GamezBD roadmap ? Website + client improvements suggestions

If it took 15 months there would be zero way that we are on average 3 months behing retail. I and the whole of the telegram were told that after an update is obtained from the client it takes 1.5 months to implement. I'm happy to go back and take screenshots, but your claim of 15 months and the general state of GameZBDO realistically speaking dont match up. for example, we are on the patch that guardian was in precreation. that was released on retail jan 15th of this year. we are currently 4 months behind retail.

 

I'm not entirely sure why my earlier comment was removed, but ill say it again. I can go back through and tage screenshots. Kolka constantly says that aftsr they get their hands on the content it takes 1.5 months for it to go live. thats why we are currently only 4 months behind retail and have stayed on average 3-6 months behind retail.

Also note that they dont have to re emulate everything from scratch, the groundwork is already there, they just need to make the updates work with their current system. if it took a year to patch evgery individual piece of content in, we likely wouldnt have shai. shai released on June 19 last year in KR We got it the 26th of the same month on NA retail. GameZ has had Shai since before I came back, which was 5ish months ago give or take 2 weeks. We are currently on the guardian precreation patch which released in NA at least 4 months ago.

we are certainly not 15+ months behind (Because remember they hacve to GET the content before they can start working on it) the evidence simply does not support the 15 month claim.

I will be screenshoitting this and I will know if this is removed, if not given a reason for said removal of my post I will be submitting a complaint

 

I see what you are saying, I do get your point. I am not saying it will take 15 months i am saying up to 15 months. But i really dont know the usuall update rate etc... Last big update i remmber was centralmarket which was added close to a year or more after it came to retail. I suppose the time frame might depend on the content and other variables.

 

Yeah, @Kolka said it can take 1-15 months (maybe he wanted to say 1-1.5 month, but whatever, that's not the debate here). That means it can take up to 15 (or 1.5) months but not necessary 15 (or 1.5) months.

Well, this is why having a roadmap comes handy... That would let us (players) know what the team is working on, when will be the next release (including which content) and when they will start working on it (and if they already started working on it)... etc.

That was my initial asking in this thread ! I would love to see a section on the website that give me info about the GamezBD roadmap... Because it is blurry right now (some people says it can take up to 15months, some says up to 1.5 months, some says that we have that, some says we have this... but the finality is that nobody really knows except the developers i guess.).
I want to have an official roadmap that we can all trust and see what comes next. That will make players (specially the ones who put their time and money into this private server) happy !

Retail has a LOT of new content coming this summer, we are aware of that and we just wait for it. I think even if we're behind retail release, we should be able to know what is coming next and when.

 

I personally also like the idea of more transparency, however it is a double-edged-sword for the staff, particularly the developers. If they start making their plans public, then the players (mainly the "rotten-apples") will undoubtedly start mouthing off as soon as the release-date isn't met, and with life being as unpredictable as it is in reality, then I would personally not want to put myself under even more pressure and stress. Gamez-community seems to constantly forget the limitations of the current GameZ-staff, there are only two developers working on the GamezBD-game-version, this makes it quite strenuous for them already, so there really is no need to put even more pressure onto their shoulders. So while transparancy is a great thing for the players, it will certainly not make the lives of the developers easier.

 

I not totally agree with that. I'm a developer myself, and we're doing the Scrum methodology in my company, with short sprints (2 weeks) and when we discuss with the product team to know which features need to be worked on next, we go trough all tickets related to that feature and i assign story points (1 story point is equal to 3 hours of development). And when i do that i'm trying to take a larger amount, not only the time i think its gonna take, but a bit more because i know that there is always some unpredictable stuffs that comes at some point. That allow us to plan approximately when the feature go in production. And you don't need to share a specific date, you can share a month if you're not sure, or a specific week or a day if you're more confident. But that doesn't means more pressure on me necessarily. It also help the developer to not lose tracks on what they need to do now and next and for the players it will be a blessing to know what developers are working on !

