My theory as to why Photo Mode was created, and why it should bother you

General Discussion
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Nobody asked for this, right? But there were a lot of other features/bugs that were a higher priority, yet the dev team seemed to have this new Photographer Simulator at their top priority with the new patch.

Why? After seeing how this team operates, namely using the customers as unpaid beta testers, a theory has formed in my mind.

They want to use us as unpaid marketers too.

Think about it. As developers, they can only get so far sending a few screenshots to review blogs, etc. Photo mode means we can now take all kinds of cool pretty pictures to share on Reddit, Instagram, and whatever other MySpace clone that’s currently in vogue. Other people see the cool photos, get interested - “what’s this game? Generation Zero? A new open world shooter?” and they made another sale.

Best of all, a still picture can’t portray gameplay, so the massive bugs and game issues are not apparent from this free advertising.

Just a theory.

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Hi! Thanks for reaching out with this idea, I’m happy to list the points you’re wrong about.

  1. Tons of people asked for this. If you’ve been watching the dev streams up until the May update, you’ve seen many people ask for it.
  2. Photo Mode did NOT have priority over any features or bugs. They have a guy specifically for tasks like this one who doesn’t have anything to do with bugfixes and also, Photo Mode was already almost ready when the game was released, meaning not that much time went into completing it after.

The world of Generation Zero is so beautifully crafted that having an option to capture the idyllic, chaotic, calm, elemental scenes that you encounter all the time is a logic decision.
Also, and I’m pretty sure me saying this won’t have any effect as your mind seems pretty much set on it, obviously they are neither trying to have you be an unpaid beta tester nor an unpaid marketer. They’re simply trying to bring you something you enjoy, and are having difficulties with the problems that sometimes brings.

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That makes things perfectly clear! Thanks for putting my frustrations at ease. Excited to get the ps4 version running again so I can take some tree pictures.

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I understand that Photo Mode didn’t make it at launch, but IF I was in the shoes of the Developer Team I would priority fixing the bugs first and foremost than putting features in, but since I ain’t on the team I don’t have much to say on the matter.

Also I had to start completely over due to a glitch with Uttern Bunker Mission not updating and I had completed every other mission that I had access to.

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I don’t exactly know how to make this clearer than I already did, Photo Mode was NOT prioritized over anything else, as I already explained :slight_smile:

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Say what u want to, but the only then I was asking to be fix with this update would be Uttern Bunker and not the Photo Mode being introduce since I didn’t see/read anything on the forum’s or a simple google search after playing the game.

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bunker and mission saves will be the theme of the June update:)

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My opinion of course, but I think that the June Update and the May Update should have been switch.

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As somebody who has worked in games development and gets pulled in when large IT projects go wrong.

When things are being fixed not all team members will be working on the faults.

If I’m called in because there is a serious Wi-Fi implementation issue it will be myself and a couple of the most appropriate regular network and client people dealing with the issue.

But the database, app Devs and server teams don’t go on holiday till we are finished our stuff.

They continue with their development tasks.

If there is an engine, enemy logic or network code then those guys will be working in those issues with whatever programmers who experienced in those areas.

However everybody else still has to earn their keep, so the team who write the rendering code may finish off the camera mode, level design will still work in the maps, sound guys continue their audio work and so on.

Code is (or should be) modular so you really shouldn’t be getting arsey about the photomode, modified maps and stuff as those who are not working in the bugs.

If you throw somebody who specialises in network code (and coders do specialise) into unfamiliar code from a game engine he/she will be of little use for quite some time and other experienced programmers will have to spend time getting them up to speed rather than fixing the bugs.

No doubt it’s is all hands to the pumps over the last couple of days where designers and artists are now testing builds, looking for patterns in bug reports and all sorts of other unfamiliar things.

So give take a deep breath and if you are having issues then give a useful bug report, if you aren’t having issues then assist those who are having issues.

Yeah I spent money in the game, I really like the idea behind it and I’m a disappointed (and I have said so) but I’m going to try and do more than complain about a fairly irrelevant issue.

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I do agree with several of not all of your points; however, I will say that after playing the game, I think it’s safe to say that the entire dev team is unfamiliar with coding in all areas…

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Let’s delete this topic, I made it in a moment of frustration.

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I think that is unfair. It is a beautiful open world and there is a fabulously atmospheric game here. Let’s agree though that the fact that we’ve all been upset over 1.05 shows how much we all want this game to succeed and (if squinting at it from a certain angle) could be seen as a positive thing?

The frustration is that proper QA and the basics of it are seemingly being shortcut to meet release timescales. This is totally not cool. I work as consultant in the SAP and Oracle EBS ERP world, and this level of failure during a release would mean the termination of someone seniors job.

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A moment of frustration that I think was justified, and that we all shared. Well done for being human enough to recognize your over-exuberance and make a public retraction. I think the internet would be a much nicer place overall if lots of other people shared the same qualities that you have shown in your post.

Have a great weekend.