Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

Likely they hoped it would turn out to be a decent thread but when you put people who want to know progress on the beta with people who believe this is all just a long con to make millions you end up with this place becoming a toxic pit of infighting sadly.

 

Your right, we do not have an exact Beta release date, but we do know that it will be within 41 days. This is the part others struggle with, why must you have an exact date? What does that change? What tangible benefit does that add?

You are asking them to paint themselves into a corner, and there is precedence that they are not great with exact dates. people know this, yet you continue to ask. If they state 11/26 and miss that date how will you feel then? If the say Dec 31st will that be too long? Will they get bashed for waiting until the last day?

It seems they lose (with a certain number of folks here) no matter what approach they take to the beta. I think this is why the majority of folks don't care about a date, and are starting to get miffed for people always asking.

My 2 cents....

 

The devs are really working harder now :\ .IMO I estimate the beta to be in 6 december .

 

the people that think this game is a long con to make millions are not posting on the forum this is skeptics vs believers.

 

Skeptics of what? Believers of what? I'm not skeptical or do I believe in anything. It's a video game you either play or you don't. You either wait for it or don't. Talking about it and asking questions about it has absolutely no weight on whether the game will be good/bad or even come out tomorrow. It's just people typing words into a box expressing their opinions about the situation. Whether you can accept it or not no one knows when the game will be at a state that Chucklefish finds acceptable for mass consumption. I have a sneaking suspicion that Chucklefish doesn't even know.

 

Uh yea they do >_>

 

And this is what I really want to talk about.

Their deadline looms low on the horizon and they still don't want to commit to a hard date deadline. Why? Do they feel the backlash could conceivably be worse than whats being discussed now? Do they feel like a hard deadline WILL paint them into a corner? These are the questions that I think should be asked. Honestly their schedule is not my concern. What I am trying to get at is how that schedule is communicated. The request for a hard deadline is a suggestion that I think best solves these questions. For the development team it creates a date that they should have a stable build that they feel comfortable releasing to us by so that the hard date can be fulfilled. For us in the thread a hard date answers a lot of the questions we have about the release and goes a long way to rebuilding confidence. If we see them being confident we can be confident too. If for some reason the schedule does not work out that way, they can communicate why, supposing there is more work to be done or a major issue that needs to be worked out before the beta can be released.

Does that sound reasonable? I don't think I am quite that insane... yet.

 

You don't believe in anything? Not even GOD? Dude, God is gonna be wicked pissed to hear about this.

 

Hey, I asked you a bunch of questions first...LOL

Chucklfish has missed dates they published and were brought to task correct? Many folks understood but were unhappy. Then they (oops, I) did it again and were brought to task a second time. I would say the Devs learned from those mistakes and are making sure to announce a date they know can make. Whats wrong with that? I applaud them for changing their approach which was not working for them. Why hold them to past behavior that clearly does not work for them?

Your only insane if you make a post complaining that this thread is not about individuals only beta discussions, but make several references to a single person in that very post.

 

The long con thing was a bit on the extreme side I admit. I think I have only ever seen a hand full of people hint that they believed the game was a fake.

 

That is certainly a fair assessment. Both about the behavior of the team and of the thread goers.

I suppose then what I'm actually asking for is another shift in thinking now that they have the deadline coming up. I would hope that with that date rapidly approaching they would be able to set a hard date and keep to it. Maybe that is unfeasible. If so why?

Certainly insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but I hope they have progressed to a point where setting a date is a good idea instead of a bad one. I worry that their insistence on not setting a date is the expectation of failure rather than the confidence of success.

 

Oh shit man. I better warn the Emperor.

 

... Did someone break Wulpher? Come on, own up.

You must be new here.

As Paco said, they've been slammed for being overconfident on specifying deadlines. It's in large part the reason for the toxicity of this thread. CF have communicated the reasons for missing those deadlines, and there are some persistent people who refuse to accept/believe those reasons and continue to badmouth CF about them. So yeah, that's worked real well in the past.

 

I think we have a 50/50 shot of a date in advance...I think they will just spring it one us when ready. I think CF only gain benefits by NOT giving us a date, no pressure for them to make an arbitrary date and we get to be surprised (and some will scream like schoolgirls) when we get an email with a Beta key in our inbox.

 

I think you may be correct about that, it is the most logical conclusion given the data.

Proud lurker since Jan 5th of this year.

And yes I am aware of their history with calendar operation, but I also like to believe times change. As I have made a case for above I think such an announcement would be warranted in this context.

I have been wrong before.

 

It was only a few weeks ago that Tiy responded "Maybe November" when asked on IRC about a release date. Pretty clear there was still uncertainty then. Now, a few weeks later, the uncertainly has probably shrunk somewhat, but maybe not enough to mention a date. An example, to show what I mean - Perhaps Tiy thought that the beta would be out sometime around the end of November, but there was two weeks uncertainty in that on either side, so the actual date could have been mid-November - mid December. Now, a few weeks later, he perhaps thinks it will be around the first week in December (so within the range he thought earlier) but there is now one week's uncertainty on either side, so it could be ~ start of December - mid-December. The uncertainty is less, but still not enough to specify an exact date.

Note on the example above - all dates used are complete fabrication and should not be relied upon.

 

See I would like updates like that.

It would be a little more valuable information than "Here is a toy we made. You can't play with it yet. We don't know when you can."

I may be unique in that desire however.

 

Sorry...You know how I get when threads go awry.

 

I'm pretty sure patience is a personality trait, not something you can just turn on or off. >_>

I'm honestly suspecting that some people missed what Tiy said earlier:
"All this said, whilst I won’t apologise for delaying the game a couple of times, we have made mistakes along the way. The most obvious of which was to give out estimated release dates on a project that’s aiming so high and I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever do that again. We also underestimated the time spent on communication overheads when working with a remote team in several different timezones. (Honestly I think if we’d all been in the same office we may have met our release date goals)."

Except they only say the first sentence, and angry fans add the other two.

 

Alpha Legion now and forever.