Good Testers and Bad Testers.

ZANGFEI · March 2007

= Good games and Bad Games. and that my dear friends is what really counts. when you see a mature group of Testers in the Alpha and Beta 1 and 2 stages of a Game you will end up with a good game but if you get the latter, the ones that say where is this where is that, i dont care. We end up with CRAP instead of games that could have very well been showstoppers.

Look at Lord of the Rings, it is more than ready for the shelf, why because the Testers were mature enough to care about what they were doing.

the latter part really is only for stress anyway so the where is and the party me really does no damage by just being there.someday we will get around those people.

Have a great day.

retrospectic · March 2007

Originally posted by ZANGFEI

= Good games and Bad Games. and that my dear friends is what really counts. when you see a mature group of Testers in the Alpha and Beta 1 and 2 stages of a Game you will end up with a good game but if you get the latter, the ones that say where is this where is that, i dont care. We end up with CRAP instead of games that could have very well been showstoppers.
Look at Lord of the Rings, it is more than ready for the shelf, why because the Testers were mature enough to care about what they were doing.
the latter part really is only for stress anyway so the where is and the party me really does no damage by just being there.someday we will get around those people.
Have a great day.

Give me an example of a game that became CRAP because of the testers? I'm pretty sure most games that end up crap have many many factors attributing to the general suckage.

Paragus1 · March 2007

Originally posted by retrospectic

Originally posted by ZANGFEI

= Good games and Bad Games. and that my dear friends is what really counts. when you see a mature group of Testers in the Alpha and Beta 1 and 2 stages of a Game you will end up with a good game but if you get the latter, the ones that say where is this where is that, i dont care. We end up with CRAP instead of games that could have very well been showstoppers.
Look at Lord of the Rings, it is more than ready for the shelf, why because the Testers were mature enough to care about what they were doing.
the latter part really is only for stress anyway so the where is and the party me really does no damage by just being there.someday we will get around those people.
Have a great day.

Give me an example of a game that became CRAP because of the testers? I'm pretty sure most games that end up crap have many many factors attributing to the general suckage.

I agree. Not only that, but when you factor in how rarely they listen to suggestions, it seems even less likely to blame beta testers for a botched project. Blaming beta testers is like Brad McQuaid blaming his customers for not having good enough PC's to play Vanguard when they are using the current cutting edge technology which is well beyond what is stated on the box. The OP might be able to get a job at the Sigil public relations department

flakes · March 2007

Look at the statistics for the poll this week on the startpage of this forum.That shows what most think is the problem with the beta tests.Not the testers themselves...but what input they REALLY have in the final game.And as it shows most people don't have a high opinion about that.

Drafell · March 2007

It's not all about testing, it is whether you can implement your given design goals within the time

frame which is set. Obviously, testing is a large part of this, and it is very important to get feedback from people with a wide and varied knowledge of games. This includes the hardcore professional testers as well as the more casual players who just want to see a game before it is released.

All feedback should be used. You often find that is the inexperienced testers which actually come up with the best suggestions for improving a game, or pointing out those oh-so-obvious bugs that your professional team has missed.

There is no such thing as a bad tester, providing you have the necessary tools to make use of the information they generate.

retrospectic · March 2007

Originally posted by flakes

Look at the statistics for the poll this week on the startpage of this forum.That shows what most think is the problem with the beta tests.Not the testers themselves...but what input they REALLY have in the final game.And as it shows most people don't have a high opinion about that.

I wouldn't put most of the suggestions I hear about World of Warcraft into the game. Mostly because everyone whines about ____ class or wants their class buffed. Testing should be about finding bugs in the game which alter the experience in a negative way.

The DESIGNERs and PROGRAMMERs should witness the testing and the comments and make decisions based on their own vision.

thaak · March 2007

Originally posted by Drafell

It's not all about testing, it is whether you can implement your given design goals within the time

frame which is set. Obviously, testing is a large part of this, and it is very important to get feedback from people with a wide and varied knowledge of games. This includes the hardcore professional testers as well as the more casual players who just want to see a game before it is released.

All feedback should be used. You often find that is the inexperienced testers which actually come up with the best suggestions for improving a game, or pointing out those oh-so-obvious bugs that your professional team has missed.

There is no such thing as a bad tester, providing you have the necessary tools to make use of the information they generate.

