Eh after beta testing AoC and Champions Online last; I gave up. Give them bugs and exploits, that's kind of ignored, but finish a quest and rank it 1 to 3 stars on the scale of fun.... "There's no 0 option."
The King will not hassle any more trying to help those who can't help themselves. Even when I got in to the RIFT beta it basically seemed like a "Watch us pat ourselves on the back" marathon than any sort of real testing market.
What's painful is seeing after launch ... They strive to try and barely change anything testers told them about prior.
I don't think the beta community has any blame on their heads.
Over the past decade I have tested over 100 games mostly beta, but I have also done some alpha testing and not just with MMO's.
I do it because I love to help find bugs & glitches in the game so that my fellow gamers get a better experiance in the game at launch.
I was an alpha tester for lord of the rings online shadows of angmar. My favorite glitch was the hole in the floor of Gondomon. It was fixed shortly after closd beta 1 started. Anyways when LotRO launched it was bug free and already had it's first content update on launch day thanks to me and my fellow testers.
More developers need to use veteran testers like us! Experiance matters!
I have been a Beta tester on a variety of games right back to battle Isle 2 (I think that was my first Beta ever) and the landscape has certainly changed.
I totally agree, pretty much every "Open Beta Tester" is actually just using OB's to get a headstart before launch (this applies to game beyond the MMO genre also). In MMO Beta's the ammount of crying that occurs on forums whenever there is a required character wipe or a particular game item has its stats lowered followed by lots of people crying it was "nerfed" is all the evidence you need of this, that and how many of them whinge about the game being buggy. Then if you tell them to send in a bug report they dont do it or you see a half assed bug report on the forums which is more of a complaint than an actual usefull bug report.
Closed Beta testers generally complain less about wipes and "nerf's" and more actively report bugs and stick to the correct bug reporting method as requested by the dev's.
Nowdays Open Beta is a joke, I swear the only thing companies really get out of OB's is load testing because from recent experience the number of bug reports being submitted when games make it to OB is little ot no different from when it is in CB and even then its mainly the names you saw reporting in CB who are filling bug reports in OB.
I used to be involved with beta testing single player games almost a decade ago, when software makers first started thinking 'Hey, maybe we can find people on the internets'. We'd do it for fun, for a chance to talk to the developers and for feeling, true or not, that we'd help shape the finished product. Every now and then you'd be rewarded with a copy of the finished game, but to me the main reward was a vastly increased chance of getting into the next beta.
Then MMOs came and changed the gaming world. By then I was out of university and couldn't spare the time, so I didn't get involved. Various testing structures saw the light of day, and as time passed we approached the current 'alpha - closed betas - open beta / hype generator'. Not too many years ago I went to an open beta of an upcoming MMO, and I must confess that I was not prepared.
Originially I went to apply for the final closed beta round of the game, and here I had my first culture shock. Aside from standard questions about my experience and computer specs, the company wanted to know if I was active on their forums and had a fan site. I beg your pardon? Why on earth would I dedicate a fansite to a game that
1) Was yet to be released
2) Had very little information published aside from some backstory blurbs, and
3) Had a grand total of 3 ingame screenshots on the website.
Further, not yet being in the beta, what incentive or motive would I have for being active on their forums? Anyone genuinely involved would be under NDA, so the forums, I found, were mere chatboards and random speculation based on whim. I shook my head, answered 'no' to the questions and settled down to wait for the open beta.
Open beta came, and I signed up. Again, I found myself unprepared. Like others have experienced, any actual talk of bugs was typically met with cries of 'testing was done in closed beta you idiot, this is just for preview / press review / stress testing / fun'. Stress testing seemed feasible, but since the game was still rife with crippling and blatantly obvious bugs I set about my business and explored and reported. When people got ridiculed in chat for doing actual beta stuff I'd approach them, and found a veritable 'underground beta' going on. People who wanted to bughunt had simply grouped up and secluded themselves from the rest of the players.
Through the experiences I had with these people, their stories of other open betas, the lack of feedback to our reports of flaws, exploits and geometry mishaps I deteriorated, becoming a bitter old fart in a matter of days. Now I hang around in bars talking about 'kids these days' and other such topics. It is with age, experience, bitterness and cynicism I say today, to anyone who cares to listen: 'Lol, open beta.'
