It's no longer pre-alpha at this point IMO...I agree with beta maybe, but I get what you are saying. The issue with their misteps was they allowed people to invest a ton of steem based on promises from the devs that couldn't be kept. Now I completely agree they have been working like crazy to make the game better and that is great.
If money wasn't involved, or we were just being paid to help alpha test a game the current actions wouldn't matter. But as they are getting paid a lot of money by players and earnings is designed into the game play more thought needs to be given to the way updates are rolled out.
These changes good or bad should be rolled out in a way that gives players some warning. 24 hours to adjust when these changes effect game play. As game play changes can effect how players build and recruit. It's not hard to code these things, test in a test net, and then announce to the players upcoming changes giving players a chance to make adjustments.
Yes you are right, beta phase is much more accurate. Its a beta game that made it to trending, the top 'app' in all the world.
And you might be right about 'the right way' to do things. But I don't think they would be where they are if they followed that advice.
Don't get me wrong, I've been feeding them suggestions in Discord since the beginning, there is a lot to improve. But I have literally refreshed the page to see changes suggested 20 minutes ago in the channel being tested live.
Money, well, it messes stuff up. Any back of the napkin calculation would have told you this was not an investment vehicle. Most people that 'invested' too much probably have too much free steem anyway, that they wanted to give it to one of the best dev teams on the chain.
I'm still in the discord, btw, trying to help them make the best game possible, because they are not there yet. Long way to go too, if you ask me. If they test-net every change we're not going to make it.