Did Hearts of Iron IV get its bid for beta Accepted?

[Shade205]

Seriously?
They just told us that the beta got rejected last friday.
What else do you want? A hour by hour report?

The last time we had delays we weren't informed, we are simply asking to be informed.


I would appreciate you not trying to hijack the thread to try to poke and argue at people. You are not only not reading what people are saying but you are accusing people of saying things they aren't even saying.


We just want to be kept in the loop which hasn't been the case in the past. It's not an absurd request.

 

[Zaku]

The last time we had delays we weren't informed, we are simply asking to be informed.


I would appreciate you not trying to hijack the thread to try to poke and argue at people. You are not only not reading what people are saying but you are accusing people of saying things they aren't even saying.


We just want to be kept in the loop which hasn't been the case in the past. It's not an absurd request.

But that's it. You WERE informed about the status of the game by a Dev. You can't say that there is a lack of information, because that is not true.

 

[Victor Cortez]

Rather have a late game then a broken game

One year ago I would have agreed.

 

[TheCzarMan]

At this point, i just want the game ASAP. I don't need it to be bug free, perfect, whatever out of the box, because I don't expect that. I know Paradox will patch and fix things for the next several years. I also know that the userbase will find way more bugs than the devs ever do in beta. So yeah, given the polish and everything, I just want it now. Call me terrible for thinking that way if you want, I don't care. I can deal with a slightly buggy game for a month or so while having fun.

 

[jaredstanko]

At this point, i just want the game ASAP. I don't need it to be bug free, perfect, whatever out of the box, because I don't expect that. I know Paradox will patch and fix things for the next several years. I also know that the userbase will find way more bugs than the devs ever do in beta. So yeah, given the polish and everything, I just want it now. Call me terrible for thinking that way if you want, I don't care. I can deal with a slightly buggy game for a month or so while having fun.

youre going to get it in 3-5 months. the version they have 1 month from now might be enjoyable for most, but not at all ready for a public release. id take it

the version available, right, right, right now? will probably make you tear your hair out.

 

[fastfreddie77]

Just put it up for sale/play in Beta ... everyone else is doing it and I personally don't mind playing or testing early stage products. Some realize there is a long term picture and know how to enjoy the process.

 

[Denkt]

Open beta will not happen.

 

[Damiani]

youre going to get it in 3-5 months. the version they have 1 month from now might be enjoyable for most, but not at all ready for a public release. id take it

the version available, right, right, right now? will probably make you tear your hair out.

What makes you say that? It seemed plenty enjoyable to me in the WWW videos.

 

[ILoveLamp]

Just release more Eu4/Ck2 expansions

In all seriousness, they could probably afford to pay the bills off of CK2 and EU4 expansion sales alone all the way to Stellaris - skip HOI4 altogether .

 

[jaredstanko]

What makes you say that? It seemed plenty enjoyable to me in the WWW videos.

its probably very very buggy and unbalanced a this point with quite a few kinks to work out. i bet you could devise an unrealistic winning strategy that would allow you to game the system and also kinda suck the fun out of the game.

 

[MajorHeartfire]

I think most of us would still rather have a late game than a broken game.

But more than that, we just want communication. Paradox releases have come a long way since the pre-QA team days (it wasn't that long ago that Paradox did not employ QA staff). We can trust them to deliver a pretty good product on release at this point. Vicky 2 was broken as all hell, but that was the last one I really remember saying to myself, "Wow, this really stinks and is unplayable."

That being said, Paradox has a small beta community right now because their betas are meant for testing. It isn't like the modern games version of testing where everyone just gets to play early, and the come to the forums to complain and tell the rest of the community that the game needs another 6 months in development because some singular part of the game is different than they wanted. Paradox beta is a real beta. They take members of the community who have shown a nack for diagnosing bugs, and put them on their next new game to enhance their findings with the in-house QA testers.

 

[DaAvenger]

Part of the issue is that people made assumptions about what the release date would be, or what stage of development they were in. I'm sure it never occurred to some people that you would do the selection of beta testers well ahead of when your actual beta is ready so you don't lose time. So, when the news of the beta rejection came, they had assumed they were in beta for several weeks even though they never said that.

Same thing with ideas that maybe they would announce a release date by X, or that they are pretty sure the release will be around Y. These are nothing but hopes and dreams, and they've made it quite clear that they won't announce a date until they are sure. This is a very responsible decision, since it would be easy for them to set a date and get everyone to back off, even if they have no chance of hitting it. Try to remember at the end of the day that they want to ship the game too, it just isn't ready yet.

Even when they aren't specifically mentioning development updates, they are still communicating some things. The fact that they started the WWW videos tells (and shows) that the game is in pretty good shape. If anything they are somewhat a victim of how good things look already, since it caused a lot of people to just assume that the game was practically done.

 

[blue_yonder]

Even when they aren't specifically mentioning development updates, they are still communicating some things.

Good post. People asking for 'more communication' should be careful what they wish for. One day, paradox will be so fat and successful they'll do all their 'communications' properly, with a slick PR guy instead of a human. And when that happens, instead of straightforward truthful things like podcat's "...it was shit, and had a negative impact on many other game elements..." or Johan's offhand remark about the beta submission, you'll have "...our customers are very important to us, and you can rest assured we will make announcements on the project's progress in a timely manner.." or "we felt it was possible to improve still further on the outstanding supply system we offered in our previous version."

But whether you are 'communicated to' by real people or by PR men, it won't actually get the game in your hands five minutes sooner, or result in them saying things they're not ready to say.

 

[Shade205]

Part of the issue is that people made assumptions about what the release date would be, or what stage of development they were in.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

We didn't assume a release date, we were told and they failed to meet it and took their sweet time telling us it was delayed.

We also didn't assume anything about development. We were told when alpha started and after alpha started we were told 6 months from release and we were also told that they are hoping to be in beta by December.

Now we are informed that they got denied beta and crunched all weekend to see if beta got accepted this time as since the plan was to be in beta in December to meet the six months from alpha release which would put release in March this beta would need to be accepted.

I feel it's nessesary to repeat that I and many others who have voice concerned here are not demanding an immediate game from paradox or a release date that would be stupid.

We are simply requesting to be in the loop as this beta denial would mean another delay and we dont want to learn that the Q1 2015 estimated release date won't be met in the third week of March like what happened last time.

 

[mdw1985]

I don't understand you.
You say you want the bitter truth, yet you complain that the beta got rejected.
That's the bitter fact you wanted to hear. They told us the status of the game.

And that's wrong again. I didn't complain about beta rejection. I complain about being left in my faith, that Beta got accepted... Johan told in the last dd, that they are crunching like mad for beta. Then someone asked (!!!) something like "did the beta got rejected?" In the thread and then (!!!) Podcat said something like "yes, hame to slow and tutorial not complete"

It is not complaining about THAT they didn't share the info. It is complaining about WHEN...

@Shade205 : you exactly understood what i meant. cheers

@Zaku : i hope my point is clear now. it is nothing personal against the devs and the company and they still are far better than many other companies. But this development info thing is something, that bothers me a lot. And just because i like them, i'll won't defend them no matter what...

 

[Evan05]

And that's wrong again. I didn't complain about beta rejection. I complain about being left in my faith, that Beta got accepted... Johan told in the last dd, that they are crunching like mad for beta. Then someone asked (!!!) something like "did the beta got rejected?" In the thread and then (!!!) Podcat said something like "yes, hame to slow and tutorial not complete"

It is not complaining about THAT they didn't share the info. It is complaining about WHEN...

@Shade205 : you exactly understood what i meant. cheers

@Zaku : i hope my point is clear now. it is nothing personal against the devs and the company and they still are far better than many other companies. But this development info thing is something, that bothers me a lot. And just because i like them, i'll won't defend them no matter what...

Perhaps they'll let us know about what happened to their beta submission in the next Dev Diary?

 

[mdw1985]

Perhaps they'll let us know about what happened to their beta submission in the next Dev Diary?

I hope for that. it doesn't need to be an essay. If Beta got rejected again, I won't be mad at them...but i really disliked this "by the way" thing in the last DD with no further explaination from Johan at all...

 

[Victor Cortez]

I think most of us would still rather have a late game than a broken game.

It all comes down to how much broken the game is.
Being unplayable a la HOI3 is one thing, not being perfectly balanced is another.

 

[mdw1985]

It all comes down to how much broken the game is.
Being unplayable a la HOI3 is one thing, not being perfectly balanced is another.

Yep, exactly! A released game, which is perfect in all matters would be wishful thinking. There still need to be released patches and so on. Most important for me is a stable and playable game, which doesn't crash every five minutes or hasn't severe or many bugs. For me it's like a tradeoff. Should they release a game, which is not totally balanced yet, but they earn money. Or should they release a very very polished game and have more expenses on the development. This is the decision of pdx and i won't judge them on that...but what is true is, that development took more time than the devs expected...

Maybe we'll see more details tolorrow victor!

 

[Victor Cortez]

Maybe we'll see more details tolorrow victor!

Yeah, I hope so.
I've no idea how long the beta approval takes (I would imagine a couple of days), but in any case I hope we're informed. If the ship is sinking, let us know.