Wasteland 2 - Early Beta Update

Couchpotato

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InXile Entertainment has news of a new update for the early beta of Wasteland 2.

Wasteland 2 Early Beta Update #28918 Notes

High Profile Fixes

Updated to Unity 4.3 which may introduce new issues not previously seen. Please report on the Early Beta Community Site.

Implemented hardware cursor

Major combat and weapon balancing (1st balancing pass).

Eliminated a variety of crashes related to saving & loading in combat.

Eliminated a variety of infinite loading occurrences during scene transitions. (Specifically Ag Center and Highpool loading crashes)

Eliminated a variety of crashes related to Highpool & Ag Center.

The game will no longer be autosaved and a duplicate party will no longer be generated when going to the main menu from gameplay.

The name of a snapshot portrait should now be set when it is created.

Custom portrait filenames should now be retained when saving/loading.

Optimization: Pre-allocate animstates for decreased load time.

Removed XP exploit for perception.

Improved individual dropsets.

Improved overall loot distribution and balance.

Eliminated circumstance of loot drop returning no items.

Clicking on a player portrait to switch to a different speaker in conversations should now work correctly.

HOTFIX - Performance improvements, and quality settings will now perform properly
More information.
 
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Remember the good 'ol days when developers would bribe you with a free game to be a beta tester? Now, we get to pay for the privilege.

I'm sick of being a beta tester… it always spoils the game for me. And I've beta tested more games than I can remember, more often than not, after buying them at retail.

I'm really looking forward to this game (I pledged $250), but I'm glad I decided to wait for the final release. I hear that the Early Beta is more of an Alpha. But, at least inXile didn't dump this as a release candidate, and they are still hard at work on it. First impressions are very important... For their next game (Torment), it would be wise for inXile to keep the bun in the oven a little longer and release a Late Beta instead.
 
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Beta testing used to be a way to play a relatively stable, bug-free game before anyone else. That was back when developers actually spent money to in-house test their stuff before beta.

Now… Beta really means alpha, and that you're getting a bug-filled, unfinished crapfest. Unless you have some financial interest in the game itself, or really want to be in the game industry, I really don't understand why anyone would want to beta test in today's day and age. That is, outside of an MMO, in which case the early access would give you a significant advantage over others when the game launches.
 
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I really don't understand why anyone would want to beta test in today's day and age.

Some people can't wait to get their hands on the game, keeps people busy and it is news/publicity material.

I don't like to be involved in any beta (early release) testing, and I strongly feel that this action degrades the charm of the complete game. Nevertheless I do understand why indie developers do it, and this is probably their best (and sometimes only) option.
 
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Game development is getting more open and collaborative than at any time in the past. Gamers get a chance to influence game design to an extent, something that we've never been able to do before. Sure, the process is still limited as major mechanics aren't going to get overhauled, but we don't have to wait for release to say "I don't think doing xxx that way is the best approach. How about xxx?"

I expect inXile will take gamer feedback into account when finalizing the UI. PoE eventually bent to gamers wishes and added a looting mechanic that eliminated the drop timer. I'm sure there's countless other examples.
 
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Updated to Unity 4.3 which may introduce new issues not previously seen. Please report on the Early Beta Community Site.
While outsourcing has been in the industry for a while this sort of direct effect by the progress of what is effectively an upstream seems to me to be unique (on this scale) and quite interesting.
 
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The enjoyment of this game is too important to me so I will be waiting until it is finished and mostly bug free. It's unfortunate that the want it all and want it now mentality is pushing companies to respond by opening up unfinished products to the public in this manner. I got the impression Sven of Divinity Original Sin was VERY apprehensive about releasing beta access too, but was feeling the heat from backers to get something in their hands. This is another game I would rather see finished rather then ruin my enjoyment of by playing a half backed version.

Then again thanks to those who will do the testing and reporting so I can have a smother and more enjoyable experience.

