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

The date that someone joined the forum is irrelevant.

 

What? Just because he hasn't been on the forums long, doesn't mean he doesn't support the Devs.

 

So here's something to think about. We've already seen previews of other people playing Starbound and the developers admit that they learned a lot from normal players running into common issues. So the game is beta worthy yet we still have no beta. Wouldn't it be helpful to the Starbound devs if they received bug reports and helpful suggestions from players on a regular basis? The game is "playable" it's just not as polished as they would like it to be.

Personally, as a beta gamer, I like to see the unfinished versions of games and make suggestions that I feel are helpful to the creation of the game. I love to see the game change before me, even if I have to update versions daily. As a quite introverted person it makes me feel like I'm more of an asset to the community than just posting on forums saying things like "You guys are doing great. Keep up the good work." I want to be there I want to help. If the game is a complete product by the time I get my hands on it the feeling of playing the game is not as special. I understand that Starbound's developers have been working non-stop to try to make it as smooth of a stone as possible but I love nothing more than feeling that rough rock and by the end of development knowing that I helped make an appealing product.

I say this all with the utmost civility. I am not trying to drive the developers to do anything they feel is wrong. I just wanted to stand up for the beta gamers that seek thrill in being part of the game.

 

Yeah, I registered somewhat late but was lurking for about a year before I posted anything.

 

No, it would not be helpful. Despite what you've seen on dev streams, and the i49 demo, the game is not in a stable state at this point (this has been confirmed by several different developers). Even though they got some useful info from watching new players experiment with the game, that doesn't indicate that they would benefit from an open beta. A small, closed beta would probably be beneficial to them sometime before they open things up to a wider audience, but an open beta would simply flood them with too many bug reports. That sounds good in theory, but in practice it just ends up eating a lot of time that could have been better spent on focused, internal testing.

 

That was quite rude of you to only quote a portion of my post. It's really people like you that make people like me not like to get on forums and post. However, in attempt to clarify my issue I will respond to this.

Tiy promised beta release in 2013 as well as final game release in 2013. I don't know if you've noticed, Fyreflyte, but 2014 is getting very close, which does not leave much time for beta players to catch a lot of bugs or make simple suggestions that could make amazing differences to gameplay. If they did however change their statement to beta release as soon as possible and final game sometime in 2014 I would be a lot more comfortable with my preorder purchase.

Many games have gone into open beta before they were considered "stable." From what I've seen there is enough implemented into the game to make it playable. I honestly don't care if my client crashes or even if my comp crashes from the game (which I highly doubt would be the case).

 

Still not today

 

I've only been a member since January but I've been on these forums and following this game since it was announced. So alluding to someones membership time is really just silly.

Yeah they did that during Insomnia. I don't blame you for missing it.

 

Oh! Okie dokerson. Yeah I never caught that claim. Thank you Sousuke Kuroda.

 

I quoted only part of it because I was responding only to that part, and I don't like littering up threads with non-relevant text. The rest of your post had nothing to do with the point I was making, so why would I include it? You're making it sound like I took something you wrote out of context, which is not what happened.

Most games that go into open beta before being stable do not end up selling well. A bad launch can forever tarnish the popularity of a game, even if the developers manage to correct the issues down the road. There are a number of reasons they cannot launch yet, ranging from bugs that corrupt character and world info (meaning you lose all your progress) to lack of playable content (they have most of the building blocks ready to go, but they still need to hook them all up for players to discover and use.) It's very easy to look at a short demo and say "hey, this looks playable", but the devs have directly stated, time and again, that the game is just not ready yet.

 

well, we get terraria 1.2 in a few hours. see you guys next year.

 

Terraria was here. Sup.
Jokes aside it was leaked /incomplete/ and sold like hotcakes.

Many games that are buggy do well -if- the idea and general execution behind them is good. That is what would matter most. Surprisingly many people are forgiving and word of mouth can work in your favor if you have a good concept, even if the execution is rough. Just so long as you follow through on it.

The problem is /many don't/. Surely we wouldn't have to worry about that with Chucklefish though.

 

That seems awfully out of touch with reality.

