Roadmaps

General Discussion
1

I was thinking into Roadmap(s).

I think there biggest advantage to share them outside VRChat is also there biggest issue with the amount of data in it and how people could take them as reference. I would like to see a more introducing roadmap. This should be in the first place for everybody outside of VRChat staff to understand software development, process flow and how far/close (in how many other features need to come first) features might be or what needs to be done first. This roadmap should not show dates or show there current process as this could be missleading to most users. This roadmap should also cover not coming features (if this is offical they should be clearly labeled as that). Everything VRChat talks about should be somewhere in this map.

For examples I would like to read from this roadmap that features like “Hide chatbox for visitors via shield level” is placed after overhawling the “Security/Shield system”.
This would visualize a lot espacially for beginners who don’t know where to look or search or don’t even know any insides at all. Because of it Visualization i could just point at it to explain things.

A roadmap would also help everybody who is around for longer to understand VRChats way to work or what issues/blocker/dependencies VRChat sees in there (maybe more complex) feature request which we can’t see.

It would also provide patience seeing that a blocker/previous task got solved

TLDR: I’m not sure if i would call it a “Roadmap” because most people in this business do expect more from a roadmap.

2

Discussions on roadmaps are always long-winded, but I think I can sum this up for the moment:

We have a very general roadmap internally, but as far as specific features, we often do not know up until a few weeks (if that) of head-time what will be released or when it will be released. These items often change and shift due to dependencies, the availability of people to work on them, outside influences, etc.

In other words: we can make a roadmap, but it’d either be short-range and would require fairly constant curation, and/or it would be immediately inaccurate.

Importantly: we’re in the process of some internal structure-building that should make it easier for us to map things out more reliably, but I wouldn’t expect to see the fruits of that labor until the latter half of this year.

3

I’m personally looking forward into this. 2nd half of the year for fruits doesn’t even sound bad to me.

4

:sweat_smile: You may have taken the incorrect meaning out of my message.

After our planning is done, it will make it easier for us to know what’s on the way, but I don’t think (even with those improvements) we’ll be able to publish reliable long-term roadmaps.

VRChat isn’t a game. We don’t plan out content packs or expansions! UGC platforms like ours have to be planned a little differently.

I’ll be glad if I’m wrong, but please don’t wait patiently for July 1st of this year, expecting us to be able to publish months worth of features and which patches to expect them in :sweat_smile:

5

I think this happend to you :) I got what you meant there.

Thank you for making sure, that i understand what you mean

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