It's Christmas.  I doubt we're going to hear anything from anybody until next Monday, if not the New Year.  The Devs deserve time off with their families too, ya know. 

JGH

Professional game devs rarely engage in a public round table discussion concerning a particular game's development.  I have no doubt that the devs are reading everything, analyzing the problems/solutions in house, and only contacting certain beta testers in private for elaborations and what-not.  Making a game is not a pretty process, so most devs keep it in the kitchen. 

They have responded to a few of the earlier threads that they are aware of the problems and have already provided one hotfix for the beta, which is admirable considering how fast it came.  With the possible exception of Vasari mines, there is such a diversity of opinions regarding beta game balance that it is pretty hard for the developers to constructively engage everyone.  Ironclad is a small team -- it is actually pretty cool that the lead developers actually take the time time to read and post on the forums at all, not to mention Frogboy, the CEO of Stardock.

Give them some time to work!  Besides, it's Christmas!

Personally, I think it'd be cool during these betas if there was a scheduled day and time to go on the IRC and hold an orderly conversation with the other players and the devs about what's good, bad and ugly.  Would go a long ways towards quicker feedback on the issues that crop up with such a new release.

You'd have to moderate it some way of course but I think it could help, especially when threads seem to get buried or customers just can't tell if they've been read or not, to have easily quotable lines from the devs regarding common issues.  Would also help as you could cut and paste them into new topics when the same problem inevitably gets posted again.

Beta feedback works best when it's a two-way street. Is there something you want specifically looked at? Are there technical limitations around how the mine spam problem can be solved (as some of the ideas are pretty out there)? Since their damage output is so different, which of the three Starbases is doing what is intended?

These are things that we don't know unless the people in the know (the developers) tell us. Obviously I don't expect someone to sit here on Christmas Day writing posts about the technical problems around Final Judgement, but we need developer feedback on our ideas just like you need player feedback on the implementation.

Because they know what's actually possible. If we all get together and decide that the best solutoin for mines is for them to be invisible without a scout in the area, its really a lot of wasted discussion if it turns out that it's impossible to do for technical reasons.

I was a software engineer for 7 years in a shop that had a formal engineering dept, qa department, etc. They way things worked it we'd release code, qa would perform regression testing (what we're doing), and if they found a defect would enter it into Team Foundation Systems, which is a MIcrosoft tool for change control (listing and resolving defects and such).

If we needed to talk to the qa personnel, we would. Otherwise, we would just fix things and re-submit to qa for further testing. The objective was to resolve 90 percent of the listed defects on the first time through. I think these guys have the situation well in hand. We've given them very well-defined defect with plenty of suggestions of how things should be fixed. Now the devs need to take a decision based on that and implement a fix.

I would expect to have something not this week, but closer to the beginning of the week after next (after 1 January) due to holidays.

 When we get the next beta release, expect about a 90 percent solution first time through. They'll probably need to revisit mines again following the next release, but just for fine-tuning. Reason is that it affects play so much.

Just my 2 cents.

What Frogboy said. We are all back at work as of yesterday. Now and I'm going through every single post people made on the forums and the literally "thousands" of emails we received. Don't worry, starbases will get their updates, mines are being reworked, bugs being fixed etc.

Just remember, its the same procedure we used for all the original Sins betas and it worked out just fine in the end

Thank you both, Blair & Frogboy, for the responses in this thread.  I'm sure everyone appreciates your ongoing efforts and the opportunity to join in the beta - anyone urging you onward with undue alacrity is just excited at the potential, largely based upon the wonderful success of a game you've given us all in the past. 

thx for the very nice answer and I think that this is pretty much what most of us are looking for.  To the point and it explains so much with so few lines.

Keep up the awesome work and I know everything will work out for the best. 

I had this same issue as well.  during an online game (through ICO), with 6 players and on Beta.  It seemed to happen when the game was paused (once the game was unpaused), the speeds of all of the resources would increase quite a bit for 2-5 minutes, then they would revert back to the normal speed.

It did this after every pause...3 or 4 different pauses.

Make more posts like this.  Speaking from experience, customers always appreciate a deverloper's presence more than visible action.  It is very easy for someone to imagine that they're being ignored, especially if they're familiar with industry-standard beta tests.  Probably one of the biggest reasons Stardock is percieved as being "in touch with customers" is the fact that its staff actually participate (albiet sparingly) in forum discussions.

What you REALLY need is a development blog.