I am a bit of a cynic because projects sell the fantastic and then spend a lot of time later explaining "what that really means". The MMO part of the industry is going through those awkward teenage years. It's like they're going through financial puberty and trying to jump every revenue stream they can find.
I'm not going to complain. I have more games available now than ever before. Some of my most cherished games have been graphically overhauled and been patched to run on current Windows. If anything I'm grateful and wish I had more time to burn on playing them all.
what so many dont see because they are not from the outside looking in is that the 'top tier' of the gaming industry are experts at manipulation. hype up a game, get as many pre-orders has possible then go hide.
Then wait about 3 months for everyone to forget and then do it again.
It essentially goes like that with anything entertainment related. When there are thousands of possible entertainment avenues, that's essentially the go to choice for staying relevant. Building hype is really nothing more than spreading product awareness....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What annoys me is that the games are not providing worlds anymore.
When it gets to the point where you hardly even read quest text because it is NEVER necessary to.
When there is simply no atmosphere to the game, merely tactics.
----
When EQ2 launched we actually saw the first game where HALF of the game had a world and the other half didn't. The sheer oppression of the evil side, drew the players together and they treated each other better than the good side which was a candyland which drove the players to nodesteal etc. EQ2 was a pretty nice psychological experiment at its launch.
at launch the idea and concept was considered radical. In fact still to this day a 'top tier' developer will come up with one game feature and hyping it up as the second coming of Christ. However in the 'new' 'indie market' of today with games coming out with a metric ton of radical features and ideas nearly every month, looking back at something seemingly (to me now) very simple, basic really illustrates how far some parts of the industry have come. I played EQ2 but I was always reclunant to play it, I never found it to be all that great to be honest. Now of course you would have to pay me money to play it
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I can't say I lost hope but the devs shortsightedness of always nerfing and focusing any promising project on the worst most casual players do annoy me. Take GW2 that OP complains about, it was a great game in the first beta weekend but since it offered any kind of difficulty they started to nerf it to the point that it lost most of the fun before it even launched.
And by making a game so easy that anyone can play it without actually making an effort you might get the players who don't really care enjoy themselves a bit more for the 3 weeks they stay in the game but after that the rest of us will be stuck in games where only a few endgame parts offer any challenge and forces us to bash us through loads of content we can complete with zero thought or effort before we get a few good things.
The lack of originality doesn't help the genre but it is catering to people that really is't into MMOs but could play one a few weeks now and again that really hurt the genre nowadays. I ain't complaining that Wow tried to make MMOs a bit more accessible in 2004, the none MMO fans generally actually learned to play the game anyways because while it was easier then EQ it still had plenty of challenges in it.
I did see one really promising thing the last week: when Agry Joe tried that Star trek VR game... Not a MMO but it did offer co-operation on a level that MMOs forgot 10-12 years ago and it would be great if both MMOs and regular multiplayer games could get that back and actually improved instead of so dumbed down that my cat could play DPS.
Besides that, I have a bit of optimism on Pantheon still, and some slight hope with Shards, Crowfall and Lineage eternal.
And you might call me elitist for wanting things harder but the games don't have to be close to impossible from start to end, just enough challenging so you actually need to think and work together with others while playing them. And that starting when you finish the tutorial, not after you leveled up to max.
Opening day for any mmo is so exciting to me. So many first days on a new release or even an older game I'm getting into were very much fun, I was like a little kid.
My first time in feeling disappointment was the release of Warhammer Online. I studied this game so much and the anticipation was unbearable !....... On log in, I instantly didn't like the graphics and I'm not even a graphics fan. Then the small zones, then two weeks later the feeling was done.
Still, my hope remained high. I had the same feeling with Guild Wars 2. With my guild in place and all ready to start. I was instantly subjected to my story line, this was ok and played a few days, but the dynamic of everything did me in, I only lasted the first 30 days. It was well done, very well done but everything was too handed to me so easily. This was a turn off.
This is when the magic was gone and have been searching since.
Do you have a breaking point, or are you enjoying everything ?
I think I've identified the problem.
I'm also sorry, but it's "lose". Loose is something you do to an arrow.
I really don't have any high expectations for games that have yet to arrive, and I try not to spend time worrying about things that are outside my reach to change.
