WAR Guild Invites sent-out 8/8

[Modern Angel]

What is this War that you speak of?

Dunno but I know you're not going to find war in 12v12 sport pvp

[taolurker]

They don't really expect players to individually beta test. Mythic has too much experience to be that naive.

They expect an aggregate of users to play the game exactly as they would on release, trying to exploit the hell out of it, grind for hours on end stockpiling penguin sphincters because it's 2.7% faster than playing through their cool dynamic world quests, generate truly representative load profiles, and bitch like tween girls fighting with their mothers on the internal forums. Then they mine all that data and tune away. Traditional "beta" testing is archaic; EA has internal QA teams for that.

I agree with you about the "aggregate" population, and that devs want players to play how they would normally, but I disagree where it comes to the "data mining". Load testing, finding/removing exploits, and grinding to uncover potential problems is not what I disagree with, I believe the problems arise where it comes to these things not being reported because people use the "preview meh-min-max-leet" method when betas should be persons who at least contribute (with devs encouraging their input).

It's also been proven that player forums are not aggregate populations which is why I italicized your portion about forums. Beta forums are influential in game development, but when your beta isn't comprised of people wanting a community but a "free trial" it's couter-productive to say the least.

Indeed.  I wish people would get this through their head so I could see less of the self-righteous "testing" rants every time someone uses the word "play" or "game" in a beta.

Which is not to say that reporting bugs you find (or even going out of your way to look for them) isn't helpful, it's just not the primary function of a beta.

I didn't say anywhere about people not playing or gaming, it's just there should be people doing so because they want to find occasional bugs, when instead they're there to see if the guild can PL/raid, if there's a class they like or whether it will run like ass on their machine.  I would say that 80-90% of beta (heck even alpha) "testers" are in a sense only load testers, because they don't actively stress the game, submit feedback, or participate other than them actually being there using bandwidth through a client.

If I were an MMO developer I'd require submitting one bug or suspected bug, or a suggestion, per login session as a requirement in alpha, and at least once weekly until the game reached beta2/preview/Gold to keep the login active. In order to reactivate a login, players would need to suggest something that would've made them play/game/test/bug-submit more. Rewards for active forum users and testers would be items, NPCs or quests bearing their names (and especially for "bug-squashing"). That type of data is waay more valuable to an MMO than any mined data (although it's more difficult to mine), and it's not being present results in making devs more out of touch with the people who should be their community.

Internal testing can only get a game so far, and the beta that's a preview is more common now, but it's not a sign of evolution but regression that the actual players aren't more involved. Betas were once about the testing, or people who at least maybe cared. Check the Tabula Rasa thread(s) and tell me how many people there actually "tested" or maybe can say they even sent a single bug report.

[Xanthippe]

If I were an MMO developer I'd require submitting one bug or suspected bug, or a suggestion, per login session as a requirement in alpha, and at least once weekly until the game reached beta2/preview/Gold to keep the login active. In order to reactivate a login, players would need to suggest something that would've made them play/game/test/bug-submit more. Rewards for active forum users and testers would be items, NPCs or quests bearing their names (and especially for "bug-squashing"). That type of data is waay more valuable to an MMO than any mined data (although it's more difficult to mine), and it's not being present results in making devs more out of touch with the people who should be their community.

I don't think I want to play a game that's been beta'd like that.  I'm not sure why, but it seems likely that a lot of earnest testers could tweak the game into something really unfun for a casual like me.

The best way to get the sort of input you're talking about from people is to hire them and pay them.  Since you're making a job out of it.

[sam, an eggplant]

Obviously reporting bugs should be encouraged, and players that do so are more valuable. When I sign up for MMO betas, I always put "I will actually report bugs!" in the "why should we pick you" section. And if picked, I do report bugs when I find them. But that's not what they really expect me to do.

MMO forums are bloodthirsty frenzied mobs of nasty spoiled children. Mobs are by definition aggregate populations.

[taolurker]

and fans are fanatics. You're point is?

[sam, an eggplant]

You claimed that forums aren't aggregates even though they act like one. I exposed the lack of sophistication in that statement. Shall we continue arguing semantics, or would you like to get back on point?

[Ragnoros]

Edit: I'm stupid and can't see the third page.

[taolurker]

You claimed that forums aren't aggregates even though they act like one. I exposed the lack of sophistication in that statement. Shall we continue arguing semantics, or would you like to get back on point?

I said "player forums" (not just referring to betas) aren't aggergates, and they aren't, because they certainly aren't representative of every (supposed) player or tester. It was you citing dictionary definitions (saying my statement lacked sophistication) where I certainly know unruly mobs certainly aren't "considered taking all units as a whole" although could certainly be considered "a cluster", and that an "aggregate population" doesn't actually make all fans fanatics.

PS  I was already arguing semantics and the point was to beg for a preview of Warhammer, which this thread sort of proves isn't a beta or aggregate.

[Abelian75]

Like others have hinted, if you limited your beta to only people who submit regular feedback and bug reports, and made large design decisions based on that feedback, you'd be designing a game based on what a small segment of the population (people who enjoy submitting feedback on games for free) believes that they want.

There's two problems with this.  The first is obvious:  This is only a segment of the population, and is probably significantly more "hardcore" (if you'll forgive the term) than your average player.

The second, less obvious, problem, is that someone believing that they enjoy/hate something doesn't mean they will actually enjoy/hate it.  For instance, you might get a bunch of people saying that there should be more emphasis on grouping in a game and less solo support to encourage community.  Then, when the game is released, you find out people don't actually end up wanting that and tons of people, including those who gave feedback about wanting more grouping and less soloing, go to another game.

This is not to say feedback is useless, it's just not 'hard' data.  You can't trust people to know what they want.  If you could, we'd all be a lot happier, because we wouldn't do all the stupid shit that ends up making us unhappy.

Now, bug reports, sure, those are entirely useful, but generally the bottleneck is going to be managing to fix the bugs, not finding them.  I submit bugs all the time when I beta test things, because I enjoy the illusion of feeling like I did something useful in any given day, but in reality I'm guessing I've never submitted a bug that wasn't already found or known about.  Is it helpful?  Sure.  Is it the important part of beta testing (in the MMO sense)?  Not really.

They WANT min-maxers.  They want every type of player in their beta.  You can't go and "pretend" to be a type of player because you're a Noble Beta Tester and want to help them make a better game... you'll never do as good a job of it as a real player.

All a beta is is a bunch of mostly randomly selected people invited to play a game early for mutually beneficial reasons.  Nothing noble, nothing to write home about.  You get something, and they get something.  Everyone's happy.