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An issue with Pay to Test
Geeky
Member UncommonPosts: 446
I believe an issue with current games and their "Support us at $1000 and become and Pre-Alpha tester" mentality is that you get Fan boi's that are doing the testing.
Fan boi's aren't critical enough of the game, the design choices or the timelines for which it's been laid out. A game being tested by people who won't question your choices is going to lead to a game that has bad mechanics, design implementation and more than likely game breaking bugs that weren't complained about enough that they are now forever in the game.
The current MMO I play has patches regularly but some stuff breaks. Completely breaks a game mechanic and when I, or whoever, voice our displeasure and want to know the actions and timelines, there are always people who say, "It's ok. This or that. Here's a work around. Don't worry." And if we were all to do that, say "It's ok", the game would suck. It takes criticism to ensure a game is maintained or works properly and in the case of designing a game, it (any of them) should have critics playing the game from the earliest points of implementation. But a critic sure as hell isn't going to pay $1000 to go in and criticize a game.
Pay to test is great for indie game studios, but it's not good when the creators are only hearing praise for the work they are doing, slow as it might be. Because a tester who is critical could end up losing their $1000 and not be an "invited" tester anymore.
Fan boi's aren't critical enough of the game, the design choices or the timelines for which it's been laid out. A game being tested by people who won't question your choices is going to lead to a game that has bad mechanics, design implementation and more than likely game breaking bugs that weren't complained about enough that they are now forever in the game.
The current MMO I play has patches regularly but some stuff breaks. Completely breaks a game mechanic and when I, or whoever, voice our displeasure and want to know the actions and timelines, there are always people who say, "It's ok. This or that. Here's a work around. Don't worry." And if we were all to do that, say "It's ok", the game would suck. It takes criticism to ensure a game is maintained or works properly and in the case of designing a game, it (any of them) should have critics playing the game from the earliest points of implementation. But a critic sure as hell isn't going to pay $1000 to go in and criticize a game.
Pay to test is great for indie game studios, but it's not good when the creators are only hearing praise for the work they are doing, slow as it might be. Because a tester who is critical could end up losing their $1000 and not be an "invited" tester anymore.
Comments
But then you have to remember, $1000 isn't a lot for some people so they don't think of it as anything more than "here, let's see what you can do and I don't care if you can't."
and $1000 isn't going to go that far so I suspect their voice will eventually have the same weight as your voice.
Of course, someone could make a post and say "people who get into alpha for games think that their opinion should always be heard."
There's always someone who is going to point fingers for some reason or another.
Game developers want to make a good game. There is too much on the line for it not to be good. However, I DO know that there are players who think they know more, want their opinions to be heard over others and if the developers don't listen then they start saying things like "I told you so ..."
So, are the opinions of the "less than $1000" club actually better or is it just that they want the game they want and if it doesn't turn out that way they get upset?
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Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
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Rogue One and The Mandalorian were good though.
Yeah. I know what being a part of Warframe's Design Council was like. They generally turned to us for Warframe/weapon names and minor aesthetic things. Not major gameplay design decisions.
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― CD PROJEKT RED
However, there is a HUUUUUGE difference between something that is a sound piece of design advice that fits in with our existing game mechanics/design decisions, and someone having an opinion on something they *think* would be better for the game.
This is where a disconnect happens between players who get upset that a developer isn't "listening" to them when they offer up advice. Not all advice is good. Not all advice fits in with the direction of a game, or the existing mechanics. Sometimes the advice is something that sounds good up front, but when you start looking at all the edge cases that could crop up if you implemented said change, it becomes evident from a coding standpoint or a design standpoint that it's just not a sound decision for the company to make.
Then you get players running around hollering about how "the developers never listen to me", when in many cases, that's not actually true. What's going on is that a player only sees things from the client-facing side of the equation, and we (the developers) are looking at the wide-reaching implications of things.
How will that change impact the other classes? Economy? Social interaction? What happens when X, Y, Z, or A, B, and C interact with the new change? What happens when A, B, C, and X, Y, Z could theoretically work, but then it's going to impact the coding for chat server, login server, social server, combat, faction, AI, and beyond, and suddenly what you thought was going to be a simple and cool idea is going to take 100+ man hours of code to implement, and you can't even see the wide ranging implications until it's been put into the testing server and then iterated on a dozen or more times to get it to where it could actually work.
Many players don't think about any of these things. Instead, they have an idea, feel that it's the "best idea in the history of ideas", and then get mad when a developer doesn't implement it.
I can assure you, at least for our team, we are always listening to what players have to say, regardless of their level of financial contribution to our company, and how much money they have given us means absolutely squat in regards to whether or not an idea makes it into the game.
Instead, it's all about whether that idea can merge with our existing codebase and our existing design without messing up the entire flow of things. And can we realistically put in the engineering time to get it done, or is it something that would be better served as a patch later on?
Soooo many complexities at work.
I guarantee you when we open the store up again in mid-March the floodgates of naysayers will spring open and you'll hear endless cries of how we are yet another "greedy" developer who is "preying" on people and spending all of the pre-order money on vacations and the high life.
The only difference is you are implying if people criticize the game, they'll get kick from beta.
"TIM ANDERSON STRUGGLES WITH FALLOUT AFTER OPENING PRE-ORDERS FOR SHORT TIME. BACKERS OUTRAGED AT USE OF FUNDS TO WRITE A BOOK YEARS AGO!!!!!!"
Pre-Alpha pledger "Holy shit, I get to play a BR that wasn't originally in the design. I love you guys, keep doing amazing work."
Again, from many people I've heard from this is my mistaken theory of what those who pay $1000 to become a Pre-Alpha tester are like. But I still think I'm not entirely mistaken, because if you pay $1000, and then another $500 for Seed A money, and then buy $200 worth or merch, you'll probably start to see the game differently than those of us who haven't spent any money on the game and give, IMHO, more of an unbiased critic of game design implementations.
I totally understand those that have paid money in the game can and probably do "work hard" at making the game good? But if you've already spent a large chunk of money, you're probably going to be more of a fan of the game than others. And we all know how Fan boi's protect.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The whole idea is that players are paying to test the games, not getting a head start, usually.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR