Hey @, a few replies to your questions:
[]
- When can we get a conversation going on what will happen with 4.17? Or is that never going to happen?
As mentioned, you will see more items show up on the roadmap when we know they’re going to make 4.17. That release is still a few months away, so knowing what all is going to land is still to be determined. Keep an eye on the roadmap for updates!
[]
02. Why can’t you post more than once every 24 hours in regards to the road map (or on the forums in general)?
Chatting with the community on the forums here is one of my many exciting responsibilities at Epic. I try and hop in as often as possible to address concerns and gather feedback. I’ve been away for a couple months working on a number of great initiatives and am glad to be chatting with you all here again.
[]
03. Why did you go the whole month without telling us about the changes to the road map?
We recognize that we failed to give a proper heads up on the changes and look to improve in regard going forward.
[]
04. When is the next update to the roadmap coming?
Charles is looking to have updates heading to the roadmap at a regular cadence as our development teams do their regular planning, which I believe is monthly but I’ll double check! We try to keep the roadmap as current as possible with the development team plans.
[]
05. Are any of the the upcoming features in 4.17 debatable?
Debatable in what sense exactly?
[]
06. How are decisions made on what to work on next? Does each team work on whatever they feel like? Or is there overall directive and goal going from version to version?
As mentioned earlier, summed up pretty well, so I’ll drop that info here again:“1. Community interest: Threads in the Feedback for Epic section, AnswerHub reports, social media posts and votes on the issues page help determine that. Please keep giving feedback and make sure to specifically explain how you would expect the tools to work for the best results. The mesh editor is an example of a tool made from these kinds of requests.
2. Large audience need: tools that help out a large audience are prioritized highly. Sequencer, Niagara, Audio Engine and other tool overhauls fall into category. is probably the highest priority in general since it helps so many people.
3. Epic Games project need: One of Epic’s projects needed it, so it was ported over from the game into a engine tool. AnimDynamics, VR Forward Renderer and Behavior Trees were created for . These get added a lot since the tool is already done and it’s just a matter of porting and testing.”
[]
07. What is the reason bugfixes can’t be on the Roadmap? It seems like otherwise they get forgotten for literally years on end? How do you intend to address otherwise?
currently is the case for two reasons - The roadmap is forward facing work, while bugfixes are always going to be in every release. The other would be that there are hundreds of fixes that go into every release. We’re looking at adding a card to the roadmap that links over to the appropriate filter view on the Trello to minimize noise but provide valuable information to .
[]
08. Should we continue to expect a culture of prioritizing new features at the cost of bugfixes in the Roadmap?
We don’t prioritize new features at the cost of bug-fixing and stability. All software development is a balance of evolution based on user needs and support for existing functionality. We do recognize that there are some long-standing bugs that affect a portion of the community and are looking at ways to get fixes in for them.
[]
09. What spurred on the decision to prioritize the Audio System for 4.16?
We have a couple of audio engineers that work specifically on audio, hence the movement for audio in upcoming releases 
[]
10. Does the Roadmap take into account other games generating revenue for Epic that could use specific features? If not, what could spur that on?
As mentioned above, community interest, large audience needs and Epic Games project needs all play important roles in helping us define where to go next and what to focus on.
[]
11. Instead of a voting system like before, why not set up a bracket system organized by Epic for the community, where we can vote for specific features? We start with 64 potential features. The top 32 voted features move to the next voting bracket. We vote again and the top 16 features move up. Eventually when we have our top 4 features, that’s how you know what the community wants the most. Services like Brackify: https://brackify.com/product/pricing - will let you do that for free. Winners get added to the road map (along with a time frame for how long they’ll take to be implemented, meaning that a might get put on the agenda today to be completed by 4.19).
We’re glad that there is so much interest in voting and are looking into ways to provide better tools for collecting community feedback on future items. Until then, please drop us a line and continue the discussion in the parent Feedback for Epic forum. While the development teams occasionally drops in and comments, rest assured that a great number of us read that forum and gauge interest based on it.
Thanks again for your comments and suggestions.