Why does everything take so long?

[Suirieko]

This is me doing a side project between work and school. Aside from setting up the lamp server, I put in less than two hours to making an auction house. I have the database and queries done, services halfway there and user interface barely started

That's bull. All it's been so far is only the database shell, Keep in mind there's multiple servers, so you're going to have to make one for each server, then on top of that the UI, the player interaction with it, and programming each and every single item into the AH, not to mention dealing with how some items stack with 99 or 999 and so on, then there's organizing the items into each category.

Then you have to perform the internal QA and stress testing before you could put it out to public. Anyone, and I mean anyone that has even a smallest experience with software development, let alone IT field would know that you just can't make these things in 5 hours, let alone a day, hell let alone a week.

Which brings up one thing:

Although I can't prove it to you, it took me 5 hours to set up this server, which included assembling the hardware, installing LAMP, accounts, services, etc.

So you say it took you 5 hours to setup one server. Great. There's 18 server. 18 * 5, so that's 90 hours of work just the hardware alone. Say you'll copy and paste the database and all the whole nine yard of software development into each of the 18 'AH servers' for FFXIV. Great, then you have to make sure that it is working perfectly fine and operational, and I do mean perfectly fine. If there's one glitch, you have to go back and fix it, and test it again. it's a vicious cycle.

Then bare in mind that this is just ONE project of the whole FFXIV project to work on. There's still Airships, there's still chocobo, there's still content, and more quests, and more classes, the list just goes on, and on, and on.

And you have to consider this: You already got the Market ward, which is functioning just as well as an Auction House functions, so you have to ask yourself, and the team this: is it even worth doing the auction house, when you already got something that does the same job already in place, only that it needs to be more optimized? I mean sure, the whole thing sucked at one point, but now it actually works and it is actually functional that people can actually use it efficiently. There's still problem with it. IE: it crashes and resets, and we don't want that obviously so there's work in that, so put that against a WHOLE new, nearly redundant feature, which is going to further delay other, higher priority project.

Ok thats fine BUT if SE CAN do a functioning AH in 1 week WHY THE HELL DONT WE HAVE IT YET??!!

Because it's not even possible, and even if it is, it's completely redundant and a waste of time to focus when anyone can agree that SE have more important and pressing matters to work on.

* * *

Now keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is studying on Information Technology and Computer Science, including programming.

[Evenstar]

That's bull. All it's been so far is only the database shell, Keep in mind there's multiple servers, so you're going to have to make one for each server, then on top of that the UI, the player interaction with it, and programming each and every single item into the AH, not to mention dealing with how some items stack with 99 or 999 and so on, then there's organizing the items into each category.

Then you have to perform the internal QA and stress testing before you could put it out to public. Anyone, and I mean anyone that has even a smallest experience with software development, let alone IT field would know that you just can't make these things in 5 hours, let alone a day, hell let alone a week.

Which brings up one thing:

So you say it took you 5 hours to setup one server. Great. There's 18 server. 18 * 5, so that's 90 hours of work just the hardware alone. Say you'll copy and paste the database and all the whole nine yard of software development into each of the 18 'AH servers' for FFXIV. Great, then you have to make sure that it is working perfectly fine and operational, and I do mean perfectly fine. If there's one glitch, you have to go back and fix it, and test it again. it's a vicious cycle.

Then bare in mind that this is just ONE project of the whole FFXIV project to work on. There's still Airships, there's still chocobo, there's still content, and more quests, and more classes, the list just goes on, and on, and on.

And you have to consider this: You already got the Market ward, which is functioning just as well as an Auction House functions, so you have to ask yourself, and the team this: is it even worth doing the auction house, when you already got something that does the same job already in place, only that it needs to be more optimized? I mean sure, the whole thing sucked at one point, but now it actually works and it is actually functional that people can actually use it efficiently. There's still problem with it. IE: it crashes and resets, and we don't want that obviously so there's work in that, so put that against a WHOLE new, nearly redundant feature, which is going to further delay other, higher priority project.

