Wags ED Team



Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 11,300





Thank you for all the insightful and helpful comments received over the past few days pertaining to F/A-18 and Early Access. Please allow me to address the most common questions and concerns we have identified.



We believe in the Early Access business model and the value that Community involvement brings at an early stage:

It gets the product into quality user hands swiftly which focuses the dev team. Despite the occasional ‘pitchforks and burning ceremonies’ we sometimes witness, the value of reading the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ is immense. This generates buzz internally and externally which is good for moral and general awareness. It generates funding which we couldn’t raise in existing capital markets for such a relatively small and rather niche genre. It makes the product into a ‘Community Venture’ for all those involved, users, devs and investors alike. It generates Community opportunities for those who wish to create large Sub Communities, YT and FB Channels and Forums (even Reddit is ultimately a commercial venture).

Complex products such as Hornet and Viper often go through rough patches. This is mainly due to limited resource availability, productivity variability and the unknown unknowns we encounter along the way. Despite the experience we have accumulated in DCS after approximately 5 million man-hours invested, 3.3 million lines of C++ code and 1.4 million lines of LUA currently in the build (without empty lines), it is not uncommon that devs and their managers overestimate productivity expectations to a certain degree. As quality is the key driver to delivering acceptable update satisfaction, we often find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, especially as we are compelled to deliver to an ever content-hungry clientele and to a growing customer base which today is in excess of 300,000 active monthly users and 55,000 daily users. Despite the obvious complexity of aircraft such as the Viper and Hornet, we have delivered in excess of 40,000 and 85,000 units respectively to-date and this is in no small way thanks to the community’s passion, involvement and willingness to try out such products early and to actively participate in the overall development story. (Note: a total of 2 million products were shipped in the previous 15 years and approx. 400,000 in 2019.)



May I also draw your attention to the less visible side of Early Access and that is user-generated content. Without the thousands and thousands of community created missions, addons, skins and in particular the massive number of videos available online and the tens of millions of views generated during this ongoing Early Access phase, there is simply no way that we would have been able to build the level of awareness and excitement which we have witnessed to-date. This aspect is an important factor in the growth and sustainability of the hardcore simulator genre. Consider this carefully, you are the ones participating with us in the growth of our hobby and this truly is the enabling factor in our common destiny.



But let’s take a small step back and ensure we all agree on the meaning of Early Access. Despite a small number of customers believing that it means ‘feature complete’, the term seems to be self-evident. In fact, it is not defined by us but to us from our friends at Steam. It is one that we will continue to adhere to for the sake of clarity and the avoidance of doubt:



“Steam Early Access enables you to sell your game on Steam while it is still being developed and provide context to customers that a product should be considered "unfinished". Early Access is a place for games that are in a playable alpha or beta state, are worth the current value of the playable build, and that you plan to continue to develop for release.”



This definition is quite clear and valuable. Delivering a product with the qualifier “Early Access” helps set the context for prospective customers as it provides them with information about the initial state of completeness in addition to describing our aspirations and objectives. The term Early Access ensures that customers fully understand and recognize that they are getting involved with a ‘work in progress’.



We believe that by the end of this year, the Hornet will no longer be in an early stage of development and hence we will qualify it as ‘Out of Early Access’. This does not mean that we will stop working on it by any means. It is a definition to assist the prospective Buyer in understanding the status of the product by qualifying its late development status. It is not destined as a message to existing users attempting to shy away from any further investment.



However, in the light of the recent concerns voiced by certain members of our Community and in order to respect your wishes, we have released a survey inviting you to actively participate in ranking the 40 plus features we believe are key to the future roadmap of the Hornet. The results of this poll will form an important decision-making factor for our resource allocation from here on and will be the reporting benchmark that we will set our dates to.



A few additional items that we feel might be of interest to you:

We have decided to focus more of our energies on the Hornet until the end of 2020 and as such the Viper will need to be on a slower burn, but development will by no means be suspended. We hired a new engineer to work on new weapons such as Maverick, JDAM/JSOW, and HARM, and they will continue full steam ahead in addition to system capabilities such as steerpoint creation (not just modification) and updates to the targeting pod such as Cursor Zero (CZ).



