Pricing Suggestions

... and here I always thought it was those people with really poor eyesight that get jobs enforcing rules at various professional sports matches... in fact, I think their positions may have actually originated not as officiators, but rather just as fans with really close spots since they are so f'n blind...

Oh wow...and these things are actually considered valuable?

I wouldn't say your snotty exactly, you just are more accustom to a badge of honor mechanic than the current model, nothing wrong with that per-say. Personally, I have to say I am on the fence with the current model myself, do I like getting early access to see what's coming, yes. But more often then not, by the time these beta's hit the public the core has been decided and can't be changed, so if I have feed back counter to a core system, it's useless.

I'll be honest, I don't like doing bug reports unless I can report from in game, and it's fast and easy. But one thing I do like doing is taking a game, and saying "Wow, this mechanic is great!" or "this fight was counter intuitive, here's some things you could do..." but by the time most betas get to me, that phase is long past, or the game is in such an early state as to be so bug filled I can't rightly play it.

As for not buying a car, or Hamburger frozen... I do have to say on one level, I understand where your coming from, but it really is apples to oranges. No other product does this, simply because no other product CAN do this, if they could, they would.

For me, what a game needs to get right the first time, is the storyline, the main mechanics, and the general feel. So long as their committed to fixing their product, I'll support them.

It's when things can't be patched in later, that I cry foul, but that's already what I said.

Part of the problem though, is something I think that is often over looked, in the good old days, as it were, a quality title could be spat out by 4-5 guys in a garage and the massive floppies mailed by the US postal system to buyers. Now a days, to even get looked at, you have hundred thousand dollar, if not millions of dollars in a CGI engine, another million or two in sound effects, and then the quadrillion lines of code to make sure your in game water effects make the player feel like their surrounded in the ocean complete with smell-o-vision sea salt air freshener. A lot of time money and industry goes into making newer and better graphics, hyper realism and such, and this is draining 80-90% of a games budget, they can't afford not to rush to market.

What needs to be done instead is investing in tools to automate, and make the new awesome graphics cheaper, and faster, but that's unlikely to happen because Graphic artist will complain their job goes to a machine, but if we manage to get the cost of making a triple A title down, then we might see a return to Quality first mentality because it isn't so much how do we make a game without breaking the bank? On the plus side we'd also get more expermenation and less formulaic games like COD 2014 Advanced Modern Warfighter breach addition.

In short I doubt we will ever see the level of polish we used to on a game again, but at least not until we can offset the cost to allow for such, but I also think, that it doesn't matter to much, because these things CAN be so quickly remedied by those with a mind and a will to do so.

(PS: As an aside, and not entirely inline with the rest of this, I myself, am just waiting for a Holodeck/Matrix environment, where I can jack myself in, have a computer compensate for my disability, and tell it, "Today I feel like playing an RPG, Computer, your the Game Master, give me a story." And have a "game" where I'm not limited to what the designers thought I could do, and coded, but only by my own imagination, in such that, whatever I do, some A.I. Game program will come up with a response no matter how off the wall, and the game will continue.)