Again the ruling class is allowed to bully, harass and attempt to silence me. I would love to reply to you but unfortunately I'm not allowed to because I would recieve the warning and you would get nothing.
@Itstimetodeal - Stop with the personal attacks. Itstimetosticktothetopic please.
I think what ruined it was players started selling beta accounts on ebay...When companies saw this they decided they wanted to make money off of it also and away went beta testing for free.....So really we are to blame for the way it is now.
In my opinion, game companies can't go around selling pre-alpha and beta access as a form of fund raising and then expect to get serious people who will responsibly test the game.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You are also from a time when cell phone use was less frequent, quality in online gaming had to draw heavily from the what made offline things fun (rpg's, etc), and shooting for quality as a marketed entertainment piece for when your done with studies or work....
Now, cell phones are powerful and gaming quickly adapted using mental hooks to rewire reward responses in kids. It can be a pile of poo, but if it it has them reflexively logging in to click, it pays the bills.
Quality, they purposely lowered to rush out qouata figures, and they know how to divide communities. "Well, it's free so..." "they have to pay bills too..." "Look at X game, this has *insert one feature* going for it"... and everyone thinks defending something makes them seem more socially non awkward or some kind of genious... hypocritically these people try and say they are anti SJW too XD
Nah, gaming is pretty much dead online. They are hearing boardmembers and not palyers. They are designing on lowes possible denominator and we are supporting it. It is a shared responsibility, we can blame hype and fake closed betas (no mans land, etc) but in the end, it is our faults for repeating the same creation process expecting different.
The hardware exceeds the software atm. And not a single company responding to it with a decent product.
Good news: Lets us old timers get back into old titles or finally get around to those titles we never finished
"hate wagon"lol I have to disagree sorry,imo your point is valid though,gamer's are often not helping because imo most are there for FREE gaming and not for the testing.
EV1 should be in on testing,there should be a que and only allowed 2 hours max of playing then you are given forms to fill out with specific questions.Each day should move through specific zones to make sure all the content is tested. Then you shut down,make all the fixes and do another test,repeating the same procedure. I have heard in the past devs claiming testing is hard,takes time,well then after a session and feedback,we should NOT be seeing an immediate release date,there should be at least a month or two of fixing.
I feel we can point the finger NOT at the employees,not even at the producer but the top end people,the owners,Ceo,investors etc etc,who force these games out.I know for FACT that Zenimax receives large amounts of investment dollars to make games,they have posted as such.You know those investors do not want to see the games WAIT too long to get out,everyday not on the market is millions not in their pocketbooks.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Worst part is a beta should be called beta, not falsely labeled as a launch to avoid the stigma surrounding early access games these days. It backfired and received worse feedback than an early access release would have.
Haxus Council Member 21 year MMO veteran PvP Raid Leader Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
I remember a time when I had to apply to be part of a beta, answer a questionnaire, and be selected to participate. There was typically an easy mechanism to bug report and that was the expected activity.
The reward was a forum badge or some such.
We can vote with our dollars but we won't. My personal favorite in today's market are the variety of pre-order packs available to purchase with what is typically a FTP title.
For a Bethesda game, it's been the least buggy. Never play a Bethesda game 6 months after release. I really don't know what people are complaining about. It's definitely not refined but it meets the core mechanics it was designed to.
I'll wait for a game to go on sale or buy a game and let it set on the shelf until they finally have most of the bugs worked out, checking on it periodically. At times it's taken one or two years after release before the game was the way it should have been at release.
If anything, all the games currently flooding the market allows me to be much more discriminating then I was in the past. As usual you can't believe the hype. So I'll be watching X4 and Anthem to see how they turn out after the general reviews.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Sure developers are partly to blame here but so are some "gamers". Today some "gamers" dont want to participate in a beta to find bugs and issues. They would rather participate in a beta, run to sites like this and other social media platforms cry the game is bugged then report the bugs to the developers. They want to be part of the hate bandwagon and this process repeats itself during the next game.
