Yeah skyrim smithing was very basic indeed, i mean come on how can you instantly smith a iron dagger is highly unrealistic
The function for the code still needs to be implemented to the backer profile? Canât wait!
Believe it or not, alpha release falls right on my birthday.
Good timing Warhorse! 
Really looking forward to check it out.
Yeah, thatâs certainly a weak point of Skyrim, that âshouting at dragonsâ thing was far more realistic 
They actually asked specifically for feedback on how the game is running on individual PCs to be included in any bug reports and what not.
Thanks Warhorse! This bit of news pretty much made my week.
As a developer I do want to say a few things to my fellow Alpha TestersâŠ
(To be clear, I am a SQL dev, I build databases, not games. But to an extent, development is development and I at least have some idea of what software this early in itâs development can be like)
This is very likely to be unlike any gaming experience youâve had. Even if youâve been in a Beta or two for an MMO⊠this is a different animal entirely. It is highly unlikely anyone reading this, who does not work in the gaming industry, has ever tested or even SEEN a game this early in development. Not even close to this early. They are going to pull back the curtain and let us see how the sausage is made. Even expect us to lend a hand in making it. And taste test so they can dial in the seasoning just rightâŠ
We are not there to have fun. We WILL have fun I am sure, it wonât be a chore⊠but we are not invited to the alpha to have fun as some reward for backing. We are there to TEST. We are supposed to break things, find bugs, cause crashes. We are volunteering to deal with all the ugly warts, hassles and game breaks so the players of the final, finished game wonât have to. Ever read a review of a game with a lot of bugs? They always hate it donât they. Few things ruin a game more than bugs⊠and we are offering to wade into the equivalent of that freaking bug chamber from the Temple of Doom folks. Itâs going to be slimy, nasty, and a cockroach is going to climb right up your arm and freak you outâŠ
Bugs arenât fun (although as a programmer I can say killing bugs is fun) The truth is⊠if âfunâ is all you are after⊠wait it out. It will become more âfunâ as it matures. I expect coming in this early to be real work. Fun work, but yes, work. I am going to have to fill out bug reports. I am going to have to gather data for devs in their attempts to resolve said bug reports. I might be needed to help replicate the bug, or provide more details⊠etc. etc. This is going to take time. I might want to log in and run and around practice sword fighting or whatever for âfunâ⊠but find an email from a dev that really needs to know what drivers I was using and could I update my nvidia drivers to version blah blah and try blah blue blee⊠to see if that fixes it⊠now, instead of playing for âfunâ, I have an obligation to do âworkâ to help squash the bug. I accept this. I expect it to work this way. I am fine with this. Itâs all about expectationâŠ
But if you are unprepared⊠it could be irksome. This early of an alpha? Folks we will be hell and gone from anything resembling a release candidate. I am expecting a bug riddled mess honestly. We will have extremely limited functionality and probably a tiny map. I give it a 10% chance that due to some weird hardware quirk or whatever⊠that I wonât even be able to load the alpha until some later version.
So for everyone participating in the Alpha, I want to ask you to take a deep breath, take a step back and think about what this really means. We do have a responsibility here. I canât make you take it seriously. If you want to use the alpha time to screw around, have fun and never fill out a bug report or assist⊠thatâs cool. Your prerogative. But if you actually want to contribute to the Alpha and assist in making this the best game possible⊠adjust your expectations DOWN and be prepared for some actual work every now again. Think of yourself as an unpaid QA Tester that gets to work (for free) whenever they feel like it. Itâs a part time job we do for fun instead of pay.
Come into it with that mindset and I think you will have a more positive experience. If you want to play a game early⊠and your only motivation is to have fun with it⊠my advice is wait. Honestly. The 10/22 release will be the buggiest, nastiest, least âfunâ release in the history of this game. It will only get better. The âI want to play it earlyâ crowd will be happier when it is in a more playable state. The âI want to test it and help make it better crowdâ will be the ones enjoying themselves this early.
I have no inside knowledge of the alpha, this is all just speculation on my part⊠but I do think it is important that people manage expectations. Iâve seen some ugliness over at Star Citizen that really boiled down to people having unrealistic expectations for an early alpha. If you walk in with your eyes open and correct expectation, this will be a blast. But if you go into it thinking you will get more than you will get this early, or are irked by the bugs, or donât want to take the time to help bughunt⊠first you will be disappointed, then you will be angry, then you will vent on this forum about how terrible the game is, the development is way off and moving too slow, I mean itâs already a MONTH late and we get this buggy mess⊠Iâve seen/heard it before. The SC guys will probably back me up on this. But if you go in with eyes wide open, fully aware of what you are getting into and what âearly alpha testingâ actually means⊠youâre going to enjoy it.
