Anyone else think an open beta is a bad idea?
- Thread starter Imposter
- Start date
I have three things to add, first two on topic, third one not...
First one:
FPS games on the whole have to be very careful about not giving away the entire cake with the sample.
So I imagine an open beta will contain SOME of multiplayer maps, and none of the single player missions (or maybe one). It will be like the RTCW multiplayer test. It gives a whole lot of work towards increasing game balance, and a sample of gameplay, without giving away the entire game for free. Multiplayer tests are my favorite form of open beta.
Second one:
Much of the game balance and obvious balance flaws should be hacked out before it ever hits beta. The less gameplay changes needed, and the shorter the beta period required, the better off you'll be. Nothing kills someone's fun quite as quickly as major nerf to their favorite weapon, two days before the game goes gold.
Third one:
UT2K3 does not suck. In fact, it's eclipsing UT now. Damned fine game. It is sad they changed the pace of the game (the weapons are noticeably weaker, and therefore frags aren't quite as shockingly rapid), but on the whole, they added the double jump and wall jump, which more than made up for any mistakes some people may believe UT2K3 has.
So for UT2K3, I'll chalk it up to a slightly hasty release (for the first two patches, the netcode was shaky), and a general light nerfing of the pace (same thing happened to T2, the pace dropped.)
But when people found the new and hidden depth (oh man jumps in UT2K3 are fun), you learn exactly how cool it can be.
That said, T2 didn't have any hidden depth, exception being the shocklance, which was also an overpowered piece of crap that unbalanced the gameplay.
First one:
FPS games on the whole have to be very careful about not giving away the entire cake with the sample.
So I imagine an open beta will contain SOME of multiplayer maps, and none of the single player missions (or maybe one). It will be like the RTCW multiplayer test. It gives a whole lot of work towards increasing game balance, and a sample of gameplay, without giving away the entire game for free. Multiplayer tests are my favorite form of open beta.
Second one:
Much of the game balance and obvious balance flaws should be hacked out before it ever hits beta. The less gameplay changes needed, and the shorter the beta period required, the better off you'll be. Nothing kills someone's fun quite as quickly as major nerf to their favorite weapon, two days before the game goes gold.
Third one:
UT2K3 does not suck. In fact, it's eclipsing UT now. Damned fine game. It is sad they changed the pace of the game (the weapons are noticeably weaker, and therefore frags aren't quite as shockingly rapid), but on the whole, they added the double jump and wall jump, which more than made up for any mistakes some people may believe UT2K3 has.
So for UT2K3, I'll chalk it up to a slightly hasty release (for the first two patches, the netcode was shaky), and a general light nerfing of the pace (same thing happened to T2, the pace dropped.)
But when people found the new and hidden depth (oh man jumps in UT2K3 are fun), you learn exactly how cool it can be.
That said, T2 didn't have any hidden depth, exception being the shocklance, which was also an overpowered piece of crap that unbalanced the gameplay.
AbirikCham
Veteran XV
wasn't quake 3 open beta? q3test or something and it turned out awesome
Njal Storm
Veteran X
everyone knows a beta is a beta.....
the only peeps u will lose a sale to are those impatimt 'if i was a coder' it would be alot better people.
beta is good all around gets die hard tribers to unite and feel like a part of the creation process, shows very well for the dev team <--- that is the key.
the only peeps u will lose a sale to are those impatimt 'if i was a coder' it would be alot better people.
beta is good all around gets die hard tribers to unite and feel like a part of the creation process, shows very well for the dev team <--- that is the key.
Problem with an Open Beta is the vast majority of "testers", do not treat it as such. They'll give the term lipservice, but in the end its more of a "demo" to the community then anything else.
Open Beta would be fine if the version released to the Public for the Open Beta is as solid as possible. IE, the "Closed" Beta portion of the testing has weeded everything it thinks exists and no "known" issue remains. We all know that no matter how solid it appears, once Joe Public gets his hands on it, he'll break it somehow. However, theres no point giving it to Joe Public if you already know he's gonna break A) B) and C). Instead, you want him to find out if there is a D) E) or F).
T2 Beta failed because this never happened. Large Issues remained known and unfixed for the greater periods of the Beta Segment, most "casual" testers became disillusioned and simply ditched trying to be a "Beta" tester as their issues were never resolved. A), B) and C) remained an issue straight on through to the Meta Period, when the Questions of D), E) and F) were being asked, but little could be done to answer them and so they remained an issue at the time the game was released.
Once development reaches "Open Beta" it needs to be sailing straight on through to the finish line, with no expectations for serious objections to be raised by the Open Beta. Once open begins, you can't drag the process out, if some critical issue does arise that will delay the process for a large period of time, then Open Beta needs to return to Closed Beta. Otherwise, major problems will kill the communities enthusiasm and their interest will wain and retard their trust in the development of Tribes 3. Once you've given the public a taste, you better be prepared with the full meal deal not long after or you'll end up with a rather hungry, disgruntled dog of a community to deal with.
