EliteMobs status update - Evolving

Hello everyone,

It's been a while since I've paused to talk about the development of EliteMobs, so what follows is about that. I will be upfront about announcements, and then I go in-depth about why I have taken these decisions. Before I move forward though, I will say that I would love to hear your take on this, should you read it to the end.

Announcement: I will now be releasing EliteMobs public updates on to Spigot on a weekly basis (probably on Sundays, after 7.3.1) or more, if bugs get detected. I will no longer accompany these releases with development log videos. 

I am also going to course correct from the current development schedule to prioritize these features: custom events, new quest system with custom quests and long term quest tracking and a tips & hints system for players.

End of announcement.

Now, for those interested in the reasoning why, it's time for a retrospective look at how I've been developing EliteMobs, and at how we got here.

Starting with the development schedule: when I first started developing EliteMobs, new builds came out fairly quickly one after the other. After a while, I started accepting public testing, and that's where things started getting dicey.

When I realized how easily public testers could find minor (and major) bugs, I started sitting on builds for longer, waiting for feedback to roll in to make sure that the features were stable and polished. However, I used that time to develop more features. Which then I sat, on, waiting for potential reports. This quickly became a cycle.

As builds started ballooning in size, simply writing down some text about the changes started feeling like it was hiding some key changes, so I started making videos to accompany the releases. Soon, I wanted to have a video with every release.

The issue is that while I really enjoy the idea of having a dev log per release, I thoroughly dislike the process of creating one. Some dev logs took 4 days worth of work, and I don't believe any of them took anything short of 8 hours.

Scripting, filming and editing videos is time consuming, especially when trying to make the final product look as good as you can make it, given the circumstances. That being said, this content can be extremely worthwhile, as has historically been the case with the guides and showcases I've created. 

Hence, between waiting for an always shifting deadline to make sure that the features are stable and with each passing release dreading having to spend another 2-3 days recording a development log, I went from releasing builds every few days to every few weeks, then to every few months.

In abstract terms, this isn't bad. Big EliteMobs releases tend to be fairly stable (though usually dev builds are hardly any less stable), and they're certainly packed with reasons to be excited. In a perfect world, people would see these as a special event, one which is worth pausing and taking a serious look at.

However, the numbers don't really support this perfect world model. The reality is that most people don't really seem to look into what changed between versions, at least not beyond a couple of bullet points and a single flashy theme - something that I could fit in a week or two worth of work, not 6 months. In terms of self-promotion, one of the times at which EliteMobs is at its most visible is when there is an update. It gets bumped to the top of recently updated plugins, which is shown by default on Spigot. Additionally, EliteMobs is one of the most actively maintained plugins on Spigot, yet public-facing updates are months apart.

In a sense, I do feel like I shot myself in the foot with the current update schedule. Perhaps I am mistaken, and if that is the case I will course correct once again, but I feel as though I have been almost intentionally sabotaging myself for years by stubbornly refusing visibility in the form of frequent public updates. 

I do not want to do what some developers do (intentionally, might I add) and update every time I add a line of code for the sake of high visibility. However, if I add something as drastic as a complete overhaul of the reinforcement power which had to be renamed to the Custom Reinforcements System because it gained so many features, it should be its own release, and not just a line at the footnote of another devlog.

Finally, I want to bring up the feature course correction. This is based on direct observation of what people bring up when seeking support when they first install EliteMobs. Quests are mostly broken and never worked that well. You can't create custom events. These are words whose variations I feel as though I've typed hundreds of times, and I have had fixes planned in the distant future in both instances. 

However, knowing that these issues exist and keep getting brought up eats away at my very soul. I want to create arenas, and dungeons after that, and raids after that. Perhaps it is hard to believe that with all the detours I seem to keep taking, but I can honestly say that I will probably regret it for the rest of my life if EliteMobs doesn't make it to creating raids. In a sense, I feel as though I am in a rush to get there, as I fear that interest in EliteMobs will slowly go away before I can get there, and I know that I won't be able to hire the build teams I need to build the massive worlds required to host these fights as I envision them without the support of Patreon and itch.io backers. I have allowed this fear to blind me to the importance of some improvements for features that already do exist for the sake of pursuing something which realistically is still well over a year away from being created.

But no more. It is time I sit down and overhaul these systems which so desperately need it. I've some really interesting plans for these features, which I believe you will be able to see sooner than you might expect.

Again, feel free to leave me your thoughts on these matters. I promise I am reading them all and taking them into serious consideration.

Happy adventuring,

- MagmaGuy