Beta Key Givaways to active loggers

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FaceLicker wrote:

This would seem only logical. However, let's say the company ran into some unexpected hardship after the person went missing or even before. Perhaps they are not being as profitable as they thought, or perhaps they realize that the 2 others left are perfectly capable of performing all the job functions of 3 people. Point is, we don't know what's going with the company and should not judge them or claim that their practices or systems are broken simply because we don't see what is going on. Nor because we, like so many others, have not been picked yet.

(Damn stupid new mouse with back-forward buttons >< lost all my text, will do it shorter)

We can't compare a real business model with a game being played. I do know from experience that if you do a task meant for 3 with only 2 employees, you will burn them and bigger problems will arise.

I disagree with your statement about how we can't judge them. If they did not want to be judged, they would not have made GGG. Do you really think we can't judge Microsoft or Apple because we don't see what's going on inside ? I think not.

As players, we represents GGG target clients. As such, we are prompt to judge what they are doing and to react to it.

By reading, answering and supporting only their current beta members, they are being judged. It takes a few seconds to get the data and see that the general interest in the game is dropping since end of August. Many factors can explain this, but do you really think this has absolutely nothing to do with how people, players judges GGG and the game ?

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.

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.

Then when people express their anger toward this, they get shut down. Is it really intended to show to active players that many non-active (which is normal since the ratio is much bigger) are being taken more than active players then have some random players to tell them to stop crying ?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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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.

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.

No one is entitled to anything and that's been made clear. I can however see people who post or visit daily feeling let down when someone with August 15th, 2011 for a registration/last visit date and has zero posts gets in. Or worse, someone with no posts from say 2010.

But then I'm the devils advocate and I can see where you guys and the those on that side of the fence are coming from. I imagine you guys are under the impression that invites to old accounts regardless of activity level... will likely bring back old members. I'm sure that's worked enough thus far.

Meh... it'll come when it comes. People need to remember that they're not entitled to anything. We're not GUARANTEED any access Closed or Open. It's a privilege and and honor to be able to TEST the product.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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.

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 their 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.

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.

For every active person, there is 100+ inactive people, or so I'm assuming (no research to back this up). The 10x increase is to help even the odds, but the sheer overwhelming number of "inactive" people makes those the popular choice for the beta timer.

The reason I have inactive in quotes is because they very well may not be inactive. WhiteBoy88 is a perfect example of one such person. He had 0 posts until he got into beta, now he has close to 1500, and is *extremely* helpful and polite.

I can definitely see why it is disheartening to people, but the trick to the random timer is to NOT watch it. It is a luxury that you are even allowed to see the names, much less click on them, so I would suggest being glad to just have that ability.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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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.

what are the odds then of being put into the beta???

Is the key program actively watching which accounts post and there for have a hierarchy of invites??

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Taric wrote:

For every active person, there is 100+ inactive people, or so I'm assuming (no research to back this up). The 10x increase is to help even the odds, but the sheer overwhelming number of "inactive" people makes those the popular choice for the beta timer.

The reason I have inactive in quotes is because they very well may not be inactive. WhiteBoy88 is a perfect example of one such person. He had 0 posts until he got into beta, now he has close to 1500, and is *extremely* helpful and polite.

I can definitely see why it is disheartening to people, but the trick to the random timer is to NOT watch it. It is a luxury that you are even allowed to see the names, much less click on them, so I would suggest being glad to just have that ability.

This is my point Taric, I do not think this is a luxury but more likely something which simply cause trouble where there could easily be none.

The reason behind why the inactive people could be suspended (by inactive I mean, as said earlier, something like a whole month) is that many people brought on the subject that Path of Exile was not ready to accept more testers than it is currently accepting.

By revoking the access of some to give it to other people, more actives, the maximum amount of tester would remain the same, but with new people more active. I think that as a developer and beta host, GGG team is in their right to expect a minimal participation from those granted access to the beta.

I can understand that people have lives, but I see the beta testing as a kind of benevolent duty and not proceeding to do it for a whole month is a little bit much.

I completely understand the point about the difficulty of making a timer which would adapt to the situation, but maybe the revoked beta spots could be given through productive means such as contests or special events.

To sum it up, the only reason why some people would have their account revoked is because they would be extremely inactive and to let another member which might contribute more take the seat considering there is a maximum seat allowed and this through different means.

I do hope that what I am saying is not taken with a bad eye as it is not my goal at all, my only goal here is to bring suggestions which might make the situation better.