Why is it so easy for you and others to believe that 7 Days to Die will actually be Beta despite the 1.0 numbering system and yet it is so hard for you to believe that 7 Days to Die was essentially Beta during Alpha 20 and 21 (and this past year’s worth of development nobody has played yet) despite alpha numbering system?
Since Alpha 20 the devs have caught a lot of flack for not adding significant new content and instead just adding art, improving visuals, polishing and finalizing current systems, ignoring the end game, and working on optimizations. During Alpha 18 Madmole stated that their focus would not be on the types of things veterans of the game would want (expansionary content) but on what would make the game look and play well for new players. What does that sound like if not beta?
So it’s not that Beta stage got skipped. It’s that they never officially changed the numbering system. The true numbering system that fully reflects the development how it has gone would have been:
Alpha 1-17 (A1-17)
Alpha/Beta Hybrid 1-2 (A18-19)
Beta 1-2 (A20-21)
Beta/Gold Hybrid 1-3 (1.0-whatever)
Gold (End of roadmap)
In any case, it’s clear TFP hasn’t been, isn’t, and won’t be following a traditional development model regardless of the numbering system. Hopefully for their next game they will simply avoid any numbering system that references alpha and beta since people obviously fixate on the narrowest of definitions in order to either defend or criticize.
So yeah, 1.0 is going to feel very beta-like just like alphas 18 and 19 felt somewhat beta-like and alphas 20 and 21 felt very beta-like. The devs clearly stated that the 1.0 tag is not a claim that the game is finished. It’s just the beginning of a new numbering system, exit from early access, and price change.