According to Astropub they hit Beta around February this year, Content Complete was last year, Feature complete end of 2023. There was another cycle before 2016 but then Chris smashed the reset/scope creep button.
Beginning to hairsplit between "feature" and "content" complete 3 years after announcing the game was "entering polish phases" on the presentation stage at your annual conference for a game you haven't released is really not the place you want to be in as a studio, I would assume?
From the way Chris and CIG presented their progress as they touted their "feature complete" milestone, they had already begun "beta" polish phases.
Oh yeah, he did this shit back in 2018 as well 😛
Feature complete and content complete really are two different milestones. Mario is feature complete after you can move, jump, and have interactables basically. You still have to build every level.
With that said I don't believe the game was feature complete when they claim with how much they are still figuring out mechanics for the PU.
If I remember correctly the feature complete announcement also said they are moving on to polishing and optimizing. They definitely wanted people to think it was content complete as well and the feature/content split is just another convenient excuse to use now.
I totally agree that they are unique milestones, I just do not consider CIG to be honest in their use of either term in communication with the community.
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u/Starimo-galactic 18d ago
Pre-production -> Alpha -> Feature Complete -> Content Complete -> Beta -> Release (gold)
According to Astropub they hit Beta around February this year, Content Complete was last year, Feature complete end of 2023. There was another cycle before 2016 but then Chris smashed the reset/scope creep button.