Will BI still release betas like they used to?

[Tankbuster 1746]

This more frequent use of beta builds is a very nice idea, it gives us confidence that the developers are actually doing stuff on the game - "patch will be ready when it's ready" was an insult to paying customers in my opinion, but it leads me to the following question.

Are we still going to get occasional "official" beta releases as we used to get, or will patches from now on be full update versions?

[Zipper5 74]

Well, I doubt we'll see the same sort of beta patches that we had in ArmA. At least, not by name. The current beta patches for ArmA II, content wise, are identical to those in ArmA. They both install into a mod folder and both can easily be enabled or disabled, for example.

I think we'll just be seeing these beta patches, and then the final patches, since the current beta patches are doing the same job the "official" beta patches for ArmA did.

[bluesteel 0]

What benefit would you have if BI picked one of the beta-builds and labeled it "official beta"? What do you expect of an "official beta"?

It would obviously not be more stable than the other beta builds; "beta" means that the code is not fully tested and potentially unstable. After all, the whole point is to test for bugs and get community feedback on any changes before releasing the next official patch version (1.04).

Releasing an "official beta" would not help developement either, since it would split the testers into two camps, one that uses the "official beta" and one that uses the newest build. Since testing is only useful if done on the newest build, this would benefit noone in the end.

[Dwarden 1125]

public betas are official betas ... just built more frequently than A1 ones ...