Open Beta would be fine if the version released to the Public for the Open Beta is as solid as possible. IE, the "Closed" Beta portion of the testing has weeded everything it thinks exists and no "known" issue remains. We all know that no matter how solid it appears, once Joe Public gets his hands on it, he'll break it somehow. However, theres no point giving it to Joe Public if you already know he's gonna break A) B) and C). Instead, you want him to find out if there is a D) E) or F).
T2 Beta failed because this never happened. Large Issues remained known and unfixed for the greater periods of the Beta Segment, most "casual" testers became disillusioned and simply ditched trying to be a "Beta" tester as their issues were never resolved. A), B) and C) remained an issue straight on through to the Meta Period, when the Questions of D), E) and F) were being asked, but little could be done to answer them and so they remained an issue at the time the game was released.
Once development reaches "Open Beta" it needs to be sailing straight on through to the finish line, with no expectations for serious objections to be raised by the Open Beta. Once open begins, you can't drag the process out, if some critical issue does arise that will delay the process for a large period of time, then Open Beta needs to return to Closed Beta. Otherwise, major problems will kill the communities enthusiasm and their interest will wain and retard their trust in the development of Tribes 3. Once you've given the public a taste, you better be prepared with the full meal deal not long after or you'll end up with a rather hungry, disgruntled dog of a community to deal with.
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Zoolooman said:
I'd like to throw in with my opinion on RtCW open beta. While it was good, it had a critical flaw. It was "short sighted". Because it only had 1 map, everything was honed based on how that one map, "Mp_Beach", played. All tactics and weapons were based upon how well they played in a rather small confined map (IE 1 enviroment). It would be like Balancing T1 using Blastside and then when all the weapons played out "balanced", wondering why many of them never get used on Rollercoaster and the other 70% of Tribes maps. Case in point with RtCW, The Flame Thrower. The FT was rather strong when the Beta came out, and because of its leathal power in the confines of the Beach Bunkers (a good 65-70% of the map environment), it had to be reduced in power and range to where it wasn't so "whorable" on the Beach map. Well, that was fine, except when you move on to maps like Tram, Depot, Village, Assualt and other maps with wide open ranges for enviroments and see the Flamer is totally useless as now it has no where near the range it needs to be even semi-effective except in very limited and rather specific cases. Most of the RtCW maps are no where near as cramped and tiny as the Beach Map. Yet the balance of the game was gauged soley in this limited fashion.
That said, we don't want "Tribes 1 demo syndrome" where an entire community grew up around the "freebie" of the demo becuase it had everything you needed to play and so there wasn't much incentive to actually move on to the "real game". It, in fact, became the game, which isn't what you really want to see happen.
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Hellsfury said:
I totally agree, and it was a bad example for me to use the RTCW multiplayer test, because balance decisions were made on the wrong map.
That said, careful choice will be required in the few maps chosen for this demo/open beta/multiplayer test. Maybe two or three, covering all the major map types of a single gametype. Save other gametypes, and the single player, to make your full product very attractive.
Void|deadjawa said:I'd just like to throw in the fact that War3 is already the 2nd biggest game on battle.net (next to Starcraft) and is in position to take over as the #1 game on bnet after the expansion comes out.
Whoever said War3 sucked was just plain wrong, people love it
Are you telling me that Warcraft 3 cant even make #1 on a system for only Blizzard games?
Here's a shocker, Blizzard uses those people just for load testing. Their earlier closed betas are for bug finding. The other thing large groups are good for is finding exploits and adjusting balance. An open beta may find some bugs, but that shouldn't be the aim of it. It's for balance, exploits, and the like.Void|deadjawa said:
As for not being surprised by the game, remember that the single player won't be open beta, and most of the multiplayer will also not be shown. It will be a small percentage of the game (demo sized) that will be in the open beta.
Note that we've never said we wouldn't have a closed beta in addition to the open beta, or that we don't currently have people under NDA
We have a QA team. Two in fact, on in Australia and one in LA. You can't possibly make a game without a full time QA team. But a QA team can't tell you things like "RedDread will lead 5150 to exploit the bomber in unclean ways destroying all semblance of balance in the game".Imposter said:
Void|deadjawa
Veteran X
Thrax Panda said:
Well if you plan on making the open beta just for balance, exploits, and load tests you better have a damn good QA team. Blizzard's beta tests are almost completely devoid of bugs, thats why they can afford to do that. I've never played in a non-Blizzard beta test that is stable enough to play balance right from the beginning. I'd be quite suprised if you guys were capable of this with a comparably small QA team.
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No, their open/wide beta tests are almost free of bugs. Their smaller closed tests are not at that level yet.Void|deadjawa said:
But I agree, 99.9% off all the bugs should be fixed before an open beta starts
Void|deadjawa
Veteran X
By "closed" you mean QA testing, right?Thrax Panda said: