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FFXIV - extended betas are a mistake
stragen001
Member UncommonPosts: 1,720
Its not just FFXIV that are doing this. Lot of games are doing the same thing.
All of these closed beta sessions, and then an open beta mean that everyone will have already tried the game by release date.
Those that dont like the game will have realised they dont like it by launch and wont subscribe
Those that do like the game will be burnt out on it already by launch and wont subscribe
Not a clever strategy for a subscription game......
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
Comments
I don't think you even played beta at all. Pretty much all the people who tried it, burnt out or not, will be playing in open beta which carry progress to release. If they don't like the game by open beta then they don't buy, it's simple.
I don't see how you think it's not a good idea to give open beta as a free trial.
I am in that boat. I won't be playing at launch the game is more of the same o...
I guess I am curious the actual benefit of releasing in beta for free. I mean a lot of these new titles coming out are not thrown together Ford Pintos, they are legitimate MMOs. Not making money on beta, grabbing the attention of people initially, then bleeding people that find the game 'meh'. Widdle it down into a title, when by release, is ready to shock the world with a 250k user base which is F2P but has an in game store.
Now with 57.3% more flames!
Needs to be - but in general isn't.
Extended betas are great IF the developers are actually giving any weight as to what is reported/requested/suggested.
From my 11 years of FFXI and watching how the betas of XIV have been handled it appears to me S-E could give a flying rats rear end what the NA players have to say. To give them some credit, in the last couple of years they have been a tad more responsive to the JP player base - but I honestly have been wondering if they even bother reading the English forums.
Other games I've seen just use the beta tag as a means of more along the lines of advertising.
In theory, a nice long beta with changes being made in response to the entire player base seems ideal. But lets face it - it just doesn't happen.
What "extended beta" are you talking about? All the beta events have been 48 hours long over a few weekends. The only exception thus far was the last weekend of beta 3 which was 5 days. Each phase has had a week or so in between for SE to make changes. The next beta is a short open beta which leads right into head-start and launch w/ all data carrying over barring some huge technical issue.
So looks like the OP made an incorrect conclusion using the wrong data. Way to go!!
I think the OP was referring to it basically taking them ~2 months to complete beta stage 3 - plus the wait between stage 2 and the start of stage 3....add in the previous beta stages, and alpha....
I want to try it, and have been too busy to do so, and I will also miss the open beta, but I am going to get my wife to give it a spin on the open beta to see if she likes it.
I myself do not play the crap out of open/closed betas, if I get to play them. I will play enough to see if I like it or not, then be done for a open beta. Before someone complains about the purpose of beta, yes I do report things still while I play.
yep, tried it .. was pretty boring and overly instanced. same thing happened with NW though I guess that's different as it isnt a sub game. same with tsw.
most other games though I do play like rift, swtor, gw2? cant even remember if I was in beta for that actually. I should say played. I don't play them anymore. this limited themepark era has to end at some point >.< or they at least have to make more than 5% of the content challenging again. im simply no longer willing to buy into a short term themepark game.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
what its not a very clever strategy actually is If your business is shady enough that you cant let players try your product before deciding if they want to spend money and support it, then i dont want to give my money to you.
All games have multiple closed betas... They are to test different aspects of the game pre-launch.. Then there is the open beta which is mainly for stress testing the servers... So that is why they make sense.. As far as being burnt out, they severely limit content that can be tackled during each phase in order to corral players into testing the items that the development teams need feedback on. The content has been VERY limited in each of these phases. Phase 3 had the most content and you could only get to level 35, there was no voice acting, story quest ended at 20, there were no jobs (I don't think), there was no arcanist class, etc. So if you're "burnt out" on what you played then its safe to say that this game just isn't for you, since you didn't even get to see half of what FFXIV:ARR has to offer yet.
So really, everything they have done is typical mmo testing procedure and if people don't sub because they don't like how FFXIV:ARR plays, then I think they should be happy that they were able to see that before wasting the money. So really it seems that the development team has done people a service by helping them make an educated choice on the game before it launches. It's not like they need every single person to sub. They have a huge fan base and multi-platforming will give them staggering amounts of subs anyway.