That is true, and at the same time, it is up the developers to either take the suggestions or not take them. I do believe that for a game to be successful the game needs to have a great backbone and just be a good game. Testers can improve some aspects, but the testers, in my opinion, don't really make or break whether a title is successful. Like others have said (I just touched on), you can have GREAT testers and a development team that doesn't listen worth shit, and the game can flop. Yes, it is up to the testers to be good testers, but it is up to the team behind the game to listen to the testers as well as CHOOSE the testers that will test their game.

flakes · March 2007

Well yes they will listen to bug-reportsmostly....but that should not be why beta test is there.Iknow most use it for that but beta should go further.Go to the website of pirates of the burning sea and check out how many things they changed because the communtiy and later on the beta testers wanted to be changed/added.Now there is a company that get's my full support.Beta testing is used in the wrong way....and that is the fault of the designers.It should be 60% bugtests and 40% gametests in general.That's also why they should implement closed beta way earlier then they do most of the times.

Now they bring out a game...mostly it still got bugs but i can live with that.Anyone who starts complaining about bugs after a game just released shouldn't play new mmorpgs.That's part of it...and don't say but i pay for it cause you just know there will be bugs at release.Name me one mmorpg that has released bugfree.However the problem i see these days is that things like : bad interface..bad keymaping wich you can't change..annoying sounds you can't switch off.Those kind of things is what i'd like beta testers to focus on with the 40% gametest i stated.

ZANGFEI · March 2007

are some of you people delusional, this thing called TEST is something someone else has offered to you free of charge and with the respect of getting that job done as best you know how in MOST not all cases PEOPLE do not give two hoots about the Game and only about the free ride. would you yes YOU the one setting at the KEYBOARD give someone that did not care about or give two hoots about what was going on in the game your new Car, to test out for a bit. I bet not. why????????. you know damn well why.Lazy goodfornothing people that use and abuse.

End of subject.

retrospectic · March 2007

Originally posted by ZANGFEI

are some of you people delusional, this thing called TEST is something someone else has offered to you free of charge and with the respect of getting that job done as best you know how in MOST not all cases PEOPLE do not give two hoots about the Game and only about the free ride. would you yes YOU the one setting at the KEYBOARD give someone that did not care about or give two hoots about what was going on in the game your new Car, to test out for a bit. I bet not. why????????. you know damn well why.Lazy goodfornothing people that use and abuse.
End of subject.

0/10 Troll.

Looks like you didn't read any of our responses and have stubborn opinions. I'm going to go back to my beta testing of LOTRO and not report any bugs, el oh el.

retrospectic · March 2007

Originally posted by ZANGFEI

are some of you people delusional, this thing called TEST is something someone else has offered to you free of charge and with the respect of getting that job done as best you know how in MOST not all cases PEOPLE do not give two hoots about the Game and only about the free ride. would you yes YOU the one setting at the KEYBOARD give someone that did not care about or give two hoots about what was going on in the game your new Car, to test out for a bit. I bet not. why????????. you know damn well why.Lazy goodfornothing people that use and abuse.
End of subject.

Let me try an analogy.

You are at Wal-Mart on Saturday. Amongst all of the bargin bins are booths with FREE SAMPLES. You see a lot of the people coming up to the booth, taking a sample, and continuing on. Once in a while, someone stops, takes a sample, and picks up the product. What you've just witnessed is called marketing. Although some people will try your product and never again eat/drink/use it, some will.

That is very similar to MMORPG testing. The only difference is that during the FREE SAMPLE the company provides a feedback system in order to allow players who enjoy the beta a chance to help fix glitches, or report content they wish to see.

Even if only 10% of the clients submit feedback, feedback is still submitted and the job gets done. Meanwhile, some just play the game because it is free and they don't have the 15 bucks, or don't want to spend it.

If I owned a car dealership I would offer anyone willing a chance to test drive my cars. If I was a bad car dealer I would approach everyone with your mentality and probably end up selling less cars.

Cheers.

Signe · March 2007

Originally posted by ZANGFEI

are some of you people delusional, this thing called TEST is something someone else has offered to you free of charge and with the respect of getting that job done as best you know how in MOST not all cases PEOPLE do not give two hoots about the Game and only about the free ride. would you yes YOU the one setting at the KEYBOARD give someone that did not care about or give two hoots about what was going on in the game your new Car, to test out for a bit. I bet not. why????????. you know damn well why.Lazy goodfornothing people that use and abuse.
End of subject.

