I don't use this feature, I just sometimes accidentally turn it on... I think.  All I know is sometimes my units take it upon themselves to go explore.  I would assume I had told them to at some point, but I'm not sure.

Hey, I was only a little tipsy when I wrote it last night.  I find it funny you counted how many exclamations points I used.  I fixed it....happy now?

Primarily to:

• Identify user specific crashes, conflicts, etc. specific to the user's rig. In-house QA cannot test or foresee all possible configuration issues without spending a grip of time and money.
• Overall test the waters - they polled us several times on what was important, and long ago faction differentiation was identified as the primary thing to focus on. So they did.
• Sounding board of solid input from the community - a preview, if you will, of the market.

I'm sure there are others. I'm extremely grateful for SD to allow me to participate the past 2 years in testing EWOM and then FE. I've learned alot, it's a cool community, and interacting with the devs is just plain awesome. Plus, they've responded and incorporated feedback countless times. Brad actually tested some of my memory crashes back in EWOM and posted about it. That's just cool. Plus, ponies were asked for and one was put in. Crossing my fingers the market likes it!

I didn't actually count the exclamation points.  I just guessed.  I've got better things to do.

Beta testers are meant to do just that: test stuff.  Find bugs.  Discuss balance.  Make suggestions.  That's all.  They are unpaid, and do it just because they like the game.  They are largely interchangeable with other people who can be brought in for the same purpose, though some folks might like to think themselves remarkably Special.  They have no place in the hierarchy of game development.  Suggesting their approval should be necessary to release a game sounds like it must have been something pretty good you were drinking last night.

You specifically brought up XCOM as an example of a game that should have had beta tester "approval" because of all the problems it has.

I like XCOM too. I think FE is a better game but that doesn't detract from my enjoyment of XCOM. Like XCOM, I can think of a list of things they could improve. I hope they do improve it. 

What is also fairly absurd in this discussion is thinking that the forum users are "the" beta group. Was there a forum beta test of XCOM? No? How did they manage? Because there's a real beta happening behind the scenes with real quality assurance people. This has been mentioned this a few times but seems to get forgotten.

If you put the release version of XCOM up for a vote by forum users, it would probably be chewed up because of all the little issues that matter to forum people but not to the general public. Same is true on FE. You will never please the hard core people.

Hmmm, I don't see the lines on my post you seem to be reading between.  I never said anything about XCOM needing beta tester approval.  You seem like I hurt your feelings for bringing up XCOM, but all I said was that it was released with a really bad camera problem that many people complain on the forums about.  I'm not talking of pleasing the 'hard core people.'  I'm talking about polishing stuff that reviewers may complain about.  Stop taking offense.

Nomorebeef you are absolutly right in everything you say. Also the list of improvements you made on page 1 should be top priority fixes.

Fixing this stuff after release would be unbelievable stupid, cause it will affect sales, Not only for this game but even for future stardock games.

There's so much blind fanboyism on these forums, that the developers might actualy think the game is solid. In its current state its only mediocre.

Heads should roll in this company if they release another beta product as a full release.

What would you expect? Its a forum dedicated to the game

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I made fun of Stardock so much with WoM I had my original message board account banned.

But this is a good game. It's not great yet, but its better than mediocre. I agree with you that there is loads of blind fanboyism on these forums and I mostly ignore what everyone has to say, but in all honesty this is a fun game. They just have a list of top end bugs/tweaks to make, as you see listed in the tech subforum, and they really need to tweak the tactical ai. come on man i've been saying this for 2 or 3 years now.

Also the fact that only some races/factions or whatever get negative abilities but not others is dumb as hell.

I love the mite laugh though!

Not if their counter-balancing positive traits are sufficiently strong.  The faction's abilities have to be considered as a whole, otherwise why have negative faction traits at all.

Pretty much what I think is needed to be completed before release... with the current timeframe ^^

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

As mentioned before on the forums, there's no real reason to use Lady Porcupine.

Which proves nothing.  

It certainly doesn't prove that negative traits are inherently bad.  Just because people don't like to play Pariden doesn't mean that negative traits in and of themselves are the cause.  Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise.  

People not liking to play Pariden could be a number of things.  People just don't like the faction play style.  People don't like the flavor.  Or, I suspect, people feel that the faction is TOO under-powered when you account for all its traits, both negative and positive.  Even that doesn't mean that negative traits are bad.  It means that Pariden is poorly designed.  

