[Jokhah]

-support

Fail to meet deadline = bitchfest

Deadline unenforceable

Check approved suggestions for a preview into new features

So if people complain because you fail to meet a deadline, the best solution is to not tell them anything and remain in the mist?
If you fail to reach your goal and people become sad, you think the solution is to not put goals in front of yourself at all?

Or would you agree that having long and short-term goals while promoting civil discussion is the optimal solution?

Deadlines may be hard to complete, but not having any goals or pressure results in the lack of motivation.

"Preview" is not the same as "set goals" in the same way as a factory visit is not the same as ordering from a factory.
The former is showing off the capabilities and the latter is taking advantage of them.

Responding by part:

1: People's complaints don't honestly matter to me.  I volunteer my time to work on code related matters.  I'm not paid, nor are many of those working in the same fashion.  Though there are goals, I'm not going to put myself in a hard spot or make false promises to satisfy your need for updates.

2: I do not agree that promoting long nor short term goals would have a civil discussion at all.  Look around the history here and you'll see what I mean.

3: Deadlines may or may not be hard to meet.  However, since I volunteer my time as opposed to being paid for it, the goals are not my motivation for working.  My motivation is my willingness to assist in the process.

4: Set goals are not a good idea with the current business model of this community's LLC as it has no way to ensure it can accomplish anything without relying on people to volunteer.




I get what you guys are after, but you seem to be missing the concept that this isn't a gaming company with a full development team / people actively applying for paid job positions.  I'm a volunteer, not a slave, and refuse to be pushed into a deadline state for the sake of pleasing those who do not actually contribute to the development process so that they don't "quit playing."

Sounds cold as hell, but it's not.  Its just being honest about the situation.

If you have a solution to the lack of developers and lack of output of money for tasks completed, I'm sure many would be happy enough to work inside a deadline.  As we lack both developers and finances to pay them, this concept could cause more people to leave as opposed to pushing themselves into more work with nothing to show for it.

Many of us are doing this for various reasons, however in my case the reference for the work I've done on my resume later down the line is the selling point, not how everyone feels about what I'm doing.

[Monkey]

-support

Fail to meet deadline = bitchfest

Deadline unenforceable

Check approved suggestions for a preview into new features

So if people complain because you fail to meet a deadline, the best solution is to not tell them anything and remain in the mist?
If you fail to reach your goal and people become sad, you think the solution is to not put goals in front of yourself at all?

Or would you agree that having long and short-term goals while promoting civil discussion is the optimal solution?

Deadlines may be hard to complete, but not having any goals or pressure results in the lack of motivation.

"Preview" is not the same as "set goals" in the same way as a factory visit is not the same as ordering from a factory.
The former is showing off the capabilities and the latter is taking advantage of them.

Responding by part:

1: People's complaints don't honestly matter to me.  I volunteer my time to work on code related matters.  I'm not paid, nor are many of those working in the same fashion.  Though there are goals, I'm not going to put myself in a hard spot or make false promises to satisfy your need for updates.

2: I do not agree that promoting long nor short term goals would have a civil discussion at all.  Look around the history here and you'll see what I mean.

3: Deadlines may or may not be hard to meet.  However, since I volunteer my time as opposed to being paid for it, the goals are not my motivation for working.  My motivation is my willingness to assist in the process.

4: Set goals are not a good idea with the current business model of this community's LLC as it has no way to ensure it can accomplish anything without relying on people to volunteer.




I get what you guys are after, but you seem to be missing the concept that this isn't a gaming company with a full development team / people actively applying for paid job positions.  I'm a volunteer, not a slave, and refuse to be pushed into a deadline state for the sake of pleasing those who do not actually contribute to the development process so that they don't "quit playing."

Sounds cold as hell, but it's not.  Its just being honest about the situation.

If you have a solution to the lack of developers and lack of output of money for tasks completed, I'm sure many would be happy enough to work inside a deadline.  As we lack both developers and finances to pay them, this concept could cause more people to leave as opposed to pushing themselves into more work with nothing to show for it.

Many of us are doing this for various reasons, however in my case the reference for the work I've done on my resume later down the line is the selling point, not how everyone feels about what I'm doing.

