Different companies will have different definition's for what an alpha is, and from comments read here it seems alot of people don't understand what is meant by alpha builds.
Where I work as a developer we class an alpha build as a fully working prototype, with all planned feature's written and working. It's at this point we say the alpha is ready and then begin the next task which is to optimise the build and fine tune everything.
Now for us we don't have to worry about investors, so we can, as a company, do it this way, other places I have worked have classed barely working software as an alpha build and essentially built the software and called it an alpha.
It all depends on your understanding of software development and constraints that the company is under to produce a working product.
Thank you, Nadia, and others who work in the field for your responses. It definitely gives me a new perspective. To be honest one of the main reasons I opened up this thread was due to the fact that every couple of weeks someone was opening a new thread that either had to do "Where is EverQuest Next" or "Is It Coming Out Soon." For me personally the main point wasn't so much about the 60%, but rather what was expanded on in the following comment.
At the moment EverQuest Next is about 60% feature complete and when Landmark open beta is announced they will be mostly done with the game's features. This could be anywhere from 80 to 90 percent. But even then, that isn't the main point. The main point is what he stated after that.
They will heavily focus on A.I. (which isn't going to be your typical enemy/NPC A.I.), as well as content, as well as all the other stuff which includes the 40 classes, the balancing, and everything else under the rainbow. I honestly find it hard to believe that the game will go into the beta/release phase in Q1/Q2 2015. I still think that the game is coming out 2016 with Q3/Q4 2015 as a positive outlook versus a "realistic" one for the beta/release phase.
So my question to those especially that has or currently works in the field (and others), when do you think the game will enter beta/open beta/release phases?
I was surprised by the 60% number but I think the estimate could easily be correct without having a playable alpha. Just because the AI tools haven't been built doesn't mean they can't place the NPCs. Even if they can't do that they can still storyboard and build like/dislike databanks for them. EQN as they describe it, and shown some SB mapping, is not like a typical MMO. A lot of preparation work can be done ahead of time waiting for the in game tools to be made.
The world is another piece that can be done right now. They mentioned at last years Live that the world had already been seeded and designers were working on specialized areas. The recent workshop contests seem to be for the racial cities.
Originally posted by Aelious I was surprised by the 60% number but I think the estimate could easily be correct without having a playable alpha. Just because the AI tools haven't been built doesn't mean they can't place the NPCs. Even if they can't do that they can still storyboard and build like/dislike databanks for them. EQN as they describe it, and shown some SB mapping, is not like a typical MMO. A lot of preparation work can be done ahead of time waiting for the in game tools to be made.
The world is another piece that can be done right now. They mentioned at last years Live that the world had already been seeded and designers were working on specialized areas. The recent workshop contests seem to be for the racial cities.
60% feature complete is not the same thing has 60% content complete.
Feature complete means they have all the gameplay features they want and they are in a close to final state. Things like combat, AI, animation framework, AH, crafting, server code, etc. To have an playable alpha you need to have specific features completed.
Anyway, this is moot for EQNext, because Landmark is EQNext alpha. All the feature complete systems are present in Landmark right now.
I agree and like how they are transitioning tools through Landmark as to let the players "play" along with the developers. Dave said "we are 60% complete". No reference specifically to features or in general so I was simply pointing out how much work they could he doing to complete it without having those tools yet like AI/scripting. As we can see from the SB panel video they are already progressing on that without having the final tools rolled out. For all we know they could have the world minus the racial cities/outposts close to completion.
The idea that a MMORPG is *60% done* and not in a playable alpha state is ludicrous.
Landmark was released as Alpha *way before* it was 60% complete, SoE's new way of development is to give it to players as early as possible so that they can get immediate feedback from the masses.
Again my opinion - but if EQNext were really 60% complete - I'd be playing it right now with thousands of others via Founder's Pack.
The fact that we are NOT playing it yet - is proof enough for me that the 60% figure is just completely taken out of context, an honest mistake or pure BS.
Take your pick.
Meh, it's really difficult to say. Alphas these days are more polished than ever before. You basically have a game and then it's, generally, about adding content. I remember when Alphas were like untextured models, etc., etc.
Is 60% referring to the time invested? If so, what are we looking at? Another 2 years? Another year before Alpha? Or are we talking about milestones? Or a little of both?
I like to think of it as a big sandpit with a wall splitting it in half.
On one half you have "Landmark". In this half of the big sand pit they're busy testing ways to build structures, test AI, test player interactions and all the other features they intend to use in Next.
On the other half of the sand pit you have "Next" which is a big world where they're going to take all the working features from the Landmark side and drop them into the Next side. So amazing structures, tested AI, tested player abilities, all the wonderful stuff that goes into making a functional MMO.
