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You can all the beta testers in the world but if they aren’t listened to it means nothing.

XR had that issue and some testers were vociferous about it afterwards. But it’s not just the X ganes. This happens all the time in Elite Dangerous. Blatantly obvious bugs are reported, the reports are ignored and on release gamers rag on the testers.

It’s bern my experience in beta testing that developers hear what they want to hear.

To be fair, with some devs it is not so much that they may not listen but rather that external pressures may prevent them from doing much about what they hear. Still, since we cannot be specific about such cases let's just wait and see what happens this time with X4. Here's hoping it works well!

Well they say it'll be out in 2018, and this is May 10th and no new info, no new screens and no mention of testing in any form. That's probably why some people are thinking it might be delayed. Because by now you'd think they would be spraying comments and hyping the game before release, and yes even months ahead of time. We who have bought game after game from Ego know them pretty well. They will put out a game half to 2/3 finished like always. They will let modders do their thing, and patch things like they always do. so anyone who has bought and played their games before isn't going to be surprised anyway. But the way its going now I doubt we see it before pate Fall or Early Winter.

KRM398 wrote:Well they say it'll be out in 2018, and this is May 10th and no new info, no new screens and no mention of testing in any form. That's probably why some people are thinking it might be delayed. Because by now you'd think they would be spraying comments and hyping the game before release, and yes even months ahead of time. We who have bought game after game from Ego know them pretty well. They will put out a game half to 2/3 finished like always. They will let modders do their thing, and patch things like they always do. so anyone who has bought and played their games before isn't going to be surprised anyway. But the way its going now I doubt we see it before pate Fall or Early Winter.

We still have 7 months before the end of the year! Beta access should last 3 months I think (before the release that is, with on-going patch after release). If Egosoft's past practice says anything, I bet they will start/have started their test in secret, and only a few people with level 5 & NDA are allowed to participate.

In my opinion early access can be a good way to polish the game before a full release, lets call it gamma-phase for better communication. That is if there is a proper way for reporting (I’m not a fan of the forum reports). However to make a clearer distinction between a full release and gamma-phase I think selling the game in early access at a higher price compared to its release price but in return giving some percentages off from DLCs for Early access users seems to me a possible way to go. That is if the DLCs are planned before release and that the pricing is done fairly so that you won’t pay more or less if you are going to buy most DLCs.
If communicated properly I’m pretty sure only those that are quite sure that they are going to play this game and are going to buy the DLCs would be willing to participate in the early access and pay a higher price in the beginning.

Nikola515 wrote:Game so far looks solid so I don't think there should be any delays unless they are planning some major features. From the videos we can see that game is somewhat functional and working..... Only thing that worries me is AI I hope we get improvement over XR. Anyway I hope we see more videos about mining and how will workforce work.

XR looked quite solid on pre-launch video.

The game was unplayable at launch, far far more than X3 at his own release (which was already messy).

That was why the game got shot by professional critics. And that's how X Rebirth failed at enlarge its public.

X4 would really need to be polished at launch. Me and a lot more people will not preco it anyway and will wait in the corner in what state the game will be at release.