what exactly are they waiting for, for a public release?

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Kerchunk#7797 เขียน:

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Belegur85#5784 เขียน:

So if your point is that beta testing is significantly different from early access, was extensive beta testing run?

...of course not. Beta testing comes long after Early Access. Beta is the last build just before full release - it's the final QA validation check to make sure everything is working before 1.0 goes live. We're nowhere near that yet. We're in 0.3.

Early Access is a long, extended period of iterative design and development that takes place over an indeterminate amount of time. It precedes Beta. The timeline we're on looks like this:

0.1, 0.2, 0.3... 0.n and then eventually a 1.0 build which will go into Beta. When 1.0 leaves Beta it will be released.

The definitions I posted should have made this very clear so I'm not sure why we're even having this conversation at this point.

So you're saying that after 'Early access' they will run a 'Beta' before the game is launched?

I'll be honest, I have not read through the early access documentation extensively, and I am not a software developer.

However, this is certainly not my understanding, as a player, from the way the game is being marketed. They have already had multiple season launches for the game, and it is said that there is going to be no reset on progress. That does not sound to me like a game that is at some point in the future, going to through a vigorous amount of testing. On the off chance that your understanding is aligned with the developers, I don't think that is the general consensus among the players of what early access is. It is not how it has been marketed. For a start, people are paying for that access. People who are not in early access, such as myself until recently, are expecting the game is going to launch relatively soon. They have not been given an indication of a timeframe. Certainly not one that would require to know technical aspects of software development. They expect that it will be available in the not too distant future. As with people on the forum, like the one creating this thread. They would like to know from the developers, rather than mere players like myself, just speculating.

What exactly would players be doing in a future beta that they are currently already not doing in early access. It's the same thing, testing the game before a more complete state. Doesn't mater what label you put on it or what referencing numbers you use. If multiple melee weapon types are missing from the game, they are just not there.

Whether players are being led to believe it is close to ready or allowed to continue to falsely believe that, comes under the umbrella of how the game is being marketed. Keep in mind, POE1 content development was stopped for a year to prioritise this 'early access'! If you are saying that is not a significant launch of the game, and is just part of the testing before beta testing and 1.0 launch, it should not of been prioritised over POE1!.

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Kerchunk#7797 เขียน:

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

Whenever a game is launched before its official release that's called a beta to anyone that's not a kid.

Hi guy. I'm turning 46 this year and will start my 23rd year of a career in software development, the first 10 of which I spent in game development.

I promise you I don't need your help with these definitions.

I posted an extensive explanation of what Beta is as compared to Early Access. If you can't be bothered to read it, that's on you. We're not in Beta yet. Beta is in the future. Beta is the final phase before full release. We're nowhere near Beta.

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quarki#9020 เขียน:

This was really painful to read. Please, for the love of versioning, read up what beta and 1.0 mean...

Yeah, guy. I think I've got it covered. I'm not the one confused here.

If you didn't sound like a condescending 14 year old it would be a lot easier to put weight into, or believe, anything you say. (I still don't by the way)

Also, it doesn't matter how a game developer defines something. The only thing that matters is how the community and the public perceives it. You could say it until you're blue in the face and it wouldn't matter if everyone in the world wasn't listening to you at that time. Then every company would also have to follow that naming convention.

If the public doesn't speak the same language as you then the industry has failed to actually use a consistent convention. Which is the way it is. People say alpha, beta, EA beta, EA and just say whatever they feel like saying because that is how they understand it and describe it in their particular office. Then you don't expect the public to be confused about it?

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

Also, it doesn't matter how a game developer defines something. The only thing that matters is how the community and the public perceives it. You could say it until you're blue in the face and it wouldn't matter if everyone in the world wasn't listening to you at that time. Then every company would also have to follow that naming convention.

If the public doesn't speak the same language as you then the industry has failed to actually use a consistent convention. Which is the way it is. People say alpha, beta, EA beta, EA and just say whatever they feel like saying because that is how they understand it and describe it in their particular office. Then you don't expect the public to be confused about it?

Oh, it surely does matter how a software developer defines things, because that's literally all that devs do.

