Upper Level Reviews of this Development Cycle

[Ganak]

Here is a suggestion:

A high level management review of this developement cycle.

Going back to last fall, we had speculation this mod could hit at the end of last year, or after the new year. Then, DDO's third anniversary. Now half the year is past.

Let's hold some people accountable. Let's review our mistakes and correct them. Even from an outsider's prospective, this could have been done better. Let's make some adjustments going forward.

My credibility on this? I challenge you to read my posting history. You won't find a more passionate defender (call me fan bois if you will) of this game. Been with the game with no breaks since launch.

I've about reached the breaking point. Like the three legged frog, I'm a real good indicator of the health of this game.

[secondchance]

well I'd agree that the "powers to be" have really "screwed the pooch" here ..... the time between content releases have grown while the content released has gotten smaller.....and if mod 9 does launch w/ only 4 new quest a raid and the battle field explorer area watch out for the boom that will drop on these pages....... it's been been a poor job on thier part....the mod is well past overdue we don't know why ? or even when at this point.... and right now from what we do know it appears that the mod to cover 4 new levels will only net us a few few new spells and 4 quests and a raid ......

how could anyone not see something wrong w/ this picture

[Tarrant]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

[Angelus_dead]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done?

Well, the need for a serious review of "Why did we do that?" goes back at least to the Module 5 Release on 09-27-07.

That's when the current problematic pattern became very clear. So I do suggest you guys reconsider the reasonings for those choices in light of what the results were, and keep it in mind for future projects (DDO, LORTO, and whatever else comes along)

Nine years ago Turbine published a post-mortem on Asheron's Call, listing the 5 biggest things that went right and wrong. It would be great if one of your developers repeated that for DDO, even if you only use it internally.

[kingfisher]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

true in theory, but there would have to be some people left around here when it drops to see it

[moonprophet]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

In order to do this, Turbine would have to SHOW us the finished product. Therein lies the rub.

[The_Phenx]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

Of course... we are reasonable people. The smart play for the future would be to do content releases independatly of system fixes and changes. That way we can have more things to do while new toys are being added.

We all just love the game, and don't want to see it go anywhere. To bad your not a masochist, then all the anger would truly feel like love...

[Lerincho]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

Tarrant we love ya bro for what you do for us, but let me interject with this.

1, it better be a nice finished product for the wait we have had to endure with minimal communication.
2, 12 months of "Super Secret" is beyond what even the CIA would call excessive.
3, So what we are being asked to do is wait for the mod to come out around christmas (at this point) and forgive all transgression and agrivation that was caused along the way?

* So then we should all feel sorry for Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez because they chose their path the same as Turbine producers have chosen their path? I think not. Doing something wrong in order to do something right is still wrong.

[Borror0]

In order to do this, Turbine would have to SHOW us the finished product. Therein lies the rub.

True but saying "Let's punish those at fault" when you have not even been explained why things are the way they are is nonsensical.

[The_Phenx]

Agreed, we need to take a step back see the reasons, and then judge with all the facts. Don't go all mob mentality.

It truly is easy to judge from a distance.

[Big-Dex]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

I'd love to have "the complete picture." Can I get a tour NOW(tm)???

Dex was here.

[Montrose]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

This model of accountability is not realistic for projects that are well and truly overdue by anyone's standards. For a project that is running (very) late one should not promote a "wait and see" paradigm. That's the Duke Nukem philosophy of software development.

So heres where I get flamed a lot. I worked on a very large software development product that many people have strong negative feelings around. This product is still mocked today in commercials with two people set against a white background. We made some of the same mistakes that I beleive you may be making (though I do not work at Turbine, so I could be mistaken). Mistakes like the dev cycle going way too long due to feature creep, trying to react to the market during development, marketing promising before talking to dev, etc etc etc.

In the end, the product was not well recieved, even though it is not nearly as bad as the negative press would have one believe (opinions will differ here I am sure). We simply took tooo long, promised too much, and in the end weren't able to complete the vision and hit any sort of realistic ship date.

At this point the hype for Mod 9 is huge. People have been waiting a long long time for a product they truly want to use, and so unless Mod 9 beams pure happy waves directly into our brains, there is going to be a lot of "I waited how long for *this*?"

So, to get back to the point, yes there is accountability to be had on points that can be observed now, such as:

1) Over-reaching for mod 9.
I would find it very difficult to believe that parts of Mod 9 could not be released early. Is every line of code inter-dependent? If so, talk to your dev team about best practice coding. If not, release something early. Throw us a bone.

2) Poor handling of community sentiment.
Even the hard-core self-professed "fan boi" forum readers are at the tipping point. Clearly this is not a PR masterpiece. Killing the weekly dev reports was an espeically nice touch.