I beta test to avoid making a bad purchase. I have found (and this is a generilization) most companys could really care less what you say.They have their own agenda and needs and that often has little to do with your input.
I have to disagree with this, and defend game developers.
Somehow game developers get demonized, especially when they put so much of their heart, souls and time into making a game. These guys work unbelievable hours for years straight trying to get a game shipped and somehow they end up the bad guys.
ANd how do you know most of them put their heart and soul? Alot of sh1t games have been coming out lately, thats because many devs are just looking to make quick money instead of putting their HEART AND SOUL into the game. THus many of them deserve the criticism,
I did do some beta testing years ago such as Guild Wars and Eve online, and wrote detailed and accurate reports for betas. Unfortunatly I am just not interested in Betas anymore becasuse a beta now is not what a beta once was. A report in beta now is treated like any other bug report in a normal release.
This may seem like they don't listen to beta testers, but the problem is that there are too many beta testers and not enough GMs. Now Betas have reached the point where the developers are treating beta reports the same as if it were released already... at last that is how it feels.
Really it is like a negative feedback, some testers dont provide feedback, developers need more beta testers to compensate for useless beta testers, and those testers feel they are not being listened to, so stop contributing, so developers need more.
What I always wanted to see was developers to record good testers and maintain a database of testers. If this data was then shared like a reference then developers could maintain a good list of beta testers. I figure many devs wouldnt want to share their beta testers, but it becomes a choice: run large servers or share good testers with good references.
Open betas have their place, however worth-while closed betas have become quite rare. Not because they aren't happening, but I believe because developers realize that in CB, the bad hype from faux beta-testers can be detrimental to the game. The problem lies in the "testers" not the test though. The majority of the testers are there to actually do the job, for free, and expect nothing more than maybe a title once the game goes live. But, like everything, there's always that small minority of "testers" which feel entitled to not follow the rules and to bitch and complain about everthing. They are the ones that bitch about how the game is horrible for an item which is listed by the devs as not functioning in the "known issues" topic because these "testers" never read the "known issues."
Anyhow, I also agree with your sentiment: there's only so many unstable iterations of a game you can go through before you just give up on testing.
The author is spot-on until the "it irks me when I read about people complaining that there are still bugs after (p2p MMOs) release" line. She should have elaborate a bit on that: what about epic fails such as FFXIV then? Can we complain at the countless flaws/bugs of that game without being deemed whiny?
The author is an experienced gamer but she's certainly clueless about the way a MMO company work these days.
On one hand we often have CEOs who don't know the first thing about MMO, pushing as hard as they can to shorten development and QA time; on the other, we have dev teams taking advantage of how clueless high ups are to do as little as possible when they're asked to fix bugs. I deal with those wankers on a daily basis and they always have some magical excuse not to fix what the community is asking for, and then we QA/community/support reps have to face the player base anger and being called names everyday. "The engine is this, the engine is that, we lost that piece of code, it's too much trouble, the art assets cannot be modified without a costy 3rd party software, you won't be able to integrate data back if we tweak things the way you ask" etc, etc, etc. Sure, a MMO is a incredibly complex piece of software and a few bugs are totally fine even after release, but it's a general trend in the MMO industry to disregard polishing and QA and the author is not helping by saying what she said. Just had to let this out.
This is really true of PC games as a whole. Back in the days when companies were on Compuserve and Genie, you could often weasel your way into becoming a tester by pestering the company people on the forums enough.
IMHO, if you don't have an sign a NDA, then you aren't really being a beta tester, it's just a marketing gimmick.
I've been testing for years and love it. Testing is the real game if you ask me. I started testing professionally, fun but doesn't pay very well though I can claim my name in the credits on two titles which was very cool. Now I do it for fun, play hard, look for bugs, strive to destroy the world itself, not just what lives on it. However, I have to agree testers aren't what they used to be. Motivated by being first to play rather than focusing on helping make a great game. Dev teams really should consider looking for a group of pros to participate in closed betas, even late alpha where the real fun is at, crashes galore, a testers meat and taters to be sure. On the other hand though, sometimes just masses of players is a test in itself so everyone has a place in the testing game but if you only play then you've no room to whine. You can't complain about a bug until they don't fix it.
I've beta tested before, and in general, I hate it.
I have always taken it seriously. I submit detailed adbug reports. I try to break things intentionally. I try to find loopholes in the mechanics.