HOTAS commands are certainly an item we will continue to work on but as I am sure most of you understand, these are highly dependent on the actual availability of a system modes, sensors and weapons. Therefore, we will address this feature as part of the specific weapon, sensor, and avionics task, rather than as a single HOTAS catch-all feature.



While we certainly understand the desire for the ATFLIR, we decided to place it in the Out of Early Access list as the Listening TGP will provide virtually all the same functionality. We first wish to prioritize unique Hornet features that are not in place anywhere in the program. However, we do look forward to reviewing the upcoming poll on this matter and will discuss the findings openly.



Following an in-depth review of all Hornet stores, it was judged that several items such as sea mines and Shrike were of limited value in the simulation. Whilst it might be still of interest to the highest purists in the Community, we would like to consider including these at some later point to be agreed.

Thank you again for all your support and continued feedback. We are grateful for your passion and commitment; without you where would we be?



Fly safe,

Matt Dear all,Thank you for all the insightful and helpful comments received over the past few days pertaining to F/A-18 and Early Access. Please allow me to address the most common questions and concerns we have identified.We believe in the Early Access business model and the value that Community involvement brings at an early stage:Complex products such as Hornet and Viper often go through rough patches. This is mainly due to limited resource availability, productivity variability and the unknown unknowns we encounter along the way. Despite the experience we have accumulated in DCS after approximately 5 million man-hours invested, 3.3 million lines of C++ code and 1.4 million lines of LUA currently in the build (without empty lines), it is not uncommon that devs and their managers overestimate productivity expectations to a certain degree. As quality is the key driver to delivering acceptable update satisfaction, we often find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, especially as we are compelled to deliver to an ever content-hungry clientele and to a growing customer base which today is in excess of 300,000 active monthly users and 55,000 daily users. Despite the obvious complexity of aircraft such as the Viper and Hornet, we have delivered in excess of 40,000 and 85,000 units respectively to-date and this is in no small way thanks to the community’s passion, involvement and willingness to try out such products early and to actively participate in the overall development story. (Note: a total of 2 million products were shipped in the previous 15 years and approx. 400,000 in 2019.)May I also draw your attention to the less visible side of Early Access and that is user-generated content. Without the thousands and thousands of community created missions, addons, skins and in particular the massive number of videos available online and the tens of millions of views generated during this ongoing Early Access phase, there is simply no way that we would have been able to build the level of awareness and excitement which we have witnessed to-date. This aspect is an important factor in the growth and sustainability of the hardcore simulator genre. Consider this carefully, you are the ones participating with us in the growth of our hobby and this truly is the enabling factor in our common destiny.But let’s take a small step back and ensure we all agree on the meaning of Early Access. Despite a small number of customers believing that it means ‘feature complete’, the term seems to be self-evident. In fact, it is not defined by us but to us from our friends at Steam. It is one that we will continue to adhere to for the sake of clarity and the avoidance of doubt:This definition is quite clear and valuable. Delivering a product with the qualifier “Early Access” helps set the context for prospective customers as it provides them with information about the initial state of completeness in addition to describing our aspirations and objectives. The term Early Access ensures that customers fully understand and recognize that they are getting involved with a ‘work in progress’.We believe that by the end of this year, the Hornet will no longer be in an early stage of development and hence we will qualify it as ‘Out of Early Access’. This does not mean that we will stop working on it by any means. It is a definition to assist the prospective Buyer in understanding the status of the product by qualifying its late development status. It is not destined as a message to existing users attempting to shy away from any further investment.However, in the light of the recent concerns voiced by certain members of our Community and in order to respect your wishes, we have released a survey inviting you to actively participate in ranking the 40 plus features we believe are key to the future roadmap of the Hornet. The results of this poll will form an important decision-making factor for our resource allocation from here on and will be the reporting benchmark that we will set our dates to.A few additional items that we feel might be of interest to you:Thank you again for all your support and continued feedback. We are grateful for your passion and commitment; without you where would we be?Fly safe,Matt

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Twitch: wagmatt



System: __________________Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/wagmatt Twitch: wagmattSystem: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.p...44#post3729544