3) Poor management of expectations around release date
To be fair, you have given us good sneak peeks of the kinds of things in Mod 9. Capstones, quest finding tech, new area visuals, etc. That's all goodness.

However, we have gotten very little in the way of (accurate) timeline. Unless I missed something, we don't know what week, month or even quarter that you are targeting.

4) Giving us some other time sink, such as community events
So Mod 9 is overdue. Long overdue. Can't you do something with the tech you already have? Merlask used to organize community events before she even worked at the company. Clearly you can use existing tech to do things like scavenger hunts, organized PvP's for prizes, Role-Playing events, Races (swim around Atraxia's haven, fastest person wins, yay!)

Have competitions where you have ghost judges watch people take down various raids and give prizes for fastest completion. Set up gauntlet challenges like the WW Gauntlet that I vaguely rmember reading about.

No, not everyone will participate. But if you advertise the event, make the prizes juicy, and make the challenge challenging (solo crucible on elite. Yes, it can be done!) then you might attract some people to give it a go.

Ok, long story short (too late!) it is clear that there *are* problems and mistakes and people *can* be held accountable for those problems and mistakes regardless of the final product.

[Accelerando]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

Somebody needs to be held accountable. Since Jan 2008 we have received 4 high level quests and two raids. That is a total of 6 playable instances in 14 months. That is .4 (rounded up thank you) new end game instances per month... for $15 per player. That is completely unacceptable. Turbine has taken advantage of their fan base sucking at their wallets during a time when many people are hurting for cash. Now we are getting into the realm of the unethical.

So yes, someone does need to be held accountable, either it is the EP, who allowed for such a slow dev cycle, the devs themselves for spending too much of their workdays on youtube, or if there is indeed a massive content update coming soon ( massive honeslty being 25+ endgame instances) and it is hush hush, fire the lawyer that signed the deal to make it so.

BTW Turbine... do you monitor your employee computer usage? You should. Guaranteed not only are you paying hundreds of dollars a day for non job relevant web surfing, we(your playerbase) are also.

[Ganak]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

I agree. Thanks Tarrant for the note.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today My apologies, I am on your side and share a similar commitment to DDO (I've been saving my vacation time for the release of mod 9 if that tells you anything. Maybe that's my reason for being grumpy; I need a vacation).


That said Tarrant, we have many "grumpy" people these days.

I've been reviewing many case studies of late on "5-star" organizations for work. I am the head floor manager for a Global IT Desk for a fortune 200 company. I'm attempting to shift our culture to a "5 star" mentality. A characteristic of a "5-star" organization is that good is never good enough. Mistakes are always reviewed. Continual improvement is constantly practiced. Strive to be perfect. Settle for no less.


I would challenge the DDO team to be cautious of becoming too defensive. We had upper level content in mod 6 on 1/30/09, mod 7 on 6/3/08 and mod 8 on 10/29/08. We've had some good previews since, but we have alot of players understandably frustrated due to limited information. How can we do better in the future? Not saying there is not good work being done by the DDO team. I'm challenging the DDO team to grow and improve from this. Thanks for all you do

[SimVerg]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

You're 6 months behind on a 3 month(does anyone still believe this?) release cycle. Unless mod 9 is Duke Nukem Forever, your PM's should probably be trying to figure out how you got here. The conclusion won't necessarily be, "Wow, I'm incompetent" but come on, it needs to be done.

[Angelus_dead]

This product is still mocked today in commercials with two people set against a white background.

Whatever could it be!??

Is every line of code inter-dependent? If so, talk to your dev team about best practice coding.

You presume the existence of a dev team.

Killing the weekly dev reports was an espeically nice touch.

As should be obvious by now, the real reason the Weekly Development Activities were canceled is because they weren't going to have development to report on each week (or even close to that).

[Angelus_dead]

BTW Turbine... do you monitor your employee computer usage? You should. Guaranteed not only are you paying hundreds of dollars a day for non job relevant web surfing, we(your playerbase) are also.

For the record, non-related surfing improves job performance. Just so you know.

(Here's a better thing to improve performance)

[Montrose]

Whatever could it be!??

I wasn't being cute so much as intentionally vague-ish, so as not to get me fired.

[Charlemagne2]

May I suggest that before you hold people accountable and determine that things could have been done differently, you see what the finished product is and the reasoning behind what was done? You may feel the same as you do now, but at least you'll have a more complete picture.

The world is judged by deadlines one the management has seemed to forgotten.

Missed deadlines in almost any field cause negative consequences, except in the regards to upper mgnt's treatment of the DDO product

[Tarrant]

Ok guys, we're making an effort to consolidate feedback and HAVE SOME FUN (on the side)!!!! So move it over to the Mod 9 Tailgate Party please!