Search your game
Hot Games
- Guild Wars 2
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy CDKey
- Aion
- Aion Gold
- Aion PowerLeveling
- Aion Card
- Shaiya
- Shaiya Gold
- Shaiya PowerLeveling
- Shaiya Items
- Aeria Points
- Maple Story
- Buy Gold
- Nexon Cash Code
- Cabal
- Cabal Gold
- Cabal PowerLeveling
- Cabal Cash
- Dragon Nest
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy Items
- Nexon Cash Code
- Eden Eternal
- Buy Gold
- Atlantica
- Atlantica Gold
- Atlantica PowerLeveling
- Atlantica Items
- Nexon Cash Code
- Blade and Soul
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy CDKey
- C9: Golden Continent
- Buy Gold
- Dungeon Fighter Online
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Mabinogi
- Mabinogi Gold
- Mabinogi Items
- Nexon Cash Code
- Path of Exile
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy Items
- RuneScape
- RuneScape Gold
- RuneScape PowerLeveling
- RuneScape Account
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy CDKey
- Vindictus
- Vindictus Gold
- Vindictus PowerLeveling
- Vindictus Items
- Nexon Cash Code
Other Game
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy Time Card
- Knight
- Knight Gold
- Wildstar
- Wildstar Gold
- Wildstar PowerLeveling
- Wildstar CDKey
- Aion Classic
- Buy Gold
- Anarchy
- Anarchy Gold
- Anarchy Items
- Anarchy CDKey
- Apex Legends
- Buy Gold
- ArcheAge
- ArcheAge Gold
- ArcheAge PowerLeveling
- ArcheAge Items
- ArcheAge CDKey
- ArcheAge
- ArcheAge Gold
- ArcheAge PowerLeveling
- ArcheAge Items
- ArcheAge CDKey
- ArcheAge Unchained
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy CDKey
- ASTA
- ASTA Gold
- Black Desert
- Buy Gold
- Bless Global
- Buy Gold
- Bless Online
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy CDKey
- Bless Unleashed
- Buy Gold
- Chimeraland
- Buy Gold
- Cronous Online
- Buy Gold
- Buy Items
- Digimon Masters Online
- Buy Gold
- Dofus
- Dofus Gold
- Dofus Items
- Dofus Touch
- Buy Gold
- Dragomon Hunter
- Buy Gold
- Dragon's Prophet
- Buy Gold
- Buy Items
- Buy CDKey
- ELOA
- ELOA Gold
- ELSword
- ELSword Gold
- Elyon
- Elyon Gold
- Elyon Items
- Eve
- Eve Gold
- Eve Time Card
- Fallout 76
- Fallout 76 Gold
- Fallout 76 Items
- FFXI
- FFXI Gold
- FFXI CDKey
- FFXIV
- FFXIV Gold
- Fiesta
- Fiesta Gold
- Flyff
- Flyff Gold
- Forza Horizon 3
- Buy Gold
- Forza Horizon 3
- Buy Gold
- Galaxy Online II
- Buy Gold
- GrandFantasia
- Buy Gold
- Guild Wars
- Guild Wars Gold
- Guild Wars Items
- Habbo
- Habbo Gold
- Habbo CDKey
- Hero Plus
- Hero Plus Gold
- LastChaos
- LastChaos Gold
- Lineage 2M
- Lineage 2M Gold
- Lost Ark
- Lost Ark Gold
- Lost Continent
- Buy Gold
- Buy Items
- Lotro
- Lotro Gold
- Lotro PowerLeveling
- Metin2
- Metin2 Gold
- MIR4
- MIR4 Gold
- Mortal online 2
- Buy Gold
- MU Legend
- MU Legend Gold
- NeverWinter Online
- Buy Gold
- New World
- New World Gold
- New World PowerLeveling
- NosTale
- NosTale Gold
- Phantasy Star Online 2
- Buy Gold
- PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
- Buy Items
- Ragnarok
- Ragnarok Gold
- Ragnarok Items
- Ragnarok Transcendence
- Buy Gold
- Ragnarok2
- Ragnarok2 Gold
- Rappelz
- Rappelz Gold
- Rappelz Items
- RF
- RF Gold
- RF Items
- Riders of Icarus
- Buy Gold
- Buy PowerLeveling
- Buy Items
- Buy CDKey
- Rose
- Rose Gold
- Runes Of Magic
- SilkRoad
- SilkRoad Gold
- SilkRoad Items
- Silkroad Silk
- SilkRoad R
- SilkRoad R Gold
- SilkRoad R CDKey
- SoulSaver
- SoulSaver Gold
- Soulworker
- Soulworker Gold
- Star Citizen
- Buy Gold
- Star_Trek
- Star_Trek Gold
- Swords of Legends Online
- Buy Gold
- Swordsman
- Swordsman Gold
- Swordsman PowerLeveling
- Temtem
- Temtem Gold
- The Secret World
- Buy Gold
- Buy CDKey
- Therian Saga
- Buy Gold
- Buy CDKey
- Tibia
- Tibia Gold
- Toram Online
- Buy Gold
- Torchlight Infinite
- Buy Gold
- Torchlight2
- Buy Gold
- Uncharted Waters Online
- Buy Gold
- Undecember
- Undecember Gold
- V4
- V4 Gold
- Wakfu
- Wakfu Gold
- Wizard101
- Wizard101 Gold
- Wizard101 Items
Home » Site News » The Road to Launch 4: A Tim...