I don't understand where deadlines were brought up. As I am a former contributor for LL and a current head developer for another community, I know that volunteer time does not always have to be that pressured. As a member of Limelight, I would just like to see where everything is in the development line. Even though I care when it is coming out, it is not what this will be used for. I want a roadmap to see what is going on, what might be coming that is new, what stage in development the project is in, not when is the exact date that it will be ready/live.

[Markus]

-support

Fail to meet deadline = bitchfest

Deadline unenforceable

Check approved suggestions for a preview into new features

So if people complain because you fail to meet a deadline, the best solution is to not tell them anything and remain in the mist?
If you fail to reach your goal and people become sad, you think the solution is to not put goals in front of yourself at all?

Or would you agree that having long and short-term goals while promoting civil discussion is the optimal solution?

Deadlines may be hard to complete, but not having any goals or pressure results in the lack of motivation.

"Preview" is not the same as "set goals" in the same way as a factory visit is not the same as ordering from a factory.
The former is showing off the capabilities and the latter is taking advantage of them.

Responding by part:

1: People's complaints don't honestly matter to me.  I volunteer my time to work on code related matters.  I'm not paid, nor are many of those working in the same fashion.  Though there are goals, I'm not going to put myself in a hard spot or make false promises to satisfy your need for updates.

2: I do not agree that promoting long nor short term goals would have a civil discussion at all.  Look around the history here and you'll see what I mean.

3: Deadlines may or may not be hard to meet.  However, since I volunteer my time as opposed to being paid for it, the goals are not my motivation for working.  My motivation is my willingness to assist in the process.

4: Set goals are not a good idea with the current business model of this community's LLC as it has no way to ensure it can accomplish anything without relying on people to volunteer.




I get what you guys are after, but you seem to be missing the concept that this isn't a gaming company with a full development team / people actively applying for paid job positions.  I'm a volunteer, not a slave, and refuse to be pushed into a deadline state for the sake of pleasing those who do not actually contribute to the development process so that they don't "quit playing."

Sounds cold as hell, but it's not.  Its just being honest about the situation.

If you have a solution to the lack of developers and lack of output of money for tasks completed, I'm sure many would be happy enough to work inside a deadline.  As we lack both developers and finances to pay them, this concept could cause more people to leave as opposed to pushing themselves into more work with nothing to show for it.

Many of us are doing this for various reasons, however in my case the reference for the work I've done on my resume later down the line is the selling point, not how everyone feels about what I'm doing.

I'm curious as to how you know we lack funds for paying actual developers? As far as I know, no one other than a select few + Temar is in the know regarding the exact amount of money Limelight has. For all I know, a lot of people are paying a lot of money for things like donator status and money packs.

Also, we do contribute to the community as well as development. That is what donations are. What else would they be? Boat fund for Soulripper?

[Doctor Internet]

-snip-

-snip-

I'm curious as to how you know we lack funds for paying actual developers? As far as I know, no one other than a select few + Temar is in the know regarding the exact amount of money Limelight has. For all I know, a lot of people are paying a lot of money for things like donator status and money packs.

Also, we do contribute to the community as well as development. That is what donations are. What else would they be? Boat fund for Soulripper?

If you look on the membership page, you see the membership stats for the last two months. We made about a thousand last month, and are on track for about 600/700 this month.

Average pay for a software developer is around £12.64/hr [

Limelight - Link watcher

You're about to enter the following site: Limelight - Link watcher You're about to enter the following site: https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Software_Developer/Salary#CareerPaths Please note: You should only visit trusted sites. We are not responsible for any loss of your privacy. https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job...areerPaths Please note: You should only visit trusted sites. We are not responsible for any loss of your privacy.

source]

That would give is around 80 hours last month, or about 55 hours predicted for this month.
Over nine developers, That's about 9 hours per dev for last month, or 6 hours per dev for this month. Sometimes it can take six hours to fix one bug.

That's all with publicly available information.

Righty, now that's out my system.

I see lots of issues for the roadmap, but also some positives.
People do deserve some transparency, more than just "here's the 30 pages of approved things". That being said, our development team is rather fluid, with situations and circumstances leading to rapid changes. We'd also have to put a lot of effort into actually keeping it up-to-date, plus any staffing issues may lead to severe delays, which upsets the community. It's having to balance all of those factors.

