Important BETA RELEASE DISCUSSION - DECEMBER 4TH (*ALL* beta discussion goes here. Other threads deleted)

Beta?

 

No beta.

 

Ok good to know.

 

Okay so your stance is: Alphatesters and bugfixing are slowing down development? Because everything you said is happening /right now/. Reports from testers(duplicates as well, ANY group of testers will produce duplicates), balance issues being fixed, pressure on the devs, bug fixes, and so on. We see it almost every day in the updates.

The issue of volume? I could have sworn we had moderators and a community manager to make a beta sub-forum and help them. Don't we? It isn't going to take away time when they have people to look through the duplicates. It isn't as if they wont have to do this at some point /regardless/ of features... as Tiy has confirmed features will NOT be fully implemented in stage1.

As for fixing the more troublesome bugs.. They seem to be doing that anyway. (Every update!) I mean they don't have to do this anyway, or anything.

So again, are you saying normal development from the beta stage on, or alpha stage which is basically an internal beta.. slows down development?
It's a very strange stance to take, that improving a game towards a finished state, slows it down.. actually hinders development.

Are you sure this isn't bias from your team being forced in essence to be community staff as well? I can see if you had to also be a constant forum mod /on top/ of a developer how there could be issues. You're basically doing two jobs.. of course THAT would slow development. That isn't supposed to happen though, outside of maybe Tiy as project lead.

A response once in awhile yes, but that happens even now without delaying it.

 

BETA

 

There's a big difference between a small set of experienced beta testers and a beta that is essentially open to the public. If the group of testers they currently have know what they're doing, they won't be submitting duplicate bug reports, and will actually be greatly improving development time by submitting quality bugs. The general public does not typically submit quality bugs. A large portion of the bug reports a developer receives in an open beta are complaints, user error, and gems such as "this is broken" (no explanation of what "this" is, or how it is broken). From the remaining pool of well intentioned players who are actually trying to help the game out with their bug reports, most are not going to submit detailed reproduction steps that help the devs quickly identify the bug. If a bug sounds bad enough, even without proper repro steps, a developer may choose to try to work it out themselves. This can add a lot of additional time on to the process.

Now, none of this means that open testing isn't essential. You do want that at some point, because you need to nail down those hard to find/reproduce bugs - with enough people playing the game, a large number will still encounter them. But you aren't going to get those kind of reports if players are running face first into some really obvious bugs; bugs you already knew about and should have fixed before releasing the beta.

You should probably read what I've written, rather than just dismissing the info out of hand; it sounds like you have no clue what you're talking about here. Tiy's comment basically detailed that they're releasing the beta before they wanted to. They didn't want it to be full of bugs, but they have guaranteed us a 2013 release, and they need to get the ball rolling now to make that happen, even if it means we see the game earlier than intended. It's also possible the game won't be nearly as full of bugs as he's stated, and he's making this statement purely to cover any bugs that do pop up. If he or anyone else on the team is faced by a player screaming about what a buggy mess the game is, they can point that person to the initial statement saying there would be bugs. A wise course, considering the temperament of some of the posters on this forum.

 

Personally, I think that the game looks like it's still in alpha. They still don't even have everything modeled, I've never participated in a beta where the developers were still constructing the graphics of the game and still trying to decide on how everything will look. They don't appear to know how you'll advance from tier to tier, and barely a month ago they were asking for boss suggestions and making it clear that they don't even know which bosses you'll fight at the end of each tier. This screams "alpha" to me, and I'm pretty sure that they don't even feel comfortable releasing beta in the state that the game is in, they're just forced to due to past promises.

Anyhow, I think the main reason we don't have beta is because Tiy wants to release a mostly finished product, which is something we don't have. This game will be judged and fail/succeed based on the beta, and he doesn't want his baby to be stomped on before it's even out of the womb.

 

You guys make it sound like they're not releasing a buggy beta, when stage 1 clearly states it will be very buggy. I don't see why everyone is so convinced the game would be harshly criticized because of being unfinished, I think the majority of people (myself included) will just be thankful they get to play.

 

i have been part of several closed beta test including SWG and WoW and some games you will probably will not have heard of like ryzom. oh and good one you dismiss what i sed by saying if dismiss what you sed there is so much spin in what you just sed your making me dizzy what are you trying to argue as it appears to change from post to post .

 

Okay let me try again. I don't think I'm getting my point across well from the other post. Let me trim the fat to the core. Last attempt and then I'll drop it. Its kind of a side topic anyway.

At point A or B they'll need a system capable of handling and processing junk from useful bug reports. (Which they are handling and squishing now regardless.) If they try and cope with it themselves? Its handling two jobs at once. Which if they decide to do I cannot stress.. despite when it happens in development, would slow it.

Even if all content was in, imagine if they had to go back and redesign ships at the end. What if they had to completely scrap whole features because they where untested? One way or another the work brought on by testing /will/ have to be done. If they decide to thumb through every single report? Now or later would bog things down. They could begin working on the things that are testable now such as artistic changes, balance with completed tiers, and so on while features are being added.

So what harm if it has to happen either way?

Which leads me to PR which people still bring up: At this point I'm not sure if handing out a five month old version or a hypothetical full release called beta would make any difference to most people. The sheer hype behind it has expectations overblown. The only difference time seems to be making is raising that higher, and causing a negative backlash to buildup. I'm hoping they can diffuse it, but we'll see how things go.