Let try an example to illustrate what i'm saying :
Let say you want to update the client and that can take from 1 to 2 months to do it. First, you need to set the starting date (let say today, May 20th), you can inform your community that you've started to work on this to let them know that there is something HUGE coming. In your roadmap, you won't say that the upgrade will be done on June 17 or June 24, but you'll take the highest estimate (2 months) so that mean that in your roadmap, you'll say that the client upgrade is planed for August (not a specific date, just August). That way you are saving the developers health and makes the players happy because they know that you're working on this subject and that it will be released somewhere in August (and if it comes in early September that's still ok) This is how Pearl abyss is doing their roadmap btw. They never say a specific date, they just keep it vague, but still, the players are thrilled with those info !

This works with a small team too (this is what we are doing in my company and i'm the only one who's working on those features. I take a huge estimate, and if i can do it faster, it's better but most of the time, it doesn't take longer since i've already taken the highest estimate (like if i where lazy and play BDO instead of working for instance lol).

Currently, there is no way for us (players) to know what you've planed or what you're working on. We don't even know the bugs (we have a place in your forum where we can discuss about the bugs but this is really time consuming to go through all the pages and list the bugs ourselves etc... Don't you have an issue tracker ? Maybe you can share it with us in a read-only state and maybe allow us to create new bugs (optional) etc... Your Telegram app only inform us in real time... We don't know what you're working on currently nor what you've planed for later, we only know when you have released a patch/update at a specific date but that's it !

Also, it is more problematic to not keep your player base informed on what you're working on than having few delays on your roadmap. Because right now, if i hadn't created this post, we won't be informed that you have planned to upgrade your website at some point and the Game Client as well, but you're just waiting for more content to be added on retail before doing the client upgrade... etc...
Those are important and valuable info for the community because otherwise, more people would be leaving if they thought that GamezBD has nothing new/more in their pocket to offer... Nobody want to be stick to v.2308... We all want the new Awakening and succession classes, we want the new UI menu, we want all the fixes and optimisations that they've made in retail... etc... But if you don't tell us that you've planed to do it, well the players will be disappointed and they'll think that GamezBD is a dead end and they won't make a donation to help you and they'll just leave at some point...

If you take me as an example, I've make a donation only after some days playing to test it out, and i made more donations when i knew that you had planned to upgrade the client because it makes me feel that this server has a future and because of that i can keep playing BDO there instead of retail.

 

Fair enough, that is your opinion and your experience.

Just to clarify, I am only a lowly moderator here on this forum specific for GamezBD, so I have NO clue about what the Developers or the Administrators have planned, or what they think is the future of this site and game-development.

Also one more thing, I personally am not that enthusiastic about the whole "new"-UI-look. Something doesn't HAVE to look new or "futuristic" (or whatever mainstream thinks), to be functional and quite adequate. However, I do understand the frustration some players may have, not knowing what is going on behind the scenes, but it shouldn't determine whether they feel like donating or not, as you described it; "they'll think that GamezBD is a dead end and they won't make a donation to help you and they'll just leave at some point...", since a donation is exactly that, a donation.

That means that at the moment you are donating, you are doing it in good faith and further more without expecting compensation, the very definition of a donation. Now that GamezBD DOES compensate players for their donations in some form or another, is just fantastic and I get that that is how Private-Server-Projects make things happen.

I just have a different view of the situation, I guess being an old man might influence my perspective, since I am here of my own free will, doing what I like and enjoy, meanwhile helping out a site and -as much as I can- the community as well.

 

So basically how it goes is gamezdb devs are decrypting the packets from new build client and decryptjon could take anywhere between 1 month and longer.
They have to do it, otherwise the packets from client would travel to the retail servers and it would be a bad thing to happen. Thats why we cant have frequent patches, because each packet has to be decrypted again.
PA is making everything in their power to make it harder for our devs, thats why Kolka choses to implement new content after everything available on retail.