Yoshi P in a nutshell

[LilimoLimomo]

So yes, they're making simple systems adjustments. Things that an intern can do. Thank you proving my point.

With respect, this gives me the impression that you aren't considering all of the work that's actually involved with implementing a second dye channel. Depending on their tech, such a change requires structural changes to their database, code, UI, and texture data at the very least. No team worth their salt is going to let an intern do all of those disparate tasks, as there are impactful ramifications for many of them that are far above an intern's pay grade.

[Koros]

structural changes to their database, code, UI, and texture data

something interns can do, or do you think modifying a struct in C# is some nigh-impossible task? the undergrad interns at Google easily deal with far harder tasks than anything in CBU3.

It's kind of sad that people think game dev coding is hard at all, no it's not, which is why we have specimens like Undertale's developer coding dialogues with

if 3232: print("literal string containing dialogue 3232")
if 3233: print...

for thousands of lines.

Of course, sadly Japan has a brain drain problem where its smartest people emigrate since its economy is in the gutters and it's work culture is a relic from chimp age, so even if they tried they couldn't do better anyways.

[LilimoLimomo]

something interns can do, or do you think modifying a struct in C# is some nigh-impossible task?

Oh, the struct modification is the easy part. What I wouldn't trust an intern to do is appropriately manage how the data in that struct is going to be efficiently stored in the database, nor manage how the existing database data will be ported over to the new structure (I feel like it's very safe to assume that CBU3 is using old-school servers, as opposed to anything in the cloud). And I'd be surprised if that same programming intern had the knowledge of the programs the artists do their texturing in to convert clothing that was initially implemented to only have a single dye channel to having two dye channels. This is a non-trivial undertaking across multiple skillsets.

[Arzalis]

Oh, the struct modification is the easy part. What I wouldn't trust an intern to do is appropriately manage how the data in that struct is going to be efficiently stored in the database, nor manage how the existing database data will be ported over to the new structure (I feel like it's very safe to assume that CBU3 is using old-school servers, as opposed to anything in the cloud). And I'd be surprised if that same programming intern had the knowledge of the programs the artists do their texturing in to convert clothing that was initially implemented to only have a single dye channel to having two dye channels. This is a non-trivial undertaking across multiple skillsets.

While I wouldn't presume to know all the details of their codebase, I can guess the implementation on the texture/material side. I think they already map everything into channels (why we get so many color variations of armor; they aren't making new textures for those). They'll just flag a previously non-dyeable channel with a property that says "this dyes with dye channel 2." They won't need to do any actual new texture work for this.

Why would they need to create a new storage method? They already have one. Migrating data from the old structure to the new one is definitely a concern, but that's more of a devops thing. They're going to be making tons of changes for the expansion anyway no doubt and it'll all be handled at maintenance before launch.

You're making this sound more complicated than it is to try to prove your point, I think. Pretty much all of this is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to be assigned to an intern or a junior programmer. Minus the actual implementation at launch.

[LilimoLimomo]

Why would they need to create a new storage method? They already have one. Migrating data from the old structure to the new one is definitely a concern, but that's more of a devops thing.

Perhaps I'm not wording this correctly, but I'm saying what you're saying: that for this change to be performant and cost-efficient and be tested at a AAA scale, there's some of this that just can't be done with only interns. An intern can do some of the busywork here, but they can't do the devops side. I'll trust you on the art side as I'm less familiar with modern-day art pipelines.