Time and time again, I see publishers push the game anyway, the same bugs that I found and reported merrily in beta, now I'm being asked to deal with them on release.
Now, to be honest, I treat open betas like a free trial just to see if I like the game or not. And I think game publishers are taking the same viewpoint, because so much of the feedback just seems to go into a big black hole, and the game releases anyway. I don't even bother with closed betas any longer.
To say you should get paid to play a video game that's in development is kind of ridiculous. Lets say the developers want to stress test the servers. They would have to pay 1000+ testers just to log in to the game and visit the same zone at the same time.
Consider the priviledge of playing a game for free as payment...
I beta test to avoid making a bad purchase. I have found (and this is a generilization) most companys could really care less what you say.They have their own agenda and needs and that often has little to do with your input.
Yeah, sadly this is how it is now days. Once upon a time we use to get paid to beta test. The company I use to work for used to beta everything from games to 3D design progs to operating systems. We kept detailed logs of what we did, where we went, what we found and how to repeat it as well as possible fixes. Devs not forum moderators or community managers use to actually discuss things with us and involve us in the whole process.
Now days it's "Submit a ticket" then hope they somehow hear about it from enough people that it gets fixed. Non to little dev communication with the testers is the norm now days. You usually have to go through community manager middlemen and moderators that push popular topics through rather than important or crucial issues.
When devs, publishers and whomever else is to blame for all this decided that trained, paid testers wasn't the way to go and would rather have volunteer moderators, free trial beta testers and that whole "This is just more advertising really" feeling rather than a professional work environment.... well you can't really blame anyone but those responsible and that isn't the testers.
I mean... you have people comming in and abusing cheat progs and using these beta's as testing grounds for there own personal progs. You have people that come in and their sole purpose is to grief others. You end up with a plethora of people simply there to preview the game (Which in all honesty what most of these beta's are about now days, they let testers in cherry pick some comments and say HEY LOOK, the testers love our game and think it's perfect and ready to roll out!".
Don't blame todays testers lol. The devs and publishers decided they didn't want quality testers a long time ago. It's no ones fault but their own, they are simply getting what they pay for.
If you want serious testers the application needs to be a bit more serious than "HEY CLICK ME FOR BETA", "CHANCE TO WIN BETA ACCESS BY SUBSCRIBING TO OUR NEWSLETTER OR FOLLOWING US ON TWITTER".
It's like an owner of a McDonalds running up to a highschool and handing out fliers saying "Come work at McDonalds, most that apply will be hired. You won't get paid, there is no training nor is any training or experience required but you can have free cheesburgers for as long as you work for us". How many quality employees you think that will net them, same could be applied to any business. Giving a job that could make or break your game to a bunch of random people that you aren't paying and that you don't communicate with simply isn't a good business decision and its their own fault that they must pay the piper at launch when people leave in droves.
Don't mind my rant though lol. Bitter subject for me.
I today still help out but I'm not exactly as dillegant as I use to be in my testing.
Another little tidbit, with professional testers the NDA's might actually mean something again lol.
Without an open beta, it's hard sell for me. Whether it's for marketing, stress tests, or just a chance to check out the game, all I know is my trust level with all these companies is so low I am unlikely to give them a dime without a trial of some kind.
I don't mind doing actual beta work, but it's been a long time since any company asked for real beta testers. Hell many companies don't even deliver games past the beta status anymore. I've not seen many open to actual feedback either...
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I also liked helping find bugs and making sugestions to make the game more fun and playable I remember in SWG beta they had rain but its intencist changed in tiers rather than smooth, they tweeked it and made very nice storms.
I would love to get in to a "beta" before a game was set into stone. i keep seeing many of the same mistakes Ive encountered in other MMO beta's
I think what ever has happened has hurt game improvement progression and it has literally stagnated for many years now so much so that I have stoped playing on activly and Im looking for a new game that amazes and suprises me. I'm a builder explorer I like crafts that matter not in micro terms but to the universe I want to make things that i can trade to other regons
I want climate seasons disease plagues diasters in a realistic but idealized reality. I want to learn and discover about my new world i want to build bridges and aquaducts dams sail boats prepare for the winter season, have a farm with animals and a garden, have interesting races that are more than just looks
have the players buy traits with points be able to build attacks and magic just like crafting by using points or skill sub components to create constructs to create everything from a candle flame to a short range nuking fireball
start off a game with players as pesants scrounging tavern garbage to survive and working as apprentices to learn skills
even a thief can get thrown into jail and meet a trainer.
just one thing DON'T MAKE IT SO PVPERS CAN RUIN CASUAL PLAYERS ENJOYMENT!!
mostly im talking about a sandbox type world I even thought about players evacuating a doomed planet only to arrive on a totally unknown and mysterious world with only a few items or nothing at all with only a small player outpost to welcome you and the rest you have to discover even which way is north and the stars in the sky and what plants are good to eat.
