Beta Key Givaways to active loggers

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Kolmir wrote:

Also, I'd like you to think a little bit about what the system is doing. I often see it is working as intended, but did you actually stop and think about the system ? Every 25 minutes, a random player (which can pretty much already be a beta member since we do know there are many people with multiple accounts) gets a beta membership. With this timer, we can click on the person to see his profile.

There are measures in place to prevent extra accounts getting extra chances at the timer.

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Kolmir wrote:

So basically, we can see how someone seems to be inactive then, for some of the players, feel deceived. Many (maybe even most) of those chosen have 0 forum posts and their last logged in is the same date as their joined.

Why would you "feel deceived"? We never said people who didn't post wouldn't get in. In fact, we've specifically said that all someone needs to do to have a chance to get into the beta is to register on the forums.

And letting in some people who don't post is a feature, not a bug. The main point of closed beta testing isn't to let people play the game, it's to test the game, and receive feedback from a wide variety of people. If only people who post regularly in the non-beta forums got in, we'd be severely skewing the kind of people in the beta, and thus what feedback we receive, which would be detrimental to making the game appeal to a wider audience.

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The whole, "You're 10x more likely to get a beta invite if you are active on the forums" thing I think have thrown people for a loop.

You do get 10x the chance though.
Unfortunately a lot of people incorrectly conclude it's not working when they see some 0-post accounts get in, but that's because they don't understand the numbers involved or how probability works, which is something we can't really do much about. We haven't deceived anyone.

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Kolmir wrote:

Don't worry. I do not feel deceived as I know too well how the timer is random (I've also said that it only makes sense from the ratio that more people with 0 posts gets selected). However, I still do not see the point in actually showing to everybody who gets selected and his statistics. The name could very well been shown without the link to the person profile and it would probably lessen quite a bit the rant about people with 0 posts being taken in and would also reduce this "deceiving" effect or even just having the timer without the name. I suppose you have a reason why you made it this way though.

In retrospect, the click-through to the account may have been a mistake. But removing it now would just make a whole bunch of people that we're trying to hide the 'problem' instead of fix it, and wouldn't stop people from using the search function to look at the accounts anyway.
Removing the names altogether would remove the entire purpose of the timer, which is to be exciting to watch in case you see your name, a factor I believe has driven up interest in the game quite well.

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Kolmir wrote:

On a side note, I must say that I appreciate an answer from a GGG staff member here. But my main points was mostly that the beta certified accounts which are not being used could be re-injected to increase the timer speed or even better, be distributed through contests. However, I do not know if you were actually planning on having people not use their beta accounts... It just feels like a waste if some people really are not using it to contribute to this game.

That's actually two suggestions - removing people from beta for inactivity, and adding more people to beta when other people are inactive. There's no real reason to connect those two as they are separate things.
For the first People have lives. They might have to go away for a while for work or family issues, and be unable to log onto the beta for some time. Revoking beta access for such people would mean they wouldn't be able to come back and give us more feedback when they were able, and it would make them very, very angry and paint us in a horrible light. In contrast, I can't see any way we'd gain anything by revoking the beta access of someone for just not playing in a while.
There is simply no reason to do that.
As for the second: It would take us time and effort to code, doesn't make a lot of sense to see happening (why do the actions of people in the beta indirectly affect the number of people in it?) and would make things even more random than it is - as the timer would have to randomly change times based on what people in the beta are doing. It just doesn't seem worth it.

The timer's still running. You can conclude from that that we are able to handle more testers :P
You're talking about screwing over a small number of beta testers for inactivity (which might be no fault of their own - really a month away from a computer is something which could easily happen in some situations) to make room for a similarly small number of extra testers - when room does not need to be made for such a small number of accounts. And we;d have to put in significant work to implement this system, which involves making some people justifiably angry at us in order to get a few new people into the beta?
I don't want to be offensive, but I'm honestly having trouble seeing why you would think this would be a good idea.