The Road to Launch 4: A Time to Choose
Greetings Dungeon Fighters!
Imagine a horde of goblins in one of Dungeon Fighter Online's many dungeons. They're all dangerous and they're all throwing different attacks at you. You need to make moment-to-moment evaluations about which creature is the most dangerous at any given moment and which you'll need to coordinate your attacks and combos to break your way through to the eventual treasure at the end of the adventure. It's exciting and its fun and it's at the heart of what makes Dungeon Fighter Online such a great game.
It also describes the job of the development team, except that instead of goblins we're fighting a laundry list of bugs, suggestions, requests, changes and the issues that come with potential new features that we want to implement in Dungeon Fighter Online. The end result is update day, when a whole passel of features, fixes and stuff is placed in the game. Getting to that moment is never pretty, and deciding what goes in those updates is a large part of what we spend every day doing.
Signal to Noise
How would you improve Dungeon Fighter Online? Wait, don't tell me here. There's a rich tradition on our official forums of offering up community suggestions. We pore over these frequently looking for ways to improve the game. The problem is that we can't just listen to the forums exclusively because only a small, vocal percentage of DFO players ever post on the forums. That's why we constantly go over data about how people are actually playing the game. We use this data to tell us on average how long it takes to clear a dungeon, what items people are buying in the shops and where people might be using cheat programs and hacks. All of this data is filtered into reports that we then compare to an enormous list of potential bugs and implementable features that act as our general roadmap to launch.
Then there are other considerations that will impact the eventual shape of a game update. Sometimes there are larger features on the drawing board that can't be put in until a lot of low-level work on other systems is completed.
Choosing Your Battles
Then how do we choose how to create a DFO game update? That's where good project management and choosing priorities becomes so important. Obviously, our first priority needs to be keeping the game up and running. Hardware issues or any kind of technical malfunction that might bring the servers down immediately pushes everything else to the back burner. After that, we look at critical bugs or major gameplay imbalances that need to be addressed. Then we need to choose what we're going to work on in any particular update - and that's where the concept of the "theme" comes in.
You may have noticed that every update we release is usually built around a particular theme. For example, "Warriors Unite," the April 28th update is all about guilds. We've learned from hard experience that it's better in an update to work on a particular feature and get it and all of its supporting systems in place than to try to launch a whole bunch of stuff in a scattershot fashion. Guilds are one of the key social features an MMO relies on to establish a stable player base - people are more likely to stick with a game once their friends are involved, so we felt it was important to get this functionality in before launch. It also allows us to concentrate our energies on what works better from a business perspective. It's much easier to get press coverage and fan chatter when an update has an easily understood "narrative" rather than just a laundry list of unrelated features.
The truth is, we don't always get it right. The DFO development team is just as human and fallible as anyone else and sometimes we make mistakes. We often have differing opinions internally about what's the best way to proceed on the game and what we should be working on. Rather than allow that to pull us apart though, we take everyone's suggestions into account and come to a decision on what any particular update's theme should be. This allows us all to pull together and work toward the same end -a better.
Dungeon Fighter Online for everyone.
The good news is that it seems to be working. We've been hearing really positive feedback on our recent content updates. We're working on every part of the DFO experience, and we want you to get a better feel for how the DFO magic happens. As always, stay tuned to our website for more Beta Journal updates, and join the DFO Facebook for regular updates and events!