We currently have a very limited amount of the community invited to the Beta. The reason for the small numbers are to find and fix common crashes prior to inviting more people. We're getting plenty of crash reports with this population size and are working hard to resolve them all.



We are preparing and deploying small patches that update core balance elements (such as monster life and damage). A team is working on a larger update that will be deployed in a few days.



30% of Beta players are playing in Hardcore. 1558 deaths have occurred so far (12 of which were on the opening beach!)



Kaom has over twice as many kills as Daresso, but Daresso promises to catch up.



The desync fixes aren't yet deployed but we're working very hard on having them ready within 2-3 weeks. I'm so hyped about this.



We're very pleased with the results of the Beta so far. Feedback from testers on Act Four, the new content, Jewel system and UI improvements is very positive. The critical feedback on balance concerns has been extremely useful to addressing early problems.



I want to address a few topics regarding the Beta timer:



Why don't you invite people more rapidly ?



We want to control the population of the Beta. Right now we have plenty of users for the current stage of early crash-fixing and balance changes. Some of the art towards the end of the Beta isn't even in yet. It's honestly a better experience to play it next week than this week.



We will turn up the rate (and allow alternate mechanisms to get in) once we're ready for it.



Why have the timer at all and not just invite people silently?



We like the transparency of the timer. It explains the invite process a lot more clearly than just silent waves where you don't really know if they're happening or not. Those waves would cause a lot less drama, but we prefer visibility where possible.



New users are being invited



Yes. And those new users have been playing the Beta and enjoying it, generating very valuable feedback.



A lot of people signed up for Path of Exile after reading about The Awakening. I understand that they haven't played 1000+ hours yet, but neither has the average Path of Exile player.



More experienced players than new players have been invited so far, by a large margin.



Some shill accounts have been invited



Yes, they have. Then they were banned and legitimate people replaced them.



Our systems for duplicate account detection are very advanced because we use them for large-scale bot/RMT detection. We block 99.5% of the shill accounts that people make, and that number is only growing as we refine the detection mechanisms.



What are you going to do to improve the timer?



We're going to check the accounts manually before they're invited. Any shill accounts that got through our automatic detection will be quickly weeded out in this process. The automatic systems will continue to be refined. The timer will be sped up when we are ready to raise the active population.



To those in the Beta: Thanks for your feedback. We really appreciate the detailed posts.

To those not in the Beta yet: Thanks for your patience. Having played The Awakening, I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to have to wait. YouTube |

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Posted by

Chris

on Grinding Gear Games on