Create a prerelease/beta channel for new releases/patches and separate new content from bug fixes

[DeliriumTrigger]

This will probably fall on deaf ears, but it's worth a shot anyway.

I am a huge fan of this game and appreciate all the effort that goes into it, including the new content, even if it isn't always stuff I'm interested in.  However, objectively the 1.4.x release has been a mess.  It's okay, these things happen, but when they do it's a good idea to look at why and how they happened so that they can be avoided in the future.  

Clearly there is some kind of issue on the testing front that is leading to bugs slipping through.  And clearly there is some kind of push to get new content out, which is why the game is in the current state it is in. 

The problem is that all the new content in the world doesn't mean much of anything if the game is riddled with fairing aero bugs and collider bugs that make it impossible to land on a moon without busting out a text editor.    And it's made even worse by the fact that the bulk of this new content is DLC, meaning many of us paid for this content and have serious impediments to actually using it.  

What I propose is that you create a beta/prerelease channel.  Make it available on the website for people who bought it from you directly, or in the betas tab for Steam users.  Take advantage of the many members of the community that would be willing to test new builds and submit bug reports.  And make a stable release your primary concern going forward.  New content should always be secondary to the stable, released build actually being stable and bug fixes should not be held up by unforeseen issues in new content releases.  

This would be useful for everyone.  You will get bug reports for new content from technical users that are willingly choosing to use potentially unstable builds, instead of noise and complaints from the community at large that are frustrated that their game isn't working.  Mod creators will get an opportunity to address issues before they make it into the stable channel, which should make transitioning to new releases a much smoother experience for them and for everyone that uses mods.  And players like me will no longer be stuck waiting around for weeks for their fully released game to be playable without having to roll back to a previous release.

This game is no longer in early access and there is literally no excuse for release builds being in this state.  Again, I sympathize with the struggle but this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed going forward.  Paying customers deserve a product that works. 

Edit:  To be clear, I'm not suggesting nightly builds.  I'm suggesting that before a release is pushed out as stable and finished, that it gets pushed out to a beta/prerelease channel first, for wider testing.  I understand all the arguments against nightly builds, makes perfect sense to me.  What doesn't make sense is that releases with major, show stopping bugs are being pushed out to everybody whether they want to be a tester or not.  That may have been acceptable when this was an early access game but it's not anymore.

Edited April 21, 2018 by nanobug

[steve_v]

11 minutes ago, nanobug said:

Make it available on the website for people who bought it from you directly, or in the betas tab for Steam users.

And. And is the word you seek. We've been there, with prerelease access only for Steam users. It wasn't pretty.

Other than that little detail, hell yes.

[DeliriumTrigger]

1 minute ago, steve_v said:

And. And is the word you seek. We've been there, with prerelease access only for Steam users. It wasn't pretty.

Other than that little detail, hell yes.

If I pushed out all my forum posts to a grammar prerelease channel would you help test for me?  lol

[Snark]

For anyone interested, a detailed discussion of this very thing, here:

Short answer:  It's been done, was eventually discontinued.  You raise a lot of good reasons why doing this can provide advantages-- but from the developer's perspective, it can provide significant disadvantages, too.  It's not "free"; it has costs of its own.  It's far from a slam-dunk that the benefits outweigh the costs; could go either way, depending on circumstances.

[StrandedonEarth]

It probably also had a significant percentage of users who "participated" only for the early access without providing any feedback, useful or otherwise.