I think so too, I'd love to see some rebalancing of the sovereign creation and faction creation... And premade factions and sovereigns But now I am beating a dead horse I guess

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

There are lots of fanboys here, but all of us recognize the game's flaws and routinely point them out. But most of the problems the game has are not major concerns. The ones that are make it into the changelog. Number 10 is really the only thing listed here that will make or break the game. I do think every beta tester should test it for at least a month before release, but it is their decision. At the end of the day, we as beta testers have done our job quite well. Compared to any game and especially WoM, we have no delusions about the state of the game. It has minor flaws and balance issues, but the basics of the game are quite solid and the game is at a level of quality where it can be released relative to how other games are released these days. The devs said they are shooting for a 79 Metascore and I think they have earned it.

Thats so they don't have to pay bonuses

Someone mentioned financial reasons for this release.  According to steam, FE isn't even in the top 100 top selling games.  It's being outsold by political machine for Christ's sake.

It seems to me that's Stardock is losing money hand over fist on the development of this game and had it not been for the fact that Stardock doesn't rely on it's game division for its primary source of revenue than things would be much worse.  

All in all FE is definitely a better game then WOM and is unquestionably much more of a "release worthy" product then WOM ever was, but whether or not its a good game that's fun to play is another matter.  If it were my game, I would delay until 2013 and add more depth, better balance, and better AI.  It's still not the successor to MOM that I've been waiting for.

None of those things you mention are currently major problems with the game. UI, the campaign, magic content deficiencies, graphical glitches, sure. Depth, balance and AI are all top in the industry. And MoM had only depth on that list. Not to be rude, but your analysis seems extremely off.

Magical content is pretty much my concern when it comes to depth.  Over 2 years after WOM and magic still isn't close to the level of MOM...

If MOM came out today, it would get savaged. 

It's like those guys who insisted that Space Empires IV had more depth than Galactic Civilizations back in the day because it had so much more stuff. None of which the computer players could use.

I've never understood the MOM love. I really like MOM's design but the AI never even came close to providing an interesting challenge. It didn't use the magic spells in the game.  Your comment later about EFE's AI is pretty rich from someone who likes MOM.

EFE's magic is pretty damn powerful. It has volcanoes and tidal waves and that falling star spell. 

You couldn't pay me to play MOM instead of EFE. EFE is a much more comprehensive game.

Don't get me wrong the AI in MOM was horrible... With the unofficial patch it's a lot better....

MOM's spells were interesting and diverse, plus there were tons of them.  Sure they were unbalanced but they sure were fun to cast.  Why doesn't FE have more summon spells?  Why doesn't FE have global enchantments?  Item creation? Variable races? 

Sure you can say that FE isn't meant to be MOM, but come on in terms of depth it doesn't come close...

Okay, I see. You are saying depth, but a more exact term would be summons and global spells. I agree about that. I have been modding since WoM and there is very little xml support for global spells. But the strategic depth is not solely based on magic. Much of FE is firmly rooted in the mundane. MoM is almost entirely based on magic. So it has depth, but it is perhaps shallow in those two specific aspects of magic. The main role of magic is in tactical battles for FE. I don't see a huge problem there, but I do see a difference. 

Of course Hf and I are working on an additional 100 unique (and I mean custom models unique) summons. Obviously I want more in my games. I also have been working on making some massive level global spells, but it is hard to do without some much needed code. Still, I have about 10 new spells that will do some serious global changes. If the devs don't want it in the vanilla that is fine. If you do, modding is the answer. Kind of like MoM and the unofficial patch.

Can you mod all those new spells in and get the AI to use them, and use them effectively?

I'm sure if it were that easy, Stardock would've done it...

Yes you can... Also, Stardock could add them, but they are also focusing on making the game bug-free with current features. Stardock does not have a lot of people there to program and make the game, so everybody is working on particular parts and making each of these parts function. Also, we forget that there is more content on its way to the game when it's released. We are only seeing a fraction of what is going on there in stardock and not the full feature list as of yet.

Release will change the entire gameplay and they are still fixing bugs and they are keeping quiet about them right now... makes me desire to see the changelog for 1.0, so I know what is going on next.