polish vs time

All long-time gamers (especially MMO gamers) know that having a polished, feature-complete and bug free game is a huge determining factor as to whether a game is successful or not after release. But finding the best balance between polish and release date/schedule can be an issue as well.

Release too early and your game and community could suffer heavily from too many bugs, glitches, and even a lack of certain features. But release too late and your game may have lost relevance and interest amongst many of its initial fans. Finding the best balance between these two is key.

At this point, I just want to caution GGG against falling too far in either category. This is coming from my own personal views on the game as well as those of my guild mates in the Angry Army.

Putting out a polished product is even more important to an indie developer. Although some leeway is given because of the funding issues people will not support rubbish coming out, and most indie devs don't have other titles to fall back for revenue if things go bad.

Taking time and pushing out to Jan for polish reasons is the right choice. It's also the right choice in regard to just being decent blokes to the team at GGG. We have an engaged bunch of devs that listen and they want that to be carried through into release, so letting the guys have Xmas off is the right call.

At the end of the day it's 5 weeks. We'll be fine and the kids that throw their toys for a wait that long will be long forgotten when OB hits.

I agree with this thread. I also am amazed with how good Path of Exile's gaming community is.