Redi was an amazing beta tester, and one can make a case that he should have been hired directly by Infinity Plus Two as a QA agent (it wouldn’t be the first time a forums member was hired as a dev—you know who you are!). As far as I know, his disappearance from the forums was for personal reasons unrelated to the game.
The beta was fun, but it does demand a certain mindset: give all the feedback you can, but trust that there is a reason (besides malice/incompetence) if it isn’t acted upon.
From my observations, being on the beta bares no relevance on attrition rates.
A former tester isn’t any more likely to continue playing or quitting the game more than non-testers who have been playing for years.
Beta ,Beta, Beta. ? Well we keep beating a thankless task in these forums indicating where the game has skewed. So Beta and anything else is not improving the game. The actual gaming reality is; it is not improving. Read your own forums. Its just an eclectic mishmash seemingly put together by Gog and Gud.
Will there be sort of a checklist to the items/functionality to pay extra attention to?
I was avoiding responding in this thread until asked directly …
No. I do not feel it was worth my time. I feel like the only feedback I gave that was acted on were regarding things an idiot could have figured out. And feedback about fairly important things was either ignored or left alone fairly consistently and without explanation. (Blanket explanation of ‘can’t not do this because money’ doesn’t count.)
I don’t think it has impacted my experience in the game particularly much. I can read between the lines and observe bad things showing up in the game without needing to see them in advance.
I was in the program for quite a while (until 5.4) and the most exciting part for me was testing major gameplay changes like the Underworld addition and the Explore rework. However for most of the past year there really was not much to test in terms of gameplay. Much of the testing had to do with UI and other changes that were already too far into development for me to feel that any feedback was impactful. Also most of my final beta testing lasted only a week or even a weekend!
I love this game and have been playing since March 2016. Its evolution the past couple years has been disappointing (to put it mildly). As far as the beta program, it would be fair to say that my enjoyment and participation with it reflected directly to that of the game itself.
In other words, if you truly love the game in its current state and have the time to test AND play, then I recommend applying for the beta program.
I am a bit late but I sent in an application if anyone is bothering to check the email still.
I sent mine some time ago, but since then, no additional info on the topic 