The post made by Kafka sums it up perfectly. I wasn’t in yesterday, so I’m really grateful she took the time to write that up for everyone’s benefit.
We aren’t going to offer alpha testing, and as Kafka said, beta testing is done at the end of an update’s life cycle.
Just to confirm what has been covered, constructive criticism = yay! Constructive feedback = yay! Non constructive feedback = no yay.
As a last point, to address what was mentioned earlier, if a player can’t discuss with other players and the developers in a civil and reasonable manner, the beta isn’t the best place for them. It isn’t a program that will magically let you take more pot shots at the developers, it’s a tool to help refine features, find bugs, and on certain features/changes seek feedback prior to releasing an update. As I have said many times, we encourage negative feedback, as long as it is actionable and usable. I am sorry if you are misinterpreting me, but I want to be as clear as I can be. We do want negative feedback that we can use, but we do not want negative feedback that is hostile or abusive. I believe it is worth treating online spaces like real life. If you wouldn’t say something to a friend, a colleague, or even a stranger on the street, please don’t say it here. If you wouldn’t threaten someone in your workplace, or at the tram stop, please don’t threaten us. And if you would? You might have some bigger problems than attacking the people that are making the games you play.
I understand that some people are frustrated by recent changes or the direction the game is taking. For that, I am sorry. However, it isn’t a free pass to attack other forum members or the people that make the game. You are welcome to leave negative feedback that isn’t constructive in our feedback sub forum if you so wish, and I encourage you to do so. However, there is no place for that in the beta, which I believe is more than reasonable.
@Redi1 to bring a little positivity to this thread, I want you to know I hope you’re selected! I always find your bug reports to be accurate, succinct, and timely, and I appreciate them (as well as all the help I see you extend to players on discord) immensely
@Saltypatra I would like to apply when the time comes but I should tell you some of my words can come off as a bit strong but I never go after the dev/creator personally but I do hold the dev/creator to a set of standards I’ve seen from them but I do try to find a balance between what needs improving and what is good looking forward to when applications open up
I absolutely take responsibility for what I say; in fact I openly admitted that I become negative in some threads. Imagine this…you pay for something but it’s not quite what the vendor said it would be. You return to the shop to discuss. The counter is unattended so you ring the bell. 3 rings and 10 minutes later you see someone in the storeroom with their headphones on playing on their phone. Would you just go “oh well” and walk away or at some point would you get slightly wound up and go behind the counter or raise your voice until someone responds?
I play Club Vegas, too. There is no live support, no dev interaction, and most problems have automated solutions. The one time i did send a support request, it was a standard stock reply and the issue still hasn’t been fixed 4mo later.
Im very happy with the accessibility and thoroughness of our dev team at gow. Of course, i do wish they would leave me unattended in global more, but sometimes life is just tough like that XD
When the only acknowledgement a post gets is it’s deletion (even if the post is constructive), can you blame people for voicing their opinion is a not-so-nice way?
Also, i noticed the word “discussion” used. Surely a discussion between 2 people requires an initial statement (constructive/unconstructive feedback/criticism) and a response instead of silence?
The purpose of the beta program is to help the developers roll out good updates. So the comments and information being passed to them by the members of the beta program has to be constructive. That’s how this works, otherwise if they are not being beneficial to the group, they should not be in it.
Sure you can say that something is probably not a good idea, but most people leave it at that and don’t offer solutions, which would be imensely more helpful to be included. Say for example a new feature is coming out and you say that it’s no good. Period. And the dev’s have no alternative ideas, then it will stay as is. However if you can give 1-3 decent alterenatives on how to improve on the feature, it might be done. Thus relieving the burden of coming up with new ideas or solutions makes it more actionable to come into being.
Bug reports in a way could be seen as constructive feedback, showing a negative, however helping them to right this wrong and fix it.
To all potential beta bugs…look at what you will be previewing (faction event). Isn’t the torture of doing this shite in regular game play masochistic enough?
Beta tests are called only to test new types of content (such as new game modes), and not balancing of events with a specific style of event.
A beta test was called to test delve functionality when the mode first released with the initial two factions. Subsequent monthly faction releases were not covered by later beta tests, as at that point delves were not a new style of content to be tested.