 

If they're going to give us a mostly polished beta, why call it beta? They did all the work, everything we were supposed to do is done. People payed for buggy gameplay and lacking content, not some pre-release.

And your assumption on it being alpha? I'm not too sure of that. The video from i49 seems like the game is well past that stage, you don't need everything implemented to make a beta.

 

Being selected for a closed beta doesn't typically give you any additional insight into the beta process. If you've been a professional QA tester, or a game designer who has worked with beta testers then you might have more to offer to this conversation. I don't even know what you're talking about when you say "spin"... do you? Or are you just flailing around some buzzwords? I didn't change any of what I said - I made a concise point based on extensive personal experience, and I stuck to it.

The short version of my post was that releasing open beta too soon can increase development time. If you have a counter argument to that, go ahead and state it. Back it up with facts.

It's possible their bug collection system will be more complex than I'm imagining, but I don't think they have the resources for anything fancy. Most likely there will be an in-game feature that allows players to submit a report which is then dumped into a text file they need to filter through. If they have time, it might go into a database with some basic category sorting features. They don't have a paid QA team, as far as I'm aware, so nobody is going to be around to filter through all of that stuff for them. I'm not 100% sure what your point here was, so maybe I'm not addressing it correctly. If you elaborate a little I can probably give a better response.

I think I understand the point you're trying to make here, but you're setting up a straw-man argument. You're saying player tested versus no testing at all, which is a situation that will never happen. If players aren't testing the content, the developers still are. If they go through and test their own work and fix all of the huge, glaring bugs, there will be substantially less bug reports for them to filter through when they release it to players. And that is exactly the point I was trying to make in my original post: if they have major bugs present, it's going to bog them down reading through lots and lots of duplicate reports. Not only that, they're then far less likely to receive reports about the more nefarious bugs that are not as apparent.
Yes, they will need to spend time dealing with bug reports either way, but one of the ways is more efficient than the other. I have no idea what state the game is in now, so whether they are going to be slowed down by a beta, I can't actually comment on. Your initial question was how could an early beta be harmful, and that was what I was responding to.

 

i did but you ignored it

just like you ignored xander and attacked me as it easier to have a go at me then it is him.

i see you have now edited your post to add replies to xander so i tack back what i just sed.

 

Beta is where most games get their polish, I can't think of any beta I've played, other than Minecraft, where the game was still being put together, and Tiy regards Minecraft's beta success as blind luck, as do I. They haven't even made all the necessary development decisions yet, which I'd say is indicative of the game still being at an Alpha stage. I don't think I've ever even played a beta where my character was wiped before the release date, they're still going to be tinkering with the build once beta is released. Can you imagine any MMO or online game where your character was wiped several times before the release of the game?

And i49 only showcased what they wanted us to see. Moments before the game was even played they had to push an update to prevent the game from crashing, Bartwe's pants were soaked with sweat by the end of it because they thought the game would crash. In fact, during the incredibly short demonstration the day prior to the playthrough the game did crash on then in front of an audience. While some people will understand this, I doubt Tiy wants to put a broken game into the hands of thousands of players that will then go on to tell everyone how they've lost their characters five times and crash every time they jump at a weird angle. He wants people to play a nearly completed product, not something that's still being taped together. He has even mentioned that the boss we saw during the i49 demo might not even be the tier 1 boss, things are THAT unstable right now.

 

"Facts" everywhere
No, seriously, can this thread endure an week without an discussion? (Spoiler: No)
Also, Tiy already said, you dont want your character be deleted and the game be super buggy? Stage 3

 

I think the biggest issue here is that they repeatedly stated that they don't want to follow the minecraft method and release Starbound super early and just 'hope' it follows the same trend as Minecraft. This was one of the reasons cited for the continued delay on the Beta release... so now that Beta is finally coming -with a caveat that it will be bug-filled- some people are probably feeling like despite the delays its still going to be a Minecraft-esque alpha build that is just called "Beta", not because they're ready to release it but because they're reaching their 2013 deadline and don't want people asking for a refund.

 

My initial response was to Xander. If you're referring to his most recent post, I did reply to it. He actually posted it while I was responding to you; I didn't ignore it, it simply wasn't posted yet. I'm not 'having a go' at you - you attacked my initial post with no provocation, and I called on you to defend your arguments. If you can't do that, then you shouldn't be attacking other peoples' posts. I'm totally open to discussing and arguing points, but you need to have a clear argument. All your initial post said was that Tiy's statement about phase 1 having bugs totally negated my entire post about why an early beta could be harmful to the design process. Tiy's statement had absolutely nothing to do with what I'd written, so I called you out to address the actual points I made.

I found my old post on positive and negative testing, and why early open betas can be harmful. It's a bit of a long read, but it elaborates on the points I was trying to make to Xander. Post can be found here. (You can skip the first 3 paragraphs if you haven't watched the video it's referencing. Starting with the bullet points and everything below that is the pertinent info).

 

Then they should admit to that mistake "beta no matter what!", apologize, call it what it is (an alpha release) and rake in the dough instead of prolonging this PR nightmare.

But it really doesn't matter at this point. Fact is they backed thenselves into a corner with their Big mouths and now it's time to make something happen.

(Ps this new forum layout makes posting from my phone suck hard).

 

Sooooooo, Mid-November is next week... Anybody else gearing up for impending craziness?

 

i am i just want to play the beta no matter how buggy it is after all that's how much beta tester earn there keep as the saying go's.