I would like to be a tester on secret world im hoping it will suprise me and wont have simple AI's that the developers think are more challanging if they dump hitpoints and damage into them. yawn!
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Its all about cutting cost, and milking the community
very true many recent BETAS were restricted to people who preordered the game. alot of those people kick themselves after they realized the train wrecks like star trek online.. or worse they buy a lifetime subscription and end up trying to get their money back by taking the company to court.
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
very true many recent BETAS were restricted to people who preordered the game. alot of those people kick themselves after they realized the train wrecks like star trek online.. or worse they buy a lifetime subscription and end up trying to get their money back by taking the company to court.
Yeah, about that... Have any good game ever given away free beta invites to people that preorder? I don't think so, good games doesn't have to use cheesy marketting tricks like that.
Never preorder a game that you aren't 100% sure of. It is fine for someone who loved Diablo 1 & 2 to preorder Diablo but you probably should test out TOR first if you like Star wars but know little about Bioware...
I'm not going to lie, though I started out "testing" things like AA and LotRO, these days I generally use them a.) for work and b.) for fun. Beta Tests ARE for player previews anymore, and it's kind of a sad fact.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
I beta test to avoid making a bad purchase. I have found (and this is a generilization) most companys could really care less what you say.They have their own agenda and needs and that often has little to do with your input.
Sad.. but true.
I think Betas would be taken more seriously if more companies actually listened to the testers and 'fixed' the bugs that were reported and complained about.
Case in point - Black Prophecy.
I was one of the very first Beta testers, and it was glorious. It had some major flaws, but I reported them and went on my way like I should have. I stopped playing for a while. 5-6 months later, I rejoined the CBT, only to find those same exact game-crippling bugs still in effect. It sort of feels like you're doing all this reporting and 'helping' for nothing. I don't blame people in that scenario who complain loudly in the world chat. Its frustrating.
Most of the time it just feels like i'm playing a Beta just to help them test the server load, instead of anything to do with the game itself.
100% Agree. Some companies just kinda want the game out there for hype instead of keeping the players by fixing the bugs...
Why wouldn't I want to beta test a game? If it sounds like a great game, but you're not entirely sure whether it will live up to your expectations. My latest beta was Rift and I saw it was a quality product, but I also saw the problems with the game, a lot of which didn't really have simple fixes. I reported the bugs I found, reported the problems with the system/world. I don't regret playing the beta and not buying the title even just a bit. I think of it as a preview for you and solid feedback for them. No harm done, not to me, not to them..
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...
Comments
Becasue I am a VHS tester!
beta's aren't for testing the game's code as much as they are the player's response to the game.
What you mean? detail this please
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Over the past decade I have tested over 100 games mostly beta, but I have also done some alpha testing and not just with MMO's.
I do it because I love to help find bugs & glitches in the game so that my fellow gamers get a better experiance in the game at launch.
I was an alpha tester for lord of the rings online shadows of angmar. My favorite glitch was the hole in the floor of Gondomon. It was fixed shortly after closd beta 1 started. Anyways when LotRO launched it was bug free and already had it's first content update on launch day thanks to me and my fellow testers.
More developers need to use veteran testers like us! Experiance matters!
I have been a Beta tester on a variety of games right back to battle Isle 2 (I think that was my first Beta ever) and the landscape has certainly changed.
I totally agree, pretty much every "Open Beta Tester" is actually just using OB's to get a headstart before launch (this applies to game beyond the MMO genre also). In MMO Beta's the ammount of crying that occurs on forums whenever there is a required character wipe or a particular game item has its stats lowered followed by lots of people crying it was "nerfed" is all the evidence you need of this, that and how many of them whinge about the game being buggy. Then if you tell them to send in a bug report they dont do it or you see a half assed bug report on the forums which is more of a complaint than an actual usefull bug report.
