A plea to the good folks of Introversion: We can wait.

[Smart guy]

Don't you guys know what is a beta?? It means that the Creators (in this case, Introversion) will release their work for those who has been elected to be beta testers, and they (beta testers) will promise the Creators to a license agreement. Then those beta testers will spend hours in the game (Darwinia) to find out any bugs and typos they missed when they are playing the game. They will alos constantly changing their hardwares to see if they are compatible witrh the game.

Finally, the Creators will announce the second beta testing stage. For those who have posted many things about the bugs, they will be elected to the second beta testing stages.

So anyway, why bother waiting?? See the users count in the front page?? There are a thousand of people who wants to be a beta tester. And everyone else in this forum wants to be a beta tester, too. Even I do, too. But there is a 100 beta testers limit, so you might not be elected. In the end, waiting or not, it's still the same.

[RoystonD12]

Smart guy, the users were almost ALL just migrated form the uplink forum database, as chris himself said.

This nullifies the last portion of your post.

Also, what does the rest of your post have to do with anything? Yes, the beta testers will be helping to find and crush bugs, what I was trying to bring attention to in this thread is the fact that many of us are willing to wait a bit longer for the final retail release, in exchange for having a more solid product.

[Sirveri]

I think one thing a earlier poster mentioned is being forgotten here. I have broadband cable modem. So do a lot of people likely posting here. But there are still a LOT of people on dial up service. Not even GOOD dial up, we're talking about sub par and outright BAD dial up. That said, the less patches the better for them. I personally could not care less being on a decent pipe. But we still should try and think about the poor people on 56k or worse connections who have to try and DL 10+ Megs of material. They're not going to bother and it will sour them on the game.

So basically the question becomes, are those people expendable as customers, or are they stupid enough to come back for more? I play games from Paradox as well, I find them truly enjoyable. There's only one problem, when you buy a paradox game, you are not getting a complete game. You're waiting about a year extra to finally get that extra patch. They finally patched Hearts of Iron to 1.06, and it's pretty awesome. But considering that it took them over a year from release to do it and each patch was a easy 18+ Megs, that tends to screw over the folks on dial up. six patches at 18-30 Megs each. on 56k. That's a lot of time.

[Iwudacus]

Yup. Every game out there gets tested before release, but they try to get their game out by a certain time. They don't spend enough time bug-hunting, and sometimes jsut leave known bugs just to meet the release date. Introversion shouldn't concentrate too much on and set release date and leave some bug in the game to save time. They should rather move the date a bit so as to be able to squash all the bugs they can find.

Some extra waiting won't do the expectation of fan-boys like me any harm. It'll probably hype things up more. Look at how much Half-Life 2 has had its release date changed. Still all the HL followers are waiting in aticipation. And in my experience, us folks who support indie games and companies are far less fickle about release dates that folks who just support big corporate titles.

Ra for indie gaming!

[Sirveri]

Actually, I just thought of another problem. The longer we wait the more the hype machine churns.

Hype for a product that IS good is still BAD. Because nothing can EVER live up to hype. Look at MOO3 and Civ3. Hard Hype, for two games which, IMO weren't very good (though most will agree that MOO3 was outright BAD). That said MOO3 took its time and was hyped up and sucked. Civ3 didn't really take its time, wasn't hyped up as much, but was shipped with crippling easily noticed bugs (like fighters not going on air superiority). But in the end the hype machine was started at the right time and the game wasn't over hyped and well it was actually a better game. I dunno, I just hope the industry media doesn't make Chris pull a Romero on us and say something stupid while flicking some long hair and jumping into a new sports car.

But I have FAITH, and it can counter any revelation thrown at me.

[Smart guy]

That's what exactly what i want to say, experts can find out those bugs quickly and Introversion will quickly correct them, as the community wants to find out what is the progress.

[Sirveri]

I think what would be nice is if IV gave us updates with substance. When we're ready is ANNOYING. Constantly pushed back release dates are ANNOYING. Comming on the board and treating us like adults and saying that you found a major bug in the save games mechanism and that it will take some extra time to fix is understandable, it provides insight, it provides translucency, and it's generally nice to read.

I can understand why the game was pushed back. It wasn't just pushed back because the devs decided to take a week off. (though I will certainly understand when they do). This was actually a area that MOO3 was somewhat good at. The thing was is that they claimed that they were 'moving' their offices. For a entire month. OK sure, one full month... right before you go gold. That was quite annoying. So well, it can backfire too. But hey, I think it's still the best course.

[USBJunkie]

man, we should all just wait a little while and let them get it right the first time. after all, if the testers do a good job, then it shouldn't take them too long to pinpoint problems anyway, right?