Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General The one thing i dont understand about the Beta

Hi,

You want me to give you the money for a full priced retail game. 40€. For a Beta. No problem. If i'm interested in a game im more than willing to pay this price.

What i don't get is why you don't want to let me TEST the game completly but give me a very limited demo version of the game. How should someone test a game without the ability to play it to 100%?

There are two answers:
1. you give a fuck about the term beta, which means feature complete and ready for testing. This means in my eyes: you are lying about needing the help of the people to test your game. You probably just need some money. But this is still no reason for giving us a beta demo instead of the beta of a fully testable and playable game. So this is - with high probability - no early access or beta. Its just a demo for cheap marketing.

2. There are things you are concerned about in the later parts of the game. Things you are unsure about how the people are going to like them. So you keep them away from public eyes by showing the world only the most polished part of the game. But i don't think this is the case, since the game looks really good.

Thats why my conclusion is: This is no early access and no real beta. Its just a marketing demo and therefore a abuse of both systems that exist on steam in this combination to help indie developers to bring out their games. They just don't have the money for a huge quality assurement department and need the players to help them out. Its a real SHAME that you abuse this systems for PR and a demo version.

Since this conclusion is not really satisfying it brought me to the decision that your release strategies make you and your game look not trustworthy enough to buy this game at this stage. I even rethink if i'm going to buy the game at all. More and more companies are abusing early access. Since money is the only language of this company that's my only way to protest against this.

No one says this is a beta, they're calling it an alpha.

You've got that completely backwards. It's true that this does give publicity and marketing for the game, but a demo would be highly polished and fixed up nicely. This is not, and does fit the definition of an alpha/Early access title.

Yes, there are more areas in the game that are done, yes Larian is holding them back, but they do have plans to release more areas later on. Right now they're working on ironing out a bunch of the major bugs and glitches.

If you do not want to help Larian to find and squash bugs, or do not want to give your feedback about how you'd like to see the game work, then certainly, do not buy this game and wait for the final release.

Larian is an indie dev. Maybe a large one, sure, but an indie dev nonetheless. They've abandoned traditional publishers and are publishing the game on their own. That's sort-of the definition of independent.

First, I think you misunderstood one thing, it's not a beta game, it's an alpha. So it's way earlier than a beta and yes some part of the game are less polished probably when you go to the end of it.

Secondly, you seems to forget a third option :
As the story is very important in this type of game, it's fairly possible, and I think it's the case here, that Larian doesn't want spoiler on the last part of the game for the person like me who want to wait for the official release.
Plus, in my opinion, it's rude to call a 15h gameplay a simple "demo" when most of the game nowadays is completed in less time than that...
Finally, I'm no developer, but I think in alpha stage, you mostly want to test the core mechanics. The story or other "less" important bug must be corrected later in the development.

Taken from the steam page, before you even have to click the read more button: immediate access to the alpha which currently contains the first 15 hours of the game . Be aware that it's still rough around the edges and that certain features are missing. New features and improvements will be added regularly.

You make it seem like it was some ploy from Larian, which is frankly ridiculous given that they are up front about literally everything they are offering you at this point in time, and what you can expect in the days to come and at the eventual completion of the game.

Outside of this there have been multiple sources of information about the game and it's state, and as to information about why they went early access, have a look at Swen's blog for some info about what they discussed for quite some time before giving early access a try: http://www.lar.net/ .

Money is not this companies only language I'm afraid, you have to realize games cost money it's not ground breaking news, in fact the purpose of just about every company looking to make a profit so that they can live and continue to function, but I'm getting derailed. Sure some devs are buggering people over on early access, but the major problem with early access at the moment is misinformed entitled fools like yourself using the system without a firm understanding of, as far as I can tell at the moment, anything. Save your libel for the steam forums where most of your kind are polite enough to stay and troll without spilling over here.

Its only early alpha, not beta

You're assuming the game is complete, and all areas are equally ready.
Do you really want to play a 50-100 hour game when each update is not guaranteed to maintain saved game compatibility?

There are people avoiding even the 15 hour alpha because they don't want to spoil the experience when they play the release. Do you really want to know the ending before you can play the game without the probability of glitches and bugs, balancing of skills, abilities, combat, etc?

Honestly, this just strikes me as "I don't want to wait for the full release and I don't want to bugtest and offer constructive feedback. Give me my finished game faster, magically, or you're plotting something evil!"

You can pretty much copy paste my paraphrase to everyone who doesn't understand early access, alpha, beta, etc. It's always ultimately about not wanting to wait to play a game they also want to be fully finished.

Isn't this how things usually work when using the general public for testing and feedback (as opposed to in-house testing where the devs can keep the story and developmental process under wraps)?

Don't feed the uneducated, can't read, spoiled troll.

Trolling* feeds on people's sincerity, which I why I generally view it with contempt, beyond a few instances of genuine good humour that can be fun.



*Not commenting on whether the OP is or not.

After all, a game that is alpha simply means...The full game minus the credits at the end.