In a game that is supposed to have a ten year development plan, we are all paying to test.
Why no Standard Beta players allowed to play Horizons Beta?
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A lot of truth in your post, even though i think there's a bit more to it than just that.
Isn't there always ?
The old system of signing up (and hoping for the e-mail, granting access) isn't completely gone. I just applied for the Black Desert Online CBT and i was in the World of Warships beta, just as examples.
But the trend certainly is going the other way, not least because companies found out that hype will create impatience, and impatience will open wallets. Be it for alpha/beta access or pre-orders.
And by the time people find out there was little else than hype, well, the money is in the bank. Rinse and repeat, because by the next time, the same people will already have forgotten the lesson they claimed to have learned.
That's not just a Steam specific phenomena. Steam's problem (imo) is a lacking (or even non-existent) QA with regard to what they toss onto that store page, but that's an entirely separate topic altogether of course.
Edit: Not talking about ED in particular by the way, more an opinion of the gaming industry in general.
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To pay for a beta, is like to pay an exorbitant price for a paintjob. It is love of the game and a financial support for the development.
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They're a business. They're allowed to ask money for anything they want. If you feel it's worth it, you pay for it. If you feel it's not, you don't.
You're not entitled to anything.
*edit* also, the timing for starting this thread seems really strange to me. They made it quite clear from the announcement of Horizons how the model works. Like Valethar said:
Why start this thread now?
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Ten year development plan doesn't mean that it isn't finished now, it means something better, as you can see with Horizons: It will evolve, supposedly 10 years..
I would rather say “Ten year development plan doesn't mean that it isn't enjoyable now”. The continued development will most likely be an interesting thing to be involved with, but Elite is clearly not a finished product. I imagine FD would say the same.
I think there might be some people who don't consider PP or CQC "finished"
Hopefully, a few of those people are FD devs.
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I was under that impression too but alas they decided to sell beta for each season from what I can see and screw it if you already paid for beta access previously, it's a cheap and shoddy way to make more money off us, I guess charging full game price for each season wasn't enough cash for them.
What an odd outlook ... Guess people are "testing" World of Warcraft then and similar ?
ED 1.0 was released as finished ... ED:Horizons is an expansion pack. Expect more expansions.
X-Terminator
Banned
Some folk here think you pay for the Beta and the released expansion comes along free!
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Ok, so Frontier set out a roadmap for a very, very ambitious, multi-year project. And here we have people turning that ambition right around on them, saying that since it's not a finished product, they shouldn't be expected to pay full price for it.
Are you for real?
And again, if you don't think the additional content is worth it, then don't bloody pay for it! You know you have a choice right?
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Deleted member 38366
D
A word of caution though about those that miss the Opportunity to Beta-Test :
Although noone puts a gun to your head... well... you're expected to Beta-Test.
That effectively means not only playing with the new toys, but :
- keeping up with the ChangeLogs
- keeping up with known issues
- keeping up with FDev-acknowledged issues & updates
- keeping up with other Tester's Reports, anomalies or shortcomings and Ideas how to improve them
- having an open eye on everything that occurs while you're testing things to the extremes whereever possible
- document even benign errors, bugs or visual anomalies
- creating experience and statistical data where needed to build a big picture (balancing, input vs. output, possible exploits, risk vs. reward etc)
- invest time in playstyles or activities you'd normally not be interested in
- after a long day, filter your gathered data and put it into perspective for drastically different Player types (oldfart Tester, Experienced Player, brand new Retail customer with no tech skills)
- put it all together and file the Bug Reports with all needed Details and observations (keep them Dev-friendly and C3 - Clear, Crisp & Concise), using your existing tech knowledge about the Game and Engine, past Versions & live one
- chime into the Beta SubForum and share your ideas about the biggest observed or anticipated problems you or other Players saw or predict to happen
- keep it cool and stay professional
- expect much of your work or ideas to possibly go entirely unnoticed/unconsidered, you're just one amongst many; Beta-Testers are silent worker bees that work tirelessly for their tireless queen
TL : DR
It isn't all fun & glory playing on the Test servers and perform actual Beta Testing.
Although noone puts a gun to your head... well... you're expected to Beta-Test.
That effectively means not only playing with the new toys, but :
- keeping up with the ChangeLogs
- keeping up with known issues
- keeping up with FDev-acknowledged issues & updates
- keeping up with other Tester's Reports, anomalies or shortcomings and Ideas how to improve them
- having an open eye on everything that occurs while you're testing things to the extremes whereever possible
- document even benign errors, bugs or visual anomalies
- creating experience and statistical data where needed to build a big picture (balancing, input vs. output, possible exploits, risk vs. reward etc)
- invest time in playstyles or activities you'd normally not be interested in
- after a long day, filter your gathered data and put it into perspective for drastically different Player types (oldfart Tester, Experienced Player, brand new Retail customer with no tech skills)
- put it all together and file the Bug Reports with all needed Details and observations (keep them Dev-friendly and C3 - Clear, Crisp & Concise), using your existing tech knowledge about the Game and Engine, past Versions & live one
- chime into the Beta SubForum and share your ideas about the biggest observed or anticipated problems you or other Players saw or predict to happen
- keep it cool and stay professional
- expect much of your work or ideas to possibly go entirely unnoticed/unconsidered, you're just one amongst many; Beta-Testers are silent worker bees that work tirelessly for their tireless queen
TL : DR
It isn't all fun & glory playing on the Test servers and perform actual Beta Testing.
