If possible, more updates would be appreciated.

[RevBrock]

Tynan and company,

I'm grateful for your hard work on this game that I have enjoyed so much.  I know you're busy with A16 but any updates would be appreciated, it's been a week since any screens or substantive news.  I know this is perhaps from a desire to build suspense (I'm sure this is also why post are tantalizingly cryptic).  Even an ETA would be great if you don't want to tip your hand concerning the features.  Nothing specific I know these things can be hard to judge but are we talking days? or weeks? 

Thanks for your time.

[Goldenpotatoes]

Tynan doesn't really do much past the rare tease because he sees time spent writing progress reports as time that could of been spent working on the game more. I'm surprised hes leaked as much as he has already, honestly.

Patience is a virtue.

[mumblemumble]

Tynan generally works full time making each update awesome, and balancing new mechanics / features (with a few updates being exceptions) while always refining and improving... This leaves little time for constant updates of info.

Plus, due to the very complex nature of the game, something in its first iterations will always be very buggy, broken, and unbalanced, so its better to show stuff when its tested and FUNCTIONAL.

This is why lots of people are picky about testing, because some people might test something which is buggy, and assume the next update will ALSO be a buggy mess....  but testing isn't for pleasure, its for TESTING, to find and fix such bugs.

Anyways, just be patient. It will come out eventually.

[skullywag]

He has tried to not give etas in the past and its worked fine so far, you dont need to know when its coming just that it is coming, testing is moving along at a steady pace and stuff is getting done. Hold on a bit longer.

[PiggyBacon]

I find the lack of updates thrilling. A little glimps is nice but not knowing anything else makes it all the better when it comes out. More of a surprise really.

[ArguedPiano]

I couldn't find the exact post but Tynan somewhat answered this question during an AMA on Reddit some time ago

Quote:
"I'd love to answer about the long term but the fact is that I don't know.

I think a lot of devs imagine a long term vision and get overconfident in it. It's a big part of why so many games get delayed and scrapped - people getting overconfident in, and committed to, a vision that really has no grounding in reality.

So I really deliberately try to plan only as much as necessary for the game and no more. That's about 1 or 2 months into the future - and I answered about that timeframe in another question. Beyond that time frame, there's just too much unpredictability to make a meaningful plan. It's like planning an exact play 5 minutes long in a soccer game (you'll run here, you'll run here, etc). That works for just a few seconds in American football, but your plan will be meaningless not long after that."

[cultist]

Small indie teams that work on ambitious projects tend not to give ETA's.

This is kind of a new trend (last 10 years or so) after Steam became a major distributor of indie games and Kickstarter became a reality.
So many new and hopeful devs (and players, backers etc.) got burned on projects that got out of control. This can't have gone unnoticed by other small developers.

I honestly think it's for the best.
If you are more used to AAA titles developed by teams of 50+ people it seems strange, I know. These companies tend to set public deadlines because they can throw extra manhours at especially problematic bugs or other issues to get them solved ASAP. And even then, the whole thing comes crashing down sometimes. Batman: Arkham City is a great example.

[carbon]

I don't know how hard it would be to do, but it might be funny if someone were to make a simple website that only contains a random text generator. Every hour, it updates to display a new status for Tynan, varying from mundane: "Tynan is currently buying milk.", to humorous: "Tynan is currently picking his nose.", to trolling: "Tynan is currently adding z-levels."

Anytime someone not in the know asked for updates, we could "helpfully" point them to it. I'm sure it could easily be reused for other developers as well, so one could get quite a bit of mileage out of it.

Bonus points if it includes a "development log" with some of the previous statuses listed in chronological order in the past tense (e.g. "nose picked", "z-levels added", etc.)
Double bonus if the status occasionally misspells Tynan's name (Tyler, Tyman, Tytan ...).

[Canute]

Do you want an ETA for Alpha 16 ? Here you got, alpha 16 is planned to released on Xmas 2017.
Sure it could be released on Xmas 2016, but then without the OK of the Quality controll, then you would be very unhappy with the release like all these other major AAA titles with their 0 day patches and still not working well.
If you want quality, special from creative work, and programming is creative work, than have patience.

[mumblemumble]

The whole idea of an ETA, and even "updates" comes down to one question. Which is more important? Having it NOW, or having it FUNCTIONAL? I mean tynan could of released 16 a month ago, as a horrible, broken, buggy, messy system which would infuriate people...but he wants it to be decent first.