Exactly.
I used to spin up a local server to step through testlive after each major update. The last two have been so bad, I just quit the playthrough.
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Iām going to have to, politely, disagree.
Just like blaming the devs for the shitshow that is Conan Exiles is wrong, deadlines are not the issue.
Iāve done IT work, including development, for 40+ years. A deadline is crucial. It helps define a feasible feature set. The issues with CE are all producer induced. Producers set the features, the timelines, the QA, and the release.
Now, they could have some poor quality devs, but that, again, is a producer issue. Iāve gotten folks removed from my projects and Iāve refused to let others join the team due to the quality of their work.
The devs are an easy target, but the state of the game is not their fault.
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@Cauthey Iāve told more then one boss ādo you want it now or do you want it right. I canāt do bothā.
Of coarse that would only apply to funcom if we got better, more complete, less buggy content when they have the time to do it right. Seems long or short makes little difference in quality.
For me when a game is released the base game is done, wont be changed. What you do get is bug fixes and new content that does not change the base game. funcom has never stopped skrewing with the base game and will never get the bugs fixed because they are introing them faster then they can fix them.
Iād ran a consistent game on test live since 3.0 til AoW ch4 when it became abundantly clear testlive was going to be running builds behind live. Still is. I gave up on it, Iād wish who ever was left happiness with all my mats, but no one is on testlive. So just what is the point of it?
Oh ya, content producers free advertising for funcom.
You do remember every update since 3.0 hit, right? My opinion an over whelming majority of the issue with those updates was hard release dates. When you have a deadline that content/update goes out as is regardless.
Having a presumptive finishing schedule is not a hard release date.
And I have been playing video games for over 50 years, does not make me a pro gamer.
How is it not? Are they subcontracting?
Is it the developers fault; funcom, for hiring coders that do poor work?
Or is it more likely the coders are over worked trying to find and fix bugs as well as gettign new features working for the up coming update that has to be out on such and such date regardless of how complete or working it is or isnāt.
I can see where we have completely different work experience. Iāve done a boat load of construction; everything from pouring basements to laying roofs. The way that worked was the contractor had a deadline, if the project was done before then they got a bonus. If it wasnāt done it cost the contractor daily till it was. I have seen a lot of corner cutting to get a place done by deadline, to the detriment to whom ever ended up buying the place.
{google any new house horror story}
Deadlines usually mean rushed, shoddy work.
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So, even if the devs are inept, itās the producerās fault.
Who is the production lead conducting this train wreck then?
If the devs are inept and they are not fired, it is the fault of management.
But I imagine the devs are not inept. More likely, they are just told to do 40 hours of work in an hour and nothing is put through QA because management has made the decision that this is how the shop will be run.
In the long ago, I had a boss ask me how long it would take to add a feature set to a product I had developed. After considering the work and current schedule, I told him six (6) weeks. He was livid. Heād already promised the customer it in two (2) weeks.
I spoke with the client, prioritized the most important features and did an iterative release that spanned around 10 weeks. All because my boss was bad at his job.
My opinion is the devs are in a similar position with their management and the player base suffers for it.
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Oh, of course. It is the triangle of production / labor / work:
You can have it done fast.
You can have it done right.
You can have it done at a reasonable price.
You can only pick two.
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As a manager, I would tell the customer the 6 weeks but tell you that got 5 weeks to get a stretch goal and a bonus is on the line if you can make that.
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The one thing that prevents this one from embracing your (very valid) point of view (in this specific instance) is how slipshot and poorly QAed the updates were even before they were put on the update treadmill.
Altho, that is less an argument against producer malfeasance and more a note that Funcom didnāt need Tencent to provoke a rushed and slipshod environment.
Previous question still stands, who occupied the producer for Conan Exiles in Funcom 's current structure?
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I would submit that the ARE INEPT. Hereās why:
In the Siptah map, open your inventory. Use one of the sorts. The order immediately changes (as visually presented). However, the actual order of the objects does not immediately change. Or, it changes, but it doesnāt match what is visually presented. Itās aā¦ surface cover, so to speak.
Then, switch back to No Sorting. Again, visual presentation immediately changes. Go down to the bottom of your inventory, and try to move that last stack of wood into a different inventory square.
The result is this. The game freezes up for about 3-5 seconds as the game is trying to reconcile the ACTUAL order of the items in your inventory. It then does come back. And fortunately - it comes back with the real visual representation of where your actual items are in the backpack list.