Just read up on how a software-dev cycle works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzOC7pITa28

This was an interview 5 months ago.
They should have never threw the "at least 6 months" out there if they're realistically years away from going into 1.0. If they can't even get the animations done for druid how far behind is every other class?

Question first:

You initially talked about wanting the Path of Exile 2 early access phase to last one year. Now we're a little further in, does it still feel like a realistic goal to reach the state you want for 1.0?

Jonathan Rogers:

I am definitely very keen to get it done this year. I would be very disappointed if we weren't able to.
It's not 100% guaranteed. We might slip. I'm still very much hoping that we're not going to. Looking at the content of this particular expansion, there's a lot of stuff going on here and a lot of it is reactionary to the problems that we saw with the game, but in the background, we've still got artists and people all working on other acts. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on in creating the rest of the content. We might have released more of that stuff if it hadn't been for the fact that we felt like we had to add a lot of in-game features. Can we get it done this year? I think it's possible.


Realistically at this point, they're going to add druid, and the bare minimum of classes and weapon types to launch. Then add acts 5-6 (I expect this to be over 4 leagues) Then ship the game. Then probably drip feed in classes with new leagues.

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quarki#9020 เขียน:

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

Also, it doesn't matter how a game developer defines something. The only thing that matters is how the community and the public perceives it. You could say it until you're blue in the face and it wouldn't matter if everyone in the world wasn't listening to you at that time. Then every company would also have to follow that naming convention.

If the public doesn't speak the same language as you then the industry has failed to actually use a consistent convention. Which is the way it is. People say alpha, beta, EA beta, EA and just say whatever they feel like saying because that is how they understand it and describe it in their particular office. Then you don't expect the public to be confused about it?

Oh, it surely does matter how a software developer defines things, because that's literally all that devs do.

Just read up on how a software-dev cycle works.

You're missing my point. Software developers aren't the consumer. The only thing that matters is how the consumer perceives it. They're the ones paying the bills. If you're confusing them with computer jargon thats not even set in stone because every development company decides to just name things however they want. Then they're going to have mixed expectations like we see now.

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Belegur85#5784 เขียน:

So your saying that after 'Early access' they will run a 'Beta' before the game is launched?

No, in actuality they probably won't. The Early Access model is basically a replacement for the old model which went something like:

Concept -> Prototype -> Alpha -> Beta -> Release

The problem with this model was that everything before release was done internally and all of the design and balancing decisions were made by the team who developed the game. As digital delivery models advanced and teams realized they could involve players in the process of designing the game prior to release, this evolved... then you got things like:

Concept -> Prototype -> Focus Groups/Teasers -> Alpha -> Closed Beta -> Open Beta -> Release

But this still kept the general player population out of the equation until it was usually too late to make any significant design changes to the game and it still led to games that were largely driven by a small number of internal resources.

The idea of Early Access is to get players involved sooner. It's to bring players (and their ideas and feedback) into the design and development process earlier before too many decisions are made in order to allow the ideas and feedback from players to have more influence over the final game.

As much as I know a lot of players hate the idea of Early Access, it's a model that's fundamentally designed to bring players into the studio. So, the new model looks something like this:

Concept -> Prototype -> Early Access -> Get Player Feedback -> More Early Access -> Get Player Feedback -> ... -> Release

Maybe you throw a Beta in there but by the time you've done enough iterations you probably don't need one, because the point of Beta is to "iron out the bugs before release" and once you've done enough rounds of Early Access you've probably done a lot of bug fixing too so you can just jump straight to Release... but if a Beta did happen it would take place after the Early Access iterations.

"

I don't think that is the general consensus among the players of what early access is, that is not how it has been marketed.

I agree... EA is an evolving concept and to be honest some studios have abused it and twisted its meaning which isn't helping. But I don't know... take it from me or leave it. I think I'm as reliable a source as you're likely to find and I'm trying to tell you what the actual intent of the EA model is and I think GGG is "doing it right" personally.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

If you didn't sound like a condescending 14 year old it would be a lot easier to put weight into, or believe, anything you say. (I still don't by the way)

There are so many benefits that come with knowing what you're talking about and to this day I think the one I appreciate the most is being able to ignore the constant abuse and toxicity that inevitably gets flung at you from people who don't.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

You're missing my point. Software developers aren't the consumer. The only thing that matters is how the consumer perceives it. They're the ones paying the bills. If you're confusing them with computer jargon thats not even set in stone because every development company decides to just name things however they want. Then they're going to have mixed expectations like we see now.

