Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months'

But other media said that coding is as simple as asking couple of question on chat.
- Copilot, add destructible terrain to my game please

I wish my clients would understand that, and my code is a lot simpler than a video game.
- I built an API connector for work (I'm a hobbyist, not a pro) to download what is the most common cargo transported by trucking companies from the DoT database. Everyone complained because they had to enter the company names correctly into a CSV as it wouldn't accept typos or do fuzzy matching, nor could it automatically determine which was the head office of a company, only return a list of all of the offices.

if it takes you 6 months to add a new fundamental game mechanic then thats understandable
if it takes you 6 months to remove an unnecessary popup then youre incompetent. (looking at you, Hunt Showdown)
- Lol hunt takes six months dev time to make the ui twice as worse
  
  closer to 2 years. its crazy how incompetent crytek is.

Half a year's work takes 6 months? I had no idea
- Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
  
  This still cracks me up even though I heard it so many years ago
  
  Two minutes silence for every minute

For Palworld, a new island takes 6 months, per the article. Probably talking about Sakurajima and the big southern one. That makes sense, since it's not just putting stuff there and calling it a day on the first finished thing, some level design has to happen so the place makes sense and doesn't feel super boring to explore.

That's nothing new.
Gamers who don't know any programming, or maybe made a little utility for themselves. Looovee to bring out the old "just change one line of code", "just add this model", etc. to alter something in a game.
They literally do not understand how complex systems become, specially in online multiplayer games. Riot had issues with their spaghetti code, and people were crawling over eachother to explain how "easy" it would be to just change an ability. Without realizing that it could impact and potentially break half a dozen other abilities.
- Well why didn't you start 6 months ago. It's not my problem. I paid full price. If you wanna be left the fuck alone sell games for $15 and take your time no one will bother you. When you start asking $80 a game the price sets expectations. Devs lack of planning is not my problem as a consumer.
- Even if you're an actual software dev, it's still pretty much impossible to guess how much work something is without knowing the codebase intimately.
  
  When a dev with game dev experience says something should be easy to fix, it's under the assumption of a reasonable code base. Most games are built off of common engines and you can sometimes infer how things are likely organized if you track how bugs are introduced, how objects interact, how things are loaded, etc...
  When something is a 1 day bugfix under ideal conditions, saying it will take 6+ months is admitting one of:
  The codebase is fucked
  All resources are going to new features
  Something external is slowing it down (palworld lawsuit, company sale, C-suite politics, etc...)
  Your current dev team is sub par
  Not that any of those is completely undefendable or pure malpractice, but saying it "can't" be done or blaming complexity is often a cop out.
  
  Absolutely, it's impossible to know how much. But it's a lot easier to grasp that it's rarely just "changing a few lines" when it comes to these types of situations.
  Specially since many programmers have encountered clients, managers, etc. who think it's that simple as well.
  
  And even then it’s sometimes impossible because how much can you keep in your head at once. Everybody specializes on these large projects. I may have 30000 ft view of how things operate but getting down into specifics can be hard. I have some intimate knowledge of the learning management system we develop for, which is way less complex than most games, and there are always little gotchas when you make code or architecture changes.
- Diablo4 has memory leak issues. As a software engineer myself, I just don't see any excuse for a game this long in production to have memory leak problems.
  There is no doubt that a lot of games are getting rushed without being properly tested.
  
  Tbf memory leaks can be very hard to diagnose and can also be hard to avoid in any software written in a language like C++, which is probably what Diablo 4 is written in.
- as a professional software dev, games with fozens or hundreds of abilities that interact with eachother scare me
  
  Yea, in things like MOBA games you have to compensate for so many edge cases that the amount of interactions between abilities is as you say, scary.
- See: Destiny and Telesto.
  
  In the wake of all the layoffs and such I don't know if any former employees have (as vaguely as possible) discussed the codebase yet. It seems like such an absolute nightmare.

If gamers are bitching about a game not adding a whole new island, you should ignore them because they're clearly idiots.
If gamers are bitching about your menu system being navigable by someone with less than a PhD (cough, Risk of Rain 2 on console, cough), and you're estimating that will take 6 months to fix, then that's because you (as a company) coded your software badly.
- menu system
  I think you are vastly underestimating how complicated menu systems and UI in games are. I have a friend who works as a professional game developer in a small studio and far as I heard, he's spent most of his time just working on their UI/menus.
  Changing these things is neither easy nor fast.
- Alternative reasons (not mutually exclusive):
  The organization has outdated policies that make delivering changes difficult.
  The systems used in development and delivery haven't been invested in enough to automate repetitive steps, optimize workflow, and increase safety of changes.
  Again, complex changes are obviously going to take more time, but if the simplest changes take significant time or effort then something is wrong.
- 6 months doesn't sound unrealistic for re-doing a menu system. Designing, reworking art, re-programming workflows and then testing everything can take several months. Even just the logistics of releasing it after it's done, that alone can take a month.
  Yes, it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work that has to be prioritized with the scope of the project and the team members available.
- That’s right. Still, it could take more than 6 months to make it right.
  
