Cappy, on 27 February 2016 - 05:37 PM, said:
From the perspective of a customer totally ignorant of software development:
it would be nice if they actually finished some of their features before undertaking a huge project like porting their half finished game to a new engine. If the engine was incapable of supporting the features they wanted to add, then why did they sell their project on said features five years ago? Did they not research the limitations? What was and wasn't possible? If they did, why were they not forthcoming with that information?
I suppose, in the end, it's a nice thought. An engine change wouldn't be totally unwelcome in my opinion. But it does frustrate me that this game seems more or less exactly the same as it was in closed beta. A contextless arena shooter with a ton of un-utilized potential, will a change of engine increase the chances of feature expansion and development?
PGI has been famously bad for this.
In fact, if I could only make one complaint about PGI, this would be it.
Many other things they've improved with, but this one they're exactly as they've always been:
PGI loves to announce a new project, work hard on it for a while, then simply forget about it. In fact, I'm actually surprised to see the CW development results next month.
We've seen this play out a LOT of times over the years. Aggressive balance passes? Hitbox corrections? They start these projects where they promise to keep working on a topic one patch at a time iteratively, do one or two passes, then just stop. The Academy? It's awesome. They talked about a lot of extra stuff they wanted to add.... but after doing the Steam launch, it's been largely forgotten too. The list is very, very long.
Now, I understand that limited developer time and numbers means they can only actively pursue so many things at one time, but these projects that get started and abandoned, it gets frustrating. They never really discuss it, either, the project is just never mentioned again.
I'd be fine if (admittedly, like CW here) they would keep coming back to them every couple months, or at least keep a list of current projects that are suspended/being worked on/slated for future action when time permits; just so you know if it's ever(* in the relatively near future) going to see some love again or if it's just done and gone.
Ah well. That's my real pet peeve, moreso than anything else, and always has been.