So while everything is being tested in Landmark... a world is being built in Next.
Both sides exist on the same sand (same game engine). So if you're playing Landmark.. in theory you're playing in a Next world. It's just called something different and it's serving a different purpose.
My concern? When I play Landmark I don't think "Oh wow this would make an amazing full MMO" .. I think "Why does this game run at 10fps and feel so clunky." - That's my concern. I don't think our PCs can handle the engine. Not in an MMO setting. It's ok for building structures but for an MMO, PVE and PVP? I'm not so sure.
In general SOE use to be quite optimistic about things. Smed said 2 years ago that EQN will be playable last year (one year ago), but it looks it's still isn't 2 years later. When Georgesson say it's 60% finished my guess is that he means 60% finish if nothing goes wrong at all and lots of things can go wrong (take longer time than expected when new unexpected parameters comes in), which destroy their time estimate completely? So basically it doesn't mean anything. They could have said any number which is high enough to make people interrested about EQN.
Comments
Thank you, Nadia, and others who work in the field for your responses. It definitely gives me a new perspective. To be honest one of the main reasons I opened up this thread was due to the fact that every couple of weeks someone was opening a new thread that either had to do "Where is EverQuest Next" or "Is It Coming Out Soon." For me personally the main point wasn't so much about the 60%, but rather what was expanded on in the following comment.
At the moment EverQuest Next is about 60% feature complete and when Landmark open beta is announced they will be mostly done with the game's features. This could be anywhere from 80 to 90 percent. But even then, that isn't the main point. The main point is what he stated after that.
They will heavily focus on A.I. (which isn't going to be your typical enemy/NPC A.I.), as well as content, as well as all the other stuff which includes the 40 classes, the balancing, and everything else under the rainbow. I honestly find it hard to believe that the game will go into the beta/release phase in Q1/Q2 2015. I still think that the game is coming out 2016 with Q3/Q4 2015 as a positive outlook versus a "realistic" one for the beta/release phase.
So my question to those especially that has or currently works in the field (and others), when do you think the game will enter beta/open beta/release phases?
The world is another piece that can be done right now. They mentioned at last years Live that the world had already been seeded and designers were working on specialized areas. The recent workshop contests seem to be for the racial cities.
60% feature complete is not the same thing has 60% content complete.
Feature complete means they have all the gameplay features they want and they are in a close to final state. Things like combat, AI, animation framework, AH, crafting, server code, etc. To have an playable alpha you need to have specific features completed.
Anyway, this is moot for EQNext, because Landmark is EQNext alpha. All the feature complete systems are present in Landmark right now.
I agree and like how they are transitioning tools through Landmark as to let the players "play" along with the developers. Dave said "we are 60% complete". No reference specifically to features or in general so I was simply pointing out how much work they could he doing to complete it without having those tools yet like AI/scripting. As we can see from the SB panel video they are already progressing on that without having the final tools rolled out. For all we know they could have the world minus the racial cities/outposts close to completion.
Meh, it's really difficult to say. Alphas these days are more polished than ever before. You basically have a game and then it's, generally, about adding content. I remember when Alphas were like untextured models, etc., etc.
Is 60% referring to the time invested? If so, what are we looking at? Another 2 years? Another year before Alpha? Or are we talking about milestones? Or a little of both?
60% really means nothing.
Crazkanuk
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60% complete is a GREAT estimation!
As long as you are taking into consideration the 80/20 rule:
The first 80% of the work, takes 20% of the time/effort
The last 20% of the work, takes 80% of the time/effort
I believe it. The 60% they have done is what you see in Landmark. They've built an engine and have the canvas on which to create their world.
The other 40% that hasn't been worked on is EQN.
So overall, 60% done. However, they are 0% complete on EQN.
I like to think of it as a big sandpit with a wall splitting it in half.
On one half you have "Landmark". In this half of the big sand pit they're busy testing ways to build structures, test AI, test player interactions and all the other features they intend to use in Next.
On the other half of the sand pit you have "Next" which is a big world where they're going to take all the working features from the Landmark side and drop them into the Next side. So amazing structures, tested AI, tested player abilities, all the wonderful stuff that goes into making a functional MMO.
So while everything is being tested in Landmark... a world is being built in Next.
Both sides exist on the same sand (same game engine). So if you're playing Landmark.. in theory you're playing in a Next world. It's just called something different and it's serving a different purpose.
My concern? When I play Landmark I don't think "Oh wow this would make an amazing full MMO" .. I think "Why does this game run at 10fps and feel so clunky." - That's my concern. I don't think our PCs can handle the engine. Not in an MMO setting. It's ok for building structures but for an MMO, PVE and PVP? I'm not so sure.
It's 60% done all the time, every time.