What's the difference between the postrelease beta and the hypothetical prerelease beta?
Christmas killed Le Guin.
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What's the difference between the postrelease beta and the hypothetical prerelease beta?
I wouldn't mind it if they tagged new releases as open beta for awhile, but I believe there are some posts by the devs about why they don't do that....somewhere on the forum. Even if they did decide to tag it like that though, we'd still have people complaining that the pre-release beta has bugs and is literally unplayable.
Meanwhile there are a lot of other people who are quite happily playing 2.2x even despite the bugs, and are quite willing to post and try to help the devs fix them. Could it be better? Sure. But for most it's good enough for now, with the promise that it will be even better soon.
It's just a different mindset I think.
Meanwhile there are a lot of other people who are quite happily playing 2.2x even despite the bugs, and are quite willing to post and try to help the devs fix them. Could it be better? Sure. But for most it's good enough for now, with the promise that it will be even better soon.
It's just a different mindset I think.
A pre-release beta would be opt-in. Then people who opt-in contribute playtesting ("a large quantity of low-quality bug reports", which is why it's important that it occur after and in addition to internal testing) and hopefully don't lose their minds when it doesn't work right/how they want because they specifically acted to get the pre-release version knowing it is not yet suitable for release.
The problem is some players don't want to play the new content until it is fully completed and tested, and don't want bugs to sully their enjoyment. As such, with a post release beta, it's often unannounced, and after finding out about the problems, these players are never notified of when it's actually done. They might not come back.
People would lose their shit anyways. While I agree that QA has been a weak spot for PDX for a long time, changing the dlc name to open Beta wouldn't make a damn different. I prefer software differences, not semantics changes
It's not about what it's called, it's about who is playing it. There's a large contingent of players out there who don't take a big interest in the development cycle and aren't forum grogs (weird, I know), and they would live in blessed ignorance playing 2.1.3 while we lords and ladies of the cutting edge installed the prerelease version to chew raw meat. A lot of the most insane complaints are coming from one-post accounts, these are people who had a working game and it just stopped and they were upset, they never thought about the forum until they had a complaint. They wouldn't have even known there was a pre-release beta, much less bumbled into it.
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If they labeled it an open beta, that would reduce sales just to pacify some complaints about quality.
I'm quite happy that I can play Le Guin, buggy or not, during my Christmas vacation. Just roll back your version if the quality bugs you that much. Don't ask the devs to hold the game back from the rest of us or cut down their sales on principle.
I'm quite happy that I can play Le Guin, buggy or not, during my Christmas vacation. Just roll back your version if the quality bugs you that much. Don't ask the devs to hold the game back from the rest of us or cut down their sales on principle.
It wouldn't reduce sales, it would merely delay them until a release-worthy version existed. And it might even increase them. There are tons of conversations about games and gaming in "normal" circles at this time of year, and Stellaris is not being represented well in those conversations. Last month I'd have told my friends "Get Stellaris and Utopia, do it now." This month I'm like "look at these super nice species portraits, someday they'll be in a good game again."
They fix the bugs all the time. 2.2.2 is almost incomparably better than 2.2.1 (Only problem for me being glitching resources when trading with other races.)
I have nothing to complain about. Especially as a student, since they released an update with DLC exactly at the only time of the year when I have time to play it.
You might have noticed a massive decrease in demos, betas, and the like in the industry the past while, and that's because the numbers showed over and over again that they rarely increased sales, and fairly often reduced sales. If you get your fill of something before it's out of beta and "release-worthy," then you're not going to buy it. I've seen this happen plenty of times among my friends.
Maybe they could reduce this by letting only people who pre-order Megacorp access to an open beta, but I imagine that would upset the community even worse than the quality issues have. A lot of this is about choosing the least problematic approach. Many of these suggestions of "just wait to release it" are made without acknowledging the drawbacks of this option. This slows down the release cycle, meaning they need to charge more to get the same income over time. Or they have to cut features in order to fit enough quality control time in. It also means they have less ability to align with things like the holidays, which again means less sales, so they need to raise the price or cut more in order to stay afloat.
Huh. I had a friend ask me about the game and my response was "There are some quality issues they're still ironing out, but the game has never been better." I say this because I've never had more fun with the game, despite various quality issues. The core design of the new economic system has totally knocked it out of the park in my opinion and more than makes up for the issues. I understand that not everyone has this attitude, but I'm going to speak up and let my voice be heard, too.
But opt-in or opt-out, it's still the same options, right? This is just a psychology thing?
Yeah, this is just about not displeasing your customer by not pushing broken updates to them unless they've specifically indicated they're into that. So many people played 2.2.0, some of them playing for their first time. 2.2.0 should have been a forum grog only bughunt adventure, not anyone's first exposure to a paradox game.
Which is why there's a big splash screen first thing when you open the game that tells you 'hey, things have changed and here's how', along with clear instructions on how to revert to a previous version for a bit if they want to. The only way the game just 'stopped working' is if they completely ignored the devs going out of their way to inform them.
I love 2.2 so far and I'm happy to have gotten to play it when I did, buggy or not.
I must disagree. The multispecies growth bit is very broken. It cannot possibly be their true intent, because these guys are not idiots.
Yeah I just bought 2 as well. 2.2 has a slew of minor problems outstanding and two major ones of which I am aware. That is not so bad. Knowing the major problems also makes it quite possible to play around them.god im so angry i just bough all the DLCs
keep those fixes coming devs!
merry christmas you guys rock!
As long as you don't terraform a planet to gaia and don't play a xenophile and don't ever take a migration treaty, you should be more or less OK for now.
The differesne is exposure. A prerelease beta is only available to the beta testers. These people are bound by NDAs even after release, so you never hear the horror stories of how bad things were before release.
A post release beta is available to anyone who purchased the material in question. These are the general public, not bound by NDA, in fact almost duty sworn to scream their bloody heads off at things they dislike.
No it is not. If it is opt in then only a fraction of players will go that way. The majority will wait for it to go official rather than opting into a beta. Just the fact that it is held back as opt in implies that it is risky and that it is not ready.
No, there are nuances. An opt in beta brings with it some of the nuance of a try-at-your-own-risk situation. Other betas often only carry the implication of being unready and are in search of feedback for improvement rather than the harsh criticism that might result if something were labeled as ready.
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