Policy Change: QA Server and Release Instructions Early Drafts Open to All (starting with R45)

Obviously not, since it's not there.

 

@Tahru
QA access was a feature accorded to a certain pledge level (i dont remember which one, Citizen or higher maybe) , so players have paid for it.

 

there's a difference betwen playing dress-up and testing dye slots, checking for missing textures, checking for animation inconsistencies... there are bugs found for these sorts of things every month.

 

This one got the 'laugh out loud award' for me today. Good job!

I agree that the nod to Dev+ backers going away here can feel a little disappointing.

But the reality is this change does not affect my own SOTA experience one bit (all it does is improve someone else's opportunity to participate). So go for it. That's a worthy use of pledge dollars.

 

No, it was never in a pledge description. It is true some people assumed that.

The underlying issue it that Dev+ is kind of boring and there is little reason to post there because the developers respond less there than in the general forums. So some people justifiably feel like that was the benefit.

I think the developers should come up with a way to make dev+ more rewarding. But in the big picture, moving QA should have happened when persistence happened.

 

Sometimes you QA something specific that has a potential to be flawed. Unfortunately, if you aren't QAing like you would play, there is potential for things that aren't so obvious to fall through the cracks.

 

@Tahru Anyway thats how i understood it (QA access was part of a certain pledge level) but dont get me wrong , im not saying it its a bad thing (opening the QA server to all). In fact, i think the more testers on QA , the better it is.

 

I'm not a lawyer and I'm too lazy atm to look up the exact verbiage but there is a concept in the law that covers this. When you have allowed something to go on for a length of time there is a concept of what a reasonable man would think/expect.
Access to QA has been available to dev+ and only dev+ for a long time so it's easy to understand ppl being miffed regardless of how often they go bak and say it wasn't part of the original package.

 

@Gurney2 We agree on that.

Unfortunately, miss interpretation and miss expectation has been a periodically recurring thing. But it's all water under the bridge and I am glad that the game is taking priority in this case. I agree more testers will lead to more bugs found and a better game.

 

Soooooo i went back to read whats avaiable in developer pledge level, then read starrs OP.

You still have your exclusive forums. Only QA, QA bug forum, andQA release notes are going public.

Those were not things included in the Dev+ pledge. So this literally did nothing to change what the pledge says you recieve.

 

That might be true, but I am no lawyer.

 

All Dev+ players should pass the same test. Wealth does not guarantee competence.

/DLMB

 

I couldn't agree more. There's literally nothing about being in Dev+ that suggests someone actually has the credentials to be there and be this "superior" presence to the "masses."

 

@DarkStarr @Lord British @Chris

This'll be my final post on the matter as I have previously outlined my thoughts.

Please do the right thing here and restore some confidence and goodwill.
A simple, "we recognize that we made a rather large mistake that potentially affected a number of people and we apologize" would suffice.

In the absence of such a statement some folks might have the takeaway that y'all have developed a rather blase attitude towards those who have supported you the most.

There was a great line (and piece of good business advice) in the Scarface movie: "Don't get high on your own supply".

 

You mean like in the OP where I apologized and took responsibility for all of this being our fault? And where I already thanked everyone for giving us feedback that the policy needed to change?

In case you read past it in the OP here's the quote:

"Please accept our sincere apologies that our previous policy has allowed some players to gain advantage over others. This was entirely our fault and we hope to avoid this kind of advantage from taking place in the future. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on this matter and alerted us to the problem so that we could change our policy."

 

@DarkStarr

Mea culpa

 

Thank you for that. Next time please actually read my post in its entirety before accusing me of not taking our players feelings and needs seriously and not taking responsibility. I take those things VERY seriously and I am always quick to admit when I have made a mistake so it is quite painful when I am accused of not doing that.

 

Since the game has existed it has been a feature and the early server testing was called dev+ testing.

Again, not in the description of the dev+ tier but an accepted part of the dev+ Pledge.

Arguing that something that has been true since R1 is not explicitly in the description of the pledge is a weak approach.

Now if the developers want to argue it is in the best interests of the game, that's fine. But it was the most compelling reason to go to the developer level. Even in the last month I know a handful of people who upgraded their bundle to village level because they wanted to take part in the QA server.

Portalarium is removing this feature of the pledge and bundle level to rectify the issue that they posted an upcoming change in the patch notes, they could have announced it in the general forums instead and then no economic advantage would have occurred to a specific segment of the population (though it would still have been an advantage for those who read the forums and could get online early in the demand for chips).

The number of testers hasn't changed with this announcement. More people can get into the QA but the same number of testers between today and launch date exist and will find the same number of bugs.




I can accept change, but those early patch notes and QA server were 95% of the value of the dev+ forums for me. (Not any financial info, but the early look and early access and early feedback made me feel more a part of development). Now it's just a spot where parts of the newsletter come a day early barring changes to the dev forum or a change to this announcement.

I will miss it.

 

In the end the people (like myself) who upgraded to village or larger bundles to be a part of QA testing are being punished due to a slip by portalarium that easily could have been fixed by making it public knowledge after the information had been slipped out. Devs had been notified we had been given the information quickly after it was in the patch notes. Instead, again while their apology is definitely appreciated, I feel that the situation was not handled nearly in the way it should have. I and many others have had a perk that some specifically saw as a perk to buying into a larger bundle, removed from us due to a mistake that was not ours. Even though Dev+ members were responsible for the market changes, those members are not even being individually punished for what they have done. Instead, let's punish the group as a whole. I do not feel this was an acceptable nor complete solution to what is going to be a much larger problem.