Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

the premise that the game would die with 6 people working on legendaries is not based on anything.
Even MO never claimed the game will die without those devs working on the expansion.

also you miss his point, the legendaries are not simply some extra. they are part of the last product, you and the developers are acting like hot is over, but it hasnt been delivered as advertised.

his point is that anet is reneging on the last product they sold, supposedly to improve the next product they want to sell.

the only way your reasoning makes sense is if you assume
1) delivering on legendaries will bankrupt the company
2) if the company doesnt go bankrupt, they will later deliver on what they sold you at no new cos

neither of which is likely.
1) because even though earnings are down, a 1 million investment(hiring more developers) over the next 2 years, would not come close to breaking their backs
2) because last time they were in the same situation, they chose to develop legendaries as part of HOT, in order to enrich their new product, rather than include them in the old product they already sold.

from anet’s best for business side, the question is, is the loss of integrity going to negatively impact earnings more than the cost of hiring 6 additional devs for 2 years.

from the consumer side, its weather the loss of trust in the developer will change the percieved value of the product. or more simply, do you feel comfortable doing business with these guys.

i personally think the loss is greater than their money saved, especially outside of box sales.

It’s not that the game would die because of those six, it was that those six were being held up by other departments because of the workloads of those departments. So you could have six people twiddling their thumbs, blocked from finishing off any additional legendary weapons or you reassign them. Of course the ideal solution is to staff up those departments with the bottlenecks but doing that tends to make the bottleneck worse.

Brook’s Law – adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

the premise that the game would die with 6 people working on legendaries is not based on anything.
Even MO never claimed the game will die without those devs working on the expansion.

also you miss his point, the legendaries are not simply some extra. they are part of the last product, you and the developers are acting like hot is over, but it hasnt been delivered as advertised.

his point is that anet is reneging on the last product they sold, supposedly to improve the next product they want to sell.

the only way your reasoning makes sense is if you assume
1) delivering on legendaries will bankrupt the company
2) if the company doesnt go bankrupt, they will later deliver on what they sold you at no new cos

neither of which is likely.
1) because even though earnings are down, a 1 million investment(hiring more developers) over the next 2 years, would not come close to breaking their backs
2) because last time they were in the same situation, they chose to develop legendaries as part of HOT, in order to enrich their new product, rather than include them in the old product they already sold.

from anet’s best for business side, the question is, is the loss of integrity going to negatively impact earnings more than the cost of hiring 6 additional devs for 2 years.

from the consumer side, its weather the loss of trust in the developer will change the percieved value of the product. or more simply, do you feel comfortable doing business with these guys.

i personally think the loss is greater than their money saved, especially outside of box sales.

It’s not that the game would die because of those six, it was that those six were being held up by other departments because of the workloads of those departments. So you could have six people twiddling their thumbs, blocked from finishing off any additional legendary weapons or you reassign them. Of course the ideal solution is to staff up those departments with the bottlenecks but doing that tends to make the bottleneck worse.

Brook’s Law – adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

that law is not a law, its a claim. its an oversimplification, it actually describes a situation of poor management, and can be avoided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%E2%80%99_law

its more about how you add manpower, and what type of systems/plans you have in place.

and if the six devs had little to do, you can use them as floating resources. making them do legendary work only as needed.

point is, its a choice, and it can be solved. they decided not to try

And how is those six being floating resources any different than them no long actively working on new legendary weapons. In either case new legendary weapons aren’t being worked on.

And I’ve seen Brook’s Law in action. New people require training and additional oversight until they’ve been successfully integrated. That training and oversight comes from your experienced employees, the very ones you are trying to ease the workload off of. So if you are in a crunch in your department, staffing up during the crunch will, for a while at least reduce the department’s throughput. Now for how long is totally related to how quickly that new employee can adopt to “how things are done” since I’m assuming they at least are competent with most of the tool chain the department uses. These groups aren’t dozens of people but a handful so pulling one awayfrom their work to oversee a new hire, even if we are talking 20%, significantly impacts that group’s output.