You, the consumer, also thinks that, just because you paid for being able to play this EA title entitles you to dictate how this game has to be.

You, the consumer, also thinks that, just because there are leagues, this game is fully released.

You, the consumer, also thinks that, just because there is endgame-content and 5 classes, that this game should already be perfectly balanced.

You, the consumer, also thinks that, 0.3 should have perfect performance and should already be heavily optimised.

You, the consumer, also thinks that, they shoud be throwing all available resources, even the people not even remotely in the right team (e.g. animations), to fix server issues.

You, the consumer, have no idea. The only thing you do is consume with your little bird brains, with 0 afterthought.

Just because you, the consumer, think something, doesn't mean it's true. There are definitions and standards which aren't getting redefined, because you, the consumer, misinterpret them.

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Kerchunk#7797 เขียน:

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Belegur85#5784 เขียน:

So your saying that after 'Early access' they will run a 'Beta' before the game is launched?

No, in actuality they probably won't. The Early Access model is basically a replacement for the old model which went something like:

Concept -> Prototype -> Alpha -> Beta -> Release

The problem with this model was that everything before release was done internally and all of the design and balancing decisions were made by the team who developed the game. As digital delivery models advanced and teams realized they could involve players in the process of designing the game prior to release, this evolved... then you got things like:

Concept -> Prototype -> Focus Groups/Teasers -> Alpha -> Closed Beta -> Open Beta -> Release

But this still kept the general player population out of the equation until it was usually too late to make any significant design changes to the game and it still led to games that were largely driven by a small number of internal resources.

The idea of Early Access is to get players involved sooner. It's to bring players (and their ideas and feedback) into the design and development process earlier before too many decisions are made in order to allow the ideas and feedback from players to have more influence over the final game.

As much as I know a lot of players hate the idea of Early Access, it's a model that's fundamentally designed to bring players into the studio. So, the new model looks something like this:

Concept -> Prototype -> Early Access -> Get Player Feedback -> More Early Access -> Get Player Feedback -> ... -> Release

Maybe you throw a Beta in there but by the time you've done enough iterations you probably don't need one, because the point of Beta is to "iron out the bugs before release" and once you've done enough rounds of Early Access you've probably done a lot of bug fixing too so you can just jump straight to Release.

"

I don't think that is the general consensus among the players of what early access is, that is not how it has been marketed.

I agree... EA is an evolving concept and to be honest some studios have abused it and twisted its meaning which isn't helping. But I don't know... take it from me or leave it. I think I'm as reliable a source as you're likely to find and I'm trying to tell you what the actual intent of the EA model is and I think GGG is "doing it right" personally.

"

Lonnie455Rich#2087 เขียน:

If you didn't sound like a condescending 14 year old it would be a lot easier to put weight into, or believe, anything you say. (I still don't by the way)

There are so many benefits that come with knowing what you're talking about and to this day I think the one I appreciate the most is being able to ignore the constant abuse and toxicity that inevitably gets flung at you from people who don't.

So basically it is just up to how the developers working on the project are defining it themselves and how they communicate that to the players.

Personally, as a guess, I do not think they are far from having it complete. When I started playing it, I thought it was possibly ready next season. Then when I played more and saw the aspects that I have mentioned are incomplete, I think it is possible it could be ready in 6 months, but may take substantially longer, as others are saying. It really depends on how progressed they are on those missing factors.

As said, what they have done is good, which is the main thing, and I think it justifies being it's own standalone game. There are enough differences that make both games viable as their own creation. They will have a challenge to manage both effectively, but POE2 can become a great game, and POE1 is a great game. POE1 can continue to be great, without needing full attention. It just need more attention than it has been getting since and leading up to the early access launch.