If these "gamers" have no intention of reporting bugs and only want likes and upvotes from sits like this for complaining what do you expect Developers to do?
Then developers should do closed test with a select pool instead of an open one. It's hardly the gamers' fault that devs dont want to hire professionals. If a developer is taking money for their game then they should take criticism for it as well. Free cbt or limited scheduled obts should be seen as games in progress but in cases of "preorder to get into the closed beta" they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
Sure developers are partly to blame here but so are some "gamers". Today some "gamers" dont want to participate in a beta to find bugs and issues. They would rather participate in a beta, run to sites like this and other social media platforms cry the game is bugged then report the bugs to the developers. They want to be part of the hate bandwagon and this process repeats itself during the next game.
If these "gamers" have no intention of reporting bugs and only want likes and upvotes from sits like this for complaining what do you expect Developers to do?
Then developers should do closed test with a select pool instead of an open one. It's hardly the gamers' fault that devs dont want to hire professionals. If a developer is taking money for their game then they should take criticism for it as well. Free cbt or limited scheduled obts should be seen as games in progress but in cases of "preorder to get into the closed beta" they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
Read the comments here if you think "Closed betas" are the answers. It doesnt matter what companies do the vocal minority will find something to complain about.
If the vocal minority is going to complain no matter what they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
Sure developers are partly to blame here but so are some "gamers". Today some "gamers" dont want to participate in a beta to find bugs and issues. They would rather participate in a beta, run to sites like this and other social media platforms cry the game is bugged then report the bugs to the developers. They want to be part of the hate bandwagon and this process repeats itself during the next game.
If these "gamers" have no intention of reporting bugs and only want likes and upvotes from sits like this for complaining what do you expect Developers to do?
Then developers should do closed test with a select pool instead of an open one. It's hardly the gamers' fault that devs dont want to hire professionals. If a developer is taking money for their game then they should take criticism for it as well. Free cbt or limited scheduled obts should be seen as games in progress but in cases of "preorder to get into the closed beta" they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
That's what it comes down to. If they've taken money or have anything for sale for real money, they are ready for criticism. If they have not taken money and do not have anything for sale, they are not ready for criticism.
There is noone to blame here but the players themselves , you can go back on this very site ( and its all here documented ) in 07-08 for ex.. and players screaming and begging that wanted to Pay to Beta test games ...
Just another example of , Be careful what you wish for you just might get it ..
Good read and, absent the context of Fallout 76, this article could probably be rerun each time a game releases out of "marketing beta"/early access. Nice contrast against Camelot Unchained (among others), which seems to be running an actual beta, as that was the first game I thought of when I read the first paragraph.
except you can pay to get into CU's beta.
Yes, you can and the developer was very clear about what they intended their beta. From my point of view, CU has not used "Beta" as a marketing tool and their ongoing communication throughout the beta process has demonstrated that they are using the term in a more 'classic' sense.
Again, that's my point of view on it, but regardless of the similarity that you can 'buy in', I think people would generally agree that the FO76 and CU demonstrate vastly different goals with their respective betas.
I know that probably comes off as a CU cheerleader or FO76 hater to some, but those are just titles to give some context and which I have some familiarity with. I imagine you could find other examples that illustrate the same general point and there could easily be a separate thread about the merits/failures of CU's beta approach if so desired.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
This is all on the developer. Bethesda saw the state of this product and said, "Let's ship this mess as is!"
I've been beta testing games for a long time. The first was Titanic: Adventure Out of Time back in 1995. Back then and for the next 10 years or so there grew a small community of beta testers and we would get invited to beta test all kinds of games because they looked for people with experience. It seems these days alpha and beta invites go to people with high twitch viewers and such. They need to go back to getting people who want to play the game for more than just viewer numbers.
Lastly...Developers need to stop worrying about launch dates! Push it back if you have to. Don't launch buggy crap just to make an arbitrary date you set!
Betas shouldn't be some pre order incentive that has a real limited time, they should be a month or two long ordeal with a small enough group for devs to easily work with.