As such, I've never lost hope, although I have been to some pretty bleak places in life (none of them concerning video games (lol?)), because I know that things do change for the better with gentle guidance and positive direction. As Red from The Shawshank Redemption said: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies".
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Ambitious MMO's shouldn't be developed by Indies, they should be taken by the big companies with the money and studios to handle the task.
Instead, is Indies taking on such projects. So not exciting times for the genre presently, we will see how it goes though.
exactly on point.
If the top tier developers had even a fraction of the willingness to experiment and let their developers create rather then bean counting every single feature the landscape would be radically different.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
If the top tier developers had even a fraction of the willingness to experiment and let their developers create rather then bean counting every single feature the landscape would be radically different.
Yup, it causes this silly reality where the ones with less capability are the ones trying to do the most ambitious things, obviously, that isn't working because of the constant struggle.
Until this changes, if it changes, there's little to be excited with that we could consider a big deal, we have Star Citizen for one MMO we can put it as top tier dev, but for any near-future; I can't think of other similar examples attm.
If the top tier developers had even a fraction of the willingness to experiment and let their developers create rather then bean counting every single feature the landscape would be radically different.
Yup, it causes this silly reality where the ones with less capability are the ones trying to do the most ambitious things, obviously, that isn't working because of the constant struggle.
Until this changes, if it changes, there's little to be excited with that we could consider a big deal, we have Star Citizen for one MMO we can put it as top tier dev, but for any near-future; I can't think of other similar examples attm.
To be fair a lot of those are working however they do not have the validation of the hype machines to tell the sheep that it is in fact valid.
That and graphics but with that said looking at games like Life is Feudal and how the graphics game engines have changed pricing to make it accessible to really anyone that is slowly changing. However, without the validation of the paid for hype engines it will likely always be more for the experienced gamers
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I dont think most developers are trying to manipulate people. By the very nature of not showing your hand, as we have seen companies like Blizzard release new ideas they did not create. Just because devs spent 2-3 years talking about them in great detail. Because of this vague language needs to be used. When your vague people tend to fill in the gaps and hear what they want. Its an unforgiving world we live in.
For the most part, if I keep up with the development of a game I can see it "going wrong" (according to my personal preferences, not in an objective way) long before launch, so there isn't usually that sharp disappointment from a crashing hype train. The last time I was deeply disappointed in a game after I got hyped up, bought it, and started playing, was the original Fable. On the other hand my hope for the single-player RPG genre was revived somewhat by Skyrim. I still haven't gotten around to playing Witcher 3, but I have fairly high hopes for that one.
As far as MMOs go, I haven't looked forward to a particular one since ArchAge was headed in an obviously PTW direction and Landmark wanted to charge people quite a lot to play the beta, before eventually getting canceled.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Last MMO I got really excited for was SWToR and I loved it. Before that was Warhammer and as a DAoC fan I had high hopes. That was a let down but didnt for a second make me upset at the entire industry.
What is "losing hope" ? I don't know the meaning of that. I'm having fun playing video games, old and new.
Your enjoyment threshold is simply lower than mine. Im happy youre happy. But i need something more.
The arrogant attitude can be returned in a similar way. Maybe you have non realistic expectations instead of selecting in the HUGE amount of available games and enjoying those the closest to your tastes.
some people need more than what the plebs enjoy, otherwise they might feel like they have some sort of common ground with people that are obviously below them. . .
And it's, "[i]who[/i] are obviously below them." People are referred to in plural differently from objects.
Silly you, plebs aren't people. . .so my grammar was correct.
You just haven't realized yet, you got older, the things that appeal to you in your youth don't anymore. That includes MMOs, Crayons, Legos and Ketchup on Chicken Nuggets.
You are clinging to your youth trying to relive the great feeling of a 40 man raid. Its not going to happen, its unhealthy. Move on, play another game, different genre. Take your MMO blinders off, there are 1000 games around you. Have a NEW glorious experience instead of trying to revive the ones that's 10 years old.