So the best time to add personal is when you actually aren’t busy, however if reduced income is an issue, having more personal than you need now so you have enough when the crunch comes may not be fiduciarily responsible behavior.

I’ve worked at software companies for 30 years now. Every single one is run as a fire department. It’s always crunch time, there are always fires that need to be put out right now. Maybe it’s east coast Vs west coast thing but none of my programmer friends who don’t work where I work are someplace that embraced agile development or any other of the “better” practices. Instead management chooses things like open floor plans, hot bunking and standing desks but the old waterfall method is sadly alive and well.

honestly i don’t care about the delivery date of the legendary. the big selling point was armour and raids, neither of those things are online either, however I do like the “episodic” delivery method of content, and these content are not “for the next expansion” but part of the long term experience of GW2, i find the concept acceptable even if I agree with the pro-“anet owns the player legendary” argument, that legendary were “oversold” as part of the “HOT experience”.

but the thing is, should the MMO experience be treated like retail game?

imo, given the amount of complain there has been about the uninteresting method of getting the new precur/legendary. it might be a good idea for them to stop and consider a more story orented path for future legendaries even if that might require them to stop their previous legendary plans. i mean seriously do you want more legendary to be just a grind fest with no background or in-game lore?

Behellagh.1468:

And how is being floating resources any different than them no long actively working on new legendary weapons. In either case new legendary weapons aren’t being worked on.

And I’ve seen Brook’s Law in action. New people require training and additional oversight until they’ve been successfully integrated. That training and oversight comes from your experienced employees, the very ones you are trying to ease the workload off of. So if you are in a crunch in your department, staffing up during the crunch will, for a while at least reduce the department’s throughput. Now for how long is totally related to how quickly that new employee can adopt to “how things are done” since I’m assuming they at least are competent with most of the tool chain the department uses. These groups aren’t dozens of people but a handful so pulling one awayfrom their work to oversee a new hire, even if we are talking 20%, significantly impacts that group’s output.

So the best time to add personal is when you actually aren’t busy, however if reduced income is an issue, having more personal than you need now so you have enough when the crunch comes may not be fiduciarily responsible behavior.

the point is brooks law, is an example of pitfall in software development, not an inescapable equation. its also created by poor management, and mitigated by good management.

keep in mind brooks law has to do with being late. the issues you are talking about are temporary. the way to solve them is not to abandon the schedule, it is to adapt the schedule and use the proper resources.

point is, this isnt a forgone conclusion, or something they had no rational choice but to do. they basically decided, they dont want to spend the energy/time/money to meet their HOT obligations.
they feel that energy is better spent on the next project

oh yeah, and the floating was in response to your claim that the legendary team was spending too much time waiting on other people.

anyhow their entire content pipeline for legendaries was unecessarily involved, and not streamlined

Isn’t Season 3 part of the HoT obligations? Pretty sure there would be some lamentations about Living Story being on hold for a much longer time. Guess it’s a trade-off between the two, right now.

From the same page that ‘advertised’ new Legendaries:

LIVING WORLD

Of course, the story of Tyria will continue beyond the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

From the ‘Legendary Weapons’ thread:

This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

Thus, the content the six Devs were working on was postponed, so the content the six Devs are working on, now, could be released sooner. I can’t say which content is more popular with the playerbase as a whole. I know I, personally, would always rather have more Living Story, and sooner than later.

Dashingsteel.3410:

Anet has your money for HoT. There is no incentive for them to finish what they promised. They are already onto the next moneymaker. They have a massive staff working on the next expansion.

Be extremely wary when Anet starts advertising the next expansion. I would take any features advertised to be added after launch with a grain of salt. In fact, you might want to take any advertised features with a grain of salt since any one of them might end up being “too much work that will be a strain on the staff”.

The incentive is keeping customers happy

[We have an open thread for this discussion. Please continue there. Thank you!]

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Legendary-weapons-6