DLC Early Access / Beta / any other means for being among first enjoyers?

[EustaceCS]

I cordially apologize if I missed already-given clear answer. I'm under impression that Quality news and other cheese outshadowed truly relevant questions - which are no less worthy to discuss with at least fellow players.

Forum search didn't brought anything of value up.
Blog search brought https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-367 with its Seven Steps. I'll start off it then.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373 sez that current state of DLC is approx. between Step 5 and Step 6 already.
With relatively high chance, since August 2023 transition to Step 6 has been completed successfully.
In other words, even in worst case scenario the Beta is in!

The reason behind keeping it away from average player, namely:

The reason is the obvious problem we would have otherwise: An experimental release is not interesting to many people, but by the time it becomes officially stable, it is old news and nobody cares.

, is more than valid.

Even moreso. I as a veteran of IT, with 10 years of experience in worst gaming- and ecommerce-related armpits our country had to offer, strongly approve this approach.
Sometimes it's just better to cook it until it's ready rather to serve it 'as is' to whomever wants to take a risk and liberty to try. The decision the developers took IS justified, valid and effective.

I, however, am still inclined to ask for any means to access Early Access.
Hell, I'd gladly pay extra for Early Access (if there will be means to do so from our country - but that's my headache, not yours)!

I've seen AAA release projects in a state way worse than your EXPERIMENTAL branches and beta versions, O, Developers.
I'm completely OK with telemetry, if necessary.
If suggestions and bug reports are not welcome - I can live with that too. From my experience, from 90% to 99% of bug reports from end users are useless anyway (because in the end savvy QA & GD DO know ALL bugs and possible improvements in the project without outside help, it's just not the right time to push these forward as soon as these appeared sometimes. Drones rework is a brilliant example of that).
I'm OK with starting from scratch every so often. Since my factory-building skills are meh, I do it on my own anyway.
Since I've been banned from everywhere recently, from LinkedIN to our local Reddit copycat, I simply can't leak anything to anyone. But I'm also OK with a full-fledged NDA and whatever means would be necessary to uphold it, if you want to.

The problem is, the things you teased for DLC are so nice so if I'll wait for a full-fledged release until global release in (speculation!) Q3 2024 - I'll damn explode!

I just need an option to pre-purchase the DLC - and an opportunity to opt-in for Beta
And probably I'm not the only person with such intent...

[mmmPI]

Since I've been banned from everywhere recently, from LinkedIN to our local Reddit copycat, I simply can't leak anything to anyone. But I'm also OK with a full-fledged NDA and whatever means would be necessary to uphold it, if you want to.

Good argument one cannot silence an idea (or a stubborn individual ), NDA are worth nothing if the place where you live don't enforce them when coming from another place.
Something like "i'm so toxic no-one ever listen to me so i can't leak anything" is much better !

Maybe Wube is looking for blind testers, without any prior experience, and if so, they wouldn't write about it in a place made visible to players.

[Koub]

We're all used to the "beta will happen when it will happen" by now (and those who aren't yet will have to get used to it eventually). So far, Wube earned my trust in their ability to take the right decisions for their game development. So I trust them to open beta at the right time, to the right target. And I'm fine not being part of it, as long as the resulting expansion is top notch.

[blazespinnaker]

They already have beta testers I believe, or at least alpha ones, but what I'm quite curious about is what the makeup of that set of testers was.

Are they all factorio players? Or is kovarex looking at feedback from folks outside the base?

Growing the base is one thing, but I'm not sure about trying to find a new one.

The quality addition was very encouraging though. That at least is a hard core factorio addition.

[aka13]

I'd also like to betatest, but I also have not seen any invitations.
perhaps the famous content creators got invited?

[EustaceCS]

Something like "i'm so toxic no-one ever listen to me so i can't leak anything" is much better !

Toxic... unlikely. In majority of cases ban reason was "because". And these services' customer support crews were so unhelpful... so I still don't know what caused this losing streak.
Imagine being banned permanently with ban reason "porn distribution" - but you never posted anything in the first place at that service. And I had it happened to me.
However, as that's exactly what toxic people would say in such situation... ugh...

So far, Wube earned my trust in their ability to take the right decisions for their game development.

True. Generally that's why I was trying to... uuuuuh, how should I call it... discuss a possibility of opt-in for obligation-free testing for pre-order owners? Because We Believe (And Eager To Endure)
Here and now, however, it doesn't look like a great idea since existing version issuing mechanism is probably not ready for experiments of such a scale and of such a kind. So expected hassle is probably not worth the effort anyway.
(buuuuuut, given that Experimental version DLC delivery might be needed anyway and since it might need some testing on willing test subjects... maybe the chance of this happening is still non-zero, right?)

[picklock]

To take part in a (closed) beta test would be nice. I would like to try out the new things and help Wube to find bugs and balance the expansion.

[FuryoftheStars]

Since I've been banned from everywhere recently, from LinkedIN to our local Reddit copycat, I simply can't leak anything to anyone.

Honestly, you probably would have been better off not mentioning any of that. IMO (and I suppose everyone's opinion may vary), it does more harm than good to your chances of being picked.

Putting aside the fact that the claim is unverifiable, it's also fairly irrelevant to your ability to "leak" information as you could have alt accounts, friends that could post for you, and these sites are not the "whole" of the internet (meaning you could post elsewhere that someone else who can post more publicly sees and reposts/links to).

The fact that you have been banned from so many as you claim is also suspicious and leans towards a tendency of not being able to follow the rules and/or other issues, which may not be looked upon favorably for closed beta testing. Your later post of reasons also doesn't help your case any. Reasons of "because" from multiple sites are rather irregular and suspicious in and of themselves (a couple of sites, sure, but several?), but also the one of "porn distribution", even if you didn't as you say, could be an indicator of a compromised account in which someone else did.

[Neutronium]

I don't see this going anywhere, but screw it... I volunteer for alpha access too

[EustaceCS]

The fact that you have been banned from so many as you claim is also suspicious and leans towards a tendency of not being able to follow the rules and/or other issues, which may not be looked upon favorably for closed beta testing.

Just curious.
Is recommendation letter from such small-scale indie company as Wargaming.net confirming, that I'm both good team player and decent tester, enough to stop these highly inappropriate speculations?
Numbered, signed by director of our regional office, as office still exists - letter's genuine status can be confirmed with a single official inquiry.

[Koub]

Is recommendation letter from such small-scale indie company as Wargaming.net confirming, that I'm both good team player and decent tester, enough to stop these highly inappropriate speculations?
Numbered, signed by director of our regional office, as office still exists - letter's genuine status can be confirmed with a single official inquiry.

Just in case your question wasn't rhetorical, I can tell that we, here, don't care. You can be banned from the whole universe, as long as you behave here, you won't be bothered. And on the other hand, you could have thousands of recommandation letters, if misbehave enough on this forum, you will be banned (eventually). And even though I do feel curious on why you were banned, and why you thought it was something you should tell, I don't care that much all things considered.

[Koub] Now moderator-me : I think we've discussed enough of that banned thing, please focus on the actual topic past this post everyone.