I hate the pre-launch streamer weekend, and I deliberately avoid those streams. I want to play the game and experience any new surprises first-hand. I would greatly prefer that they just release the update, rather than making me wait an extra week for no good reason.
You don't wait an extra week due to streamer weekend. They choose when to release (it'll be a Monday) and then the weekend right before that is when they do streamer weekend. It doesn't make the release any later than if they didn't do streamer weekend.
I don't exactly disagree with you as it was not really the best way to say that but just as players get frustrated as the release gets closer and they are still waiting, it is normal for the support staff and devs (anyone talking to the public) to get a bit short when they are responding to the same thing over and over. I've done IT support and if you start getting the same questions repeated in a short time, you do start losing the more friendly responses as you start thinking "not this again" in your head. It's normal and although it can lower the quality of customer service, you shouldn't read too much into it. I doubt it was meant as any kind of attack even if it kind of came across that way to some small extent. It sounded more like someone just tired of hearing people ask for more information that they can't share. In this case, as I said, I am positive it was in a stream even though they didn't comment on it and just used repair kits but they probably didn't realize it was there and so thought it could not be discussed.
On an upcoming undisclosed weekend….
1) Fun for 1000’s of people
Makes perfect sense to me. Better to open up to a smaller controlled group that will be highly visible and can validate that experimental is actually ready, like a second QA check. They hand pick the streamers as not just those with viewing volume but those that can give good feedback. Better to use 200 players that they can choose as a sanity check than just release it to everyone.
Actually, cooking and strength make sense... @madmole explained it, the first time it was introduced. Whoever does fitness and training with weights will need to know exactly what type of diet and recipes to use to have better performance. If I recall correctly, that's the reason Master Chef was put in the STR tree.
Many other users will have weeks and months to access the content and report bugs. Trust me that there will be some left for you to report after those first two days. I agree that if the experimental build was only for streamers during the entire period of its cycle and everyone else would only get it once it went stable then that would be ineffective. But the two days are simply a celebratory marketing event that also serves as a soft launch before it goes out to everyone. The streamers aren't even expected to report bugs. They are asked to simply play and have fun with their audiences.