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What an odd outlook ... Guess people are "testing" World of Warcraft then and similar ?
ED 1.0 was released as finished ... ED:Horizons is an expansion pack. Expect more expansions.
I don’t know anything about the development of Warcraft, this is about Elite.
Quibbling over the semantics of ‘finished’, or whether something was released as ‘finished’ isn’t really worthwhile - I can stop making a large meal half-way through and say it is finished, and many people would still enjoy it, but those who enjoy a good banquet would have a hunger for more, especially if that’s what they had in mind when they joined the party.
A number of the players I know who have backed the project from early on, play the game not only because it is enjoyable in its current state, but because of the potential for what it could become with the right implementation of what has been proposed by FD. It’s with that view that I would hesitate to use the term ‘finished’, and would say that we are all testing a product that is in continued development - Which is, to clarify, something that I have no issue with.
So if it really is as uninteresting to you as you say, why are you complaining about not being able to play the beta of horizons? Or were you so annoyed with FD for not letting you have early access to a game you seem not to be interested in, so decided to complain?
What an odd outlook ... Guess people are "testing" World of Warcraft then and similar ?
ED 1.0 was released as finished ... ED:Horizons is an expansion pack. Expect more expansions.
Well, that's technically not correct, is it ?
ED is de facto season 1 and "finished" (or let's say "concluded) with 1.5 (not 1.0). And even after that there will be more additions to the base game. Some Horizons features (like synthesis and crafting) will at least partially become available to non Horizons players.
Even FD acknowledged that release 1.0 contained less content than originally intended, and, as a gesture of compensation, raised the total number of planned ships from 25 to 30.
I also disagree that Horizons is an expansion, it's a season pass. Just as ED was in hindsight, the term "season" hadn't crept up until the second half of this year.
-An expansion is a fully featured one-off content addition. Pay full price, get the full update in one go (GW 2 "Heart of Thorns, ESO "Imperial City, SWTOR "Knights of the fallen Empire" to name a few examples), and know what the additional content is.
-A season pass is a staggered content addition. Pay full price, get additional content in chunks over a period of time (in ED's case a year), and usually without full knowledge of the exact nature of that content.
I don't think many would have guessed CQC and PP back in december 2014.
What i do agree with is "don't wanna buy it, then don't". At the end of the day you can't blame anyone but yourself if you fell for hype or marketing.
Temptations can be given into, but they can also be resisted.
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horizons isn't worth a full game price it's an expansion not a new game....and I did put my money where my mouth is and didn't buy it. I put enough cash already into this gonna wait till the horizon season goes down or untill they sell season three with season 1 and 2 included for free.
Wellington
Banned
Simple answer: Cash grab....... The nerve of asking people to PAY to test something is beyond greed, its insulting. Add to that the fact that most of the testing done by said "paying" customers is ignored and a broken/unfinished product is pushed out of the door just adds to the insult. I'm just browsing through the inevitable white knight responses and laughing into my coffee hehehe. FD ARE making people pay to test, no other way you can dress this up, and to add insult to injury, people that ALREADY have paid to beta test earlier have to pay AGAIN......Can you see the pattern? I ditched ED a while ago when I found out we were being dimed for Horizons and everything else thats possible to dime players for, and have yet to be proven wrong on any of it
WHEN are players going to wake up to the fact they hold the power? The answer is probably never, as long as people keep ploughing their cash into un-finished and badly designed products just to be "FIRST"......
Lets put it thisway, IF you went to a car showroom to buy a car, you wouldnt walk out with half a car thats a junker, having paid in full with the other half relying on the car firms good will and promises would you? YET you do it here..... People need to get real, vote with your cash, its the ONLY way to improve the industry.
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Guess you should have paid the extra 50 bucks for the life time pass when you got the standard beta if you wanted to beta test the expansions (seasons)... live and learn.
You have to be an Alpha or Preimum Beta backer or have the lifetime upgrades package or, you have to pay for the Horizons Beta specifically. I don't make the rules, that is simply the way Frontier set it up. Sorry Commander.
Isn't the reason they charge for people to test the beta, which is totally up to them if they want to pay. To stop the game being trashed online by people just wanting to get there hands on a game for free? and then say its balls because this doesn't work and that doesn't work not understanding that a beta is to help the developers make the game/expansion stable for release. lots of games have been killed by bad press from people not understanding the point of testing, and just saying all over the net "fell though the moon it's <Ahem>!
anyway chin up its just a game.
anyway chin up its just a game.
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