Profile of CieZ

So your basically telling me to give Relic a free pass on over hyping something, lying about the selection process, then expect nothing to happen when they disappoint half of their community? Can't tell if your talking about EA or Relic. I love Relic, great people and great devlopers, one of the best smaller major game developers, and the community manager Cynthia tries her hardest to keep everyone happy. The first CoH has some of my most fond memories as a child. But eventually someone has to put their foot down and call them on the BS.

I'm pointing out the obvious not only on my behalf, but for the community as a whole, everyone here is fantastic. It may be entitlement, but most believe that if we survived the crap and trusted relic would do better (and they have come a long way ), we all should be shown some appreciation for supporting them every step of the way.

Most of the people that made the cut are being humble about it, but there are still going to be the minority that acts like an ass that got in and say they were entitled to a spot. (My good friend being one of them)

Who says they lied about their selection process? Did they even ever reveal their selection process? To my knowledge, no. They did not. Therefore you absolutely cannot say that they lied about their selection process.

They asked us to fill out a short application. Presumably they used that data in combination with some algorithm to select a pool of candidates that fit their general model of our community. That seems like the best way to test to me.

Invite only top players? Majority of the community is mad, and the game becomes too focused on "ZOMG ESPORTS B O I S" and anything the casual players might be interested in will get snubbed.

Invite people completely randomly? Might not get a proper distribution to reflect your actual player base.

Invite only casuals? Opposite of inviting only top players.

In order to get good feedback, Relic needs to gather a pool of testers as statistically akin to their community as possible. I believe that was the point of their survey.

Maybe I'm totally wrong about that (I obviously do not work for Relic, only they could answer your question on the ways in which their application data was used), but I don't think I am.

Brachiaraidos is right though. People are getting way too worked up about this, and it reflects badly on the community as a whole. We've been begging Relic to communicate and work more openly with the community, so they do, and how does the community respond? Not well...

The underlying fact here is that the entire point of this alpha is NOT to let some small "lucky" minority get to play with all the cool shiny new toys so that they can rub it in their friend's faces... to think or suggest that Relic would pull something like that is silly. They asked for our help identifying bugs and giving our feedback on what we like about the new content so that ultimately, together, that content can be released to the community as a whole and everyone benefit from their hard work - as well as ours.

If you really want Relic to keep taking strides towards the community, we have to meet them halfway. If every time they try and work with us, there is a major backlash because not everyone who wanted to help them test got to help them... well, I don't think they'd keep doing these closed alphas/betas. I know I wouldn't if I were them. The more we work with them, without giving them massive amounts of grief, the more they'll be willing to continue working with us. And who says you won't get in on whatever their next invite-only alpha/beta is while you friend has to sit on the sidelines?

Everyone will get to have fun with the new content when it is released, just be patient.

TLDR - Honestly it sounds like you're just upset that your friend got in while you didn't. They only invited a select number of people for a reason, it's an alpha - not a pre-release. And no community member should get special treatment just because of their name. Everyone should have a fair shot. I sincerely wish you better luck in the future Jackie.

Just my 2 cents.

Why should they have got in?

Yes, they are very good at this game.
I don't know if they would have given good feedback or not, but I suspect they would have.

But, simply put, being highly ranked in the game shouldn't just get you access to the alpha.

For this to be a valid test of any kind they need a wide range of players that fully explore the skill curve of the community. Putting in too many of the games top players throws this curve hugely.

That is why some of the best guys didn't get in, it's also why some of the worst will have. Almost regardless of what they want to gain from this Alpha they will have needed to recreate a much smaller version of the player base.

TL;DR: Putting in all the top players just because they are top will not make the test, or end product, better - it'll probably make it worse.

Also, the point of the Alpha isn't to showcase things to the community. It's not to make us feel more included (well, that probably isn't it's primary purpose). It's not a reward to the most excited or most loyal players. It's an Alpha that is designed to test the code they have written for whatever has been tested. Its a test to find problems, be they balance, features, abilities, units...etc.

People haven't been betrayed by the alpha, the people in the dark will have been anyway and the people who can't talk about it knew that was the case when they signed up for a closed alpha (or should have).

Well put. While I think that generally, good players give good balance feedback, you do need to take into account your entire player base and just because you're good doesn't mean you will give good feedback. Good players could give bad feedback just like bad players could give good feedback. One's standing within the community should not entitle them to anything, or else the system is inherently unfair to the vast majority.

Plus the alpha is about a lot more than just balance feedback.

I'm in, feel free to add me on steam for games next week.

RtN.CieZ

Sorry to those that did not get in hopefully relic will do an open test before launching.

As far as I'm aware. I think they only thing they've announced publicly is that next patch will contain the "mysterious" new faction. The invites for the alpha to test said "mysterious" faction will be the 28th, with the alpha opening up sometime after that.

I assume at least some balance changes will come through when the new faction goes live? But who knows. Maybe not. I don't think they've confirmed anything aside from Brits... I mean, new faction... yeah.

Edit: For clarification, and so that this post doesn't get invis'd no one from Relic or otherwise has said anything specific about which faction they're adding... but we all know it's Brits.

Wouldn't it not necessarily replicate to all computers during a replay if it had to do with a buffer overflow/underrun or something like that?

I guess I'm not sure on the specifics but wouldn't each audio driver/system handle the allocation/processing of data slightly differently?

Although, that could explain why some people never have it, and others do have it at times.

Maybe we should have like 40 brave souls see if we all get it during the same game that Romeo cast?