And be part of the initial group providing feedback.Another positive way to look at it is, if you have Alpha access, you're going to get space legs much much earlier than the official release date
Alpha Testing Access For Odyssey Pre-Order
- Thread starter Caydran
- Start date
Really people are upset about this?
What's far more worrying is you write up a feedback post, or collect information for a detailed bug report, easily 30-60 minutes of your time, and frontier simply don't care. You click submit, and that's the last you hear about it (i don't want a thankyou but a fix while in beta would be okay).
Yet all the while they're streaming videos ruffling the white knights by claiming to listen to players, make changes all this stuff, and nothing.
If you're going to do it for odysee, id really ask them to outline very specifically the scope they have for making changes, so you can focus your time energy on something more meaningful than nothing, while getting lied to about it, and white knights running with that and claiming youre nuts.
What's far more worrying is you write up a feedback post, or collect information for a detailed bug report, easily 30-60 minutes of your time, and frontier simply don't care. You click submit, and that's the last you hear about it (i don't want a thankyou but a fix while in beta would be okay).
Yet all the while they're streaming videos ruffling the white knights by claiming to listen to players, make changes all this stuff, and nothing.
If you're going to do it for odysee, id really ask them to outline very specifically the scope they have for making changes, so you can focus your time energy on something more meaningful than nothing, while getting lied to about it, and white knights running with that and claiming youre nuts.
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Does anyone remember the good, old days when developers actually appreciated players volunteering to test their software for them and sometimes even rewarded volunteer testers with game licenses, extras, premiums, etc.
This developer: "Hey, instead of paying to test our software, let's charge our existing customers a 28% premium to test the software for us!" GENIUS!!!
And then ignore the bug reports and feedback.
Though that's more the industry as a whole at this point, rather than something unique to FDev.
Doesn't excuse it, but over the last 20 years scores of people with more money than sense begged the industry to make it so, and I can't say I'm surprised the industry decided to start taking the money.
I mean, who wouldn't want customers with perpetually open wallets and no standards who eagerly buy vague concepts and accept anything as long as you don't call it a final product - possibly for years?
We should all be so lucky.
I doubt it. Its probably a marketing experiment for the next title.
Elite started with a paid beta, then they made them free, and now its back again. My guess is that for funding the "publisher" business buffers all the projects so that they are always financially secure regardless of what they do, or the success or failure of a specific title or release. Sure its possible for big bang companies like rockstar and cdpr but you can tell from frontiers skeleton nature and quality levels their strategy is as few eggs as possible in any basket and lots of baskets.
Yeah they're having a go this time around to find out if the money from deluxe preorders outweights any load testing needs and goodwill from improved quality.
Yes and no. Frontier have run all sorts of betas in the past. Apparently the majority of them were purely marketing betas.. but there were interesting ones where frontier actually required test data from the public so told everyone to go out to system and do something. They even offered a beta tester decal if you went and did your part. That was exactly a win/win situation to me.
So when you open up the details for this alpha beta it really depends on whats in the box.
Given current conditions I think we all need to offer FDev a pass on release dates.
Says I'm condescending, then proceeds to be condescending to me. GG.Lol what an incredibly condescending response to someone who was clearly being sarcastic/facetious. Anyway, let's forge ahead...
For one, saying "NEVER" in big caps doesn't change the fact that you're wrong here, but I will say that you're right that's not as much being "lazy or incompetent" (even though sometimes it is) as it's... and this might shock you... they're too cheap. Because guess what? They went from a small independent game dev with budgetary concerns to a publicly-traded corporation with shareholder/profit-margin concerns, almost literally overnight. If you played Elite on release you already know this, it was a bug-filled mess and they took MONTHS to get the game to something resembling "no longer alpha/beta".
It's not for additional income, they're not like Star Citizen at all. It's for the purposes of additional profit because, as I already stated, they're a publicly-traded company and any marketing move they make is in response to and in service of shareholder interest, not "we need more sales to stay afloat" - that ship sailed the day they went public. And for anyone who has been playing E
Heh, I guess you're trying to live up to your handle here by explaining this in such a way that it seems you just landed on this planet and learned all these facts yourself just now? Thanks, but this goes under the column "duh".
More condescension when all you did was prove the first two assertions. Facile and smug, always a good combo!
