#Dates / Roadmap

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

inland pendant
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While missing deadlines can be frustrating, I think everyone agrees that having a shared idea on how things are going is beneficial. To improve communication I propose a system where the roadmap starts vague the further the target, gradually becoming more specific as the target gets closer.

Date Suggestions:
If not this year, give us a year.
If this year, give us a Quarter.
If this Quarter, give us a Month.
If this Month, give us a date.
If date moves, give us a reason.

I think this balances the needs of the community, the team and the <@&814435151307866142>

I'm not sure of the best way to communicate this, but my first thought is Aarons monthly dev blog.

wateryearcalendar.jpg
unkempt badger
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As Kieran and other members mentioned in the council town hall that just finished, this is something we're evaluating to drive accountability.
I'll agree it has been a challenge and there are implications to both dates given and dates missed, so I personally want to do my best to craft the right agreements and communicate in the most effective manner to the community. There is work in process that I hope evolves reporting of timeliness.
This is absolutely a fair push and a needed area of improvement.

stray wedge
# inland pendant While missing deadlines can be frustrating, I think everyone agrees that having ...

Damn this was fast 😛

In all seriousness though I feel the community is resilient and as some discussed prior. It's the vocal few that push negativity when something goes wrong on the Illuvium timeline.

I feel the dev blogs do a good job at illuminating the behind the scenes progress but don't seem to appeal to the more casual 'bystander'

I feel it is worth having something public even if it turns out to be wrong one day. Since many people pass through Web 3 on a daily basis and having something tangible to return to and give them incentive to 'check in' is valuable. However this would be prioritising the casual investors over the die-hard community in some sense.

I am excited to keep this conversation going. Really the communities input and sentiment is ultra important here. The communities dissapointmemt with missed dates in the past has been part of the reason dates have been stricter. We need a show off force that it's important to give broad dates. At least that's what I'd like to see

languid abyss
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Bring back time estimates.

dapper pebble
ebon stump
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I wouldn't mind to be able to reply with date estimates as long as they are realistic.
What ever date you have in mind, add an extra month. Nobody needs another delay announcement.

dapper pebble
hybrid plank
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I have always held the position and continue to bring up that quarterly estimates are the best option. Its broad enough for the team to have leeway at the same time specific/general enough for the community to look forward to.

What has always been irking the community is actually the lack of acknowledgement that a certain estimate will not be hit or will be delayed. Often times the team would use, "we never give dates" or "it was not an official date/announcement" to not address it.

The community can be both understandable and cutthroat but I do believe that a proper holding statement or explanation can placate most of the community for any delays.

Lets take Illuvium Zero season 1 for example. Pushing back season 1 for marketplace is a valid and acceptable reason the community accepted but the problem here now was that there was no news on what the new ETA for season 1 would be.

Problem now is theres a delicate balance needed to pad ETAs to accommodate QA, marketing, etc

zenith osprey
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I was convinced that Andrew Wall talked with @granite crystal in one of his videos (around December) that they plan on releasing the internal colab tool to the website. So that we can keep track of development and see what's going and therefore don't have to ask anymore >>when<< 🤔

ebon stump
zenith osprey
# ebon stump Oh yeah I totally forgot about that

I think everyone forgot 😂

But did the Team drop development on this one?

@analog belfry maybe going pushing for this would be a "forever" solution. If we get this tool, then never again will the community have to ask >>wen<<

trail wyvern
# ebon stump I wouldn't mind to be able to reply with date estimates as long as they are real...

I think the “realistic” part is the important part. Time estimates need to be based on scheduling and accountability and be achievable. If there is a hickup or change because of agreed change of scope then people will understand and adjust their expectations. If a date is pulled out of thin air and then not met it makes people unhappy and confused as to how the date could be so wrong and feel upset by long delays. Imho

rare lintel
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In Gov V2 having council members assist Aaron with giving updates and curating the Dev blog would not only alleviate the burden on core contributers but appease the community with more frequent updates as well.

polar jolt
analog belfry
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I propose that we hold a monthly meeting with all producers to closely monitor the anticipated release dates of each product. This meeting would sit outside of the weekly meetings the production team attend. For larger products, we can start with broader timeframes and refine them as we approach completion. As the head producer, @languid abyss would be responsible for updating timelines on the web tool after each meeting and as new information arises. While the dev blog could be a potential avenue for updates, it may not be accurate enough and is occasionally delayed.

This approach should enhance the efficiency of our product delivery, but it's important to manage expectations, as there may still be occasional delays based on our estimates. We will strive to minimise these delays, but the possibility of them occurring will always be present.

As emphasised during the Town Hall, our team has matured, which gives me confidence that our projected timelines will be more accurate moving forward

raven flare
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Just my two cents as a someone who works in software development.

I love how illuvium doesn’t work off of strict timelines. Often times what happens is a deadline gets put out, which can lead to throwing out good design principles and focusing on “how can we get this out the door in 2 weeks”. Maybe the proper solution would take 2 months, but another solution takes 2 weeks and it “works”.

Let’s not put public deadlines out there until things are almost entirely done and only need polish. Yes it can be frustrating on the outside, but what would be more frustrating is a rush job.

languid abyss
granite ruin
static wagon
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@languid abyss Based on Kierans proposal do you have any idea when we can expect the first monthly meeting to happen so we can start getting some dates out for the community?

bold gale
# stray wedge Damn this was fast 😛 In all seriousness though I feel the community is resilie...

Disagree. Dev blogs are nice, but I have never been able to understand how far releases are from them, just the release order (tentative relase order).

I think right now we all wonder is PvP closed beta is 2 months away or another year away. We need to understand what the team is aiming for. Both for closed beta and open beta.

