Community Update - #002 - Current Development Status & Delay

[Antii]

With all honesty, I could be ranting and being pissed that another delay was made, when I was super hyped that the server gonna launch this year 2022, but I won't do that cause I understand the development side of the story, it's not something you can do in five minutes, everything needes to be fleshed out and look good for the full experience. Cause I can definitely gurantee that players would be marching with torchers the first time they fell under the map while driving and would come to forums or discord that "this is trash we don't want this". And that has unfortunately happed to GTA World LC, it was launched and people were pissed off at how janky and bugged it was. I believe in that @Biography and his team will do their best to bring us something we haven't seen. It's better late then never. I'm gonna stick around until it's released that's for sure.

[Biography]

33 minutes ago, Rodrigo_Ferrer said:

I respect the honesty, transparency, and quite frankly the integrity however looking at development team roadmap some of the more depthful systems are yet to be implemented, and with Christmas around the corner a release in 2023 Q1 is a possibility not a probability. 

Considering that economy and businesses were the only remaining major features, I would expect more work to go into that and less into worrying about some fictional mayoral election storyline when there isn't a server to play or the elections to be held in. There's IC news but no IC. 
 

A year is a long time to set as a target and be unable to deliver. The momentum has shifted from excitement to disappointment, and now you only have 4 months which is 1/3 of the time with added pressure so I genuinely hope the new release target was thought through and not just a quick promise. 

 

Anyway, it's a marathon not a sprint and I don't want to make a bad situation worse so hopefully we can all have nice holidays and come back rested and refreshed at the start of the year. 

 

I absolutely disagree with your comment regarding the storyline.

 

The storyline is server lore and if you wish to have good server lore, you must take actions in that direction prior to your launch. You can't do good worldbuilding in a day or a week. 

 

Also, we are not "worrying about storyline" because that is not created by the developers. The development department does.. development and the community department does its own thing. None of the storybuilding affects the speed of the development, so I find your comment absolutely illogical in that regard. Sorry.

[Fat Bulldog Ferrer]

33 minutes ago, Biography said:

I absolutely disagree with your comment regarding the storyline.

 

The storyline is server lore and if you wish to have good server lore, you must take actions in that direction prior to your launch. You can't do good worldbuilding in a day or a week. 

 

Also, we are not "worrying about storyline" because that is not created by the developers. The development department does.. development and the community department does its own thing. None of the storybuilding affects the speed of the development, so I find your comment absolutely illogical in that regard. Sorry.

 

I know it's not created by the developers but the economy and businesses aren't created by developers either unless you're telling me the delay is solely on developers while everything is laid out and ready for them to be developed considering it's been since summer that they were the ''only remaining major features'' and 5 months later they're not even in development according to the development team roadmap. My point was regarding priorities not who's tasked with or responsible for what. Otherwise the math doesn't add up. 

 

Maybe I'm old school but I'd rather have a server I can play in and create roleplay that can be documented rather than read fucking lore and be unable to play. Anything you post on the forum is meaningless unless there's real roleplay. 

 

For the record, I don't want to discredit the work that's been put into the build-up and or the lore that should compliment the real roleplay in the future and make it more immersive but more effort should be put into expectation management and setting deadlines that are both realistic and striven to be met. If I knew you couldn't deliver in the promised time frame I wouldn't have spent as long on a faction project I can't now start due to changed circumstances. Though being emotionally invested that's not only the rationale talking and I don't want to start an argument but I would like expectations to be managed better. That's all.

[Brett]

@Rodrigo_Ferrer

 

We're going to hold an opposite opinion on the aspect of lore being meaningless without real roleplay, as it flies in the face of absolutely everything roleplay is built upon. If what you were saying in that department was true, then factions both illegal and legal wouldn't spend the time they do making faction threads detailing histories going back decades. They wouldn't attempt to make lore that pre-exist the server, in order to ensure they have a baseline to continue building upon. That has always been a foundation of roleplay, and thus to be in any form of opposition by declaring it meaningless without "real roleplay," just doesn't make sense now, and even if you're considering yourself "old school," it doesn't even make sense back then either as this has always been something done since the early days of even LSRP. This argument to me makes absolutely zero sense.

