November? really?

[rainichan]

Culture in this case has nothing to do with it.

It does when it's seen as a disrespectful, dick move to take vacation in the middle of crunch time because you're feeling overwhelmed. I've pulled my share of 10-12 hours days when things needed to get done at work, but they're likely going above and beyond pulling 100 hours overtime in a month or less with no breaks save for their national one-day holidays is insanity.

[IgnisFatuus]

I think most people here are completely delusional when it comes to this holiday thing. like I care, really.

if any other company doesnt get shit done in time your business relations will suffer and your partner wont care if your staff just had vacation or not. its a matter of planning your staff accordingly.

if SE cant manage to hire enough people so that work doesnt come to a standstill while people take vacations then it just shows how utterly incompetent they are in even managing that. its just a very lame excuse because they are not able to work on schedule. ever.

[Cidolfas86]

It does when it's seen as a disrespectful, dick move to take vacation in the middle of crunch time because you're feeling overwhelmed.

The same kinds of things your describing happen in the west as well due in no small part to mismanagement and lack of any solid unions in the industry. The point is that Japan isn't unique in this. "Development hell" isn't unique to Japan.

[rainichan]

...it's not mismanagement on their part, though. It is literally a cultural difference in "you and your team have worked hard, have 4-5 days off because you've earned it by not taking a day off that isn't a holiday in almost two years." That is how they're raised. That is how they're taught. If your peer is working this hard, you should strive to be working just as hard as they are, if not harder. If you're not, then you're disgracing your peers and who you work for. You want a mental health day? You don't really need it, do you? No one else does, and if you take that day off you're going to push your work off on Tanaka for the day and you know he's already swamped.

Yeah, that happens in the west. I can say with some certainty that part of those teams take a break after long dev hours, and then the other half will once the others are back. But that's not how the Japanese do. The patch being delayed some is not the end of the world. Unsub and play something else until patch drops.

[Natsukii]

People should complain less.
There are other mmo´s that do significantly worse than this one regarding offering and providing new content.
Im actually happy that they take longer with applying the next update, so now the casual players actually can get somewhere with gearing up and prepare for 3.1.
Just my opinion obviously.

[Wildsprite]

The same kinds of things your describing happen in the west as well due in no small part to mismanagement and lack of any solid unions in the industry. The point is that Japan isn't unique in this. "Development hell" isn't unique to Japan.

Regardless of this they are a team and as such they take vacations at the same time. This is a thing in Japan, your opinion won't change that nomatter how hard you try. I wholeheartedly believe they were entitled to the one that caused this delay.

I don't want to compare to anything. I'm just disappointed the developers left us with nothing to do for 5 months.

If you have nothing to do because you rushed through content or because you don't want to do some of the content available that isn't the fault of the devs.

[Loony_BoB]

Development hell certainly isn't unique to Japan. Although the national culture that dictates laws and the view of things as a whole is certainly at the extreme end.

However, neither is delaying vacation until after release heading up to deadlines (especially ones that affect mass media and public image on such a global scale - can you imagine if they made the release date early and had to delay it?), and then everyone taking vacation after release as a result. HW was the key release date, not 3.1. They likely missed/delayed their summer holidays. And no, not everyone took time off at once, there were obviously people working on 3.05, 3.07, etc. But there has to be some agreed time to delay holidays (before the biggest release of the year, crunch time) and some agreed time to make up for it (following the biggest release of the year, time to regenerate following the crunch).

This is normal in all things that involve huge public releases and a lot of people working on them - film, TV, video games, etc. Whether or not it's right to do this is up for debate, but it is absolutely normal.

For what it's worth, I can't find an online article, but living in Edinburgh and reading the Metro every day means I did get made aware that Rockstar staff do exactly this following successful releases (or at least they did after one of the GTA games). I dread to think what happens after an unsuccessful release, but I suspect we're more likely to hear about that in the finance pages because, well, that's where you generally hear about large layoffs.

[Neri]

Well, those who want to unsub, just do so. I recommend unsub for like until before 4.0 release date is announced and then resub if you still feel like it. That way I am sure you will have a lot of contents to do.

[Eldeniel]

The only problem for me is that they've released the previous updates too soon, now we have to wait 2 more month for new content.

[Maaizr]

very excited, regardless of the wait time - will continue to enjoy the game for what it is

and for those of you unsubbing for now/quitting entirely