Philosophy in a "closed" beta.Thoughts.

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Bladetrain3r wrote:

I think you'll find a surprisingly large percentage of the supporters are/were already members of the beta who just loved the game enough to want to support it.

+1 Beta Member prior to getting the chance to support, I think its great that if anything this has increased the player base and that means something I love lasts longer!

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Aliquis wrote:

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Panda413 wrote:

They are still giving out free beta keys every 5 minutes.

They are giving the OPTION to people that wish to contribute. It is not now and never will be a requirement to pay money to play this game.

I don't subscribe to any philosophy in which that can be construed as a negative thing in any way.

I don't know what your definition of "now" is, but I can't play "now" unless I buy something first. And I signed up before you did. Your view of this philosophy seems to be shaded by the fact that you didn't get screwed by it.

The quote was referring to not needing to buy the game at any time and it does not refer to having guaranteed free access at this point in time.

Can you not read or do you just like misquoting?

Hello to everyone,

So it has come to my understanding that the way this thread was supposed to go was not achieved.

This wasnt a negative critic thread or even an attack at the donators, seems that they felt offended, this wasnt my intention at all.
Construtive conversation to find a solution from now on to this issue, that was my objective.

I donated for alot of things in my gamer life, the diference is that, if you say "donation" is supposed to be an understanding of a gift to benefit a cause and not having anything in change besides good will.

When you change that mentality is not a donation anymore.

Me and some people were trying to understand what changed in the beta philosophy, as for me this is not ethical, from there we need to understand what is the new ethic and philosophy thought.I recommend bringing this out of closed beta to a new status with the risk of spreading the image created.(if this image is intended please ignore this words).

As a potencial customer i was worried about the image of a game that we all were waiting for.

Bringing out a system that allows people for an direct entrance in a closed beta access, can and is, bringing bad reputation to PoE in the gamer community, in case of any doubts, selling this access to a open public IS banalizing.Someone said "how can bringing more people to the close beta can be banalizing?" well, banalize comes from banal and that means "common to all".

Donations that brings an advantage is a turnoff for most of gamers.While it can be unethical buying something in a store that brings an unfair advantage ingame, allowing this advantage or opportunity to some people is unethical too.

Hype is a promotion or propaganda of a product, turning the customer to an anxiety state until its release.This decision, just ruined that hype.

As for a product to be released it needs to have a budget before, this budget was thought before, offcourse donations are welcome in any project, more resources to work with, recognition for the work that motivates the team.If an opportunity to make profit occurs in that process and before the product is released, its the company responsability to mesure the impact in the community and if it is viable to profit before wearing out the image.

Selling the propaganda is not, in my point of view, good marketing, for alot of reasons that were already discussed in this thread.

This concludes that the player base, target customer, hype and image will not be the same at release, that can cause less profit, this is what almost all of the replies were trying to make an argument to justify the decision made.Some of you were perspicacious enough and saw my objective.
Trying to save the PoE interests in a global market because im a fan and i think you have something here, that i dont want to see going in a wrong way.

Thank you for your attention.
I will let the flame on.

Peace.

It can benefict the game in the present but will not benefict the game in a long term.
The hype lost its true.
Banalized the image is also true.
The target costumer is not the same anymore, instead of having a community interested in helping, you now have gamers that will get tired of the game more quickly that you can predict, those players were in the hype, you just lost profit numbers there.
People were trying to get into the game like crazy that was the magical turn on...that unique feel have been lost.
When those players that got in get tired of it they will not recommend the game to friends, "you buying PoE!? lets buy another im already tired of that one." Sold 1 beta access lost 2 potencial customers to the community.
This is a bad marketing strategy.
Beta weekends is something new and even in there they realized to late unfortunaly, playing that game over and over in weekends got alot of people burnout, now when the game is released they have more Trolls in the community that they would predict.
This is not a closed beta anymore you can call it whatever you want.

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berlighty wrote:

The hype lost its true.

What solution would you recommend?


Edit:-

Oh yah, i just read the rules of the beta tester.
If u have solution, post them in the correct thread.

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starsg wrote:

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berlighty wrote:

The hype lost its true.

