Beta for Western Front

The more I read here the more it sounds to me that some people are just unhappy they haven't been picked for the Alpha/Beta. It was a large number of people. The only number that Relic posted publicly was the 500 hardy wrote in the HQ forums for the ones allowed in at day 1. Multiple other waves followed, so without stating the actual number it were definitely several thousand people.

I agree though that the NDA is bad at the moment and hope they'll allow us to post certain things.

Lack of transparency breeds doubt and concern.

I, for one, had been unaware of the extent of some of the testing, and it was good you informed on some of that Milka. Thanks for that. And I agree that whether its called a beta, or an extended alpha, or an epsilon omega super infinite test, is semantic and irrelevant to whether sufficient testing and adjustment has been achieved.

I think a signifcant part of community distrust, is a direct result of the disastrous Industry/Tiger Ace launch. Then too, testers had expressed opinions beforehand patting themselves and each other on the back for a good job, and reassuring community it was good, only for it to go live with not only gamebreaking bugs (such as spammable FHQs) but serious balance flaws (many of which it took Relic months to iron out in multiple patches).

Problem is, for those of us not involved with any of the testing and feedbsck giving, is we have no way of knowing what you guys have been up to, what feedback youve given, nor of gauging for validity of what you guys are posting now. We can only take your word for it.

In that sense, paradoxically, I agree with the NDA, purely for the reason that it infact protects testers from posting opinions that make THEM targets for blame on a poor balance/bug on launch, rather than Relic itself for their own quality control and "finish" on the product before launch.

If I was a tester, Id keep my mouth tightly shut about anything happening inside the testing envelope, with or without NDA, and instead use that effort and posting time on reporting problems and concerns internally. Its not their responsibility to report on progress to the community, or hype the product, merely to as vigorously and critically as possible to point out flaws and problems with the product to Devs so they can be corrected. Worst thing a testing group can do, is fall into the trap of being "yes men". Defeats the purpose entirely if that happens.

Ironically, the more testers express ANYTHING about the launch, the more you make yourselves targets for blame if theproduct really has problems.

TLDR: Testers, keep your mouths shut. NDA or not. Launch will be all the proof finish and completeness of the product needs. Especially if you are a tester who quite frankly has poor stat knowledge or few games played. If you arent a stat guru or "pro", the community frankly doesnt want to hear your rather uninformed opinion, nor will it trust it, anymore than if it came from any other random John Doe who posts on current balance and issues. You just end up making yourself a target for blame if it actually turns out that there are major problems.

Of course balance is going to be bad at launch... when has an RTS (or an expansion for one) ever gone live without balance issues?

To expect an expansion containing two entire new factions, a dozen new maps, new commanders, etc etc to be balanced is really stupid.

There's no way to test every map/faction/strat/doctrine combination without a long open beta (at which point you might as well just release the game cuz everyone has access to it anyways).

So yeah. Get real dude.

Or beta pffff

There's been a lot of testing. Still need some fine tuning but overall the balance is there. More so than Sov vs Ost if you ask me.

Too bad people missed out on the alpha, I wouldn't have bought it without having tried it out first. Hopefully there will be a free weekend soon.