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troopertroup wrote:

I'm glad that some people see my point... I have been active in many betas... Regardless if I only joined a day ago. I haven't heard anything on this game until recently I won't lie. But I love to help out and play in the beta to help GGG or whoever I play the beta for. Regardless of my personal situation... I think the beta key system needs a little update... You play a beta to test and help with suggestions and or information abot whatever the case may be. Not to log on Jan 2010 and never log in again and get a beta key and completely waste it all... Absolutly not fair. I hope I kindly informed anyone who agrees with me and those that don't understand my situation.

The problem is you're making an assumption that such keys will be wasted, without evidence.
Not logging on to post does not mean that someone won't come test once they get the email saying they're in beta. People only need to log on to post, and oddly enough, some people don't feel they have much to say about the game because they haven't played it.

When you say "You play a beta to test and help with suggestions and or information abot whatever the case may be. Not to log on Jan 2010 and never log in again and get a beta key and completely waste it all" you're correct. But the people who logged in ages ago and not since are doing so BEFORE they're in the beta. They're not playing the beta before that because they aren't in it.

Those people came to the forums and registered for an account because we said that would get them a chance at beta access - that shows they wanted to get in. The fact that they haven't logged in (which doesn't mean they haven't been reading the forums, you can do that without logging in) doesn't mean they shouldn't get in. They did what was required to have a chance at beta, so they have a chance at beta. That IS fair, regardless of what you may think. If we tell people they can get into beta by just making an account, and then change that out from under them so that now they don't have the chance anymore because they don't post - THAT would be unfair, and would be us going back on our promise.

Some people register and then don't bother to log in while reading the forums because they have nothing to post, then come post huge amounts of useful feedback once they get into beta and thus have something to tell us.

Not having logged in doesn't mean someone hasn't been following the forums. It doesn't mean they don't care about the game, and it doesn't mean they won't start posting lots once they are in beta. All it means is they haven't logged in/posted. If you want to draw other conclusions from that then go ahead, but that won't make them correct.

Not posting does NOT mean someone will be less good as a beta tester, and only letting active posters into the beta is BAD for the beta because it hugely biases the kind of people who get in and means we're not getting feedback from as wide a range of people, and is bad for the forums because it encourages spam.

We do appreciate those who come here to post and participate in the community - that's why you get 10 times the chance to be picked by the timer compared to someone who doesn't. That doesn't mean those who don't post don't deserve any chance.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Not having logged in doesn't mean someone hasn't been following the forums. It doesn't mean they don't care about the game, and it doesn't mean they won't start posting lots once they are in beta. All it means is they haven't logged in/posted. If you want to draw other conclusions from that then go ahead, but that won't make them correct.

Easy fix to that part would be that you're required to log in to view most of the forums. Some developers go so far as to not allow you to even see the forums at all without having created an active paying account. I'm not saying you'd need to go crazy with it, but requiring someone to log in once a week or whatever isn't too much to ask. ;)

It IS too much to ask that people log in to have a chance to get in the beta because we've specifically promised people who signed up to the site that just registering would give them the chance at beta access. Going back on that would be not cool. Here at GGG, we're cool, and we don't want to stop being cool by going back on our word.

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Raycheetah wrote:

That Mark has troubled himself to try to answer the concerns posted here is not a sign that he is putting the jackbooted foot of the GGG Empire down on the necks of dissenters; he is trying to help folks to understand how and why GGG is doing what they do. He doesn't have to pop in and post that kind of answer; he could very well be putting that time and effort to better use working on the game.

Well, I'm not that great. It's partially because circumstances in the office mean I'm currently working from my hard drive instead of my solid state drive, meaning the game takes ages to compile, and keeping up with the forums is something I can do while it does that. I mostly just try to keep up with the beta feedback/bug forums, so I'm only round these parts when I end up with extra time or am at home catching up with what's going on.

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Azuroth wrote:

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Mark_GGG wrote:

It's partially because circumstances in the office mean I'm currently working from my hard drive instead of my solid state drive, meaning the game takes ages to compile, and keeping up with the forums is something I can do while it does that.

On an entirely off topic tangent, how much faster would you say your compiles are when working off SSD? Obviously it's enough to get you time to post on the forums. Would you say it's twice as fast? One more data point couldn't hurt for convincing them to upgrade my work machine :)

I'd say definitely more than twice as fast. Hard to be exact since depending what's changed it complies more or less code each time.