  💯
- cough, Risk of Rain 2 on console, cough
  I still remember when they somehow broke the Xbox version and nobody could get past the start menu.
  
  I had to read an article about that. It apparently coincided with the release of the second DLC. It was pretty broken on PS5 as well. That just screams some high level exec said it MUST be out on the announced date cause they told someone that it would be. Likely part of a contract or their bonus was tied to it. Doesn’t matter if it’s unplayable. It ‘met’ the release deadline. Now we’re just ‘doing maintenance’.
  I’m a dev and I firmly believe that if people could see the software they use daily as a physical object like a car…they’d be more “Hell, no. That’s a death trap” than they probably realize.
- I like to link them to any modding SDK (official or unofficial) and as them why don't they make it.
  
  Well for one they're a consumer who paid for a functional game. Nobody expects drivers to break out power tools and mod their car right off the lot.
  It's even more embarrassing when modders do fix it. Some random guy with no source code access manages to fix an issue in 3 weeks that a whole team couldn't fix in 3 years.

It would also be great if devs added things during development that should simply be there at launch. Instead of that, shit gets rushed out the door with promises of future fixes and updates. And then devs get all huffy when people rightfully ask for things to be added that are supposed to be basic launch features…
- What I don't understand is why do developers make bad games? They should just make good games instead.
  Gamers want good games, not bad games.
  
  The developers aren't in charge of what's in the game, the PMs and accountants are
  
  Soo true
  
  Well, the fact is that there are also a LOT of dumb customers willing to buy crap. God knows why.
  Just look at the trending / best selling lists on Steam. There’s shit on there that I wouldn’t play if you paid me. Yet somehow there’s enough of a customer base for that that they sell it.
  Honestly, Steam should look into setting a minimum quality level for things sold on the platform.
- supposed to be basic launch features
  isn't this very subjective and dependent on the game and scale of success?
- I agree with the sentiment, but I don't know Helldivers 2 -- what basic launch features were/are missing?
  
  There's a strong argument that the server architecture needed to be better at launch, but then the game sold more than an order of magnitude better than it was expected to, so no one would have noticed that it scaled badly had the player count been in line with their design and testing.

Mostly agree, 98% of requests are unrealistic. Most of these requests are not even simple.
But many times, things ARE fucked. And when that happen - dear gamers, don't curse devs, as a team. There was shitty ceo, who couldnt make a straight decision or changed them 200 times a day, because felt some popular new feature totally must be in the game, that ruined whole concept. Many times, the concept were shitty from the start, then blame director of that. Even more often, publishers pushes their financial decision over dev team (hello Helldivers2 vs Sony). Yet another time, some lawsuit shitstorm happens, that makes devs scrap something (hello Palworlds vs big_n). And many times, its all together.

Maybe the suits can fix that in a week by using AI.
/s btw
- Hey ChatGPT, code a new island!
  
  Players: it's not unique enough and that makes it boring. It's like they rushed this one with some standard stuff.

- Don't compare actual games to scams.
  
  I mean, it really depends on how you define scam. If you're so loose with the definition that you would have considered No Man's Sky a "scam" when it first released, then I can understand that.
  Otherwise it's not really a scam. There's a free trial going on right now in Star Citizen.You're free to check out the game for yourself. It's in a really good state compared to what we've previously seen (not even close to bug free, but way more playable than before).
- players? you mean marks
- I own something from that. I tried running it once and it would barely load. I gave up. Didn’t try again even on a new pc
  
  I bought a pledge early on. Sold it a few years later for double the price. Great investment!

My Helldivers gripe is that the war bonds cost too much for the casual player. 1000 super credits takes a while to gather, and even grind. Paying actual money for them is about $25aud per war bond. I think there's eight war bonds now? That's a full day's income, and you still need to collect medals to unlock the contents of the warbond.
Edit: You all don't need to explain this to me, I'm aware of the options for getting super credits. None of that changes how I feel about the game and that I'm losing interest because of it.
- But you don’t “need” to unlock them all on the day of release, there is no FOMO component, they don’t disappear after a month.
  And if you play enough to unlock them faster than they can get them out, you definitely have the time to grind the 1000SC to unlock them.
  