Because it's not even possible, and even if it is, it's completely redundant and a waste of time to focus when anyone can agree that SE have more important and pressing matters to work on.

* * *

Now keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is studying on Information Technology and Computer Science, including programming.

Thank god we have people with brains! Thank you! I just couldn't bring myself to write such a huge post, but you basically said everything I wanted to say. Too bad it is no use since most of the people here are ignorant and clueless when it comes to programming and software developing. I am studying Information Science and Computer Science myself and I agree with everything you said. Anyone with the smallest bit of knowledge how software developing works wouldn't dare to say an Auction House can be implemented in a week. It wouldn't suprise me if it would take up to a month with a small team of 4-5 people working on it.

You have to model it, build it and test it. After you are done in almost 100% of the cases you will end up with broken parts or stuff you didn't think about. So you end up going back to the drawing table, fix the code, test it some more and keep repeating that process until it is perfectly fine.

I didn't even mention the UI yet .... it is not like the guys can open Office 2007 and Paint and put stuff together in an hour ...

[Wolfie]

That's bull. All it's been so far is only the database shell, Keep in mind there's multiple servers, so you're going to have to make one for each server, then on top of that the UI, the player interaction with it, and programming each and every single item into the AH, not to mention dealing with how some items stack with 99 or 999 and so on, then there's organizing the items into each category. Then you have to perform the internal QA and stress testing before you could put it out to public. Anyone, and I mean anyone that has even a smallest experience with software development, let alone IT field would know that you just can't make these things in 5 hours, let alone a day, hell let alone a week. Which brings up one thing:So you say it took you 5 hours to setup one server. Great. There's 18 server. 18 * 5, so that's 90 hours of work just the hardware alone. Say you'll copy and paste the database and all the whole nine yard of software development into each of the 18 'AH servers' for FFXIV. Great, then you have to make sure that it is working perfectly fine and operational, and I do mean perfectly fine. If there's one glitch, you have to go back and fix it, and test it again. it's a vicious cycle.Then bare in mind that this is just ONE project of the whole FFXIV project to work on. There's still Airships, there's still chocobo, there's still content, and more quests, and more classes, the list just goes on, and on, and on.And you have to consider this: You already got the Market ward, which is functioning just as well as an Auction House functions, so you have to ask yourself, and the team this: is it even worth doing the auction house, when you already got something that does the same job already in place, only that it needs to be more optimized? I mean sure, the whole thing sucked at one point, but now it actually works and it is actually functional that people can actually use it efficiently. There's still problem with it. IE: it crashes and resets, and we don't want that obviously so there's work in that, so put that against a WHOLE new, nearly redundant feature, which is going to further delay other, higher priority project. Because it's not even possible, and even if it is, it's completely redundant and a waste of time to focus when anyone can agree that SE have more important and pressing matters to work on.* * *Now keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is studying on Information Technology and Computer Science, including programming.

This is something coming from a guy designing data storehouses for a pharmaceutical company.

It's been three months of planning with no visible results. It takes less than a week for any professional team to acquire a server and database cluster to set up a storehouse. database schema and queries are done in less than three days, and the rest of the time is spent building the interface, web app in my case, for the database.

The dev team has done absolutely nothing beyond "investigation". With a team of three individuals, I have built an app catalog which in addition to adding and deleting entries, supports editing of entries , real time visualization of code commits per app, commenting, etc.

It took us two months to go from talk and planning to having a functional app available in a production system.

You really want me to believe that building a simple transaction system is going to take this long for a AAA development firm?

[Ostia]

This is something coming from a guy designing data storehouses for a pharmaceutical company.

It's been three months of planning with no visible results. It takes less than a week for any professional team to acquire a server and database cluster to set up a storehouse. database schema and queries are done in less than three days, and the rest of the time is spent building the interface, web app in my case, for the database.

