Lack of honesty from NWI

@pakislav said in Lack of honesty from NWI:

Insurgency 2014 had 7 maps at the start. Sandstorm has six that are much bigger and better.

By the time the game gained more popularity, it had many more maps. The team is now much bigger and much more capable of giving us more maps.

If NWI drops another awesome patch like the one from November the game might very well be in a perfect state for release.

Two weeks is not enough time to fix every issue in the game. And you can’t release a major patch right before launch, you then need time to fix all the issues caused by it. There will be bugs that need to be patched. We haven’t even played Precinct yet, I’m sure that will have issues just like all the other maps did. You need time to test this stuff and make sure it’s ready for the release.

But I seriously don't care in the slightest about that arbitrary release since I fully expect the development of the game to continue for years like with previous NWI titles.

Player base will suffer if the game has a poor release. People don’t buy a game because it looks “promising”, they buy it because it looks “good”.

I recommended they they delay the release by several months.

You've done no such thing in this thread.

“This game is obviously not going to be ready for release on December 12. It does not have the stability or content. But that's alright, I would be happy to see this game delayed for another few months. Release it in the Spring if you have to. Pause the beta if you worry people will get sick of the game by the time it releases. But I don't want to see this game have a disaster launch because NWI released it to early. That happens to often, and is too easy to avoid.”

You visciously attacked the devs for "dishonesty" as if you were writing an article for buzzfeed about gun violence from the perspective of a soyboy millenial journalist.

“Okay so despite the title, I'm really not sure whether NWI is trying to be dishonest, being forced to do so, or just extremely bad at estimating development times. Whatever it is, they've been giving us extremely unrealistic dates and ranges for development progress since the announcement of the title in 2016. I think a lot of people have noticed this, but I haven't seen any talk about it.”

“Granted I have zero experience developing a game, but when everything they announce is as unrealistic as it is, it makes me question their honesty.”

Again, learn to speak for yourself.

last edited by Tooth Decay

@tooth-decay said in Lack of honesty from NWI:

@pakislav said in Lack of honesty from NWI:

Insurgency 2014 had 7 maps at the start. Sandstorm has six that are much bigger and better.

By the time the game gained more popularity, it had many more maps. The team is now much bigger and much more capable of giving us more maps.

There were maybe 20ish maps added over the span of three years. Many, like Tell and Station, were made by the community and won map contests.

Also, I'd rather have less maps that are more flushed out than the fuckton of maps in Ins2014, where some are better than others (cough Contact cough).

Two weeks is not enough time to fix every issue in the game.

They won't fix every issue with the game. That's not how game development works. Bug fixes are gonna come out for months, and fucking hell, probably years. You think the recent CoD games have been bug-free on launch?

Player base will suffer if the game has a poor release. People don’t buy a game because it looks “promising”, they buy it because it looks “good”.

If it does, it'll really only be temporary. It's not like Sandstorm is going to completely lose its playerbase on launch unless NWI really fucks up, which I doubt.

People definitely buy games that look promising; just look at Escape From Tarkov.

I'm not sure if it's been said before, but I'll reiterate: NWI is an indie developer. They aren't AAA devs with AAA funding, and it's completely outrageous IMO when AAA devs have to delay a game's launch by several months (cough BFV cough ), but Sandstorm is a fucking awesome Tactical FPS being made by 37 developers. I think you've got to give them some slack; they're taking on a big project here.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@MarksmanMax
This game is meant to tap into the market of mainstream FPS games. The success of AAA games has a lot to do with the launch. Just look at Titanfall 2. Very good game, but failed because it got little attention at launch. Insurgency won’t be treated any differently with people used to playing Battlefield. They may like the gameplay, but the lack of content and performance will instantly turn them off.

I'm not sure if it's been said before, but I'll reiterate: NWI is an indie developer. They aren't AAA devs with AAA funding, and it's completely outrageous IMO when AAA devs have to delay a game's launch by several months (cough BFV cough ), but Sandstorm is a fucking awesome Tactical FPS being made by 37 developers. I think you've got to give them some slack; they're taking on a big project here.

Great, I never criticized the development speed of this game. My criticism is of the unrealistic development times they’ve been giving. The reality of the development time wasn’t even in the same ballpark of their estimate. Now they want to release this game with little testing, performance issues, and half the planned content so that they can say it was released in 2018.

last edited by Tooth Decay

@Tooth-Decay

Developers dependent on publishers can have both forces demanding progress schedules in contracts and a tough time estimating development time - Both of these are very probably existing for NWI, most devs also need to force scheduled goals on themselves to survive economically you probably know as well.

If you have worked with dead lines you know it is both tough and demanding, sometimes making it hard to make your product / work task / school work / etc as envisioned within the time limit - Especially in cooperating with people across different fields of work - Having deadlines months and sometimes even years in advance is a real pain in most fields.

Dishonesty? No, transparent, communicative and making some honest mistakes- Having problems with scheduling is normal and should be expected, people buying early access should understand this to avoid unrealistic expectations. (Heard of DayZ - I bought it in 2014, it is soon ready for release now! That is some proper scheduling challenges).

"The other most frequently found (65%) were problems in the design phase and delay or optimistic schedule" quote article linked below.

Read about game development challenges if you are interested. This article was good imo:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220686446_What_went_wrong_A_survey_of_problems_in_game_development

Name link 2009:
What Went Wrong? A Survey of Problems in
Game Development
FABIO PETRILLO, MARCELO PIMENTA, FRANCISCO TRINDADE, and
CARLOS DIETRICH
Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

last edited by Pacalis

@pacalis That is something I’ve considered, but I’m pretty sure NWI has been giving unrealistic development times since before Focus Home Interactive came along. I definitely wouldn’t leave that out of the question, though.