So if you don't want to read that ramble.. Betas = good. Choices = good.
That's kind of the point. People deserve to know what the product looks like before they pay money for it. If you are trying to bait people into subscribing to something they haven't played, and are not secure about your product's quality, it's probably not going to last long. MMO's are long term projects.
Do people seriously burn out that fast on an MMO????? I never experienced that.
If anything, the trial lets people who are on the fence or would generally not look at it try the game. If they try the game, there is a chance that they'll change their mind.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
Currently playing: GW2, EVE
Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
There was a good article over on Gamasutra about demos, and I think it aptly applies to long "open betas" (which are essentially demos with an expiration date).
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CaspianPrince/20130603/193494/The_Demo_Is_Dead.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CaspianPrince/20130605/193709/The_Demo_Is_Dead_Part_2.php
Two key quotes, for those who don't want to click over:
To this end, I totally agree with Caspian Prince in his article. A lot of people say they won't buy a game without a demo (or free open beta) to try it out. I think more people than that won't buy a game with a demo (or free open beta). I think the Benchmark/character creator was demo enough, very smart - it was essentially a live trailer, proving point 1, and involving some game feature to satisfy point 2, but no actual game play, so you can't really get to point 3.
Here, S/E has a short open beta period - like 3 days. I think this is mainly for stress testing. It's not the same as, say, Neverwinter's months-long beta period. Not an indefinite demo like Prince Caspian is talking about.
The rest of the betas were all closed; by invitation only. Companies need betas to refine, to gather feedback, and to fix stuff. About 6-9 months is pretty typical for a large AAA game to be in Beta from my experience, with the company adding invitiations as they feel comfortable and need to start testing things with more players. I don't think the P1-P3 betas were in the same category as "Lot of games (that) are doing the same thing". And in a F2P game, is there really a difference between "open beta" and "release" anyway? - FFXIVARR will be P2P, so there is a definitive cutoff.
The few P1-P3 beta players (they had over a million signed up, I don't think the number of invitations was 5% of that) may be "burnt out" - but that's on them. No one should sign up for Beta thinking it's fun and games; it's a volunteer job - your supposed to test on what the company asks you to test, your supposed to seek out and report bugs, and your supposed to submit suggestions and feedback. If you burned out on the story/gameplay/whatever, then ok - but you signed up for the labor of love that is beta testing, and you should have known what you were getting into before you submitted your application. Beta does not mean the same thing as "early access gameplay".
This x1000000000
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And if there is no open beta, gamers cry foul. I get tired of playing a "new" mmo only to have the elitists calling me a noob on day 1 because I didn't play the open beta and "know everything" already.
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Open betas are one of the dumbest ideas in mmo history if you ask me.
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"Oh by Dragim, they need to stress test and find bugs!"
Yeah, maybe they do.. But what did they USED to do? What did Everquest do? What did Ultima Online do? What did Dark age of Camelot do?
I don't recall them having massive open betas. Or "closed betas" letting thousands of people in.
But hey...I could be wrong.
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"But Dragim, if you don't want to spoil anything, just don't play"
Yeah but everyone else playing spoils it for me. They know all the secrets. They know all the spots, they know how to maximize the auction house, farming spots and driving prices up and down.
There is no "Great Discovery". It is "omg i got as much information in beta I could so I can beat everyone else out and talk about how elite I am."
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End open betas! It ruins it for everyone!
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
If the game was any good, people would subscribe on release, whether they played the beta or not.
It's a hard concept to fathom, considering almost every MMO release is trash. We're getting so accustomed to immediately quitting these horse manure game titles, to the point where we start believing the only profit in an MMO is found in the first opening weeks, generating posts like the OP made. I.e. "a MMO won't be profitable without suckering in a large pool of players to try the game for the first time".
If you make a sub game and tell players you will be enjoying it for years to come that's the harm in a month or two of beta?
The title of this thread says to me, FFXIV won't be holding your attention for very long. You'll be moving on to something else sooner rather than later, so the Devs are making a mistake. They should be just teasing you with hype and false promises, so you'll buy the game.