Were you sputtering when you typed that? I've been in a lot of betas and I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that the games that ended up bad were not the fault of the people testing them. The developers and testers have a fair trade off, in my opinion, anyway. The testers get to fiddle with a game before it launches and the devs get the bodies necessary for collecting information, bug reporting and even some decent input. Even if you never report a bug, you're contributing by just being there, especially in the latter stages.

rufusangus · March 2007

You always are going to have testers with both constructive input and useless input, but most of them are willing to atleast try to be constructive. The problem is, many times companies will flat out ignore the input they recieve, and if the majority of the testers feel changing the way X feature is handled would make the game better, they will change X feature but in a totally diffrent way than was suggested, so instead of improving it, they just make it diffrent, but still just as bad.

Even Blizzard is guilty of this. I was in the warcraft 3 frozen throne beta, and essentially nearly everyone with constructive input felt that the huntress unit was a bit too strong, and needed to have its health slightly lowered. What did blizzard do? They increased its health and its attack power, and gave it a diffrent kind of armor, that made the unit even more powerfull in most situations. The sad thing is, this screwed up the Night elf races entire teir 1 build, and caused a domino effect of stupid changes in an attempt to fix it, and even to this day its still not balanced, they are either way to powerfull or way to weak depending on what enemy race they are facing. This is a prime example of how most of the testers will agree on something, and the developer just refuses to listen; A very simple HP tweak would have fixed it, but rather than just fix it, they completly changed how the unit worked and rebalanced the other tier 1 units around it. It's like they did the total opposite of what was suggested just to spite the testers.

Developers have selective reading skills i guess; They see "this class needs a slight tweak here" as "don't fix this class, overpower it and make some wonky counter to it that sounds good on paper but doesn't work in practice".

A good tester gives constructive criticism's and suggests ways to fix problems, but often times what they have to say isn't going to be positive, and they keep an eye out for bugs. Most testers fit into this catagory, and oddly enough, developers seem to listen to them the least out of anyone, because they never ever fallow suggestions, and its rare for them to make a change that even remotely has anything todo with what was suggested, sometimes even doing something totally opposite.

Bad testers; Theres 2 types of these, ones that just get pissed and rant and rave, saying nothing constructive, and ones like ZANGFEI who are more intrested in kissing ass than actually testing, and further more, will visit the forums and actually attack testers making constructive input, because apparently to them, the point of testing isn't to find bugs or put in input as to how best to fix problems, it's to play the game before everyone else and kiss ass. Whats really stupid is testers like that are often listened to, even when they are obviously not testing at all, they only want to play and have fun like its retail.

Thats really why beta testing hardly works anymore, they only listen to the people that tell them what they want to hear, and when they do listen to good testers, they have to take an ego trick and over complicated the problem into an elaborated and uneeded fix, which often creates a whole new set of problems.

2 things come to mind; first of all, the testers should be required to make atleast one post every few days thats constructive, to weed out the people who are just there to get a "sneak preview" of the game and arn't actually trying to help get anything fixed. Two, if the majority of the testers all are in agreement about something, then take thier advice, otherwise theres no point in having a beta at all.

And ZANGEI, what you need to understand is the point of beta testing is not to have fun; They are asking the players to help them do a job. There are people who get paid todo the same thing, so essentially they are asking us for a favor in doing a job for free, getting to see the game early is just a benefit of that. They should be greatfull to us, not the other way around, because they can't afford to pay a large enough team of professional testers to full test an MMO. We are saving them money by doing the work for them, and if your only intrest is kissing ass and telling them what they want to hear, your doing more harm than good.

Samuraisword · March 2007

There is no evidence that the testers for LOTRO were the deciding factor for it's polished state. It's a credit to the developers.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=531

check out this article on testing

choosingheal · March 2007

The long and short of it is there are benefits to having a program tested by gamers. Some gamers are specific in what they want for thier characters and request those things and make suggestions. Some gammers are able to play a game and find common or not so common mistakes or errors/bugs that are within a game that benefit all players alike. I dont believe a games success is based soley on the testing of it. I believe that a good game base along with gamers with a mission can make a game good enough for more than just a few to like.

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