  I'm definitely experiencing FOMO with the warbonds I don't have. I don't have the time to play/grind or the inclination to pay for them, so I am missing out. There's three warbonds that I don't have and sure I'll eventually get them maybe but right now I'm missing out. Being able to unlock things is a big part of a game to me. I'm not dedicated enough to HD2 to skip the other games I want to play in order to get the unlocks. The whole process is lowering my interest in the game. I paid for it, I want to use the new toys that get released with it. If I were to buy it today, I'd be so far behind I'd feel short-changed in what I got access to.
- Have to disagree. The war bonds have been some of the easiest to pay with in game currency compared to games like cod where their cod points feel next to worthless.
  If you are netting very few credits per hell dive, you may be playing with those that don’t need them or playing bots, or a newly released content. Farming on level 1 will often get you with like minded folk, especially before a war bonds release. Farming is quick when you realize you don’t have to extract, just abort to ship.
- 1000 super credits are easily farmed just by doing missions. Do low level missions, race to the poi's with the car, rinse repeat.
  Fun? No. But you said farming so this is it. ¯(ツ)/¯
  By just playing the game for little over a week, so no farming, just playing, i've gathered 700 sc.
  The medals are easily gathered doing level 5 and up missions and completing your personal orders. And taking part in the majors of course.
  
  All that stuff is great if you've the time. I've got maybe 1-2 hours a week for the game.
- Ignoring the part about the super credits and fomo stuff, the money confuses me. Is regional pricing so different that you're paying an additional $10 AUD compared to US and EU pricing? Additionally, $25 AUD as a full day's income? Even a low hour, part time job earns way more than that. I feel like your situation might not be financially compatible with buying things like that, I'd cheat or pirate if it's that important to you. $10 USD is not much for DLC, and while I strongly dislike purchasable gameplay mechanics in games, it's supporting the continued development and it isn't egregious. $10 is a burger, or a coffee, and I'm saying this as someone well below the poverty line.
  
  They meant buying all eight, which is funky to me since a day's income for me is more like $120 CAD. edit: but also an extra ten bucks is zero surprise, we already have that issue in cad for exchange rates and aus likes to put extra charges on video games tho i dunno about dlcs.

But like, the commercial said that making games is just sitting on a couch and pressing a sound board to add that one sound effect in level 3, so like I don’t know why they want money for it.

So then why don't they have regular bulletins in their games showing 'Look, look! These features will be coming by xx/xx/xxxx!' ?
Things set the timeline back? 'Oh no! Looks like we won't be releasing this on that date, it will actually be this date!'
Seems like a non issue for anyone with a 6th graders capacity for interacting with other humans. These are IT folks, with the added layer of gamers to boot — though. Anticipating motivations and responding to others input isn't exactly a strong suit.
Edit: oh, beyond that — I have very little sympathy for a developer of a content drip. You're out for the money, don't whine when people inevitably get sick of waiting for a little more of something they've already gotten maximum enjoyment out of.
- Try telling your users (who are gamers) that the feature they want is being pushed back. See how well they'll react.

The PC build is trash

Well in Helldivers 2s case, its not helpful that they picked to use a dead game engine. Autodesk Stingray has been dead for a while.
Also, I might agree except that solo indie devs in their basement can add many basic features in 6 months time, not just one. I get that some features, like new maps, mechanics, or characters take time. But for example, when a game mechanic already exists elsewhere in a game but not in a different part (for example, a flashlight attachment on one gun but not a different gun), there is not a thing in the world that will convince me that would take 6 months to add. And if it would take 6 months to add, that is entirely due to laziness or incompetence.
- Working as a solo dev on a project you know by heart is literally the easiest work to do. If you’ve never had to work on a large old codebase you have no idea just how hard it can be to make changes.
  I’ve done this sort of thing for years and I would not even give an estimate on a change for a new project without some time to look at the code base.
- I am not a game dev and do not have a stake in this personally but also dislike the 'lazy or incompetent dev' line that gets used sometimes. While ALOT of games seem to be made with really shitty code, with a game that seems as complex as Helldivers 2 adding a new feature can be a lot more complex than expected.
  First there are non-technical factors: bosses that might not want to implement the feature and needs to be convinced, the devs might not know how to implement it and need to do research which takes time, artists that need to be added to the pipeline for assets, budget or other financial concerns (management might not think the feature will contribute to revenue), or even something like petty internal politics.
  One the side of technical problems there is combinatorial explosion where adding ONE feature means thinking about how it interacts with all the other features. There is the problem of possible technical debt where you might inherit bad code from previous devs that you need to change before you can add anything. There is also the problem that the feature might not be technically feasible; remember that a game has only a fraction of a second to do its calculations and display them to the player while also checking for player input. This does not even begin to consider the problems caused by being a multiplayer game with possible network problems.
  On the discontinued engine, the studio founder said that they were already in development of Helldivers 2 when it was discontinued according to the Wikipedia article.
  