 

Do you have some examples to back this up? Off the top of my head, I could point out quite a few games that have suffered from unstable launches (EverQuest 2, Diablo 3, Sim City Online, and SWTOR just to name a few). All solid games, but they got so much bad publicity in their first few months out that players were or are unwilling to try them out once the issues were rectified. Luckily, I missed the buggy version of Terraria that Xander referenced, because I would have written it off as junk and never gone back to it.
Xander brought up some good points in his response to this; as he noted, there are some good examples of games that were released in less than ideal states that later went on to sell quite well. Perhaps I should amend my statement to say that games that go into open beta before being stable would likely have had better overall sales if they'd had a clean launch.

 

Minecraft, Terraria, WoW to name a few. All had pretty damn unstable betas, all of which seem pretty damn successful regardless. Only an idiot judges a game on its beta.

Yes, unstable LAUNCHES, not BETAS. I'm fairly sure you've previously claimed to be a programmer yourself (unless I'm thinking of someone else), I find it hard to believe you don't know the difference between an unstable launch and an unstable beta. These aren't examples of games that released unstable betas that hence led to their demise.

I like that you've changed the topic of the argument to suit your purposes. Heres your original quote.

Making it seem as though it was due to a poor beta that the game was unsuccessful, which is ridiculous. Yes, a bad LAUNCH (as you say directly afterward) can tarnish a games reputation. But an open beta is by no means a launch, this is a very simple concept and I should hope that you understand it after this post and don't try to contest it with me because you would be wrong.

An open beta is not a launch, its a stage in development that occurs prior to the launch in which bugs are fixed and the game is typically not completely stable. If a game has a bad launch then yeah, its probably going to be screwed in terms of sales, if a game has a bad beta, then who cares? So long as the problems in the beta get fixed before launch theres no problem. Stop equating open beta with a launch of the full game.

 

I could respond to each point you made, but actually your last paragraph pretty much summed them all up. For Starbound (and, in fact, for any game these days that releases content packages post-launch) the Beta is the launch. Players are not going to differentiate between the two, because other than a difference in perception, there is no difference from a player perspective. In both cases they can play the game, and in both cases more content will be released down the road. But if a player picks up the beta, tries to play it, and has all of his character and world data corrupted 2 days later, and then again a couple days after that, he may well set it down and never come back. There are so many games out there to play these days that you are doing yourself a great disservice by releasing a game in sub-par condition. You want to wow people on that initial experience.

I guess the bottom line is that I trust the devs at Chucklefish more than I trust random forum members who proclaim that the game is ready to play. If CF says it's not yet ready for beta, it probably isn't - they are in the best position to determine such things.

 

Because changing release date 4th time (IIRC: late 2012, early 2013, 2013, and now 2014) can make people really angry, and innocent will be hurt (see Treasure Adventure World preorders). It's fine that game takes a lot of time to make, but developers should be really careful about release dates especially then they try to maintain high hype around the game.

P.S. We all can extend logic and "just play something else" forever without the need for Starbound.

 

No, it isn't. This isn't a matter of opinion, it is a fact, and no matter how some misinformed individuals view a beta, it is a testing phase. NOT the launch. Again, not something you can contest here.

Actually, they do. Sure you get the loud minority complaining their asses off about problems in a beta. But the people who matter, ie. reviewers, know what they're talking about, and they tend to colour the opinion for the vast majority of individuals. Games with unstable official launches get slammed, such as Sim City, games with unstable betas do not, such as Minecraft.

Then that is his own fault, because he isn't the majority and he should be at least literate enough to read a disclaimer that tells him about the kind of issues he is likely to face and that the game he is about to play in no way represents the final finished product. This argument is invalid.

But they are not releasing a game, they are opening up a development phase for testing. There is a very big difference, and that you can't seem to see that difference tells me that you're probably part of the problem. You are probably one of the people that picks up a beta and treats it like a launch, when you shouldn't. You are wrong to do so.

 

Woo, finally finished La-Mulana(only took 92 hours). Now you can release the Beta Tiy, I've got no more obligations.

 

Only now do we find out that they were waiting on you the whole time!