 

On the note of development, I think what you may be missing on this topic is that although yes there were only a few remaining features that needed to be done back then, that was in regards to V1. When V2 started, the ENTIRE codebase had to be rescripted from top to bottom. It wasn't a matter of "Well just code these last few things." It was "Recode absolutely every line of code in a new language and make it streamlined then what it originally was." And that rescript is basically coming to a conclusion in only 4 months time, so I hope that makes that situation more clear as it wasn't as simple as just a few more systems. 

[Biography]

4 minutes ago, Rodrigo_Ferrer said:

I know it's not created by the developers but the economy and businesses aren't created by developers either unless you're telling me the delay is solely on developers while everything is laid out and ready for them to be developed considering it's been since summer that they were the ''only remaining major features'' and 5 months later they're not even in development according to the development team roadmap. My point was regarding priorities not who's tasked with or responsible for what. Otherwise the math doesn't add up. 

 

All script documentation has been completed and has been ready for months. 

 

Not sure how the math doesn't add up. Yes, economy and businesses were the only remaining features. And yes, they are on the to-do list now. You can't start working on major scripts like that before you've set up correlating scripts. It is much easier to tie them to those major systems at the end. You can't build a roof without foundation.

 

If your point was regarding development priorities, your comment about the server lore makes no sense. Why at all bring that up if your true argument was the development priorities?

 

Either way, your emotional investment is well understood by many.

[Chef]

Servers that start without a good lore are destined to be a rinse and repeat of every other server that has existed. Everyone goes in game day 1 and makes their own conflicting lores that mean fuck all in the long run and get overwritten constantly.

 

It is what it is, you're delaying to give us a more solid finished product so I'll continue to be patient and hopeful. 

 

One thing that was mentioned but I didn't see in the announcement was a free roam server for us to scope out the v2 map. Should we expect that soon? @Biography

[Biography]

@Chef Yep, we are making some final touches before it gets out. Shouldnt take more than a couple of days.

 

It's not going to be restricted to EA, as we want as much help as possible finding bugs.

 

Whilst we have made so many improvements on the map, IMO, it is far from being fully optimized and my personal prediction is that it will take a number of months to get rid of 99% of all bugs. This of course depends on factors such as how big of a team we have to fix those, whether they are motivated to work, whether we need to direct finance to them, etc. 

 

Either way, it will be interesting to see how many people actually care about development and will spend their free time finding and reporting bugs. It's funny how some people refuse to spend 30 minutes doing that, but then are absolutely ungrateful that a lot of people here have spent 2 years doing exactly the same.

 

It's one thing to demand a good server, but the reality is many people are either too lazy or not interested to spend time building the community. But that is sonwwhat understandable since many people have IRL commitments. From my perspective, it's very easy to tell which people are actual community supporters. We are grateful for all donators, but a donation doesn't necessarily make one a community supporter, on matter of principle.

[Fat Bulldog Ferrer]

33 minutes ago, Biography said:

All script documentation has been completed and has been ready for months. 

 

Not sure how the math doesn't add up. Yes, economy and businesses were the only remaining features. And yes, they are on the to-do list now. You can't start working on major scripts like that before you've set up correlating scripts. It is much easier to tie them to those major systems at the end. You can't build a roof without foundation.

 

If your point was regarding development priorities, your comment about the server lore makes no sense. Why at all bring that up if your true argument was the development priorities?

 

Either way, your emotional investment is well understood by many.

 

I didn't intend to write more than the first reply in this topic but here we are. My point was very fucking simple. Lore without the server is meaningless. Is there a server? No. So the lore will become meaningful when the server launches. Simple as. So worry more about delivering on the expectations you've set and promises you've made rather than teasing me with content that does fuck all. Once you can do that, others can rely on you and not waste their time planning and preparing projects based on given timelines. 

