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Dominus: The Beta Blues
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Beta testing is just a quick way to get into our most anticipated MMO IMMEDIATELY...right? Right? Well, maybe not as today's Developer Perspectives opines. We mourn the loss of what used to be an actual testing period for games. Check it out and then add your thoughts in the comments....unless you're That Guy.
Beta testing used to mean that you presented an unfinished product to a small group of people who expected it to be unfinished. Then they would test it. This was sort of a key phase for MMO development. As we all know to our sorrow, an MMO can be flawlessly designed with intricacies like a mechanical Swiss watch and still suck the chrome off a bumper when those intricacies collide with a large number of human beings.
Read more of Sanya Weathers' Developer Perspectives: The Beta Blues.
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Comments
It is a good point. Betas have been for a while now a "sneak-peek" into up and coming MMOs, especially any with an Open-Beta and often seem more marketing driven than development driven. I work in a software/hardware company (non-gaming) and I can tell you Betas for us are so completely different. And they are very necessary for understanding how customers use the product, and for getting feedback about certain features from the customers as well.
MMO betas seem to hurt more than they help. Maybe with enough people playing the game there's a small percentage who still submit bugs or help out. But I see people running around, learning game mechanics and looking for exploits. They do not report these exploits, they just want to know how to get an advantage once the game is released and its terrible.
Also another bad thing about this type of Beta, is what has been referred to as the 3-month honeymoon period with MMOs. Typically people play a game for 3 months, get sick of it and then move on. So if you play beta for 2 months, then buy the game and play the 1 free month that comes with the game you are sick of the game before you even pay a single sub...
But who to blame? I'm sure there's plenty blame to go around.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
well have faith that you don't need to convince all
there are still tons of gamers out there that understand an idea behind a game and that there is a big difference between big and small teams (mostly small ones trying to develop way better visions :P)...i'd say if those stick with your game thru beta and early release you also get that word of mouth you need, just a little later.
I have to blame this on F2P's... Apparently the word Beta stands for something quite different in the F2P realm than P2P.. They have closed Beta which means a test that gets wiped where they test different functions at different times.. And then there is the OPEN Beta, which is basically like release, but where they can claim to be acively fixing anything that's wrong..
When people hear the word Beta they do not think of bugs or the state of the game, some only think about if the data is being wiped and others want to see how fast they can reach the cap within the "test"..
Since MMO's don't have the pre-release "Demo" that many are used to in other genre's, they see this as a chance to do just that..
But if it was a real test, they should start limiting exactly what a player could do until specific times.. Maybe for the first day or 2 only a certain dungeon run over and over again.. Perhaps another day a raid that drops lots of loot so you can test vendors, the raid and gear drop rates etc..
If you are able to access most of the game at the start of a beta, people are going to want to see it.. Makes it even worse if you have to actually spend lots of time to level your character just to umm "test" the content further down the road.. If you want to test the whole game, make specific test dates for certain elements..
It sounds like GIGO. If betas invite a slew of idiots that don't even care to improve the overall game experience, companies are getting the testing they deserve.
There needs to be someone in charge of quality of those testing, no? A more stringent applicant selection needs to be enforced.
Can't speak English in an English-based game? Sorry friend, you aren't the droid I'm looking for.
In the "Why do you want to take part in our Beta?" section leetPwnUrMoM writes "screw off, f*****"... perhaps not.
Not everyone is cut out to be a beta tester.
The worst thing about current "beta's" is you can yell and scream and send in a million fully detailed bug/exploit reports and those exact same issues that can be "gamebreaking" have not been touched or even acknowlaged at release day and sometimes even months after.
no. just no. it's the big AAA titles that have changed the face of betas. rift? swtor? those were huge betas. sure f2ps go through "open beta," but that is an entirely different beta beast than AAA mmos' "closed" "betas."
for one you don't have to get a key, just jump in and play. for another there is the explicit understanding that the open beta is just there to get the ball rolling, to start up buzz.
on the other hand, the closed betas for the big leaguers, you have to get a key somewhere (even though there's usually millions floating around), and there's still the veneer of the beta being exclusive or somesuch. moreover it draws in the cheapskate crowd, gets them a character, and gets them a little invested in the game on the hopes that that investment becomes monetary.
sure maybe the difference between closed and open betas is semantics, but i feel like one is very much "hey come play our game! it's almost done!" while the other is "hey, you 50,000 'special' people! come 'help' us with our game! anddon'tforgettotellyourfirends)"
Open Betas seem like the players testing the game for themselves, not developers testing the game for a release.
A Closed Beta, with an NDA on the other hand feels entirely different. It feels like the reason you're there is to test the game, not chat it up on forums.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well, here is one major issue with beta testing:
Players usually do not have intimate detail of code, thus can not test limits directly. So the only way testing can be done is to just play the game and discover bugs.
MMOs Played: I can no longer list them all in the 500 character limit.
Nice article and normally I don't like or agree with her articles to be honest.
I wrote a wall of text in regard ot beta's... but decided that today the wall would come down.
Thanks for the link to the article.
Wait I dont mind beta testing as long the Company wants to pay me..After all, are they not bragging how much money they Make?Same with F2p..They dont care how many people play in beta..Hell its a Beta all year around! Just bring the wallet..
I retired retroactively..Haha
*cough*funcom*cough*
I feel like I'm reading this article through a mirror.
I had the good fortune to be in a closed beta once that was a real beta (well, even more of an alpha really). It was a lot of work and it tends to make it harder to achieve that magical suspension of disbelief back in the live game when you have this wierd mix of mystery-breaking spoilers and memories of broken, crashing stages of semi-completeness. And in the end, it's hard to know if your feedback and bug reports were really construcive or just noise (especially when the internal boards explode into a flamewar with other dedicated-but-incompatable players over the heart and soul of the game that leaves one emotionally exhausted). Yet when you return to the production world, your fellow players (or at least an emotionally-intense subset) will expect you to provide walkthroughs and spoilers while at the same time blasting you for perceived unfairness of what you know on the assumption that you are one of those powergamers exploiting foreknowledge for personal gain.
