Beta 5 is meant to be the polish phase where all those last bugs get ironed out. Which is why it is important that we keep talking about them. If you have any more, please do post them.

well as features im quite satisfied with FE

we had reworked cities, events, races, a lot of differentiation and this was basically what the game needed

still like you said the game is not totally stable and with many bugs and glitches and  A LOT of balance/tweaking to do (and ai to improve )

dunno if the time is enough to do this but surelly is way better than WOM, also the game doesnt make me say "id reallly love to have... mutant turtles/robots/puzzle games/a fps tactical battle", it seems to me the basic content is what it should be, just improved in some aspect

We have to stay in there and keep reporting. I will not criticize Stardock at this stage, cause Beta 5 will be about balancing and fixing bugs. I have put in two set of bug reports today (the bugs of Altar and the bugs of Shadow world). I will be a pretty angry puppy if this is not fixed before release, but for now we should report, report and then report errors. 

I'm not sure the people here understand how Beta5 works. Beta5 is locked down so that all these bugs will get fixed. They have stopped adding new content so that they can fix all the bugs without having to worry about adding new ones. Beta5 could last a long time, like months, and still be Beta5. There is no reason to have a Beta6 because since they are in lock down they won't be adding anything new. Length of time doesn't determine the Beta number, each series has a specific purpose. Unless they decide to add a whole bunch of new content there is absolutely no need for a Beta6.

So the devs here should have spent the last months fixing bugs as they found them in old features that are no longer present in order that they might enter the bugfix beta without bugs to fix?

The previous betas were to test major features and general functionality against the wants/needs of the community, rather than making a game nobody wants to play work really well.

I agree that I want the game to succeed and it will definitely depend on what they are able to achieve as far as bugfixing and balancing here in this last stretch, but they shouldn't waste a year fixing and balancing features that don't make it in the final version.

I am just surprised that here in beta 5 they have features that a large swath of the community seems to be agreed on and satisfied with. That is an achievement. To quote ddd888 above:

well as features im quite satisfied with FE

we had reworked cities, events, races, a lot of differentiation and this was basically what the game needed

I think FE has plenty of content, I think with good balance and polish, it could hit near a 90 metacritic.  I think the pacing is a bit slow, and I don't like the fragile cities that fall to ruin to monsters that then salt the earth, and I haven't yet seen how balanced late game is, but I like what I see so far. 

I think too many aspects of the game have been rectified (or improved) through an excessively painful process. Too many things that should have been implemented differently from the get go had to be "force-changed" by the sheer force of negative feedback, like many UI "features" which started out so wrong that fixing them must have cost triple the pain.

This "longer than ideal road" has had its impact on the company, I guess. Maybe they're somewhat tired too (I could even understand them). We did notice an acceleration towards Beta 5 that took us by surprise... who knows, maybe pre-orders didn't go so well and they need to wrap it up faster.

I think that, if the game won't be significantly changed from here to release, reception does risk to be a "WoM-lite" kind of thing. Not in magnitude nor in tone of course (Stardock should get a lot of good credit for what they did for their customers in any case) but at least in the sense that the game feels again like a mixture of really good or even great ideas put together without ideal integration. 

To me, I'll say it again, the magic system seems the biggest proof of this. Becoming a "mage" in FE is an erratic, weird and ultimately random business, which is not a good thing to say about the "main" aspect of the game. 

Modding will help a lot I'm sure but we can't expect the few (if exceptional) modders here to produce the equivalent of the Skyrim modding community. But then again, maybe they will

Well, this would be the point in the beta where we see if the game can succeed. Beta 5 started out kind of rough, but as long as it is an indefinite cycle, I am not too concerned. I don't think anyone at Stardockia thinks the game is ready for release. But let's jump on them it if they do. Don't want it out in its current state.

Brad said in another post there would be two more major public releases.  Who knows if that will be enough?  I guess we'll find out.  We're all just speculating right now.  I know I've been impressed with the strides taken every release.  Just when I think they'll never get there, they get a little bit closer! 

BUT I ALSO THINK THEY ARE PROBABLY GETTING BURNED OUT BY NOW AND WANT TO RELEASE THIS BAD BOY SO THEY CAN DO SOMETHING ELSE (emphasis added).  After all, they've been listening to us nag for 4+ years now.  FE v1.0 will not get the 90 meta-critic rating (it won't even get the 85 meta-critic rating they're hoping for), but after Brad makes a few after releases patches, updates, etc., it might get them close enough and I'm pretty much enjoying the game for what it is.  I feel like my $49 EWOM money was finally well spent.

True but it's not our fault. It's not even that we like to bitch and moan whatever we get.

Take for instance the release of Legend of Grimrock. I have nothing but praise for that game. People just buy it and immediately it plays smoothly, the graphics are killer, the UI does its job perfectly, the balance is great unless you want to split hairs, the game's progress also shows a great mastery of the design phase. Most of all, the developers of LoG show without doubt that they deeply understand what the potential buyers could be looking for in a game like that. Net result: everybody's happy and on the first try. 

On the other hand, if you get every single thing wrong the first time, and you have to wait for player's feedback in order to realize it (and sometimes not even that is enough) it's no wonder things won't go as smoothly.

Of course FE is a more daring and complicated game, that's one of the redeeming aspects (of which there are many anyway) 

He said AT LEAST two more beta releases.  

I disagree.  I think the problem with long betas is that people assume that because a bug has existed in the beta for a long time that it means the team is destined for failure.  You can't possibly count the number of times forum people have posted "Bug XXXXX still exists!  You guys are incompetent.  You clearly don't understand Software Development Technique 917.b or you would have fixed this bug seven months ago!"  

My point is that either we think they have conducted a quality beta or they have not.  Supposition about the mental state of the developers is just asininity.  If you like their design concept and think they have conducted a good beta, then have faith in the end product.  If you think either the design or the beta process are flawed then you probably won't like the end product.     

Overall I think this thread is full of people who fail to understand betas (and Brad's explanation of Beta 5 in particular).  

Seeing the amount of new spells, new quests and new abilities (like flying units) we are far from feature freeze (and we are still yet to see modding tools, campaign, that wasn't betatested and hell more).

Like the OP wrote, each new item, creates new bugs possibilites, we do need half a year of development specially in the AI department since the game (or more actually Frogboy) need to teach the AI's to use that new content, and then to debug the AI code. (with thing like stacking buring blades or outposts standing one against each other or two dozen of leather armor pieces)

I don't really care if it is called beta 6 or beta 5z, just give this game more time.

With all due respect to the modders. This beta is about the unmodded game. The modding tools aren't really released yet, and what they do is more hacking than modding. They can only affect balance, and there is a lot more than that.

There is concern about quality of the game, lack of insight on what is being planned/known in terms of bugs found, small steps of improvements but no breakthroughs in most painful areas (heroes/units balance, monsters ignoring AI, AI competency, slowdowns, crashes, ui glitches) - there is no single aspect of the game that we could at this stage tick off as COMPLETED, tested, accepted. 

UI - glitches, lack of information, overlays, inventory management, army management

stability - crashes, slowdowns, missing heads and 3d models

balance - no comment

AI - basic

design features - still added (flying, events, 

content - missing

campaing - never seen off

tactical combat - still missing unit placement, autoresolve givng different results than autoplay, arrows shooting form the side of the screen, no tactical walls, towers - city combat), slowdowns, bugs in abilities, items, ui

diplomacy - AI requesting thousands of gildars, attacking out of blue moon, askign for money when beggin for peace

magic - core to the game and yet ... lacking, for no other words, oh and AI can't use it even so

nothing is completed, nothing... oops sorry, we got game intro finished