I moved to League of Legends for years, now I'm on For Honor, next month I might be playing some survival sim. Don't you ever get sick and tired of playing "Catch" on the playground? Lets try Frisbee
After the release of the game, and the long grind just to reach lvl 50, it was an alright game, I pretty much expected to be the way that it was, 75% on simply meeting expectations ( the cake was a lie when reaching end game)
but it failed;
-Tube shooter space sim: their tube shooter space sim mini game instead of a full twich style kind of combat system, also it was not co-op, and did not have some kind of tournament system or incorporate more into story
-Illum - failed open world pvp
-Iokath - failed open world pvp, barely anyone is engaging in the non-incentivized open world pvp they created
- No day/night cycle
- static worlds, npcs just stand there
- no mini games other than the 3d space shooter as an apology for their tube shooter - so no pazaak, swoop racing, 3d chess etc
- Bounty hunting, was a meaningless grind and not what a person would expect of bounty hunting in swtor
- Gambling , but in the form of the cartel market and not with in game currency as a pvp mini game
- no new classes since launch
- barely added new races - only 2 so far since launch for a SW game
- not enough character creation options considering the effort they put into the cartel market vs character creation
- limited game development - very small expansions with very little content
And just recently, they mentioned open world pvp in Iokath like it was going to be wonderful with walkers and pvp, and even delayed it to further fine tune it. But just like with bounty hunting, they take an idea and just do something else with it. When you imagine pvp with walkers in the open world, what do you imagine? Basically a seige with NPCs, and political system for players to engage in, but not that, they did somethign else and people did not like it, and so there is basically no pvp in iokath.
- No large WZ
- class balance - merc is qiute OP doing a lot of dmg, more than other Damage dealers, while also being able to heal
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
If I had lost all hope, I wouldn't be reading or posting here. With that said it my hope is dormant, waiting for the current trend to die, so a real mmorpg (virtual world) might emerge and invigorate the genre.
The first blow to my hopes were when Vanguard got into the hands of SOE. Vanguard was not that great a game, but it had potential and it was still closer to a real mmorpg than anything we seen since.
The next blow was cancellation of EqNext. The ONLY game that had a vision of living breathing virtual world - Ignore the Lion king, the poor combat, the crazy gamble with spawning Landmark on top, just the vision as it was written on the foundation papers. Of course the cancellation was easy to foresee already at the time of the SOE sale.
And now we wait ...
Probably going to be some years still before one of the indie projects will burn through and set a new standard of living breathing virtual worlds. Which one it will be is hard to say, as there are so many factors that can influence. A crazy prediction is that first we have to find a king of the many new pvp mmos popping up, and the king will probably be one that includes survival/builder elements to a high degree. After that we will see living breathing world concepts (EqNext like) because pure pvp games just doesn't have the audience numbers, and eventually a pve based game that wants to be something other than a story driven themepark will take the throne... in 2022.
ALSO we will need to see f2p die or change significantly, because the way f2p is designed in current games works against the game as a living breathing virtual world. F2p (as is) is much too intrusive and immersion breaking, and needs to be taken outside the game itself.
Pretty much everything post-WoW has been a disappointment to me. Guild wars 2 sucked me in for a little while, but i just didn't care about an endgame without trinity.
I've still been enjoying plenty of games in other genres though, so It's not all bad.
You just haven't realized yet, you got older, the things that appeal to you in your youth don't anymore. That includes MMOs, Crayons, Legos and Ketchup on Chicken Nuggets.
You are clinging to your youth trying to relive the great feeling of a 40 man raid. Its not going to happen, its unhealthy. Move on, play another game, different genre. Take your MMO blinders off, there are 1000 games around you. Have a NEW glorious experience instead of trying to revive the ones that's 10 years old.
I moved to League of Legends for years, now I'm on For Honor, next month I might be playing some survival sim. Don't you ever get sick and tired of playing "Catch" on the playground? Lets try Frisbee
Ask a lifetime golfer if they ever get tired of it. Or to go play something else.
Loving only MMORPGs is like that, nothing else will do.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What annoys me is that the games are not providing worlds anymore.
When it gets to the point where you hardly even read quest text because it is NEVER necessary to.
When there is simply no atmosphere to the game, merely tactics.