Closed Beta testers generally complain less about wipes and "nerf's" and more actively report bugs and stick to the correct bug reporting method as requested by the dev's.
Nowdays Open Beta is a joke, I swear the only thing companies really get out of OB's is load testing because from recent experience the number of bug reports being submitted when games make it to OB is little ot no different from when it is in CB and even then its mainly the names you saw reporting in CB who are filling bug reports in OB.
I used to be involved with beta testing single player games almost a decade ago, when software makers first started thinking 'Hey, maybe we can find people on the internets'. We'd do it for fun, for a chance to talk to the developers and for feeling, true or not, that we'd help shape the finished product. Every now and then you'd be rewarded with a copy of the finished game, but to me the main reward was a vastly increased chance of getting into the next beta.
Then MMOs came and changed the gaming world. By then I was out of university and couldn't spare the time, so I didn't get involved. Various testing structures saw the light of day, and as time passed we approached the current 'alpha - closed betas - open beta / hype generator'. Not too many years ago I went to an open beta of an upcoming MMO, and I must confess that I was not prepared.
Originially I went to apply for the final closed beta round of the game, and here I had my first culture shock. Aside from standard questions about my experience and computer specs, the company wanted to know if I was active on their forums and had a fan site. I beg your pardon? Why on earth would I dedicate a fansite to a game that
1) Was yet to be released
2) Had very little information published aside from some backstory blurbs, and
3) Had a grand total of 3 ingame screenshots on the website.
Further, not yet being in the beta, what incentive or motive would I have for being active on their forums? Anyone genuinely involved would be under NDA, so the forums, I found, were mere chatboards and random speculation based on whim. I shook my head, answered 'no' to the questions and settled down to wait for the open beta.
Open beta came, and I signed up. Again, I found myself unprepared. Like others have experienced, any actual talk of bugs was typically met with cries of 'testing was done in closed beta you idiot, this is just for preview / press review / stress testing / fun'. Stress testing seemed feasible, but since the game was still rife with crippling and blatantly obvious bugs I set about my business and explored and reported. When people got ridiculed in chat for doing actual beta stuff I'd approach them, and found a veritable 'underground beta' going on. People who wanted to bughunt had simply grouped up and secluded themselves from the rest of the players.
Through the experiences I had with these people, their stories of other open betas, the lack of feedback to our reports of flaws, exploits and geometry mishaps I deteriorated, becoming a bitter old fart in a matter of days. Now I hang around in bars talking about 'kids these days' and other such topics. It is with age, experience, bitterness and cynicism I say today, to anyone who cares to listen: 'Lol, open beta.'
I did do some beta testing years ago such as Guild Wars and Eve online, and wrote detailed and accurate reports for betas. Unfortunatly I am just not interested in Betas anymore becasuse a beta now is not what a beta once was. A report in beta now is treated like any other bug report in a normal release.
This may seem like they don't listen to beta testers, but the problem is that there are too many beta testers and not enough GMs. Now Betas have reached the point where the developers are treating beta reports the same as if it were released already... at last that is how it feels.
Really it is like a negative feedback, some testers dont provide feedback, developers need more beta testers to compensate for useless beta testers, and those testers feel they are not being listened to, so stop contributing, so developers need more.
What I always wanted to see was developers to record good testers and maintain a database of testers. If this data was then shared like a reference then developers could maintain a good list of beta testers. I figure many devs wouldnt want to share their beta testers, but it becomes a choice: run large servers or share good testers with good references.
Open betas have their place, however worth-while closed betas have become quite rare. Not because they aren't happening, but I believe because developers realize that in CB, the bad hype from faux beta-testers can be detrimental to the game. The problem lies in the "testers" not the test though. The majority of the testers are there to actually do the job, for free, and expect nothing more than maybe a title once the game goes live. But, like everything, there's always that small minority of "testers" which feel entitled to not follow the rules and to bitch and complain about everthing. They are the ones that bitch about how the game is horrible for an item which is listed by the devs as not functioning in the "known issues" topic because these "testers" never read the "known issues."
Anyhow, I also agree with your sentiment: there's only so many unstable iterations of a game you can go through before you just give up on testing.
The author is spot-on until the "it irks me when I read about people complaining that there are still bugs after (p2p MMOs) release" line. She should have elaborate a bit on that: what about epic fails such as FFXIV then? Can we complain at the countless flaws/bugs of that game without being deemed whiny?
