paint everyone was so excited about.
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(not just @ you, but using your post to reply…)
I don’t think BL compares well to hospital admin software or AAA title studios (yet). Game dev has additional factors. A level of mystery is sometimes appreciated by hardcore fans - this is the reason you often see studios post cryptic things like a single emoji on social media…or a short video with a few numbers. It creates desire & anticipation. (As you can see by the people here posting saying “give it to me now!!! I must have it!!!”) & the game devs/ceos sometimes become enigmas themselves, in the process - which feeds into it even more. Psychology is a big factor here…why are people that rage-quit still checking on the forums? How many times have some people left and come back? They are getting something else from this game. Maybe it’s comfort. Maybe it’s making their neurotransmitters happy, maybe it’s the social aspect.
I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors (let’s not forget - a lot of people are still working from home and are in odd life situations right now). I think a couple of large updates and the hiring of one talented social media wizard would help with the game’s perceived lack of communication/progression. Someone that would provide weekly “what’s up” streams every Friday or so & help keep the website/steam/social media popp’n & up to date.
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