Going over budget could also be a reason why they are releasing this game in its current state, but it still doesn’t explain how they were so far off with their estimates. It also shouldn’t be much of a problem anymore since they should have sold enough beta copies to keep supporting the game.

Anyway those are both very possible, but I felt getting into that stuff (and some other things) would have made my initial post too long. And poor communication and expectations have been issues for a lot of other games, but it’s not something I would expect from NWI.

@tooth-decay said in Lack of honesty from NWI:
"RS2 got a lot of criticism for only having 8 maps. And of course more maps will come after launch, but launch should be where you have the game in a finished state, not “we’ll fix it later”. A lot of a game’s success comes down to how it was when it launched. Just look at No Man’s Sky."

I believe it's difficult to compare Rising Storm developer Tripwire with NWI as Tripwire is a much larger company and therefore is out of the indie developer ballgame where the stakes are a lot higher [being an indie developer]. Just look at the revenue of both companies. Numbers may be inaccurate or outdated, but works as a comparison of relative size (feel free to correct me if numbers looks off):

Revenue Tripwire: $86.2M
Revenue NWI: $4.6M

Source:
https://www.zoominfo.com/c/new-world-interactive-llc/356350665
https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/company/tripwire-inc-104965-64318?tab=financials

NWI is most likely aware that their game should be perfect at launch, and they definitely would try to achieve that, but as I mentioned, economic pressure demands fixed target dates, both to keep a budget, honour contracts, and create good marketing -> When a company sets a release date they can use this when marketing the game to draw customers and make a hype, no company would take a delayed release lightly, as it affects revenue. This have been communicated by NWI themselves across different media platforms - Still, I have a lot of faith in NWI because they have proved again and again that they are able to create solid games for us. I am actually quite exited about how much NWI can be able to achieve in the coming years, as Focus Home Interactive looks like a solid publisher, both from a financial point of view and the amount of cool games they have in their stable already. Also Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful tool, and if you look at the Insurgency 2014 maps from within the map creator [Insurgency SDK], it is quite impressive to see what they were able to squeeze out with a more limited engine. When NWI gets more experience with UE4, they can achieve even more.

Try looking at the longer perspective and don't worry too much - I am sure they both have qualified people making sure they will do what it takes to get a nice end result and will give Insurgency Sandstorm a lot of nurture post-release. Future looks bright for NWI from my point of view, and what Insurgency Sandstorm is already, is quite amazing and will only get better in time=)

EDIT: Even Nvidia is strongly aboard with NWI at this game, and are optimizing their software to suit Insurgency Sandstorm. That's cool with me.

last edited by Pacalis

@pacalis not to mention the whole point of Steam is to assist indie companies with getting their games out. Hence why they offer alpha and beta testing the way they do before launch reviews.

@tooth-decay said in Lack of honesty from NWI:

So in February 2017 NWI was hoping to have a closed alpha in ten months.

...

So then it's summer of 2018, around when the closed alpha was launched. ...

Just fyi, the alpha started in January 2018.

@snuffeldjuret It wasn’t even much of an alpha. Few people were accepted, and I believe it only featured the map Hideout against bots. I would argue the alpha they had in mind when they mentioned it in 2017 was the one in July of this year.

@tooth-decay You would argue that? Well it removes the credibility of everything else you said because arguing that point is utterly ridiculous, and not correct of course. The dishonesty I see comes from you, not NWI.

@snuffeldjuret Removes all credibility? I laid out the whole development process of this using articles from NWI’s official website. Mentioning an alpha where a few hundred players were accepted does not discredit the entire post. While some points are open for debate, the basis of I’ve been saying is pretty straightforward- NWI has been giving very poor estimates for the amount of work and time they would need for development, and it’s having a negative effect on the game. This is pretty obvious even without going through all the links and quotes.

last edited by Tooth Decay

@tooth-decay
It is not your posts tooth. It's your train of thought. The direction and “way” in which you are using said posts. And for me personally, it's your inability to rationally factor in what NWI has done so far and will do later. Their reputation should account for more than what you are allowing.
Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't put it past you to pat yourself on the back for the giant update on the 6th that rolled out, because you “ put the pressure on NWI” - this is the vibe I am getting from you dude....

last edited by Max80

@max80 That being said, I do wanna take partial credit for the M9 getting an actual sight picture since I did post about it in the Forums and the Discord lmao.

@max80 My point was never that they aren’t coming out with content fast enough. It’s that their goals and development times for this game have been unrealistic. While I’m glad to see the patch they came out with, what I really want to see is the release be delayed. Yes, I do have faith that either way we will get more than enough content for this, but as a game meant to expand the player base, it should have that needed content at launch.

@tooth-decay My point is if you disregard the alpha for being "too small", then you don't seem like a rational person and honestly I have no interest in reading the rest of your post. There is only so much time in the world.

last edited by Snuffeldjuret

@snuffeldjuret I was in the more recent CTA and it featured basically everything in the game. Hell, I've played with shit in the Alpha that's still not in-game.

I actually had no idea that there was an initial plan for an offline story campaign. That would be so lit! And it would be a first, in the tactical shooter industry. Ah well.

There is definitely a current lack of content but I doubt that this is the final build before release. It has so much polish and so much potential already that I bet they have a ton of good stuff coming our way. What makes this game so promising, though, is community. If we need more content, we can ask for some. They will most likely consider it. As for dishonesty, I don't think that's really the right word. it's more like milestones promised, but not delivered due to time constraints and most likely patch jobs and hotfixes.

Games aren't easy to program and they aren't always perfect the whole way through development. Take Bannerlord, for example. 2017 release, even on their steam page, had to be delayed due to perfection. Give it time, and a little faith ❤