Marauders -> RE: Release 3 - Public Beta (10/27/2006 10:46:04 PM)
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I certainly understand that. I believe that adding PDS 2.0 to the beta builds may have been premature. That left a build up for a long time that had bugs in it that had been long squashed in beta. The builds could not be released even in public form because the PDS was back to alpha stage. Consider two things here though. The first is that David wanted to do PDS 2.0 for a while, but he added other things that had been requested by the Maxuimum-Football community. Many community members who had purchased the game had complaints about the PDS being a utility that did not match up well with the 3D game at times, and David believed it was a better to get PDS 2.0 into the game as soon as he could. Knowing that revamping the defense and doing fure updates in graphics would require the PDS to be integrated, it made sense to get it into the game as the major update to Release 3. I would have waited a few builds to clean up the public release, but that may have required David to take the same hill twice, and he didn't have the time to do that. Almost all software publishers will release their products a bit early, so this isn't new or exclusive to Matrix Games. I don't really like that approach, but that is common. In this case, there were active requests in this forum to release the program early and let the community help up with any remaining bugs. Whether it was correct or not to release when they did, that is debatable, but that is the history of it. The other thing to consider is that there is a group of naysayers that like to make negative posts when a bug shows up. This has delayed the posting of a public beta build, because bugs do show up from time to time after changes in code are made, and I don't believe either David or Matrix Games want to have to read a bunch of attack posts. In my opinion, it is a good idea to get an update out just to get all of those old bugs out of the way, and I know David agrees with that. I must add here that there have been many delays in Release 3 because the beta team has asked for many features and tweaks. I asked for two tight ends and three running backs, Old Coach asked for six defensive linemen, nmleague asked for changes in punt returns, we all asked for various updates to the defense, and so on. There are many examples of the beta team pushing for features that we believed would make the game better and more realistic. The defense has actually been updated twice in Release 3, and it will likely be updated again afterward. I personally have kept an eye on the public board and have relayed wishes and feedback from the community as feature posts in the beta board, and I know that David keeps a tab on the opinions of the community members. That is why positive and constructive feedback is important. Please read my original post above carefully. I have given the extremes of the window for getting the Release 3 beta up on the server. It is important to get it out. It is important to get more feedback from the community, and it is important for the purchasers of Maximum-Football to get an updated copy in their hands.
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