On the whole, I don't have a major issue if it was to be approved, but I won't vote +support for it.

[Faustie]

Warning: Rambling mess below

I think that Doc's response sums it up fairly well. It's difficult to put a concrete roadmap in place when the dev team is fairly fluid right now. We have a few key goals set up for the upcoming months, which I'll comment more on when things are closer to being ready (media team wants to flex, rightfully so). But, these key goals tend to change slightly depending on one big overarching goal - optimisation. We're constantly looking at ways to improve the gamemode in this regard, but we have to balance it with our limited time and budget. This bit might be worthy of its own dev blog if people are interested - let me know and I can put in the time to put it out there, but a quick overview:

There are multiple possible routes we can take to improve optimisation. These pretty much branch into two extremes as I see it: optimisation of the existing gamemode, or development of a brand new gamemode. We're aiming for somewhere in the middle. We don't really have the time or money right now to develop a brand new gamemode while still maintaining and releasing updates for the existing one, but we want to do more than simply put band-aids on the existing gamemode. Our optimisation so far has been a mixture of identifying poor code (there's an awful lot from the legacy days) and improving that, or in replacing large key chunks of the gamemode with new improved code. Several months ago, for example, Doctor Internet released a new and improved networking library that has made a major difference, server-side. That's an example of a gamemode replacement optimisation. Then, a while later, I released a somewhat major optimisation that focused on improving and fixing player networking flaws that tied in with the new library. 

Problem is, we need to balance this with our budget - I've made it quite clear that I want devs to be paid to the best of our ability. While contributor is currently a volunteer role, Doc is aiming to train several contributors up and ready for dev positions. Once they're devs - or given contributor contracts, which we're preparing - then they're fully eligible for payment so long as they meet legal requirements. Optimisation is great, but here's the key problem: it does not tend to bring in money. This would not be a problem if all development was free, but I'm adamantly against that - the devs deserve as much payment as we can reasonably afford and is fair for their hard work. As optimisation has a very low return of investment, we need to focus on other possible projects in order to afford continued development.

Likewise, if we identify a problem or if we find a new improved way of doing things, that will tend to take priority and may cause other parts of the roadmap to drop off or be cancelled entirely, if they are identified as being bad for optimisation. It's a difficult balance, particularly as while many of the player-made suggestions are great in terms of gameplay or roleplay, they have the potential to be awful for optimisation if not carefully and slowly developed. 

Likewise, the majority of our development planning currently focuses on the staff review threads Doc has been implementing. We have a huge stream of player-made suggestions to work through, and outside of a couple of big, long-term projects we're working on, our main development focus will be on those. We can't just shove them in, however. They need to be refined, linked up to other existing systems to support RP and gameplay, and optimised. A lot of this can change over time, which is the main reason we don't have a proper roadmap out there.

That being said, I think it's possible. I'd need to discuss with our dev team to make sure everyone feels comfortable with it, but you do all deserve more transparency. Without trying to rip on any other members of the team, I will say that there's a difference in point of view of some staff team members - some want full transparency, others would prefer less. I lean towards the more side but I can't just bulldoze what the rest of the team wants. That wouldn't be fair. I'm hopeful that soon we can find a compromise that pleases both you guys, the community, and the team. 

If we can sort out a proper roadmap with the huge stream of suggestions you guys give us (and thank you for that! It's great to have such a vast resource to work with) while balancing optimisation and our budget, then I see no reason why a dev roadmap can't be made available to you.


Apologies for the rambling mess here. I intended to speak solely about the transparency issue but it lost focus a bit. I think there's a lot that the community deserve to know but it has to be balanced with the media team's wishes (hype generation etc.) and the dev team's comfort and readiness. In the meantime, if there are any particular aspects I've mentioned above that you'd like a dev blog or similar on, please let me know and perhaps I can expand on some points.

[Doctor Internet]

Pushing for Staff Review.

#type:[review]

[Doctor Internet]

Approved.

[Doctor Internet]

Done. Take a look at This Thread for more information.