So here's the reality that you don't understand:
As a final point I'll say that the change from companies needing to encourage players/prospective players to help test pre-release products to "lettting" them pay for the privilege pretty much coincided with the expansion of the internet and video games along with it. This allowed all software companies to send themselves data rather than have to coax users to send it to them. Once companies realized that people would pay for "Early Access" it opened the door to the current lazy development cycles and way overwrought games that companies either never intended to "complete" (e.g. Ark, E: D) or just couldn't maintain a balance between vision and demand (e.g. NMS, CP 2077). Since companies have no moral compass they saw more potential savings in reducing the size and competency levels of their in-house QA teams (whether you choose to believe it or not). IMO this is why people have been heavily gravitating back to much simpler, old-style (even pixelated) games because at least with those you're not dealing with constant crashes, lag, imbalances and plain drudgery. The saddest part of it all is that consoles used to be a sort of safe haven from this mess but once console makers started allowing this type of software development to pollute the console world we've all been pretty much stuck with it. Sony is the craziest example, as recently as 15 years ago they still required a very very strict level of stability that meant you almost never dealt with crashes or other game-breaking bugs. Now it's almost like clockwork you see those awful blue screens with the error codes on them.
- Even though the OP was being sarcastic, they're not wrong on the facts. Game dev companies used to pay or reward gamers to beta test their games, and now people pay for early access. In those days they weren't hiring them in any sense, and they weren't "training them up" to be a professional QA analyst either. All they asked was that you provide the odd update on what you're seeing and give a templated report on any bug you uncover. Sounds a lot like what people do now (but voluntarily), doesn't it? It doesn't mean it's right or wrong, just that it's the reality.
- You don't realize that users ARE testers, they're just not analysts (and the OP never claimed they were). In other words, they're not designing test cases and running them to observe expected or unexpected results, they're exercising a system that WILL HAVE FLAWS because... and this may shock you... software defects are EXPECTED in software systems. We know they're there, we just can't think of every possible use case to uncover them in the analysis phase. So, how do we uncover them? We wrap our code in logs, run-time data feeds, "crash guards" and several other tools to help us understand what just happened and then... GET PEOPLE TO USE IT! You know those choices you get when installing software that ask you something like "Help <Insert Company> by sending reports blah blah blah" that are usually checked by default? If you keep it checked you're a full-fledged tester! (I hope you were sitting down for that)
- While it's fine to point out the history and feel it's a shame that people are willing to pay for what quite honestly IS free labour for software/game companies, it really isn't the company's fault, it's the players'. That's what I smh at, people are happily taken advantage of for the apparent endorphin rush experienced when receiving some perceived reward that only exists as such in the person's imagination. It's really quite sad, but, just like anything else in life, if it's not hurting anyone else they can do whatever they want.
- With that said, a corporation is not a human being with morals and ethics that guide its decisions, it's a money-making machine that is governed by laws and regulations that limit how far it's able to go in the pursuit of said monies. This is why it's rather pathetic that people on this board stick up for FD like they're sticking up "for the devs" or for their "good buddy" DB. News flash people: they want your money. Period. That's your only leverage over them, and you're best off treating it as such. Buying the alpha doesn't "help the company" in the way you think it does. Buy things that are worth your hard earned money (as some on this thread have explained, and I understand), but don't do it "for the devs" or "for the company", that's asinine and leads to bad/lazy products.
All we can hope is that the continued deterioration of quality leads to more gamers voting with their wallets.
On reading back what I commented I agree it doesn't fit what I quoted from you. I apologise.
All good buddy
Bought and paid for, you earned it. Congrats.
AAAHAHAHAHA!
Inside the duvet cover, top right corner...
It’s much better to be entitled to something due to your investment, or whatever other commitment may have been necessary to gain that entitlement, than it is to declare an entitlement to something simply because you feel entitled.
I’ve never quite understood why some people feel it unfair that they don’t have access to something they have not committed to, whilst others do because they did.
Hoomans!
I’ve never quite understood why some people feel it unfair that they don’t have access to something they have not committed to, whilst others do because they did.
Hoomans!
I dont mind paying money for a beta neither. I expect to pay reduced price because I'm getting an inferior unfinished version. Preferrably free.
Just a guess, I think they'll keep the opportunity to take part in the alpha and beta right up until the beta ends.
Alpha testing should be completed well before the beta starts. I'm guessing end of the year is more likely.