What solution would you recommend?


Edit:-

Oh yah, i just read the rules of the beta tester.
If u have solution, post them in the correct thread.

Good question.
We need to find a way to get people with anxiety again!?

Edit:-

/movethread betadiscussion

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trcanberra wrote:

"

Aliquis wrote:

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Panda413 wrote:

They are still giving out free beta keys every 5 minutes.

They are giving the OPTION to people that wish to contribute. It is not now and never will be a requirement to pay money to play this game.

I don't subscribe to any philosophy in which that can be construed as a negative thing in any way.

I don't know what your definition of "now" is, but I can't play "now" unless I buy something first. And I signed up before you did. Your view of this philosophy seems to be shaded by the fact that you didn't get screwed by it.

The quote was referring to not needing to buy the game at any time and it does not refer to having guaranteed free access at this point in time.

Can you not read or do you just like misquoting?

You must be joking.

i don't think the game will technically "burn out" unless it's worse than diablo 2, cause people are still playing that game :P

the only things you can purchase with...they're called points? that's kind of a boring name ANYWAY the things you purchase with points would only apply to people who are actually so into the game that they would be all, "i can't fit my gazillion items in the stash" and by that point you know they're sticking around

i would find it ridiculously difficult to burn out on this game (you've seen the passive grid, right? i mean, just look at it) unless you're the type that flits between games every month anyway, in which case since you've already paid ten dollars it's a net gain for the devs to have gotten that instead of...zero dollars

another plus is that you're putting your game ahead of diablo 3 in the queue, and that's an advantage you need in this day and age

overall at this point there's not really that much you could detract from the game at this point by adding more people, given the results of the stress test

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berlighty wrote:

It can benefict the game in the present but will not benefict the game in a long term.
The hype lost its true.
Banalized the image is also true.
The target costumer is not the same anymore, instead of having a community interested in helping, you now have gamers that will get tired of the game more quickly that you can predict, those players were in the hype, you just lost profit numbers there.
People were trying to get into the game like crazy that was the magical turn on...that unique feel have been lost.
When those players that got in get tired of it they will not recommend the game to friends, "you buying PoE!? lets buy another im already tired of that one." Sold 1 beta access lost 2 potencial customers to the community.
This is a bad marketing strategy.
Beta weekends is something new and even in there they realized to late unfortunaly, playing that game over and over in weekends got alot of people burnout, now when the game is released they have more Trolls in the community that they would predict.

I don't agree about many things here.
Benefiting game's present will make shore that game has a future. It may not give any more benefits for the long run but it will not do harm as well.
The target customer of at least final product is not just someone who is interested in helping but everyone. For beta test I agree they are interested in players that help but inviting someone every 5 minutes is not the way you make helping community! If it was true server would be full of active people by now even without public stress test. In fact, if that clock finally chooses me I would just play the game and may (or may not) even forget about this web site :D

Your example is bad for many reasons:
First of all, You can't buy game that is for free :)
Second, they probably earned price of one key form 2 players who would invest 0$ anyways :)
And Third, those who get in the game do recommend the it while they are playing it. Even when they stop playing there is no reason not to recommend it. Why would you not recommend a game that made a good impression on you? Unless you played it, didn't liked it and then quit(Probably not even target audience).
Also it was stated before that you are not buying beta access but receiving it as a gift for donating. No one forces me to play the game just because I received the key for donation.

I also think that hype thing is a little too exaggerated.
You really think everyone who waited for key more than 2 or 3 months will say "YES! I'm finally in! This is gona BE AWESOME" instead of "Ohh.. I finally got invite to that cool looking game. Bad thing I don't have time for it right now..."? I bet not even half of received free beta keys are being activated.

I made a donation (much more than three times the minimum donation rewarded with Beta access) long after becoming a Beta member, myself. I received three Beta keys which I did not need, and had no trouble finding three people excited to have them. Their excitement is no different than if they had received those keys from the Timer, or if I had given them Friend keys, instead.

Those three new Beta members will enjoy the game and provide as much valuable input (or not) as they would if they had received their Beta access in any other way. =^[.]^=