[Aphelion]

Which is a better scenario:

Jumpgate Evolution gets released with 80% of the proposed content and the next 20% is added over the year by regular, monthly patches supported by half the development staff. The following year, new content is released every month at the same rate. A small, but solidly built development team stays with the game until subscriptions fall below a certain level and the game cannot be supported anymore. It then dies and/or support is pretty much stopped and we maybe get Istvan-style patches from this point on. (Love you Istvan, but just think how much you could have accomplished with 3 programmers listening to your beck-and-call?)

OR

Jumpgate Evolution gets released with 100% of the proposed content. One programmer is assigned to maintain Jumpgate Evolution and he is not from the development team. He manages to get a new patch out every 2 months or so that is mainly bugfixes, while the original development team works on the first major content release in a free "expansion-style" pack. Once the expansion is released, development of the game is left to a lone programmer who is responsible for ship balance, bug fixes, and content development.



Okay... I think you all get my point. While I love how much Net Devil is supporting us right this second, I would like to know that daddy is going to be there for me later before I get invested in a game as much as I did 6 years ago. I've played WoW for 8 months now and I'm pretty damn bored with it wheras I played Jumpgate for 3-4 years total. I really think that, had there been regular patches and content updates, I might have even stayed longer. I know that Net Devil is a small company, but please, please, PLEASE get some permanent staff for this game so that it can surpass it's predecessor in terms of pilot numbers per year. Recruit some nice rookie programmers fresh out of college even.

[Lordopic]

Ill take the first one please.

[TexMurphy]

You will get a or b depending on the income generated by Jumpgate Evolution.

If Jumpgate Evolution generates enough money for A then we get A if not we get B.

Tex

[Eraser55]

Well when they launch the game, the features in it should work 100%.

There should be nothing missing in the game..Like if they built a rock in space, but they could only have half of that rock and we would have to wait 1-6 months for the next half. That is a big mistake.. I would rather see whole patches then half patches.. So I wouldn't mind waiting 1 year for a big update then having 12 updates witch can destroy an already working game.

[Radi]

Option B but with bigger dev team.

[Wild_Bill]

Someone elsewhere posted the idea of having a BUNCH of stuff ready at launch, but hold back a lot of it to be released a little at a time. Not really patches (as in newly developed features, released and then bug-fixed forever) but newly released tested content. THAT makes sense to me. You've got this great team that have been working for 10 months now (and no where near release as near as I can tell), why not do a LOT of stuff, get it all Alpha and Beta tested then release 60-70% of what's been developed & tested, then over the rest of the year release the remainder WHILE working on new stuff and testing it too.

That would be a major step up to what we've had. Like Aphelion, I'm not throwing rocks at Istvan. Whether I've liked what he's done or not, without his unending labors this game would have been dust years ago instead of limping along on life-support. If content is built and tested while we have 8 devs working on it, then one person could handle the releases over the year as well as doing whatever bugfixes remain. Having one person develop, test and bug-fix just doesn't work that well.

[Aphelion]

Originally Posted by TexMurphy

You will get a or b depending on the income generated by Jumpgate Evolution.

If Jumpgate Evolution generates enough money for A then we get A if not we get B.

Tex

Originally Posted by Wild_Bill

Like Aphelion, I'm not throwing rocks at Istvan. Whether I've liked what he's done or not, without his unending labors this game would have been dust years ago instead of limping along on life-support.

Okay, so lets worry about getting subscribers and a solid game first, then worry about creating content for it later. I'm sure there are enough ideas in these forums that there will always be some new thing to add in future updates.