Yes, and you're welcome for that.
I had to openly challenge him for weeks, telling him to make a similar chart that showed clear goals. Even threw together a mock image explaining how they should be done, and it got deleted.
Imagine if the game had that from the very start of its development. "Lack of transparency" is basically the biggest problem that people can agree on, whether you defend or hate the game.
Imagine if, from the start, they had a chart similar to the one above and was spaced something like this.
- Implementation of planned powerups
- Five levels planned (each level being about seven disjointed hallways)
- Three enemies per level, one guard and two uniques
- One boss per level (5 bosses)
- 5 overworld scenes per level (25 scenes)
- 4 game overs per level (one for each enemy and the boss)
- 1 Faye scene per level (5 scenes)
- 20 terminals per level (100 terminals)
- ~10 cutscenes per level (50 scenes)
and then just make a completion-percentage for each of those. One hallway got finished? Add 3% to the Level column. Knocked out like 10 terminals for a level? That bar is now 10% full!
You'd be able to, without spoilers, inform everyone every week or so what progress you made. You would have a visual representation of how far the game has come. It would also make people more aware when goalposts get changed, like when something is added to development or cut, such as how equipable powerups were added, or the earth charge attack was removed.
Why did this only finally get added on the ninth year of development, after people had to ask for it?
Why did this game take nine years, when the average ACT turnaround time is like three years?
Hell, the game I posted a chart for only took two years, and it does basically everything that Future Fragment set out to do.