What this tells me (a guy whoās worked in technology his entire life):
This is ugly, unrefined scripting on top of spaghetti code. They do not have anyone that understands the CORE SYSTEMS working on their team. Instead, they are slapping scripted band-aids on top of already intricate and complex (and likely inefficient) systems.
This observation, and may other observations, tells me that they do not have any systems developers working on this game. Zero. They have artists (bazaar), they have script kiddies and core system designer wannabes. Possibly some very gifted and ingenious scriptors. Because I expect it would take some very clever scripting to introduce such changes without touching the core systems underneath.
With a pure cost and time analysis - sometimes it is expensive to dig into the core of a system and to change or correct it appropriately. But then again - all of the superficial āgoing all the way around your assā to get things done without touching the core of a system sometimes requires MORE TIME and MORE COST than actually investing in the right skilled people to do the job properly.
Dude 
Never had to this before but, itās slipshod. Referring back to horses being poorly shod. Lose, slipping shoes made the horse feel unstable so would balk, or lose shoes.
Sorry, itās a thing with me, always been curious where old sayings started. 
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Gratitude.
This one had first heard the term in military times, and it had been explained as the type of shot one makes when the weapon slips and falls to the ground.
But then again, militaries love to commandeer words and invent their own languages.
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I think there is a moral issue knocking at the door, however. I think FunCom will keep it that way. This is just a matter of time.
Indeedā¦ choo choo! That being where the famous trains from the north and south met on a single trackā¦ (b&w movie like 1930s?).
Gooday!
Moral or Morale?
Not that the two arenāt related.
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I canāt tell you who. I can tell you that they have failed at their job.
In the sprints my team is doing, we have deadlines for development, testing, QA, and requestor signoff/UAT.
When a story does not meet a date, it is pulled from the sprint.
An amazing thing happened when we implemented this proven methodology, retention went up, user engagement went up, and, eventually, sprints doubled then tripled in successful stories.
This is an industry standard approach and has been for decades.
I wish the management at Funcom would learn about it.
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Would you believe me if I said it is a major paradigm shift and aftermath? I have argued about āthe coreā, but this is better.
āPeople love charts.ā ā a Google head (those heads just needed to understand how stocks make money, by law)
Working with āthe coreā in C is good programming experience. It looks ready for production.
āMoralā 
This may help: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/ps4-capture-gameplay-screenshots/#video
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None of what you wrote makes the devs inept in general. Theyāre āineptā in the context of their specific circumstances, sure, but thatās not really what people take away when they read āthe devs are ineptā.
To work with any sufficiently complex codebase, you need knowledge about it. You need to understand what it does, how it does it, and why it does it that way.
Sure, you can get that knowledge slowly and painstakingly by reading the source code, reasoning about it, tinkering with it, etc. But thatās slow and prone to catastrophic errors. Usually you get that knowledge by reading the documentation and talking to other who have worked on that same codebase.
Now imagine a codebase that is as complex as Conan Exiles, but poorly documented and with most (or maybe even all) of the original team unavailable. And imagine, furthermore, youāre assigned a new feature by your manager and told to get it done by such-and-such date.
Doing a shŃt job in such circumstances does not make you inept. It does, however, make your workplace a shŃtty one.
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The person may not be inept, but the company is.
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Iād add, given more people are being hired per @AndyB, perhaps some of the devs who had experience with CE left for this reason. Itās further possible this has been happening over CEās development life.
Also, one comment about community managers before I return to lurking, I miss the days of Jens Erickās streams with Natascha sometimes joining in. They also would usually have a dev who worked on highlighted improvements as guests. Sometimes even multiple guests.
EDIT: One other thing. My firm uses software developed by a large software company. They offer it as a standalone server installation, remote access, or SaaS. We went with the standalone version which costs around $21K per year for a small business. I regularly read the companyās community forums about issues others are having with remote access, SaaS, and communication from the company. It makes some of the things weāre going through pale in comparison. Iām talking hours of lost productivity due to software errors with real life deadlines from government agencies, late payrolls for employees, the works. Software development feels like itās in a bad state overall no matter where you look.
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thoise where goood times!
things went downhill with dennis (sorry thats how i feel)
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Up at 5AM as usual, fire up my world, walk the dog, set down with my coffee, check my email, watch my news, log in to discord, post my 
good mornings, get to the Dune discord, see 9 funcom reps logged in, 6 active and chatting about nothing, quit that discord. 
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