----
When EQ2 launched we actually saw the first game where HALF of the game had a world and the other half didn't. The sheer oppression of the evil side, drew the players together and they treated each other better than the good side which was a candyland which drove the players to nodesteal etc. EQ2 was a pretty nice psychological experiment at its launch.
at launch the idea and concept was considered radical. In fact still to this day a 'top tier' developer will come up with one game feature and hyping it up as the second coming of Christ. However in the 'new' 'indie market' of today with games coming out with a metric ton of radical features and ideas nearly every month, looking back at something seemingly (to me now) very simple, basic really illustrates how far some parts of the industry have come. I played EQ2 but I was always reclunant to play it, I never found it to be all that great to be honest. Now of course you would have to pay me money to play it
While the new indie market is long on new ideas they remain very short on delivery, at least in the MMORPG space.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
When I realized the concept of building a better virtual world was no longer of interest to developers of MMOs, or most of the people they were catering to.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Actually some of the problem is how betas are handled today.
In the past beta testing was by a relatively small circle of people who were very interested in the game. These people dedicated their time to helping improve the games during development. And if you didn't give bug reports, and opinions, etc. you probably weren't invited back to the next phase. I found the very best communities beta-testing games.
Now beta testing, if you can call it that, is a game preview by whoever is willing to pay the most. As a result the games are not being put into the grist mill. If there are exploits, they are not revealed and instead saved for the purpose of using them when the game launches. There also isn't that developer/tester relationship that the old games had in testing.
Comments
It essentially goes like that with anything entertainment related. When there are thousands of possible entertainment avenues, that's essentially the go to choice for staying relevant. Building hype is really nothing more than spreading product awareness....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
at launch the idea and concept was considered radical. In fact still to this day a 'top tier' developer will come up with one game feature and hyping it up as the second coming of Christ. However in the 'new' 'indie market' of today with games coming out with a metric ton of radical features and ideas nearly every month, looking back at something seemingly (to me now) very simple, basic really illustrates how far some parts of the industry have come.
I played EQ2 but I was always reclunant to play it, I never found it to be all that great to be honest. Now of course you would have to pay me money to play it
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Ambitious MMO's shouldn't be developed by Indies, they should be taken by the big companies with the money and studios to handle the task.
Instead, is Indies taking on such projects. So not exciting times for the genre presently, we will see how it goes though.
And by making a game so easy that anyone can play it without actually making an effort you might get the players who don't really care enjoy themselves a bit more for the 3 weeks they stay in the game but after that the rest of us will be stuck in games where only a few endgame parts offer any challenge and forces us to bash us through loads of content we can complete with zero thought or effort before we get a few good things.
The lack of originality doesn't help the genre but it is catering to people that really is't into MMOs but could play one a few weeks now and again that really hurt the genre nowadays. I ain't complaining that Wow tried to make MMOs a bit more accessible in 2004, the none MMO fans generally actually learned to play the game anyways because while it was easier then EQ it still had plenty of challenges in it.
I did see one really promising thing the last week: when Agry Joe tried that Star trek VR game... Not a MMO but it did offer co-operation on a level that MMOs forgot 10-12 years ago and it would be great if both MMOs and regular multiplayer games could get that back and actually improved instead of so dumbed down that my cat could play DPS.
Besides that, I have a bit of optimism on Pantheon still, and some slight hope with Shards, Crowfall and Lineage eternal.
And you might call me elitist for wanting things harder but the games don't have to be close to impossible from start to end, just enough challenging so you actually need to think and work together with others while playing them. And that starting when you finish the tutorial, not after you leveled up to max.
I think I've identified the problem.
I'm also sorry, but it's "lose". Loose is something you do to an arrow.
I really don't have any high expectations for games that have yet to arrive, and I try not to spend time worrying about things that are outside my reach to change.
As such, I've never lost hope, although I have been to some pretty bleak places in life (none of them concerning video games (lol?)), because I know that things do change for the better with gentle guidance and positive direction. As Red from The Shawshank Redemption said: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies".
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
exactly on point.
If the top tier developers had even a fraction of the willingness to experiment and let their developers create rather then bean counting every single feature the landscape would be radically different.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Until this changes, if it changes, there's little to be excited with that we could consider a big deal, we have Star Citizen for one MMO we can put it as top tier dev, but for any near-future; I can't think of other similar examples attm.
To be fair a lot of those are working however they do not have the validation of the hype machines to tell the sheep that it is in fact valid.
