you already have enough people to keep up with the demands of one unfinished and one unreleased early access games, i apologize for not making my point clearly enough.

xeper wrote:
EA is a concept most steam users (that write in Forums) can not understand.

Thanks for the hint! I would have no Problem with a really buggy EA i love seeing games grow, but i can understand that the Devs don't want to "release" it too early (technically it would be no "release").

Maybe "you" don't have a problem with buggy product, but there's two kind of bugs : those that will prevent you from playing (aka game-breaking ones) and those that will give you a distorted gameplay experience (aka the "bugs" )

I hope you'll agree that game-breaking ones would have a bad effect on word of mouth and sales as they will prevent early adopters to... test.



I don't know if you were here when ES released the beta : it was more stable than most of the titles on sale. And Amplitude grew their reputation thanks to such thing. I don't think, but I may be wrong, they'll early realease something that would go against their already established reputation.

VieuxChat wrote:
Maybe "you" don't have a problem with buggy product, but there's two kind of bugs : those that will prevent you from playing (aka game-breaking ones) and those that will give you a distorted gameplay experience (aka the "bugs" )

I hope you'll agree that game-breaking ones would have a bad effect on word of mouth and sales as they will prevent early adopters to... test.



I don't know if you were here when ES released the beta : it was more stable than most of the titles on sale. And Amplitude grew their reputation thanks to such thing. I don't think, but I may be wrong, they'll early realease something that would go against their already established reputation.

Yes, there's little more annoying for the gaming consumer than buying that brand new game that you've been waiting for for ages only to spend ages trying to get it to function. Gaming in the 80s and early 90s was almost always like this. The number of boot disks I remember making just to get certain games to run . . .



It was even worse if you managed to get the game installed, got it started and the thing crashed during the intro or shortly after beginning to play. It wasn't much better if you spent hours on the game only to have some bug wreck the end-game. Master of Magic had a strange bug in this vein--if you left the game while casting the Spell of Mastery (the game-ending spell), and came back to it later, it would often re-load you into the spell book and you wouldn't be able to exit it. Not a fun bug.



The fewer of these sorts of bugs, the better. Player time during EA is probably much better spent finding odd gameplay bugs, visual errors, balance problems, rare errors. That's not possible if the game isn't fundamentally stable. Reading through de Waubert's view of EA, it seems like Amplitude understands this.

Unstable, crashing and not feature complete. That is what EA should be (you release a Alpha i mean c'mon i don't know what people expect?!).

It can't be too early if the Devs want as much input as possible.

I can understand if they want to release more of a Beta (or late Alpha) for better reputation, because well a broad part of the mass doesn't get what EA or Alpha means.

Comparing it to a game on a real release helps my point really...

xeper wrote:
Unstable, crashing and not feature complete. That is what EA should be (you release a Alpha i mean c'mon i don't know what people expect?!).

It can't be too early if the Devs want as much input as possible.

I can understand if they want to release more of a Beta (or late Alpha) for better reputation, because well a broad part of the mass doesn't get what EA or Alpha means.

Comparing it to a game on a real release helps my point really...

Alas, the deficiencies of EA cannot be repaired by any individual studio. Instead, they are the result of incurable misconceptions and unwarranted expectations that spring from the collective experience of the gaming public. Knowing the type of response that EA is likely to produce given the audience that uses it, Amplitude's desire to release on EA a generally stable product focused on content tweaks reflects a mature, brand value-oriented attitude that is perfectly warranted.



That said, I would have very much welcomed a broader testing base limited to a wider pool of VIPs. A lot of us like watching a game develop even WITH the instability, random crashes, and incomplete features.

well the point of most people on the steam forums is that a game should have its basic features implemented in alpha/beta. they also don't understand the concept of g2g and think they are the only forum the devs should post to. also likely a bunch of people who havn't bought the game complaining about it. just the realities of steam forums

Varadhon wrote:
Alas, the deficiencies of EA cannot be repaired by any individual studio. Instead, they are the result of incurable misconceptions and unwarranted expectations that spring from the collective experience of the gaming public. Knowing the type of response that EA is likely to produce given the audience that uses it, Amplitude's desire to release on EA a generally stable product focused on content tweaks reflects a mature, brand value-oriented attitude that is perfectly warranted.