The author is an experienced gamer but she's certainly clueless about the way a MMO company work these days.
On one hand we often have CEOs who don't know the first thing about MMO, pushing as hard as they can to shorten development and QA time; on the other, we have dev teams taking advantage of how clueless high ups are to do as little as possible when they're asked to fix bugs. I deal with those wankers on a daily basis and they always have some magical excuse not to fix what the community is asking for, and then we QA/community/support reps have to face the player base anger and being called names everyday. "The engine is this, the engine is that, we lost that piece of code, it's too much trouble, the art assets cannot be modified without a costy 3rd party software, you won't be able to integrate data back if we tweak things the way you ask" etc, etc, etc. Sure, a MMO is a incredibly complex piece of software and a few bugs are totally fine even after release, but it's a general trend in the MMO industry to disregard polishing and QA and the author is not helping by saying what she said. Just had to let this out.
WOW ruined everything.
I can not get into a beta to save my life anymore.
I even got to cb xbox live, now I am lucky if I can buy my way into an open beta wtf
This is really true of PC games as a whole. Back in the days when companies were on Compuserve and Genie, you could often weasel your way into becoming a tester by pestering the company people on the forums enough.
IMHO, if you don't have an sign a NDA, then you aren't really being a beta tester, it's just a marketing gimmick.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
I've been testing for years and love it. Testing is the real game if you ask me. I started testing professionally, fun but doesn't pay very well though I can claim my name in the credits on two titles which was very cool. Now I do it for fun, play hard, look for bugs, strive to destroy the world itself, not just what lives on it. However, I have to agree testers aren't what they used to be. Motivated by being first to play rather than focusing on helping make a great game. Dev teams really should consider looking for a group of pros to participate in closed betas, even late alpha where the real fun is at, crashes galore, a testers meat and taters to be sure. On the other hand though, sometimes just masses of players is a test in itself so everyone has a place in the testing game but if you only play then you've no room to whine. You can't complain about a bug until they don't fix it.
I've beta tested before, and in general, I hate it.
I have always taken it seriously. I submit detailed adbug reports. I try to break things intentionally. I try to find loopholes in the mechanics.
Time and time again, I see publishers push the game anyway, the same bugs that I found and reported merrily in beta, now I'm being asked to deal with them on release.
Now, to be honest, I treat open betas like a free trial just to see if I like the game or not. And I think game publishers are taking the same viewpoint, because so much of the feedback just seems to go into a big black hole, and the game releases anyway. I don't even bother with closed betas any longer.
To say you should get paid to play a video game that's in development is kind of ridiculous. Lets say the developers want to stress test the servers. They would have to pay 1000+ testers just to log in to the game and visit the same zone at the same time.
Consider the priviledge of playing a game for free as payment...
Yeah, sadly this is how it is now days. Once upon a time we use to get paid to beta test. The company I use to work for used to beta everything from games to 3D design progs to operating systems. We kept detailed logs of what we did, where we went, what we found and how to repeat it as well as possible fixes. Devs not forum moderators or community managers use to actually discuss things with us and involve us in the whole process.
Now days it's "Submit a ticket" then hope they somehow hear about it from enough people that it gets fixed. Non to little dev communication with the testers is the norm now days. You usually have to go through community manager middlemen and moderators that push popular topics through rather than important or crucial issues.
When devs, publishers and whomever else is to blame for all this decided that trained, paid testers wasn't the way to go and would rather have volunteer moderators, free trial beta testers and that whole "This is just more advertising really" feeling rather than a professional work environment.... well you can't really blame anyone but those responsible and that isn't the testers.
I mean... you have people comming in and abusing cheat progs and using these beta's as testing grounds for there own personal progs. You have people that come in and their sole purpose is to grief others. You end up with a plethora of people simply there to preview the game (Which in all honesty what most of these beta's are about now days, they let testers in cherry pick some comments and say HEY LOOK, the testers love our game and think it's perfect and ready to roll out!".
Don't blame todays testers lol. The devs and publishers decided they didn't want quality testers a long time ago. It's no ones fault but their own, they are simply getting what they pay for.
If you want serious testers the application needs to be a bit more serious than "HEY CLICK ME FOR BETA", "CHANCE TO WIN BETA ACCESS BY SUBSCRIBING TO OUR NEWSLETTER OR FOLLOWING US ON TWITTER".
It's like an owner of a McDonalds running up to a highschool and handing out fliers saying "Come work at McDonalds, most that apply will be hired. You won't get paid, there is no training nor is any training or experience required but you can have free cheesburgers for as long as you work for us". How many quality employees you think that will net them, same could be applied to any business. Giving a job that could make or break your game to a bunch of random people that you aren't paying and that you don't communicate with simply isn't a good business decision and its their own fault that they must pay the piper at launch when people leave in droves.
Don't mind my rant though lol. Bitter subject for me.
I today still help out but I'm not exactly as dillegant as I use to be in my testing.
Another little tidbit, with professional testers the NDA's might actually mean something again lol.
Without an open beta, it's hard sell for me. Whether it's for marketing, stress tests, or just a chance to check out the game, all I know is my trust level with all these companies is so low I am unlikely to give them a dime without a trial of some kind.
I don't mind doing actual beta work, but it's been a long time since any company asked for real beta testers. Hell many companies don't even deliver games past the beta status anymore. I've not seen many open to actual feedback either...
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I also liked helping find bugs and making sugestions to make the game more fun and playable I remember in SWG beta they had rain but its intencist changed in tiers rather than smooth, they tweeked it and made very nice storms.
I would love to get in to a "beta" before a game was set into stone. i keep seeing many of the same mistakes Ive encountered in other MMO beta's
I think what ever has happened has hurt game improvement progression and it has literally stagnated for many years now so much so that I have stoped playing on activly and Im looking for a new game that amazes and suprises me. I'm a builder explorer I like crafts that matter not in micro terms but to the universe I want to make things that i can trade to other regons
I want climate seasons disease plagues diasters in a realistic but idealized reality. I want to learn and discover about my new world i want to build bridges and aquaducts dams sail boats prepare for the winter season, have a farm with animals and a garden, have interesting races that are more than just looks
have the players buy traits with points be able to build attacks and magic just like crafting by using points or skill sub components to create constructs to create everything from a candle flame to a short range nuking fireball
start off a game with players as pesants scrounging tavern garbage to survive and working as apprentices to learn skills
even a thief can get thrown into jail and meet a trainer.
just one thing DON'T MAKE IT SO PVPERS CAN RUIN CASUAL PLAYERS ENJOYMENT!!
mostly im talking about a sandbox type world I even thought about players evacuating a doomed planet only to arrive on a totally unknown and mysterious world with only a few items or nothing at all with only a small player outpost to welcome you and the rest you have to discover even which way is north and the stars in the sky and what plants are good to eat.
I would like to be a tester on secret world im hoping it will suprise me and wont have simple AI's that the developers think are more challanging if they dump hitpoints and damage into them. yawn!
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Its all about cutting cost, and milking the community
very true many recent BETAS were restricted to people who preordered the game. alot of those people kick themselves after they realized the train wrecks like star trek online.. or worse they buy a lifetime subscription and end up trying to get their money back by taking the company to court.
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Yeah, about that... Have any good game ever given away free beta invites to people that preorder? I don't think so, good games doesn't have to use cheesy marketting tricks like that.
Never preorder a game that you aren't 100% sure of. It is fine for someone who loved Diablo 1 & 2 to preorder Diablo but you probably should test out TOR first if you like Star wars but know little about Bioware...
If i really like the game and am fan of it i will beta test to find out bugs and repport them maybe give feedbacks about things i like or don't like
I'm not going to lie, though I started out "testing" things like AA and LotRO, these days I generally use them a.) for work and b.) for fun. Beta Tests ARE for player previews anymore, and it's kind of a sad fact.
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100% Agree. Some companies just kinda want the game out there for hype instead of keeping the players by fixing the bugs...
Why wouldn't I want to beta test a game? If it sounds like a great game, but you're not entirely sure whether it will live up to your expectations. My latest beta was Rift and I saw it was a quality product, but I also saw the problems with the game, a lot of which didn't really have simple fixes. I reported the bugs I found, reported the problems with the system/world. I don't regret playing the beta and not buying the title even just a bit. I think of it as a preview for you and solid feedback for them. No harm done, not to me, not to them..
Waiting for Guild Wars 2, and maybe SWTOR until that time...