The dissapointment about dates before was much due to the way it was said. ”I am 99% sure”, ”I am confident” etc.

Just say ”we are interally aiming for this and this date”. ”It’s our best estimate atm”.

All that is needed.

stray wedge
icy shuttle
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agree with @bold gale every few weeks i check this discord and try to just basically figure out: What is the most likely dates games are actually being released? I dont want to consume 99 different pieces of info/blogs (which dont help me in answering this)

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I do not need absolute dates or guarantees, but even just general consensus or realistic dates.. aiming for illuvium zero by Oct 2023 for example.. if its not oct I'm not gonna care i just want to roughly know when. This info shouldnt take hours of sleuthing to find

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this info is just so confusing, alpha, beta, so on so forth.. just when do we think illuvium zero is ready for regular ppl? what about battle arena? overworld?

bold gale
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I think a interesting question to discuss during the next townhall is if there are any resources we could reallocate within the team to get PvP out faster.

From the top of my head, Illuvitars and Zero should only use resources not needed for PvP and Overworld. If there are any resources focused on those atm that would be needed on the PvP side we should allocate those towards PvP.

Illuvitars: could be interesting to work on more in the future with card game etc. but otherwise leave as is for now.
Zero: I am a land owner myself, and yes it is nice to zoom out your land etc., but honestly if I could just start producing fuel for a game that is out I am happy. I can accept that Zero is not optimal from a game perspective (for now) as long as I can start producing real resources. Getting the marketplace working etc is of course needed. But there might be ”extra” features we are doing on the Zero side that we can refocus to overworld/PvP.

I run a small business myself, cutting your darlings and prioritize is hard but sometimes you just need to get the ”MVP” out. I love the team’s focus on excellence though and they are doing a great job. For most part I think they are probably focusing on the right things, but sometimes it is nice with someone with fresh eyes from the outside that can provide a new perspective.

Sometimes you are just so in love with your product and what you want it to be, that you don’t realise that the product will be fine as a first version without some features.

Not saying this is the case here, just saying that would be nice with a discussion to see if there is.

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Another thing I was thinking about is the council. Would be nice with some kind of summary what you are working on / dicussing / looking at. Maybe like the Aaron dev blog but from council perspective (so monthly occuring).

Maybe I missed where I can find information of what the council are doing but otherwise I think they should be more open.
It is important that healthy discussions are held there, and that the outcome of these discussions are shared with the community. If we want to be a dao 🙂 Thoughts here @grand stone @unkempt badger @analog belfry @hot umbra ?

I think the council should be very encouraging towards the team (cause honestly they are amazing and hard working, nobody doubts that) , but also be able to ask tough questions. And not in order to critize the team, but to look for improvements.

For example, we have seen some stir on Twitter lately that it is now one year since PB1 came out and we still have no PvP (see @vapid sedge thread) and it does not look like we are going to have it in the next few months (cause the internal PvP build is far from polished according the team).
Some analysis around that would be great. The answer might be ”it just takes that long to make PvP” and that’s fine. Or the answer would maybe be ”we should have done it this way instead”.

So we learn as a DAO 😎🙌

analog belfry
analog belfry
# raven flare Just my two cents as a someone who works in software development. I love how i...

This was one of the arguments for not putting out public dates, however, as the community has seen over the past 12 months in a crypto project unfortunately that does not work. We are going back to public timelines, even if they are rough. I would much rather the community have insight in what we're working towards. I'm happy to accept responsibility when we don't hit timelines, this is how it was in the beginning, and yes there will be delays sometimes and unhappy people but I think that is a far better situation than the one we find ourselves in now where the community feels they have no insight into where development is at.

polar jolt
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Name me one time Elon Musk had a accurate timeline. His companies seem ok.

static wagon
quick tiger
# raven flare Just my two cents as a someone who works in software development. I love how i...

Getting something out the door in 2 weeks cost a few grand. 2 months is a few million. It's no good having kick ass plants and rocks if you're having to make team members redundant to keep the lights on.

Removing dates, though frustrating, didn't really achieve anything. It just made the community hyper focused on runway/cost instead. So we watched in real time as the money (not so slowly) drained away with nothing but a "soon" to help soothe our concerns. Well looking at the state of the runway today it looks as though illuvium is rapidly running out of "soons". Maybe it is time for a date now

analog belfry
# quick tiger Getting something out the door in 2 weeks cost a few grand. 2 months is a few mi...

While I agree, removing dates hurt us in losing some accountability but to say we achieved nothing is not a fair comment. We have delivered a lot in the time that we have removed dates. I agree, things could always be better, but in no way is it fair to say nothing has been achieved. We have had our team in overdrive for years now, and building three games and several DeFi products is no easy task simultaneously. Let's try and keep the team focussed and not dishearten them with emotionally driven comments. As I said in the last town hall, we recognise the issues, and we are addressing them.

quick tiger
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I have nothing but admiration and respect for all the artists and devs building these games. Do not be disheartened by my words because they are not aimed at you. My criticisms are levelled precisely at leadership not the wider team.

bold gale
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Well I think the leadership is really putting in their sweat and tears as well, creds for that :D. And they do many things great.
Let's not dishearten them as well 😉

Then everybody can make mistakes ofc, but let's not forget that the leadership is working crazy hours as well 🙂

icy shuttle
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unlike possibly others, i will not hold a pitchfork if it's wrong, i just want to be able to have a rough gauge internally on where the team is at & how far they need to go.. I would rather you guys say October for X release and be off by a few month for example, than nothing

bold gale
stiff heron
polar jolt