Why some non reviewers join alpha games?

[Romain672]

Look like it's the second time it happen to me.
Were they both invited by the developper? That look weird because it's some new accounts.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=286541485
Is it a bug?

[voriki]

You can always ask the developer to be added to the group. More testers = more bugs to discover.

I am in such a case myself. I don't qualify as a reviewer, but had been added manually to the King of Tokyo testing group when it was in Alpha first. I have pitched in in Bug Reports to help out with rule interpretations and provided helpful feedback to the developer.

Sometimes someone who knows a lot of 1 game is better that someone who knows some of many games.

[Romain672]

But it's really weird.
First time it was a totally new account, which joined the game all the time but never accepted it. I gave him a private RT.
And the second time, that person did not talk, stopped the game after 1min (look like he doesn't knew the game), and didn't played the game again.

This just look really weird to me, even if it's possible that both of them were invited by the developper.


And I'm not talking about people like you, you got lots of games, you are playing them normally (even if i don't like much people who doesn't talk, if you read the rules once it's fine), but some people don't apparently, and have access to those.

But if my assumption is correct, there should be similar report from the community. So if anyone else get a similar experience, please share it here, even if it's just one sentence and it would became likely there is a bug going on. If no other report is done, look like i just got unlucky with those people.

[Romain672]

Ok I just got it.
In the lobby: https://boardgamearena.com/lobby
You have at the bottom "See all available tables for all games"
If you click on it, you will see all games, included the alpha games.

And if you click on the table, you will not be able to see the lobby of the table.
But if you click on join, you will join the alpha game and the alpha group even if you aren't a reviewer.

Since I'm a reviewer, when i tested it without clicking on 'start reviewing', the game started normally.
And at the end of the game, I still haven't 'start reviewing the game'.
That's why I think what I said here is true.
And so it look like a bug.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=68768

[Een]

Ok I just got it.
In the lobby: https://boardgamearena.com/lobby
You have at the bottom "See all available tables for all games"
If you click on it, you will see all games, included the alpha games.

And if you click on the table, you will not be able to see the lobby of the table.
But if you click on join, you will join the alpha game and the alpha group even if you aren't a reviewer.

Since I'm a reviewer, when i tested it without clicking on 'start reviewing', the game started normally.
And at the end of the game, I still haven't 'start reviewing the game'.
That's why I think what I said here is true.
And so it look like a bug.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=68768

Thanks a lot for noticing this and finding where the issue was. It will be fixed in the next release so that this list doesn't display tables for games that should not be visible.