FGU 2nd Chance Access?

[pollux]

While I can understand feeling "left out" of the chatter around FGU... the beta is really an "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" situation. It has been impossible to run a networked game so far (that may have changed with today's update, but I suspect there are still major issues that would stop a play session dead). The actions tab in character sheets has problems. Many (most?) people have trouble opening their existing campaigns. Many rulesets still have major issues that prevent local play. I've spent most of my time in the beta drawing line-of-sight layers for maps I'll never use so that Doug and SW employees can focus on more valuable tasks, I've probably spent 15 hours doing this. I've spent another 10 or 15 hours reading forum posts and trying to reproduce and clarify bugs reported by other people, taking videos in OBS and posting them to the forum as GIFs so devs can waste less time investigating incomplete bug reports. I haven't used FGC or FGU for any of my own prep or play since the beta started. I think I'm a slightly extreme case, but essentially no one is using FGU for real games or doing their campaign prep in it for real.

So the idea that loyal customers who didn't participate in the kickstarter are "missing out" on the beta doesn't reflect the reality of what it's like to be in the beta... which feels more like "I paid for the privilege of donating my time as a QA engineer and map artist". I don't say that disparagingly, SW is trying to push out a product that's a little too big for a company their size, and they need help and we all WANT them to succeed. I'm gladly pitching in, but I'm for sure not playing games with FGU, it's not useful for that purpose yet. I think this is part of why it rankles when people casually toss around the idea of "entitled" backers. I don't want to say there's no truth behind the concept... but disproportionately the backers who are active in this forum are investing our time trying to improve the product in service of the community... and generally doing so INSTEAD of having fun with FGC. The idea that we're trying to hoard all the FGU fun for ourselves is... I dunno... it doesn't feel great and it doesn't feel true. Smiteworks wants to release this thing ASAP, when it's fun to use they're going to take it out of beta without delay. The active beta testers are trying to help them do that faster and better than they can by themselves.

And from that perspective, anyone can be in the beta even if they don't have access to FGU yet. Spend time each day in the forums and on the discord answering people who ask FAQs that are already addressed in the sticky posts. When someone posts a bug report in the playtest forum that is difficult to understand (this happens nearly every day), ask them questions to get more info so that when a dev comes by they're looking at a complete and coherent report. If that's not how you imagined participating in the beta to be, I suspect you'd find that FGU in its current state is mostly irritating and not at all useful to you.

[Trenloe]

Well put @pollux. There is definitely the thought from a few users that "beta testing" is "fully functional with only a few quirks" - definitely not in the current level of FG Unity. There are regular posts in the forums from people who are trying to play with FG Unity - despite the fact that it's stated it's not ready for that yet, nor are the developers looking at that side of the code in earnest yet. It's understandable that people want to use it to play, but their expectations must be managed - otherwise FG ends up with bad press and (more) disgruntled users. Hence why the vast majority voted against any further early access to FGU.

Please understand where FGU is and wait semi-patiently for the future release. Keep using FG Classic to enjoy gaming with your friends...

[Kyler]

Thumbs up Pollux. Very well put!!