If possible, I'd love to see about getting into the stage 1 beta. I'm still gonna assume that a mouse would be lightyears better than a mousepad for this game?
They definitely do need the beta. There's a reason that developers open up a beta to a wider group of people, and that's because it's a critical stage for finding bugs caused by unusual hardware configurations, and that people tend to play games in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways, finding bugs that the devs would never have considered if they'd worked on it for another ten years. They're hardly going to compromise their development process for something as petty as punishing impatience.
Beta is only the bait. Because of most of these "testers" as we have no use. The testers - it's a profession.
You can count me in at stage 1. Bug hunting is fun. It's like a game within a game. Ultimately, it makes the game better though and can give a good perspective from those not involved with the development ... it's like having a person critique something you wrote. A fresh set of eyes can help iron things out.
Ahh great! It's nice to see movement forward! Even without a date this is great news for people interested in the game. Nice job listening to your communities complaints and flipping out and giving us some great information.
It's a profession eh? This Phrase rings true for this, We say it alot on my line of work in a slightly different way too; Why pay someone to do a task when you have a loyal and strong fanbase there to do the task for you and with much better accuracy. Its a win win situation.
You know, this will actually work like skyrim to me. My first character barely reached level twenties because i used it to learn about the game [and how to mod it]. So, i'd better join beta 1 anyway to get used to the game, and make a really random [and specially ugly] character. Maybe Glitch or Apex, or even human... I dunno, i'll leave the races i want the most to play as for phase 3. So, i see you work at Bethesda...
Yes, profession, people need to be able to find the bug and write a competent and useful report. And do not scream "This thing does not work." People earn money doing tests.
I'm sure there are enough competent testers in the fan base to make this a valid beta. The issue will come with the devs having to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to feedback.
I do not think so, the majority just want to get the game as soon as possible. I knew people who tried, for that reason, get into the development team.
It's true that a lot of people playing the beta will have no interest in being involved with the bughunting, but there will still be a significant number who will. Or are you expecting that this is all some ruse, and that there will actually be a (secret) paid beta separate from this where the real bughunting will take place? Why would they do that? I'm also confused about why you think the beta is 'bait'? Seems to me they've already hooked a significant number of people, with a couple of mil in pre-orders.
It's the path they are choosing though. I'm not going to concern myself with it at this point. I'll just provide the best feedback that I can. The devs can worry about the rest.
Sounds very exciting. Any idea as to what bug tracker you're going to use? Bugzilla? FogBugz? Hopefully not a forum thread? Quality bug reports and management begin with a quality (or, at least operable) bug tracker.
