[Dragon]

For another example, Blue Planet: War in Heaven is subject to the same process.
There was a feature- and story-complete version of the campaign, which got a massive doing over after Darius showed it to General Battuta.

There is also one additional reason, as you may know, Steve'o's models use loads of hi-res textures and have lot of polys, which makes even his fighters kill framerate on weaker computers.
Now imagine that there's a destroyer done in such inefficient style, current Solaris have around 60K polys and 28 textures. And now, imagine it accompanied by Karuna class frigates and one jet unrevealed frigate class, which also have huge texture and poly count. The same applies to UEF cruiser by the way, though not as much. And now think that it's attacked by GTVA ships, which causes them to launch fighters and start firing. First WiH modpack was really unoptimized, which we are trying to correct now. That's the thing on which Esarai is working, that's also why we need modellers (there's a thread on BP board if somebody is interested in joining). On a side note, I think that if FREDing would be finished well before optimization, we would rather release campaign with unoptimized models and patch it later than hold the release until we finish optimizing.
Also, do not forget all the awesome stuff that got added since first version of campaign. It didn't featured Maalik, ground missions (currently we have one, but it's possible that there would be more), Kvasir,  my normal maps, some new music, nor The_E's interface, not to mention many other things about which wasn't revealed jet. We are going to make sure that all the waiting will be worth of it.

[General Battuta]

It was definitely a campaign with high system requirements, but we could've released with unoptimized models, and if we finish before they come in, we will.

You forgot Fury and Darius retabling everything. That was awesome! And fiction text and stuff.

[The E]

Yeah, but the point is that getting the missions and story done and out there take priority over models.

[General Battuta]

Righto, exactly.

But I don't really want to turn this into another discussion of BP, god knows we've got enough of those. I just hope people learn from this trap a lot of the old mods fell into.

[Spoon]

I keep running into feature creep as well. Things like icon's, command briefing .ani's etc.
They are not really needed but it's so damn tempting to spend a few days replacing them all.

[Mongoose]

I think Goober's post brings up a very good point.  It's not always all about the shinies...having feature creep set in can also potentially lead to something that's significantly more polished and enjoyable than the initial release would have been.  Just to use the ST:R example, all of the items that Goober listed added a great amount of value to the overall campaign, with the most value for me personally coming from the whole Phoenix experience.  Seriously, that was one of the best events I've ever been involved with during my online days.  Joining together with everyone else who managed to figure out the original puzzle, poring over each week's new clues, trying to grind my way through the translation of a piece of fictional language, actually calling a "Holonet audio access" number and recording the playback for everyone else...I've never experienced anything in the ARG realm like that, and it was all tremendous fun.  So if feature-creep enables certain mods to come up with something like Phoenix, or almost-professional voicework, or an even more tightly-crafted story, then there's very little downside from where I'm sitting.

And even limiting things just to the HTL issue, I'm as as much of an advocate of graphics-do-not-gameplay-make as anyone...but at the same time, I've also seen the sort of amazing work that the modelers in this community are capable of, and I'd like to continue to enjoy it.  Remember, like it or not, there's only one "first time" for the player, just a single chance for the creator to make an initial emotional impression on them.  If you go ahead and release a low-poly version of a mod, then re-release it later when all the models have been upgraded, the best you're going to get is a replay for graphics' sake, and while replaying campaigns can be quite fun, it'll never recapture the exact same level of emotional experience as the original run-through.  I feel like I'd rather be utterly blown away by all aspects of a mod the first time through myself.

[Rodo]

This is up to the teams developing the campaigns, you can't blame someone for pursuing excellence in their work, nor for taking enough time to finish their projects as they see fit.
I think you are just eager to play something, it's been a long time since the last "big" release.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

To combat feature creep, the best thing to do is to decide on a release, and ask coders what is up and coming in future releases, and then simply stick to your guns no matter what else happens.  We've decided on the 3.6,11 release, and NOTHING beyond its capabilities will be done.  there will be no further changes. 

To put some things to rest, notice We ARE reworking the missions.  they need dialogue and polishing, we need cut scenes done, cb animations.  and some other things that are minor.   Those are 100% needed.  Right now as far as I see things, music, voice acting, and one or two models are the only purely optional components.  The modellers have worked hard and continue to do so on the high poly stuff, neither myself nor any member of this team will throw that work away.  To be honest, we shouldn't.  Right now everything that we are doing IS the original vision that Styxx had for MT.  I know it is taking quite awhile, and still will, but no one on the MT staff is willing to disrespect THE VISION.  I'm sorry if this comes across as harsh or rude, but we will not release until the vision is realized.  I personally have far too much respect for Styxx for that.  Styxx once said to me in ICQ that he didn't want MT to be a mod, he wanted it to be the measuring stick against which all are compared.  He further stated that being the best at anything isn't good enough if one isn't setting a new standard of excellence.  I'm paraphrasing of course, but that is level of belief that he has in this project, and trust me, it is quite infectious.

So where does that leave MT?  It leaves us working on things, and finding ways to stop future delays from happening.   Missions and models are our focus right now, everything else will be tying up loose ends.  Some being tied up while we work on M&M, others need to be done after.

The bottom line is really simple though, if you really want something to be released, then volunteer for it.  It has been my experience that if one does nothing to change a situation, then they accept the situation and forfeit *****ing rights.  Sorry if I offend anyone.

[General Battuta]

Sounds good to me.

[Fury]

For another example, Blue Planet: War in Heaven is subject to the same process.
There was a feature- and story-complete version of the campaign, which got a massive doing over after Darius showed it to General Battuta.
We do hope to avoid a development process as long as ST:Rs, though. 

Not quite. Let me give a quick summary of what exactly happened.
- Darius had all story, plot, mission specific details only in his brilliant head. He was fredding WiH missions by himself, just like he did with AoA. AoA was a one-man project.
- Due to complexity of WiH and Darius' med school activities, this produced less than stellar missions. As far as numbers go, Darius had perhaps a dozen missions in varius stages of progress. There was no "complete" version of the original campaign at any point, except maybe in Darius' head, but fredding was pretty far along.
- With Battuta's support, I wrote a message to Darius encouraging him to change how WiH was being developed.
- The end result was that all of WiH elements were eventually written down for other team members to scrutiny. Current incarnation of WiH is miles better than original because of all the open discussion and co-operative fredding we've had since the Great Restart.

As for WiH's ships. As Dragon put it, the models are gorgeous but really unoptimized. We still haven't received anyone else than esarai to work on those models. While it is unlikely, it is still a possibility that unoptimized models will delay release of WiH unless at that point we have enough models optimized to have decent framerates even on older PC's. Steve-O has expressed interest in redoing at least Karuna frigate, but he's been out of touch so we can't rely on this either.

[Kosh]

NAH    Not me. I think it was the right decision to delay it until it had reached perfection.

That's exactly why Duke Nukem Forever had been in development for so long. They delayed it so long that the company is now bankrupt and it is questionable whether or not we will ever see it released.

[Col. Fishguts]

In some cases a mod can't be released because some of the old models are no longer functioning in FSO. There's a upper limit to the number of used textures per ship. I don't remember the exact number, but I know that some of the orignal models for BWO break that limit and thus cannot be used with FSO.

Plus, I've seen some of their HTL models, and it will be worth the wait.