That and graphics but with that said looking at games like Life is Feudal and how the graphics game engines have changed pricing to make it accessible to really anyone that is slowly changing. However, without the validation of the paid for hype engines it will likely always be more for the experienced gamers
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
As far as MMOs go, I haven't looked forward to a particular one since ArchAge was headed in an obviously PTW direction and Landmark wanted to charge people quite a lot to play the beta, before eventually getting canceled.
:awesome:
Hey now, don't be knocking ketchup on nuggets!
After the release of the game, and the long grind just to reach lvl 50, it was an alright game, I pretty much expected to be the way that it was, 75% on simply meeting expectations ( the cake was a lie when reaching end game)
but it failed;
-Tube shooter space sim: their tube shooter space sim mini game instead of a full twich style kind of combat system, also it was not co-op, and did not have some kind of tournament system or incorporate more into story
-Illum - failed open world pvp
-Iokath - failed open world pvp, barely anyone is engaging in the non-incentivized open world pvp they created
- No day/night cycle
- static worlds, npcs just stand there
- no mini games other than the 3d space shooter as an apology for their tube shooter - so no pazaak, swoop racing, 3d chess etc
- Bounty hunting, was a meaningless grind and not what a person would expect of bounty hunting in swtor
- Gambling , but in the form of the cartel market and not with in game currency as a pvp mini game
- no new classes since launch
- barely added new races - only 2 so far since launch for a SW game
- not enough character creation options considering the effort they put into the cartel market vs character creation
- limited game development - very small expansions with very little content
And just recently, they mentioned open world pvp in Iokath like it was going to be wonderful with walkers and pvp, and even delayed it to further fine tune it. But just like with bounty hunting, they take an idea and just do something else with it. When you imagine pvp with walkers in the open world, what do you imagine? Basically a seige with NPCs, and political system for players to engage in, but not that, they did somethign else and people did not like it, and so there is basically no pvp in iokath.
- No large WZ
- class balance - merc is qiute OP doing a lot of dmg, more than other Damage dealers, while also being able to heal
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Wtf, we talking about game lol, not freaking life things.
Lose hope Lmfao.
The first blow to my hopes were when Vanguard got into the hands of SOE. Vanguard was not that great a game, but it had potential and it was still closer to a real mmorpg than anything we seen since.
The next blow was cancellation of EqNext. The ONLY game that had a vision of living breathing virtual world - Ignore the Lion king, the poor combat, the crazy gamble with spawning Landmark on top, just the vision as it was written on the foundation papers. Of course the cancellation was easy to foresee already at the time of the SOE sale.
And now we wait ...
Probably going to be some years still before one of the indie projects will burn through and set a new standard of living breathing virtual worlds. Which one it will be is hard to say, as there are so many factors that can influence.
A crazy prediction is that first we have to find a king of the many new pvp mmos popping up, and the king will probably be one that includes survival/builder elements to a high degree. After that we will see living breathing world concepts (EqNext like) because pure pvp games just doesn't have the audience numbers, and eventually a pve based game that wants to be something other than a story driven themepark will take the throne... in 2022.
ALSO we will need to see f2p die or change significantly, because the way f2p is designed in current games works against the game as a living breathing virtual world. F2p (as is) is much too intrusive and immersion breaking, and needs to be taken outside the game itself.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Guild wars 2 sucked me in for a little while, but i just didn't care about an endgame without trinity.
I've still been enjoying plenty of games in other genres though, so It's not all bad.
Ask a lifetime golfer if they ever get tired of it. Or to go play something else.
Loving only MMORPGs is like that, nothing else will do.
Difference between a tourist vs a purist.
Enjoy your tour.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Totally the opposite for me, I would have never thought gamers would buy in to such a concept.
I gave them too much credit obviously.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Hopes for Darkfall though! Still some devs dare to go P2P.
While the new indie market is long on new ideas they remain very short on delivery, at least in the MMORPG space.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
In the past beta testing was by a relatively small circle of people who were very interested in the game. These people dedicated their time to helping improve the games during development. And if you didn't give bug reports, and opinions, etc. you probably weren't invited back to the next phase. I found the very best communities beta-testing games.
Now beta testing, if you can call it that, is a game preview by whoever is willing to pay the most. As a result the games are not being put into the grist mill. If there are exploits, they are not revealed and instead saved for the purpose of using them when the game launches. There also isn't that developer/tester relationship that the old games had in testing.