My issue if anyone actually cares & the reason i did not buy the game has nothing to do with bugs. Honestly I love early access games ( even though this is technically not) I love the fact i get to play games early i can deal with the bugs, always have. My issue is with the core gameplay and the fact they essentially changed the Fallout genre from single player RPG to Online quasi survival lite.
In some of the places I've worked for, Alpha testing is said to stand for "Eats Computer", while Beta testing is "Won't Eat Computer, we hope".
I too hate this marketing driven "Beta Tests" that are actually pre-official release marketing hype machines. A way to try to identify the difference between a real test and a fake test is that the real test has an easy way to report bugs and other issues, while the fake doesn't.
Of course, that varies too. I've seen a real test where it was almost impossible to report anything because basically you had to flag down a dev in game. They had a really small team, but still, that's not the right way to do a test.
On the other hand, a test that just uses Email to report issues can very easily be a marketing hype thing, especially if they provide no feedback to the reports. Of course with no feedback, you just don't know one way or the other.
A well run test will have some kind of access to a bug/issues database so you can add your findings, any work arounds you've figured out, more details to existing issues, etc. They may even have an in-game tool for reporting issues, and often it will include a snapshot of current status, location, etc when you use that. Of course, these types are almost always covered by an NDA, a very easy restriction to live with.
Unfortunately there have been so many fake "betas" out there that people have become fooled by the marketing and don't realize what a real beta is, and the expectation of bugs and reporting. It's sad, and it hurts the industry and games in the long run.
Alphas and betas should absolutely be used only to find and squash bugs and refine gameplay .
Me and my pantheon guild were just talking about that
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Even back in the days when betas were real betas it was standard to end the beta cycle with an "open beta" shortly before launch for marketing purposes. Just about every MMO ever in those mythical good old days did it that way: year(s) long closed beta and very short open beta lasting a few days for the general public to get a preview.
Some of those were even truly open and not tied to pre-purchase. All that has really changed is that these events are now used primarily as a pre-purchase incentive and the term "open" has been mostly dropped. But they are really just the same faux-beta PR event they have always been.
Real testing still needs to happen somewhere along the development cycle and when there isn't enough of that, it shows as is obviously the case with FO76. But having a fluffy open beta close to launch wasn't the problem here. What didn't happen for the months preceding that was.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Comments
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
EVERYONE stick to the topic. I will be removing off topic posts.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, cell phones are powerful and gaming quickly adapted using mental hooks to rewire reward responses in kids. It can be a pile of poo, but if it it has them reflexively logging in to click, it pays the bills.
Quality, they purposely lowered to rush out qouata figures, and they know how to divide communities. "Well, it's free so..." "they have to pay bills too..." "Look at X game, this has *insert one feature* going for it"... and everyone thinks defending something makes them seem more socially non awkward or some kind of genious... hypocritically these people try and say they are anti SJW too XD
Nah, gaming is pretty much dead online. They are hearing boardmembers and not palyers. They are designing on lowes possible denominator and we are supporting it. It is a shared responsibility, we can blame hype and fake closed betas (no mans land, etc) but in the end, it is our faults for repeating the same creation process expecting different.
The hardware exceeds the software atm. And not a single company responding to it with a decent product.
Good news: Lets us old timers get back into old titles or finally get around to those titles we never finished
Stop giving it to them.
They need to understand their mistakes and people giving them money just because of their name is the reason they get away with it.
The corrupt journalists that praise this company should also be shamed for tricking people into purchasing this nonsense.
I have to disagree sorry,imo your point is valid though,gamer's are often not helping because imo most are there for FREE gaming and not for the testing.
EV1 should be in on testing,there should be a que and only allowed 2 hours max of playing then you are given forms to fill out with specific questions.Each day should move through specific zones to make sure all the content is tested.
Then you shut down,make all the fixes and do another test,repeating the same procedure.
I have heard in the past devs claiming testing is hard,takes time,well then after a session and feedback,we should NOT be seeing an immediate release date,there should be at least a month or two of fixing.