That said, I would have very much welcomed a broader testing base limited to a wider pool of VIPs. A lot of us like watching a game develop even WITH the instability, random crashes, and incomplete features.

Broader up to which point ? I think there's a "critical mass" of people to test something before it goes public. We are not a lot of VIPs but as we know each other the discussions can be very tight on the features that need discussion. Moreover we know what should be an "alpha" or a "beta".

Too much feedback wouldn't be helpful (the "bugs" have people from amplitude whose jobs to find them and crush them). We have heavy discussions about gameplay elements and the devs are very responsive, they wouldn't be as much if there woul dbe too much people to answer to (more people = more topics to speak about usually). For instance, when the forums opened the devs read everything that was posted. Now there's too much to read, so the VIPs are there to take care of the most blatant gameplay issue (we're not omniscient and usually some problems slip through our attention).

Now my view on this is that we haven't reach such a critical mass of VIPs. And the devs often add one VIP now and then to the pool (as some ancient VIPs were interested in ES and are not in DotE or EL : for instance, even if I'm a bit involved in DotE testing, I'm mostly on the EL discussions, and heavy ones. Wall of Text for the win !)



With an EA, Amplitude couldn't control who has access to those first buggy, instable, not fun, builds.

How does one become a VIP?



I have a lot of testing experience and am articulate and communicative. This game is right up my alley and I would love to help shape it in any way that I can.

When devs need VIPs they just look at those that create thoughful posts.

When they need VIPs.

which to be honest they don't need, i would hope the current vips could more than keep up with DotE and endless legend forums.

i would hope the current vips could more than keep up with DotE and endless legend forums.

I'm not sure to understand that sentence correctly.

Do you mean we're not enough for chat needs to be done ?

Or that we're already enough for what needs to be done ?

VieuxChat wrote:
Broader up to which point ? I think there's a "critical mass" of people to test something before it goes public. We are not a lot of VIPs but as we know each other the discussions can be very tight on the features that need discussion. Moreover we know what should be an "alpha" or a "beta".

Too much feedback wouldn't be helpful (the "bugs" have people from amplitude whose jobs to find them and crush them). We have heavy discussions about gameplay elements and the devs are very responsive, they wouldn't be as much if there woul dbe too much people to answer to (more people = more topics to speak about usually). For instance, when the forums opened the devs read everything that was posted. Now there's too much to read, so the VIPs are there to take care of the most blatant gameplay issue (we're not omniscient and usually some problems slip through our attention).

Now my view on this is that we haven't reach such a critical mass of VIPs. And the devs often add one VIP now and then to the pool (as some ancient VIPs were interested in ES and are not in DotE or EL : for instance, even if I'm a bit involved in DotE testing, I'm mostly on the EL discussions, and heavy ones. Wall of Text for the win !)



With an EA, Amplitude couldn't control who has access to those first buggy, instable, not fun, builds.

I take this to mean we're in agreement. lol

EA is a concept most steam users (that write in Forums) can not understand.

Thanks for the hint! I would have no Problem with a really buggy EA i love seeing games grow, but i can understand that the Devs don't want to "release" it too early (technically it would be no "release").

Well it does take more then simple forum talking to become a vip!

Hmm, I want this announcement, please. I'm getting feverish!

Igncom1 wrote:
Well it does take more then simple forum talking to become a vip!

Exorbitant amounts of alcohol never hurts.

Mansen wrote:
Exorbitant amounts of alcohol never hurts.

Well, I don't drink any alcohol, ever. SpaceTroll has taken this as a challenge, for some weird reason. It seems to make him uncomfortable, when I stay the whole evening, not drinking a drop, and then remember all the things everyone did. I really need an angel-smiley... 3

and Nos has no problem with having me drink, it seems... I fear the time when he will reveal the pictures, recordings and god knows what happened...

SpaceTroll wrote:
and Nos has no problem with having me drink, it seems... I fear the time when he will reveal the pictures, recordings and god knows what happened...

I'm comfortable with other people than me drinking. Why shouldn't I be?

I still need this angel smiley...

You are behaving like an elderly couple. I try to get the picture out of my head - because i have met both of you in reallife :P.