  Yeah I agree this seems more like tech debt and possibly a shitty architecture to me, both problems that ultimately come from poor management. The codebase I'm responsible for at work was developed in a mad rush, and the levels of pointless coupling and interdependence sometimes makes it hard to change anything without spending forever tracking down all the stupid little places that piece was touching. That shit comes from management pushing you to just do the thing already and move on, which works for a while until things get so messy you have to slow down or spend some time on a refactor. Someone could easily have made a technical decision for the sake of expedience, which was then built upon and became interconnected with other things in a way that made changing it require a major change, which of course no manager will support, so the work gets broken up into 100 tiny stupid tickets trying to move toward adding the new feature without ever making a breaking change, slowing down the whole thing even more.
- I don’t think the game engine has anything to do with it. The common criticism against Helldivers 2 is that there should be more enemies, biomes, weapons, missions etc.
  Adding a new enemy isn’t easy work. People think it’s just dragging a new 3D model to the map and then it’s done.
  First it needs to be planned. It must be conceptually different from all other enemies so people don’t complain about that it’s just a copy paste reskin. Then it must be developed, which includes code, modeling, animation and sound design - all working in tandem.
  And finally it must be tested and tweaked to ensure it mechanically works with all other systems in the game, like other enemies, weapons, missions, etc. Maybe during testing they realize it’s not as fun to play as they imagined, so they have to go back to the drawing board and iterate. Each iteration can affect code, modeling, animation and sound design. However, all involved aren’t just waiting in standby for feedback from play testing. They’re currently working with 100s of other things at the same time.
  And then after a month of work they realize it’s never going to mechanically work, and they have to start from the beginning with a new idea.
  Then repeat all of the above until they find something that actually works. This could easily amount to 6 months of work.
- Sure, larger businesses have more developers to get more work done. But there comes a time when throwing new developers at a problem convolutes the process and actually slows things down more than it helps.
  Something that seems simple to you like a flashlight attachment may not be so simple under the hood.
  Solo indie devs have an advantage because they're familiar with all of the code. They're the ones that wrote it.
  They don't need to learn a new part of the code when making fixes or changes. They don't need to explain to another dev that "you don't change how this information is passed in here because you'll need it to look just like that in some other section that you'll never touch".
  Additionally any decisions/changes/etc. are all decided by one person, no need for meetings to get everyone on board and explain exactly what you want to do. No need to try to get everyone to understand your vision for what you want to happen.
  A famous comic might explain this process a little better:
- Sounds to me like you're not considering that they likely have a massive list of priorities to address and a flashlight attachment is simply not even close to the top of the list.
  Nothing exists in a vacuum.
  
  It was only an example. As the asset already exists in the game elsewhere, adding that same asset somewhere else in the game should definitely not take even an intern more than a week to implement.
  Again, it is understandable in certain circumstances that major content drops take time. But for something as simple as the flashlight attachment example (which again is only a hypothetical example), there is no excuse for something like that to take 6 months or more to implement. Even if they have other priorities, something like that is so menial to implement that it would not take any significant amount of time away from higher priority development. Particularly because, in the example, other guns already have flashlight attachments, it already exists in the game. Unless they programmed the game in the literal worst way imagineable, they likely have a modular weapon system with slots that accept attachments. Very easy to add a new slot and allow it to accept the flashlight attachment, again as an example.
- “Our software is a bloated mess” is not the defence they think it is.
  
  Doesn't seem to hurt Bethesda. Oblivion remaster drops and the Internet ate that shit up like the pile of old shit it is.
  
  It kind of is, unfortunately. Games are often developed with a lot of pressure and the constant dangling of the budget being cut off. I don't think the devs are incompetent and think what they produced (code quality wise) would be the best, but what could they do if they need a result to present to the publisher end of week and then don't get money (aka time) to clean it up but instead they get the next deadline.
  On the other hand I am also not sure I can blame publishers. Things can easily spiral out of control if managed badly in the other direction.... see Cloud Imperium Games (i.e. Star Citizen).