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Typically talking, the convenience of creating adjustments to the sport, its narrative/characters/content material is inversely proportional to how shut that content material is to launch. The nearer the patch/DLC/replace is to launch, the extra locked-down and set-in-stone it’s. It is because these sort of adjustments will typically have an effect on different techniques, narratives, characters, techniques, and many others. and that sort of propagation by means of the system will get dearer the extra adjustments must be made afterward. I’ll use my present mission as my instance.
My present mission is getting near launch. We have already got the primary a number of seasons of content material for this recreation scheduled – we plan on including a number of vital boss fights and content material updates over the course of the subsequent 12 months. The primary new boss scheduled to go stay within the first post-launch replace is the closest to being accomplished. That boss already has all of its mechanics locked down, all the artwork accomplished, all the voice over recorded, all the options designed, and so forth. At this level, we’re simply tuning the struggle as a result of it’s so near launch that we don’t need to danger breaking something. It doesn’t matter what the neighborhood reception is for this specific character within the narrative, they’re getting this struggle as a result of we’ve already locked in these plans months earlier than launch and it’s too late to alter them now.
The additional into the longer term we go, nonetheless, the extra malleable issues turn out to be. An excellent rule of thumb is to imagine we on the dev staff are working two or three patches forward of no matter you’re presently seeing in recreation. Content material patches are sometimes quarterly releases, which implies that the factor I’m engaged on as we speak most likely received’t be seen by gamers for a minimum of 3-6 months down the road. If supporting character Neelo turns into an enormous fan favourite, we will pivot so as to add extra content material to function Neelo – and generally we do! Nevertheless, even when Neelo turns into tremendous in style proper at launch, that probably means the quickest we will add extra Neelo to the content material updates (if we didn’t plan to take action earlier than) is in round six months post-launch. The patches earlier than which might be already within the means of being locked down and preparing for certification and launch, it’s too late to alter them.
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