On the question of “public beta,” and why it doesn’t have to mean posting your draft HG for 100% open access, have a look at this thread and the ones it links to:
I’ve never heard of CoG objecting to CoG-label authors posting the whole game at beta. I did a fully open beta for XoR, which went on to have (at the time, 6 years ago) the best first-day sales of any CoG to date. I plan to do it again with XoR2. As I’ve said on a bunch of the threads behind the link above, any sales I might have lost were more than made up for by the feedback I got on the whole game.
I suspect the only reason more CoG authors don’t do open betas of the whole game is that nagging worry about losing money… which is understandable, but I’m not sure is actually borne out by the sales of games, CoG or HG, that have built up a forum fandom during development.
I’ve also yet to hear from any beta testers with buyers’ remorse, because there was nothing new in the version they bought… but that doesn’t mean you’re alone out there, @ClaimedMinotaur. I’m sure there are others who feel they’ve spoiled themselves for the final version by diving deep into the WiP, and all I can say as an author is thanks for your sacrifice if you gave me feedback in the process.