Personally I agree about the sub-pen, it seems to me a deal of work that ultimately served very little useful purpose. On the other hand, the scope and complexity of the changes made in the game proper are breath-taking, particularly on the engine-side, which greatly exceeded my expectations given the very small dev team. Frankly I'm astounded they've got as much done as they have. I realise that being told this will likely not assuage your frustration at the interval, however, the complexity of the changes and all the inter-relationships between different aspects of the diesel and engine operations, and of the bots sometimes operating them, has meant a truly formidable amount of bugs and unintended side-effects to deal with - and I only came into testing at the very tail end of it. Suffice to say, the content that's gone in since the beta will assuredly surprise and I think please you, and that if you're left with one or two questions, it'll be "How did 3 or so devs get all this done in the time?", and "how is this much new content still included in the original purchase price?".
I'm not sure, how much as a tester one is permitted to talk about, but I believe testing is available to all who apply - though in my case it took 6 months of writing to get approved - but I'd urge you to try, as the nearer the patch gets to release, the more likely it is I think that testers will be taken on board. I do think that as players learn to operate the new engines, there will be 3 weeks of utter mayhem on the lobbies, as captains adjust to the new realities of response-times from human operated engines, and the miscommunications that will inevitably arise. That said, as the player-base and captains shake-down the process, and drills required, the extra players on the boat will really add to the game experience, especially in games such as Frost and Duyfken.
Keep the faith!
|