The dev team has done absolutely nothing beyond "investigation". With a team of three individuals, I have built an app catalog which in addition to adding and deleting entries, supports editing of entries , real time visualization of code commits per app, commenting, etc.

It took us two months to go from talk and planning to having a functional app available in a production system.

You really want me to believe that building a simple transaction system is going to take this long for a AAA development firm?

Just a tip, the people here don't take kindly to your kind of talk, they like to bullshit themselves, they actually think that SE has stopped every single team and their janitors to work on the so called "Re-design" of combat etc etc.

[Elexia]

Just a tip, the people here don't take kindly to your kind of talk, they like to bullshit themselves, they actually think that SE has stopped every single team and their janitors to work on the so called "Re-design" of combat etc etc.

People also like to believe nothing takes time.

[Ostia]

People also like to believe nothing takes time.

Indeed, for example the people that like to believe that it has not been 1 year since alpha ..... yet nothing to show for it lol

[Suirieko]

This is something coming from a guy designing data storehouses for a pharmaceutical company.

Oh my goodness, this reply is SO wrong that if you look up the definition of wrong, you'd find your picture there, I mean REALLY! You don't even know who I am and what I do! that's hilarious!

cliche, I know, but I just can't help but say it!

It's been three months of planning with no visible results. It takes less than a week for any professional team to acquire a server and database cluster to set up a storehouse. database schema and queries are done in less than three days, and the rest of the time is spent building the interface, web app in my case, for the database.

Again, setting up the database is one thing. it's only a shell. You've only setup the skeleton of the system, hell the frame work. What about the players to server interactivity? what about reliability? what about optimization, ensuring that this thing rarely crashes if not ever. Hell what about the well done UI that fits into the UI theme of the game? internal testing? external testing? stress testing? stability testing? What about having at least one database server per GAME SERVER, there are 18 of them in all. You have to test all 18 of them. Hell I already got into this.

Now keep in mind, that this is just one of the MANY things they have to work on. I already went into the detail of this, I'm not even going to go into this, again.

The dev team has done absolutely nothing beyond "investigation". With a team of three individuals, I have built an app catalog which in addition to adding and deleting entries, supports editing of entries , real time visualization of code commits per app, commenting, etc.

It took us two months to go from talk and planning to having a functional app available in a production system.

You really want me to believe that building a simple transaction system is going to take this long for a AAA development firm?

Okay. At first I was thinking that it would be a little redundant to reply to your first post, but now I feel that I should have to, so I will, in order to reply to the above paragraph, at least to the best of my knowledge and estimation of what goes on.

It's been 6 months since the game was released, and ~3 months since the new developer lead has come in, and the game's development still moving at a snail's pace.

The game was rushed out, they spent 5 years or so to work on it, with not even a year worth of alpha testing and beta testing. Hell personally I believed that they should've spent more time on beta testing. I don't know how a new team can just immediately go into the game from day one. There's planning, there's meeting, there's taking information from us, the players, and there's development, and inspection of what went wrong and fix it. I'd rather they take their time to fix the game, rather than rush it out, because rushing the game out is what got the game in this mess in the FIRST place.

Monster redesigns involved increased size, when most complaints were that they had boring designs.

Keep in mind that a LOT of these monsters will be the first of MANY, so of COURSE they are boring. It's the same for just about every MMORPG. in Perfect World I had to kill waves, after waves of beetles and fish and squirrels and snakes and tiny monsters for the first 25 levels, in FFXI I had to kill rabbits, and beetles, and sheeps, and basic orcs, and goblins, and crabs, and crawlers, and crabs, dragon flies, and crabs, and crabs that actually aggros and birds, and birds and my god more freaking birds to level my jobs up. I mean really, what are you expecting to fight Behemoths or giant wyrms or giant turtles at level 5? It's called starting small and work your way up, really. Again, I'm willing to bet a year worth of my pay that we WILL see level cap increase, and which, in turn, will lead to more epic monsters, and more epic fights, and so on.