So anyway, didnât mean to be a downer and all âput your shoulder to grindstones this isnât fun this is WORK!â, but having seen how expectations can cause problems elsewhere⊠I felt I had to make this post here hoping to stave off some of that. Please, have fun in the alpha⊠just donât expect to be playing a finished game or anything close to it. Small map, some quests, some NPCs⊠it will be rough and buggy⊠there will be crap animations they donât want to waste time fixing until the have the mocap they intend to replace it with⊠it will crash on you⊠you will get stuck in a wall if you talk to an NPC while having a cup in your inventory for some weird random reason. As a fake example; you see if the property of the cup isnât reset to X before starting a conversation tree, the variable gets lost when this other proc calls it⊠thatâs the kind of stuff I am talking about⊠weird random glitches⊠that are often weird even to programmers. In fact this fictitious example is a good one⊠your job in this as a tester is to make sure the dev knows you had a cup in your inventory. Iâm serious. The cup is the key. At first you wouldnât think that relevant, you got stuck in a wall when talking to an NPC⊠you wouldnât associate the cup with the bug⊠but if the devs never know about the cup, they wonât be able to recreate the bug⊠so at some point in the back and forth, you might be asked to list everything in your inventory or take a screen shot and send it in⊠or maybe you were clever enough to figure out it only happens when the cup is in your inventory⊠however we get there, the problem wonât be solved until they know about the seemingly irrelevant cup in your inventory. This is what bug hunting is. This is the sort of thing Warhorse might ask of you on occasion.
Manage your expectations to something more like that, and youâll be fine. If you think you are playing the final game a year before everyone else in 3 weeks⊠well⊠I know I donât want to read your rants of extreme disappointment on the 23rdâŠ
I hope this didnât come off as condescending or arrogant. And again, I actually donât know how this alpha will go, this is nothing but a guess based on some previous experiences and my experience dealing with rollouts and testing in development of unrelated software. If Warhorse says something to contradict me⊠believe them not me, Iâm pretty clueless actually.
But I really wanted to try to manage expectations heading into an early alpha. Iâve come to learn very, VERY few people actually know what that means.
Any other programmers or devs want to back me up, add some points or critique mine? What does everyone else in the community think our mindset should be going into this? Maybe I am thinking too much like a developer and approaching this too much like professional software testing gigâŠ
But I swear I saw people lose their minds on forums over what was actually really bad expectation on their part of what they were getting into in âearly alphaâ
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Amen.
Your post should be made sticky and shown in big red letters to all potential alpha testers
As an embedded software developer i know how frustating it can be for everyone, if you donât get detailed bug reports. The customer yells at my collegues (and boy, can those semiconductor guys yell), they have to try really hard to get more information from the customer than just âYOUR SYSTEM DOESNâT WORKâ, and even then the information given tends to be incomplete or incorrect so i canât reproduce the issue. E-Mails fly back and forth, each reply including more and more managers and other important people in CC, until finally that cup in your inventory is mentioned. That seemingly irrelevant key information i really needed to figure out whatâs going on.
The actual bugfix rarely takes more than a few hours of work (testing included), but getting there can be a real pain.
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Too long post to read. Can you please do some summary of the important? 
He made two vital points regarding the upcoming alpha:
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Donât expect to get something even remotely resembling a âfinishedâ game. There will be a lot of bugs, and maybe the alpha wonât even run on your system.
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File meaningful bug reports, providing as much information to the devs as possible (even stuff that seems unimportant/unrelated to you)
3 Likes
I wouldnât worry too much about expectations and participation. Most people joining up for alpha stages now what to expect - and it isnât as if the devs arenât vocal enough for it to be clear. In an other game where they offered early alpha access it surprised me initially as well how large the participation in bug hunting/reporting as well as platform and performance test was (and having fun while doing it). But I think itâs just because very few people actually go for alpha access looking for a fully working game, instead want to take a look under the hood of game development - seeing more of the process than in other cases.
Yeah, Iâve seen it. But it still seems weird to me to ask for PC performance reports specificially in such an early alpha.
Well the only thing I can figure to be honest is that they want to start on optimization of the game as soon as possible and having a minimum spec would be good information to have to set a baseline.
I think it said something about people being to apathetic to take 5 minutes to read donât need to know anyway. Something like that anyway.
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Wanted to back up the other voodoo dude hereâŠ
If you are performance tuning, the first thing you need is a baseline. No baseline, nothing to compare against to know if the change made any improvement.
I donât expect them to be optimizing the code this early⊠but I would expect them want a baseline for performance comparison when they do get there.
Thanks - nice name btw. 
First of all, thanks for taking the time to actually write all this! Itâs really important and nice read too. As a product specialist / dev myself (enterprise software) I totally agree and I think it doesnât really matter what software you create, there are always similarities.
Totally agree, it might be a good idea having a thread on how to create reports that are actually helping, as sometimes reproducing bugs can be a nightmare, rarely even impossible (funny but I actually stumble upon those cases quite often at $dayjob). Maybe, and this goes more to the devs, have someone create a little post what specific data is helpful to you.
Iâm exited as well. October is my favret month and Halloween my favoret holiday. So I am exited to see this come out for me and you all now sometime around the 22nd. Fingers crossed there will be no further complications and we can have it by the new ETA.
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eh so how will I get the alpha? yes Iâm a baron and the instruction posted on the kickstarter update is not clear⊠help⊠ps I know it will be on 22nd october.
As far as I know you will simply recieve an email containing further informations. Alpha will be distributed via Steam so you should register a Steam account in case you are not already using Steam. You must then download and install Steam client to your computer.
I personaly find Steam to be perfectly reasonable solution.
oh I see so when will they send us new email? Iâm an avid user of steam hehe and Iâm surprised the alpha will be through steam, I thought it will be stand alone like most other big kickstarter projects.