New features being a priority

[Ozo]

Hello!

I read that you guys are fixing balance issues and bugs as a priority, sure getting rid of bugs and having a balanced game is great but, being an alpha is supposed to mainly add new features and getting rid of the most serious bugs.

I think you should prioritize getting new features out there and let us do the balance and bug feedback!
When you reach beta you should have most of the features out, and focus on balancing and bug fixing.

This is just my opinion though, but i fear that fixing even the smallest bugs now will take more time in the long run.
Since new bugs tend to show up with new features, getting all (or most) features out and then focusing on bugs would be a good approach

[kovarex]

Hi,

we are not doing balance, it is quite obvious that the balance will have to be changed many times when we add new concepts and features etc etc.

But bugs are different story, we want to try to remove as many bugs as we can now, before we start adding new features because:
1) It will save us a lot of time, people will not report the bugs again and again.
2) Not fixing bugs first is not good idea, we (me and Tomas) have some amount of programming experience (both hobby and job), and we know, that it would be path straight to hell.
3) It is really bad PR when people play our game and encounter bugs, I feel so ashamed when I see youtube video with some bug ...
4) I believe, that now there are is the biggest count of bug reports, as people started to play the game, once we solve most of them, there shouldn't appear new bugs so quickly and we will have more time for features.

My estimation is, that the 0.2.8 will be mainly bugfix release again, and after that we can start thinking more about features (and choose which one should we do first).

Edit: I just have to add something
We need to do all this the right way. We need to keep calm, to remain persistent and patient. We will listen to you, people who like the game a lot, but there are things we will just do our way, the same way we have been working till now.
If we find out, that we need to refactor our code, and that will result in no features in 14 days, but it would help us to do things more easily in the future, we will do it, even if someone will curse us. We were always considering long-term effects of the development and we will keep doing it this way.

PS. The reason I quit my last corporate job (spent 4 years there) is, that they didn't work this way. They added features before refactoring and fixing their code. They have been developing their corporate application for 15 years this way. It was hell of a mess. I was able to convince them to spend 1/2 of my time repairing the code, but it still wasn't enough, and they didn't really understand how important it is. One of my motivations to start working on Factorio was, to be able to do the programming the right way. This is investment that pays off many many times in the future.

We would like to add features right away too, it tempts us a lot! But first things first.
Also, don't take this post personally, I just wanted to state our opinion somewhere.

[( Tchey )]

I think i like you, Kovarex.

[rymn]

I think i like you, Kovarex.

Me too

[Ozo]

I guess I'm used to how other companies work. But if you think that this is the best way to do it, I totally respect that. Do you have a date for the next update?

[( Tchey )]

They say they want a new release every friday, but no promised. 028 should be out friday, then.

[Ween]

There is only one remaining question, how do you find time to fix bug and add feature when you have to answer to all these comment on the forum ?

[( Tchey )]

Easy. Robotic Logistic XXX.

[ssilk]

Looking into old threads...

One of those insights into development, which we would wish from all other software developers...
And yes, I think it could be put into "implemented, but not as suggested".