 

Since I replied from a source of frustration rather than rationale I overexaggerated, apologize and am not going to reply here again. 

[Biography]

I am sorry, Ferrer, you usually bring up valid questions, but none of what you wrote this time makes any sense and it appears as if you are trying to find something to complain about just for the sake of it.

 

1. First, you said the following, implying that we are wasting time on a storyline as opposed to development:

"Remaining major features, I would expect more work to go into that and less into worrying about some fictional mayoral election storyline"

 

2. Then after challenged, you said your actual concern was solely which scripts the dev team is prioritizing. Why then bring server lore at all?

 

3. Now you are saying that server lore is meaningless, but if it is, why at all bring it up as if this is some sort of a terrible ordeal that we made? Why exactly does it annoy you that we are writing lore before the server opens as opposed to when it does? Is it going to hurt your roleplay, faction or what? 

 

We went from 1 to 3 different statements in a matter of minutes, which to me indicates you just want to complain for the sake of it. I get you are disappointed but you are not going to achieve anything by complaining about bogus stuff. I apologize when we make mistakes, but what you are doing right now is stupid.

 

I won't address your comment regarding the relevancy of lore as I thought you were someone who understood what RP is about, but apparently I was wrong.

[Fat Bulldog Ferrer]

5 minutes ago, Biography said:

I am sorry, Ferrer, you usually bring up valid questions, but none of what you wrote this time makes any sense and it appears as if you are trying to find something to complain about just for the sake of it.

 

1. First, you said the following, implying that we are wasting time on a storyline as opposed to development:

"Remaining major features, I would expect more work to go into that and less into worrying about some fictional mayoral election storyline"

 

2. Then after challenged, you said your actual concern was solely which scripts the dev team is prioritizing. Why then bring server lore at all?

 

3. Now you are saying that server lore is meaningless, but if it is, why at all bring it up as if this is some sort of a terrible ordeal that we made? Why exactly does it annoy you that we are writing lore before the server opens as opposed to when it does? Is it going to hurt your roleplay, faction or what? 

 

We went from 1 to 3 different statements in a matter of minutes, which to me indicates you just want to complain for the sake of it. I get you are disappointed but you are not going to achieve anything by complaining about bogus stuff. I apologize when we make mistakes, but what you are doing right now is stupid.

 

I won't address your comment regarding the relevancy of lore as I thought you were someone who understood what RP is about, but apparently I was wrong.

 

Alright. Since you really want to continue this back and forth let's do this.

 

Expectation management. As a community manager, it's your responsibility to communicate and make clear to all parties involved what they should expect - and when they should expect it. The when in question was 2022 which is a full year. 12 months. 52 weeks. It didn't have to be spring 2022. It didn't have to be summer 2022. It didn't have to be fall 2022. It had to be in 2022. I know it's a volunteer project so you don't owe me shit but I expected (expectation minus outcome results in disappointment) that I can rely on you being able to deliver on a year-long window. Hindsight 20/20 I should've just waited until the server launched: another lesson not to trust blindly even when people have good intentions and seem competent because they can still be irresponsible with the promises and expectations they set not thinking other people are making plans and preparations based on them.

 

I never said lore wasn't relevant. I never said lore wasn't meaningful. I said it's meaningless when there's no server. My frustration and backlash regarding development, lore, priorities, etc. was irrational and I admitted and apologized for it but you still care more about putting me in my place than keeping your promises instead of posting teasers. Why don't you make a trailer of a girl in a sexy lingerie playing hard to get? That's what you come off as right now with the attitude. 

 

I simply don't grasp the concept of someone as competent as you being off by so much, and it hurting my bottom line in the process. Maybe once you read to understand my perspective you'll understand why I'm frustrated and barking at you in the first place. Though frankly, as I said, I was in a fairly festive mood after the first post. Now I'm more disappointed than anything.

 

Why don't you take time off until New Year's if you're depressed and burned out from overworking on a volunteer project? Clear your mind and give me a deadline I can rely on and we can shrug off being mean to each other leading up to Christmas.