devtrackers.gg
Hello, Slayers!
Let’s talk about our studio’s approach to development and how that plays into the information you’ll find on our new and improved roadmap.
Our studio works under the principles of agile development. Contrary to what you may believe, this doesn’t mean we’re all gymnastic ninjas. Agile development is about breaking large chunks of work down into smaller pieces in order to be more adaptable. This allows us to deploy smaller improvements over time instead of one large content launch. Think of building a feature as building a house. With agile, we build that house one room at a time instead of all at once. This means you get to access the fun rec room immediately instead of waiting a year for the entire house to be complete. Yay!
Another big component of agile is being able to adapt to incoming player feedback and data. So take that rec room from the previous analogy. If we receive feedback that the room is not up to snuff, and our next step was to expand that rec room and its offerings, then we’d have the freedom to pivot, adjust, or straight up cancel further work on the rec room. Is my analogy making sense or is it quickly falling apart? Seriously, I can’t tell anymore...
ANYWAY, we didn’t find that our old roadmap was conveying this workflow properly. While pretty, it was hard to zoom out and get a birds-eye view of all our content in development and see where it was in the pipeline. We believe that this simplified roadmap better communicates each chunk of work. It’s also much more flexible, allowing us to update earlier and more often. This will serve to better reflect our production priorities — which can change rapidly.
You may notice that Weapon 8 and Weapon Reworks did not make the transition to this new Roadmap. The more we thought about adding these items, the more we realized that they weren’t a priority for us as a team. We don’t believe that a new weapon or a complete rework would solve any of the biggest challenges that Dauntless currently faces. We believe that our time is better spent on the other items on the roadmap. If we ever decide to add another weapon or rework one, you’ll be the first to know.
We’ve also folded our player issues Trello board into the same page, making it a one-stop-shop for development updates. Now you can see what’s coming to Dauntless AND what we’re currently fixing, all in one place.
Let us know what you think of the new Favro board, and be sure to give it a bookmark: http://playdauntless.com/roadmap