Nixman wrote:I've always considered that when money is changing hands then its a product not a test, while I understand its in development and have accepted as such, I don't feel its my responsibility to beta test anything quite frankly, I didnt sign a beta agreement nor was I ask too. Im playing the game like many others, and like many others have paid more than I usually would for a game.
That being said however, knowing how new features work is important if you don't want to start pissing people off especially when they have to wait 5 days only to realise that because a feature was not explained properly, they have wasted a lot time over it.
I'm not here to spend a month fine tuning how best to dry boards, I don't buy the 'figuring out' part either, once its has been figured out it will be put on the wiki and everyone will know, so it doesn't make a blind bit of difference.
What money has changed hands? I know I haven't given them any. I do, however, think that it is too early in the development process to be introducing the cash shop. So, unless you have gone crazy in the cash shop, I don't know how you could have spent more than usual for the game since the game is free.
Although we didn't sign a tester agreement (which is usually a way for the development company to protect itself from the testers), the fact is that the game is still in a relatively early testing phase. Major features of the game are still very much in flux (e.g., combat and item purity) and many features that will be needed haven't even been introduced (e.g., animal husbandry and planting trees). One of the things this implies is that whether we passively or actively test the game, we will be spending a month or more helping the developers fine tune how the board drying feature works; thus, even if they gave us the specs for the feature, those specs will probably change.
And then you have people like the Chief who (when he is not being a PITA as a PvP radical) are theorycrafters who really enjoy the challenge of working out the details of how a game works: what is optimal, what things affect damage, etc. They are one of the four main audiences (personality types) that game developers cater to and they tend to provide a service to the rest of us by documenting game play, working out optimal strategies, and discovering things that can be done in the game that the developers never thought the game supported. Most MMOs and most of the more recent single player games I have tried leave enough things vague that the theorycrafters can play their game which, eventually, enriches our game experience as well.
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