I do not know if this is intentional, but in order to join the newest preview (spikes) you need to have spent at least $4,95 on Energy in the last three months, is this intentional?
A test server should be free for players to report bugs, not have a 5€ paywall for something play testers get paid for.
The paywall used to exist even since the Gunner Update.
In my opinion,I don't believe that the paywalling is still necessary, especially in today's state of the game.
It made sense when the game was POPULAR, so only the people actually interested in playtesting could provide feedback (rather than those who play test servers just to get an early look at new content).
In the current state of the game though, I feel like EVERYONE who still stuck around for this long would be interested in any droplets of new content, and WOULD care enough to make sure it ends up perfect.
There's only about 500 of us, and lmiting a measly 40 of those people to actually do the service is just damaging to the whole process of testing in my opinion.
i give them the benefit of the doubt to remove this dumb paywall, there is no way GH is doing a paid beta in 2026 for a F2P game
I totally don't understand it, like we have to pay 5$ to be able to try test an update on not-so-working-well test server, so we could leave a feedback about it? It's just hilarious, I'm not even mad at this point, it just makes no sense to me
Generally speaking, I believe it's a method some adopt to either filter out players to make it easier to follow feedback, or because in theory those players who made purchases could be considered more loyal and dedicated, thus possibly provide more valuable feedback. I can partly understand the logic behind it, but especially with the current playerbase I believe it would be better to allow in everyone and gather as much feedback as possible. It'd be beneficial also from the point of view of entertainment and hype, as more people would get excited for future content and spread the word. Just my take.
I have to be honest, at first I did genuinely balk at this too for the same reasons - it seemed sort of unfair because everyone here is someone who stuck around to see if the game would continue to grow at all, but as someone who hasn't spent anything on the game because I was waiting to see if it was worth it to do so... well, on reflection, I have come to think that the rather open demonstration that something new is in the works is worth my support.
I am of a mind that it is to filter out players who are just going to poke their heads in at no cost, say nothing at all, and leave again. Feedback is valuable from all players, but the expectation of exchange probably means anyone who does decide to hop in and look around is more likely to say something.
I'm in two minds about it even now, and at this formative stage I can see the value of bringing down the paywall if wider feedback can be guaranteed, but having held off for so long and finally handed in five bucks for three months of access to tests in the future I can't help but start to see it as something I could be convinced is fair.
I do still agree that the current playerbase is small enough that gathering more feedback is valuable (I think Top-Platinum is completely right) but I also remember not so long ago, OCH went free and there were immediate questions about what will happen to players who bought it recently and ended up without much benefit. I feel like if this is a strategy moving forwards, the interest is in making sure that the way the test servers work is consistent from this point on so feedback *stays* valuable, no matter how large the game might end up getting. Something about playing the long game.
While we can speculate all day on why this was done, 5 bucks later I don't think I regret joining in. I've spent more for worse reasons, before now.
The major issue is that we cannot spend the $5 now to get access to the preview/beta, Vyre-Acidlashed, at least according to the description if you try to login through the preview.
There's also the fact that I strongly believe, among many gamers, that preview/betas should not be paywalled since it defeats the purpose of the community testing content when this should have been done by professional playtesters (which is literally a job in the gaming industry), but I do agree with people that say that betas should be available for a wide audience instead of professional playtesters since it gives the community the power to adjust the content that is being tested on.
So that is why I strongly believe Spiral Knights should just remove this outdated paywall that has been set even on gunner update in 2014.
Honestly, yeah, that's reasonable. I also didn't actually realize that there were access issues at this time.
In fairness to you I think I could also be convinced that it's less than acceptable in a gaming market that continually releases unfinished projects in early access to externalise the cost of testing, but I think I was primed to excuse that in the light of the game already being in a released state for so long - it felt as though what was being offered was access privilege, rather than a chance to do work for the dev team at the time.
Generally the best playtesters aren't going to be inhouse devs/players or the people with the most hours in the game
It's going to be your average joe player who's about halfway through the game
If you're only getting feedback about difficulty and fun something is from people who are running with triple max UVs on Chaos/Black Kat then you're doing it wrong and you're going to end up with an update that only a small portion of your game will find fun, but will likely actually drive off a lot of other people who run into a heap of BS and then go play something they feel like they can actually beat
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