Heck most of the "finished" games these days need several months of patches to make them worth playing. The only Beta's I can see as worth while are MMO beta's and even those are rarely worth the time.
 
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Now… Beta really means alpha, and that you're getting a bug-filled, unfinished crapfest.

Beta cant mean alpha.
During the developpment of a commercial software, some decisions belong exclusively to the developpers while other decisions'd better suit the customers. The current situation does not change that.

In both cases, functionalities coming from decisions must be tested: during the alpha stage, decisions belonging to the developpers in an exclusive way are tested while it makes simple sense to introduce customers to get a feed back on decisions oriented to them.

It is just a crowdfunding consequence. Somebody came with the brilliant idea of monetizing a beta access as a pledge level. It was a cheaper way to get funds than manufacturing a goodie. Even better, it worked in reverse: instead of paying testers, they were charged.
Later, the escalation kept on with the even more brilliant idea of monetizing an alpha stage, even though alpha stage as it addresses concerns exclusive to the developpers is not a tradable good. Alpha stage cant be sold.

The difference: crowdfunding. In other cases, the pressure on the developpers pushs them to optimize resources by separating clearly alpha and beta stages. Introducing customers too early will only eat up resources.
With a crowdfunding process, the pressure is all the reverse: it is trying to introduce the customers as early as possible to try to increase resources.
So some projects spread the introduction of customers in alpha 1, alpha 2 etc beta 1, beta 2 etc in order to collect even more resources.
In all cases, they do not sale an access to an alpha as it can be sold and triggers betas as early they can.
 
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Beta cant mean alpha.
During the developpment of a commercial software, some decisions belong exclusively to the developpers while other decisions'd better suit the customers. The current situation does not change that.

In both cases, functionalities coming from decisions must be tested: during the alpha stage, decisions belonging to the developpers in an exclusive way are tested while it makes simple sense to introduce customers to get a feed back on decisions oriented to them.

It is just a crowdfunding consequence. Somebody came with the brilliant idea of monetizing a beta access as a pledge level. It was a cheaper way to get funds than manufacturing a goodie. Even better, it worked in reverse: instead of paying testers, they were charged.
Later, the escalation kept on with the even more brilliant idea of monetizing an alpha stage, even though alpha stage as it addresses concerns exclusive to the developpers is not a tradable good. Alpha stage cant be sold.

The difference: crowdfunding. In other cases, the pressure on the developpers pushs them to optimize resources by separating clearly alpha and beta stages. Introducing customers too early will only eat up resources.
With a crowdfunding process, the pressure is all the reverse: it is trying to introduce the customers as early as possible to try to increase resources.
So some projects spread the introduction of customers in alpha 1, alpha 2 etc beta 1, beta 2 etc in order to collect even more resources.
In all cases, they do not sale an access to an alpha as it can be sold and triggers betas as early they can.

Yes, thank you. I was using the word "alpha" for effect, and not in its literal form. Basically, the cost of game production has skyrocketed as has the expectation of investors in game companies. Things like in-house testing, despite its relative low cost in the grand scheme of things, has become very limited, if not outright cut. In-house testing used to find the vast majority of bugs and unfinished work, leaving beta for the sole purpose of trying to break the game. As a beta tester, they would give you a nearly complete game and ask you to do what you normally wouldn't do while playing it, since the main path had already been polished. You would find bugs, but they were few, and never game breaking. In this past world, beta testing was cool.

In beta now, you're lucky to have more than a piece at a time and you're even more lucky to be able to finish that segment without a game stopping crash, etc.

And no offense, but this trend began looong before crowdfunding.
 
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I used to be a games tester for a job back in the 90's. Was good fun to. :)

Daniel.
 
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You guys are so negative sometimes ~.~

Some people enjoy the alpha/beta testing phase. To them, being able to contribute to the final product is just as enjoyable as the final product itself.
 
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W2 better have disgruntled people now than after the release. The team gets a lot of help and feedback this way.
 
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