Is it possible to gain access to the Preview branch?

[Jaqenn]

Hi there,

  My life has become cold and empty as I live without my eagerly awaited access to the Outbreak Upgrade for Oxygen Not Included.

  What are the requirements to gain access to the Preview branch for ONI?  Is just asking nicely enough?  If so, can I please have it?

  If I need to prove my worthiness, my best credential is that I'm a software engineer and I pride myself on writing actionable bug reports.

 

  Otherwise, I'll just stare at the clock until Thursday gets here.

  -Jaqenn

  

[Whispershade]

I am dubious they will be adding anyone to for the Outbreak update seeing as it'll be openly available in 4 days.

But the best I can suggest if you are interested in participating in future updates is to contribute regularly to the forums, be constructive, and be helpful.

While I have no idea what they screen for in deciding who to invite for the closed beta, what I have suggested certainly cannot hurt and it makes the whole forum better.

[AlexRou]

10 hours ago, Whispershade said:

While I have no idea what they screen for in deciding who to invite for the closed beta, what I have suggested certainly cannot hurt and it makes the whole forum better.

In the invite message I got they said

Quote

We have identified you as being a frequent contributor to the Oxygen Not Included forum and we believe you might be interested in helping us. 

So yeah best way is to post a lot, not spam, really discuss ideas in detail and hope they notice you if and when they decide to add more people. You can start by picking a random thread and debating the ideas in it. Do not simply say "me too", give intellectual comments whether you think it would work or not. Maybe even add on your own ideas while explaining how and why it would add to the original idea.

What any dev needs are people that can debate ideas so they have a clearer picture of the idea instead of everything being one sided. Which is the whole point of closed testing, you want feedback from a small group of people but you don't want everyone of them saying "I like it", you want them to point out bad things and explain why they are bad and how they can do better. They don't need people who just play the game and report if something is broken.

[Jaqenn]

9 hours ago, AlexRou said:

...you want them to point out bad things and explain why they are bad and how they can do better. They don't need people who just play the game and report if something is broken.

Ohh, that's very valuable to point out.  I'd currently only be submitting bug reports.

I'm not sophisticated enough yet to say 'Hey this system is or isn't a good idea'.  I occasionally think that I've invented a great new build technique, and then I come read on the forums and realize that I'm a chump. 

[Kasuha]

On 22. 8. 2017 at 6:08 AM, AlexRou said:

What any dev needs are people that can debate ideas so they have a clearer picture of the idea instead of everything being one sided. Which is the whole point of closed testing, you want feedback from a small group of people but you don't want everyone of them saying "I like it", you want them to point out bad things and explain why they are bad and how they can do better. They don't need people who just play the game and report if something is broken.

Actually I think the most valuable contribution of the ONI closed testers is feedback on how the game feels on regular, multi-cycle playthrough. Devs don't have time to spend whole day playing 100+ cycle colony on each build to see if the difficulty curve is right. And re-using a colony through builds, though possible, does not make a representative sample. Especially with OU that had multiple considerable swings in features and difficulty during the testing.

Of course there are bugs being reported and fixed and there are discussions and suggestions just like on public forums but just like on public forums, devs also don't share their opinions on these.

[AlexRou]

7 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Actually I think the most valuable contribution of the ONI closed testers is feedback on how the game feels on regular, multi-cycle playthrough.

I think the second sentence includes this. But yeah that's one of the most important ones.

When I said "debate ideas" I don't just mean suggestions, I meant dev ideas as well (stuff they implemented for you to test). 

7 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Of course there are bugs being reported and fixed and there are discussions and suggestions just like on public forums but just like on public forums, devs also don't share their opinions on these.

I feel like bug fixing would be the least of their concerns until they decided on a feature since if they're going to change it anyway it's not a good use of dev time to make sure it works, just that it works well enough to get the feedback. So people who only give bug reports should be pretty low on the list when selecting people.