Forums Preferences: Alpha and Beta

Hey all,

Trying to get a sense on whether backers would prefer a separate forum for general alpha (and beta) discussions (there will be a bug forum for each stage for discussion and investigation of unusual bugs), or if you'd all rather have most conversation in here.

This will not necessarily be decided by this poll, but it will help us to inform what forums we make to cover alpha and beta when they start.

Thanks all!

I think for the sake of organization there should be as many Sub forums as needed, perhaps even to the point of making separate subforums for different groups of bugs, like say Crashing and freezing to be kept separate from issues like the Commander's Walk animation getting decoupled or whatever.

Right now the Backer's Lounge is simply too cluttered with random threads, trying to shoehorn in Alpha testing stuff as well will just make things harder for everyone.

Mike

Well speaking from experience, I would say leave the backer forum as is, and then create a new alpha testing forum. (For bugs and issues only.) If people want to discuss features, or non-issue based topics, they can revert to this backer forum.

I don't really think its necessary to break the alpha testing forum into smaller sub categories though. It would be annoying to have to keep switching sub-forums to see all the current issues.

I would think that having a separate forum for Alpha/Beta testing purposes would be better. Allows for greater organization of topics and threads as well as keeping some things that shouldnt be discussed (whatever they may be) away from non-testers.

In reference to having subforums, as others have suggested, it might be easier to only have a single subforum in the forum itself.

"PA Alpha Board"
-"Bugs/Reports"
-General discussion

What my possibly poor diagram represents is you have the main board, with all its announcements and topics listed below like normal; but at the top, under the Primary Header, put a subforum link for the bugs. I've seen and built lots of forums that did that kind of setup. It keeps the board mostly clean of bug reports and leaves it to general discussion and all reports can be consolidated via that single link.

Definitely separate, otherwise it would be impossible to post about bugs and details without other backers seeing it who aren't part of the alpha/beta (I assume there will be some kind of NDA).

100% new sub-forum.

We need a place to talk about technical issues, bugs, crashes and whatnot that won't get swept away beneath the suggestions for "improvement" that are so commonly posted in the Backers Lounge.

No doubt said improvements and their posters are cripplingly convinced of the delusional belief that the Devs only look to the Backers Lounge when it comes to suggestions, which is of course, utter nonsense.

pretty much this.

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As much as i would love to read all about alpha in a forum seeing as how i will only be participating in the beta, having a separate alpha and beta sub forum would be the best idea.

Other posters summarised the point pretty well.
The actual Backer forum tend to be already clustered with suggestions and other stuff, it risk to become very hard to follow once the Alpha is out.

Better separate the things.
Like an Alpha subforum, divided in two :
- Technical/bugs
- Feedback

Separate bug forum, definitely, but you've already said you'll be doing that.

Seperate discussion forum? Not so sure; you're already being amazingly open to the whole backer community so far, and to the public in general (both the public forum and the livestreams) that I'd hesitate to suggest that you stop being so open now.

It would depend mostly on how restrictive an NDA you end up favouring I guess. Obviously if there are a lot of things you'd not like us to talk about (gameplay, units etc.), then we'll need a separate place to do so. However if it's mainly the alpha code that needs protecting, then I reckon it would be just as interesting for the rest of the backers to hear about how things are going throughout the alpha and beta.

I've voted "don't care" because I'm happy to go with whatever you decide, but I think there are a lot of people who have beta / pre-orders in here who would love to hear about how stuff in the alpha is going.

separating things for organisation purposes will be nice to have a new sub forum.

Can we not fracture the community even further? Voted Backers Longue.

Can we please fracture the community where appropriate?

People need to talk directly to the Devs with bug reports and crash-dumps.
You seriously want that in the Backers Lounge? (General Discussion 2.0)

Is it fair to taunt all the Beta Backers with how often we're crashing?

But it's not further fracturing the community, not all backers have access to Alpha OR Beta, so the community is already 'divided', you you want to come to the backers lounge, see 1 thread from Uber about Backer content, 15 General Discussion threads and 50 Bug/testing threads?

Whether or no the Forum is locked to only those taking part in the Alpha is up to debate, I think, purely from an organizational side only testers should be able to post new threads and reply to existing threads, whether or not people can view the testing subforum(s) is a separate issue entirely.

Mike

I too think that a more focused Alpha/Beta only subforum would be better for balance discussion and such.

hmmm those that are talking about segregation they are already segregated because they didn't donate enough money to receive an alpha code. the post will be about bugs and problems we will be having with the alpha purely to help the devs how does having another bunch of people posting in the middle of it help them. and no they should not have to search for it waste of their valuable time.

if they really want to see what bugs we have picked up i suggest either the filling out of an automated form that gives them access to view not post(as described above is useless) on these separate forums which will be about which post shall go through a form rather than the standard post layout. either that or a template must be used when posting both for ease of reading and sorting of similar problems.

The Alpha forum should be available only to the Alpha participants. That should make sense.

Throwing my hat in the ring for a separate forum.

We need, as others have pointed out, a place to discuss alpha specific topics. I feel like it should be regulated as well to keep topics that are more general out in the backers forum.

Thanks all.. didn't want to leave this up long. Just wanted a general consensus, and I have it!