Okay, then I need to explain it:Last time I played, 1 or 2 versions ago, you had a timetable for characters and set-in-stone opportunities where and when you should interact them for story progression. "Visit her during this class, then meet up with her during this daytime at this place", and then there were those magic classes where you had to repeat the minigames. That's a grind aspect at worst, a clickfest at best, especially if you tie specific days for said progression events, like visit xy characters during Thursday evening for example. Given the weekend teaser previously, and if you haven't scrapped the whole "weekly house competition" idea, that's also going to be a sort of grind if you tie certain progression events for that village, since I guess you won't be able to do them in one go, and for that, you'll have to participate actively for points. This falls under the grind category as well, not so much as having to farm certain amount of points with characters for progression, which maybe you will include in some form or maybe not, but it is anyway.
I literally started a new game, and the game breaking bug came with the scene between the foster parents. If I choose to continue to watch, bug screen that couldn't be ignored came, and if I rolldback I couldn't choose the other option, which halted the progression from the intro itself.
I know about beta testings, I did them myself. That's why I will never understand, why developers decide to release beta versions for patrons as a "reward". It will create leaks, backlash, and as I mentioned, it's a weird marketing strategy in itself. I also know that for sandbox games, it's necessary to have them, because you'll only find a few of these games that can be updated without any sort of a hitch. I'm also familiar with the early access model, which is different, because there you get a more than enough for a demo chunk of content, which will most likely change in the finished version but sometimes can be buggy. I have an EA for Baldurs Gate 3 currently and had for Divinity 2.
If your beta got leaked from a small select group that you have for this purpose, ignore the last paragraph of course, but I advise you to purge the leaker, since it will cause only problems on the long run.
Have a good day as well.
1st: Yup, we have a calendar with events, but most of them do not affect on the story at all (maybe only at the start, like "win 1 duel", but only for a mechanic introduction). Our calendar is some sort of time skip\fast travel - so u can teleport right to the needed character without "hide-n-seek".
2nd: All our mechanics (duels, mini-games, house competition) are completely optional things for some extra content. They are not hard tbh, but if you are a little bit lazy you can skip them and focus on routes
3rd: If u face some bug in the beginning - pls just report, we could miss smth
4th: Bugs happens even in big companies, we are doing our best
Hope this will helps
