EPTOn April 13 2016 10:32 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
I also think this whole discussion does not give nearly the appropriate amount of credit to the players that get early access. Most players that have a reputation for hard work and skill in similar games will be able to get access. They have put years into developing those skillsets, similar to how that was the case for SC1/SC2. Your new talent from Overwatch that plays itself to the top throughout the years will be able to do the same if they ever decide to transition into something else.
I also think this whole discussion does not give nearly the appropriate amount of credit to the players that get early access. Most players that have a reputation for hard work and skill in similar games will be able to get access. They have put years into developing those skillsets, similar to how that was the case for SC1/SC2. Your new talent from Overwatch that plays itself to the top throughout the years will be able to do the same if they ever decide to transition into something else.
I think this discussion has to do a lot with the fact that Alpha's and Beta's are much more known and viewable nowadays.
The top players of games always have been invited to Alpha's and Beta's (as you know), yet most of the time we had to sign strict NDA's, where streaming (didn't really exist yet), screenshots, publicly talking about it, previews, reviews were all banned. Most Alpha's consisted of a few hundred players maximum. Depending no the developer, Beta's were much less strict and most of the time a chunk bigger.
Forward to 2016 and we see Beta's getting 1000's of players (Hearthstone, Sc2, Dota), including streams, previews etc.
In contrast to how a Beta used to be, the Beta's we have now, are 99% of the final product itself and they are becoming some sort of advertisement/balance mechanic.
Hell, even payment methods are available in most Beta's, which still amazes me to this day...
Long story short, the way games are produced has changed and Alpha's & Beta's are different from what they used to be, with things like Twitch.
I went back in memory lane (my hotmail account) and quickly found lines like this :
"This Beta test is still under strict NDA. Please do not discuss it outside of our Private Beta Forums"
"This NDA implies that the test pilot may not hand out such confidential information to any third party, such as private individuals, companies, authorities and organizations i.e. to friends, to magazines or YouTube. This agreement applies one year from the day of signing."
There's a reason why these ex-TF2 players are all monsters at OW, and I can tell you it is not because they had early access.
The same reason that ex-TF2 players will be monsters at OW, even without early access.
