From a production standpoint; given how many features are planned for the product, how do you make your choices on what will be in launch and what will be in a future patch? Obviously for the sake of getting the game out in a timely fashion not every feature that has been discussed will be in at launch. What kind of feature density could we expect for the first major content patch once we've launched further down the road?asked by BlackDragon

Travis, you want to start with that one?

Yeah, so first of all I would say that from a production standpoint, I would probably scope your question, immediately, so that we can make it for launch 'cause it's very long! Haha, sorry...So, "given how many features are planned for the product, how do you make your choices on what will be in launch and what will be in a future patch?" ... Basically we have product roadmaps for each of the modules, and that lays out our plan - in addition to teams like the core tech team, the graphics team, so I would say "non-module teams" that are working on maybe the core engine technology - we lay out all of our roadmaps for each of these teams. We kind of line up these nexus points where there are things we'll be releasing at the same time, there are features coming online at the same time, and as for which features are attacked first, it's kind of the same way that you'd build a house, right? So you build a foundation first, and then you start putting up all of the... uhhhh... oh I've never built a house before... but you start putting out the outside, and then you start building the inside - you know, it kind of follows the standard paradigm. And to that end, I think when you start seeing the base and the core gameplay come online, then you start adding the additional features. It's like, "okay, you can move now! Where do you move? You can shoot now! What do you shoot?" and things like that - it's just kind of organic. So while we will not have ALL features that we've been talking about, and all the stretch-goal features that we've talked about, at launch, there's a pretty long-term plan in place for getting all of these things along the way.

Even though we have roadmaps laid out for each of these different features, it's also good to understand that these things are moving targets sometimes, based on and adapting to the needs of the company. We may push back a feature based on whether we suddenly encounter an obstacle that we realize that requires more resource and more attention, or we realize that it's a feature that the players may not want right now, and therefore they want something else instead. So we have the ability and the luxury of being able to move these around based on the needs of the game, and what the players are gonna want, and what we'd like to see in the game.

That's a good point too, about the constantly changing nature of it. Alex has something he's very fond of saying and is very true, which is "by the time that you've taken the time to write your schedule, it's out of date and it's wrong." So the schedule, the roadmaps, everything is a constantly evolving process - which is good, because it keeps employed!

And in a perfect world these are the goals and timelines we'd like to meet, but we don't live in a perfect world, and things require changing on the fly sometimes - and sometimes by the seat of your pants! Sometimes we can-... or at least... a good producer would like to be able to forecast problems down the road, but you know, real life happens - Murphy's law likes to show it's ugly head every now and then, and we need to adjust things on the fly. Sometimes a feature may make it, and sometimes we may absolutely scrap what we started with and realize it just wasn't the direction we wanted to go.