Combat effect redesigns involved, again, increased size of the effects, when most complaints were that the effects were boring and too similar to one another.

Eh, I wasn't even expecting something epic because it's only the first 50 level. I mean, really, what is the game always going to stay at level 50? What haven't FFXI history or any other MMORPG history taught you anything? I'd wait for the more awesome stuff until after we get maybe level 70 or 80, and then complain if it's lackluster. Although, I will admit that I was pretty pissed when I saw how silly Freeze, Flare, Quake, etc are small and nothing more than what you get when a mage sneeze, which is an insult to these incredibly strong spell names in FF history.

The devs are still investigating how to implement jump/AH, and their effects. Really? You can come up with a workable database schema for an AH in less than a day, and the queries and services to add or remove entries in less than an hour. Why is this taking so long?

Okay. Jumps. Okay. I've argued about jumps for as long as I've heard about this game coming out. Jumps in this game changes a LOT. The game, at this point, is not even optimized for any form of jumping, really. So adding jumps means, having to work on, well, every freaking zones in the game, from cities to well, everywhere! So why are they still investigating it? Because it's a WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF WORK for the game, which may not even be necessary!

Auction House, which I already argued this in every freaking post in this thread, and number of times since the alpha/beta release. I've been on both side. I supported Auction house in the beginning because the market ward sucked, and now I'm against it because the market ward is actually functional that it actually works! why are they still investigating it? Because it would be a completely redundant project when Market Wards does the job just as well.

There have been NO new levequests introduced, and the side quests that were introduced are extremely basic, light on lore, and few in number. Is anyone even writing lore for this game?

This, I won't argue. I'd like to see more in-depth quest and hell, more levequests just to keep things unique.

Devs still investigating map collision for getting hung up on ledges?

I've seen some improvement on this since the game has started but yeah I'd still like to see more work with this.

Market Ward search is still elementary and not flexible. Seeking items is still extremely difficult to work with.

Aaaand when's the last time you played this game? Seeking items worked very well for me. Oh, can't find the item? Don't you know what (0) Zero means? I've had no trouble using the system at all. If there's problem with the item availability, that's the problem with the players, not the development. See, the player needs to make it and sell it for it to be for sale. That is how the Market Ward system works.

For me, when I look for an item, I go to the search and look for say, uh, Blackened Scale Mail, it tells me who has it, what room they are in, and how much they are selling it for me, and even goes as far as marking the players that are selling it with a star, and I get my blackened scale mail (if it's available and I can afford it and the price is good) faster than you can say "omfg I got a blackened scale mail!"

Why does everything take so long? What's taking up all the dev's time?

Perhaps they have a LOt of projects to work on? like... Battle system? class abilities? Spells? More quests? Airships? Chocobos? Contents? Jumps? even holiday events?! Auction House? Look at the letter from producers. Some of them have some nifty outlines!

[Suirieko]

Well, I'm impressed that a college kid, in his spare time, was able to knock out a shell of an AH in 5 hours... I mean, hey, if he can do it in 5 hours... how long is it going to take a professional to do it? Either way, no excuse not to have an AH in the game.

Reviews will be awful if they 're-release' without an AH... again.

Anyway, point is, it was impressive that he did that in 5 hours. Yes, it's not a fully functioning AH but he did THAT in 5 hours. Like I previously said, not even a full day at the office in Japan. (Or majority of the world).

That's just it. It's a very small part of the whole system. then there's the fact that it has to be repeated for each and every server (there are at least 18, along with any testing servers they may have!). Auction House isn't something that can be made quickly, let alone even necessary, there are tons of other projects to work on that should have more priority than the AH.

[Mega]

Now keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is studying on Information Technology and Computer Science, including programming.

Yea yea.. with 100 posts you should know by now we're all computer wizards here at the XIV forums.