I have to admit that ever since that experience, the thought of an invitation to a beta feels more like a threat than a perk
I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the newest crowd of MMO players, mainly the surge brought on by World of Warcraft. I am not blaming the game but the, for lack of a better term, the console crowd that jumped ship to join the ranks of MMO gamers. And what makes it suck is I have always felt that the more people enjoying games in this genre the better... Now I am not so sure...
Consoles are inherently a here and now type of platform. Console game players are used to having a finished product when they load up whatever game it is they are loading up. So when these players decided to join the ranks of the MMO gamers, I feel anyway, they came over with that same mentality. How often did you get to beta test the next big console game?
Take this mindset add in a beta test and, once again this is my opinion, these players might not have understood how a beta worked or whatever. The whole beta test as free trial thing though is terrible. And for me it all started with the influx of this new wave of MMO players.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Great article. The only "fix" to this problem that I can think of is to be more selective in your beta invitations and testing parameters. Interested in getting feedback on the flow of combat? Invite specific testers for that pupose and limit them to that sole testing activity, at least in the begining. Then, you can slowly expand out with testers who've proven their value testing specific features, and allow them to start testing larger and larger cross-sections of the game.
I've beta tested quite a few games, and I report whatever I find... Answer questions for other testers... Interact with the devs... etc.
Most of the time when I apply to be a beta tester it seems like either they don't ask about beta testing experience or don't prioritize people with experience or skill. It can be really frustrating when there is a game that I am really looking forward to, and I am talking to people in the beta who are telling me "yeah, I stopped playing, its too buggy" while I still am not in the beta, and I would be replicating and reporting the bugs. How about, if you are not getting valid feedback and responses from a user and they are not active and participating, then they lose their spot and it goes to someone else.
Just as an aside, which team/game are you working on, Sanya?
The problem is that new MMOs don't have demo or trial versions. So of course people will look to beta for that, instead. Give us a proper chance to see if the game is worth buying, and we'll stop trying to use beta tests that way.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I think you exaggerate.
If developers say their product is unfinished and the beta is there to see if it works and to find bugs then the testers will accept it and most even give feedback.
On the other hand when EA asks you to beta test something you know where your feedback goes normally :P
I never play beta's, I rely on friends who do for infomation if I want to play something from launch. But thats rare, usually I don't buy until the first reviews come out. Not previews, not first looks, wait for the review.
Betas are now a commecial exercise as much as a testing one. But you don't pay for them right? Wrong, whats 10 days early access but you paying for beta?
If you do what I do the game is freash, brand spanking new and you will enjoy it that much more.
I would really love for once to be involved in a beta that actually had direction to it. Most betas I have been involved with gave me no indication as what they want me to test, what areas they want feedback etc. I think when I do beta test again, which I am sure I will, I will create my own testing parameters and work through it from there. I guess what they are really trying to get is black box user acceptance testing, though I suspect with the last beta I was involved in the main "information" that I was giving was actually nothing to do with what I was giving feedback on, rather demographic ifnormation of where I was in the game and what activities I was doing. There are still bugs that I reported on numerous occasions that are still in this piece of software. So now I am reporting them again in the live game. I can undeerstand that there is only limited numbers of bugs that developers can deal with at one time, but each time I have reported them it is like they have never heard of them before.
What it really leaves me feeling like I was a furry rodent of some description in a maze being tested to see what I would do. Did not feel like a collaboration at all...
Heehee ... I know exactly what you mean. Unfortunately, I just can't act natural when I'm on a test character - it's a completely different experience than a live game.
It depends on the game and developers honestly..
A massive beta with thousands of players that are just playing the game early instead of doing anything that a small alpha or selective beta would do is beyond comparison almost.
Look at the indy/small production crew developers like Grinding Gear Games. Path of Exile's crew goes through major changes based on the communities opinion, testing, and ideas almost every other week.. Quite a few skill ideas have even gone into the game be it a gem or a talent.
That kind of interaction and testing just isn't possible when you're just "nameless face #6945" the company could care less about since they treated their beta like a release..
The blame goes on the developers, not the players in most every case...
you know I could get on your side, but as a pre alpha world tester for "pitch black" and submitting over 200 bug reports, I never got an invite to future testing. So I guess ill just have to preview Dominus at some other time
LOL...Didn't even realize it was Sanya until the end. Don't stop doing what you are doing! The game will be great with the testers you have already!
"How do I, as a developer, convince you that beta means BETA?"
Well do not start the beta 2 weeks before the game is suppose to release :P, by then it fair to assume you not really beta testing, but more or less stress testing. I play a lot of beta's, but have to shamefull admit that I hardly every beta tested a game. Only when I really loved the game and actually felt being involved I did write down bugs, tested the bugs and tried to break things and write detailed report.
One of the things I noticed was some proper bug reporting tool to make your more involved. So see "your" bug being bumbed up the ladder and being worked on give me a sense of "purpose" and feel like your really doing something. To me writing something on a forum on the fault of a game does not make me feel involved and because of the 1000s of people doing it, I find it hard to discuss of add to them. While with a good bug tracker tool you could search for the bug or if you failed to find it the developer will most likely link them and then you could add to it, give your side of the story and more information.
So in short simply make people feel more like a tester and less then a monkey that just types report 100s of other monkey also type.
Sanya..the answer is simple. Just keep doing what you not doing..... not passing out beta keys.