I feel we can point the finger NOT at the employees,not even at the producer but the top end people,the owners,Ceo,investors etc etc,who force these games out.I know for FACT that Zenimax receives large amounts of investment dollars to make games,they have posted as such.You know those investors do not want to see the games WAIT too long to get out,everyday not on the market is millions not in their pocketbooks.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
The reward was a forum badge or some such.
We can vote with our dollars but we won't. My personal favorite in today's market are the variety of pre-order packs available to purchase with what is typically a FTP title.
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
If anything, all the games currently flooding the market allows me to be much more discriminating then I was in the past. As usual you can't believe the hype. So I'll be watching X4 and Anthem to see how they turn out after the general reviews.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Then developers should do closed test with a select pool instead of an open one. It's hardly the gamers' fault that devs dont want to hire professionals. If a developer is taking money for their game then they should take criticism for it as well. Free cbt or limited scheduled obts should be seen as games in progress but in cases of "preorder to get into the closed beta" they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
If the vocal minority is going to complain no matter what they should be called out on every piece of bullshit.
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/477821/anthems-first-closed-alpha-event-to-take-place-december-8-9-mmorpg-com#latest
Just another example of , Be careful what you wish for you just might get it ..
Yes, you can and the developer was very clear about what they intended their beta. From my point of view, CU has not used "Beta" as a marketing tool and their ongoing communication throughout the beta process has demonstrated that they are using the term in a more 'classic' sense.
Again, that's my point of view on it, but regardless of the similarity that you can 'buy in', I think people would generally agree that the FO76 and CU demonstrate vastly different goals with their respective betas.
I know that probably comes off as a CU cheerleader or FO76 hater to some, but those are just titles to give some context and which I have some familiarity with. I imagine you could find other examples that illustrate the same general point and there could easily be a separate thread about the merits/failures of CU's beta approach if so desired.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
I've been beta testing games for a long time. The first was Titanic: Adventure Out of Time back in 1995. Back then and for the next 10 years or so there grew a small community of beta testers and we would get invited to beta test all kinds of games because they looked for people with experience. It seems these days alpha and beta invites go to people with high twitch viewers and such. They need to go back to getting people who want to play the game for more than just viewer numbers.
Lastly...Developers need to stop worrying about launch dates! Push it back if you have to. Don't launch buggy crap just to make an arbitrary date you set!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aloha Mr Hand !
I too hate this marketing driven "Beta Tests" that are actually pre-official release marketing hype machines. A way to try to identify the difference between a real test and a fake test is that the real test has an easy way to report bugs and other issues, while the fake doesn't.
Of course, that varies too. I've seen a real test where it was almost impossible to report anything because basically you had to flag down a dev in game. They had a really small team, but still, that's not the right way to do a test.
On the other hand, a test that just uses Email to report issues can very easily be a marketing hype thing, especially if they provide no feedback to the reports. Of course with no feedback, you just don't know one way or the other.
A well run test will have some kind of access to a bug/issues database so you can add your findings, any work arounds you've figured out, more details to existing issues, etc. They may even have an in-game tool for reporting issues, and often it will include a snapshot of current status, location, etc when you use that. Of course, these types are almost always covered by an NDA, a very easy restriction to live with.
Unfortunately there have been so many fake "betas" out there that people have become fooled by the marketing and don't realize what a real beta is, and the expectation of bugs and reporting. It's sad, and it hurts the industry and games in the long run.
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
Me and my pantheon guild were just talking about that
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
Some of those were even truly open and not tied to pre-purchase. All that has really changed is that these events are now used primarily as a pre-purchase incentive and the term "open" has been mostly dropped. But they are really just the same faux-beta PR event they have always been.
Real testing still needs to happen somewhere along the development cycle and when there isn't enough of that, it shows as is obviously the case with FO76. But having a fluffy open beta close to launch wasn't the problem here. What didn't happen for the months preceding that was.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED