Why I think that the beta should be nearly completely closed...

Why wouldn't they speak about it after release?

 

I think its quite normal in NDA's that you cant speak a word or show anything of what you've seen in the beta, ever.
You can say how you liked a specific key element like "the combat was well made" etc.

 

Mhm. That's the most available. You'd need to ask for permission to give out Beta Info.

 

Thing is that without LP from Pbat and others Terraria wouldn't be that successful. It is one of the cheapest way of advertising your game. Sure you can be selfish and want to keep others waiting, but there is plenty of people that want to see more from this game. If not LP of Terraria I would never know about it. Now I have 500+ hours in it. From my viewpoint it would be better to have closed beta of Starbound with few chosen persons making LP. Just my 5C.

Oh and hello everyone - this is actually my first post in here.

 

Hello and welcome.
Yeah its a great PR tool, but LP never did a LP of the beta (of my knowledge).
Sooo what you saw was people playing the game... when it was out.
IMO its better to have a LP like 1-2 weeks pre launch.

 

Youtubes will do a Let's Play before or after. The advertising will be there one way or another. I can promise that.

 

I see what mean by not wanting to ruin the surprise now. Even thought people don't have to watch videos or visit the wiki they will end up seeing something one way or another. Although I still stand by what I said with Terraria still being a completely new experience for me even though I watched all of Pbat's videos the second the came out.

 

I heartily agree with you, Doctor. I find that the discovery of a game is the most important aspect of it. I went into the Minecraft Alpha almost totally blind, and I eventually became involved in the community (which was very brief, 90% of Minecrafters are assholes). Anyway, I think that a closed Beta would be best for this game. If anybody was there for the Last Stand: Union City, Con (the developer) made sure that only people who would 1. Contribute and 2. Keep their mouths shut were in the beta. I think that an application process is in order, with about 100-150 people being let in, but sworn to secrecy.

 

Agreed. Awesome. Defineatly closed beta, open, or even a large closed beta wouldnt be fun.

 

While this does make a lot of sense, it might generate a huge stir for the people who aren't accepted... I know I would be upset

 

For the greater good. I probably wouldn't be accepted either, but I can wait until it's released. It's only supposed to be around 4-7 months.

 

Yeah, I guess it would be for the best interest of the people

 

Personally, I'm with G33K on enjoying the elements of suprise and discorvery. I'd much rather discover things myself upon release, when possible, rather than knowing a large amount about the game beforehand. That said, I'm perfectly capable of avoiding large spoilers if need be, so an open beta wouldn't really bother me too much.

Doing larger betas would allow for a lot more thorough bug testing before a release, so I think a beta of some form would be a good idea. I think doing a closed one to begin with, and then deciding if that's enough or not, would be the way to go.

 

I totally agree with you, its amazing the fell of discovering something new.

 

haha ok then I hope the translation of handplockade made sense because I guess that is a literal translation of 'hand picked'.

I'm not missing the point. To put it simply, you're saying, 'It would be better if the game was spoiled for NOBODY in the community' and I'm saying, 'That's not a good reason to say no open beta because if the devs want as many people to test it as possible then so be it'.

It's all about compromise. If you're in an air conditioned room with someone and you're hot but he's cold, he has to compromise because if you're cold you can wear clothes to make you warm but if you're warm you can't wear clothes to make you cooler. In terms of an open beta and your concern about the community gaining too much knowledge of late game stuff, you have to compromise. You can actively avoid gaining knowledge but you can't actively seek out the knowledge if it isn't there.

Bottom line is, you can't decide what is or isn't good for the community. There'll be people who agree with you and there'll be people who want that info. What you feel strongly about doesn't apply to everyone, and a case like this means it's hard to convince people to change their minds. Regarding spoilers, it's down to personal preference. You said that anyone who suggests that you, and people like you, could just not watch youtube vids/read whole wikis/whatever are missing the point. I think saying something like that is a perfectly valid counter-argument.

Right now from reading the posts in this thread, I still can't find a good reason to argue that information saturation = bad for the whole community.

 

There's no ''right'' or ''wrong'' way to ''leak'' information. There will always be complainers, guaranteed, regardless of what actions they take. Because of this, you can't give a personal opinion, because a personal opinion caters to who? Yourself, whether you'll admit that or not.

There are people who say even things such as official trailers/teasers give away far too much information.

It's honestly a bit of a hassle that they've started announcing themselves so early before a release because it makes it harder to keep interest on their game in the meantime. It's harder to decide how to go about giving out information when, on one hand you have those that want to know very little until release, but on the other you know if you don't release an adequate amount of information before launch you won't have as many people interested when it's finally launched.

I honestly hope they ignore what others want as far as how they release information and just go with what they themselves feel is best, because everybody's opinion outside of the team is obviously going to cater to what they themselves want. Nobody can speak for the entire community.

Chucklefish, just do what you're going to do and don't look back!

 

Yall are missing half the game in this genre; sandbox. And, to me, a good one needs items to have one hundred more uses then it was made for. For example, a nice trick in the new stairs is making windows from them, or in terraria, the abitily to slingshot your self off doors.

Also, if your game is about discovery, where is it replay value? Sure, you might have 5 lets play, but soon, you will find, less, and less, and get bored. This goes back to the first one.

And, thrid and last for this post, this game is going to live in the shadow of minecraft and terraria, lets face it, it will, and if all they show is the features common to this games, who, minus the people who trust Tiy, would buy this game.

 

All games open with discovery. It's used for buzz. I'd argue you get a bigger buzz holding off until later, then letting it last longer.

 

I think these days and age, Betas are being handled poorly. The only companies that seem to take betas seriously are Blizzard. Even Guild Wars 2 is doing a massive beta which is a glorified demo of WvW. I find it utterly ridiculous that they are so focused on getting people hyped and pre-ordering games that they would let their game suffer through the most important part of its development.