Do you think Premium Beta access should end?

[freedom4556]

Clearly they cut whatever beta period they had planned short. Apocalypse lasted less than 24 hours.

If they had done a 72 hour public beta (like this three day holiday weekend) of the final release candidate code, think of all the recent bad experiences and word-of-mouth that could've been nipped in the bud.

No slight against the premium testers was intended, sorry for the sarcasm.

 

[Kaocraft]

They should have a phase of beta testing where everyone has access, to ensure the most thorough testing possible, but keep premium beta access for the majority of the testing period. They did this with the CQC update and I think it's the most sensible solution.

 

[kofeyh]

Beta test isn't the same as alpha; usually in alpha the feature set is finalised and initial test lead to pretty big fixes and major changes to mechanics, beta is just checking that there are no game-destroying bugs (like endless CTDs, transaction errors and so on). Frontier can't and won't fix everything; just what time permits and the major game breaking issues.

They are reducing the numbers by having a (low) entry bar. It's about 2-3 coffee's worth. Or little more than a single cinema trip. It's not going to magically fix any problems though, to have it completely open. Which is the crux of the OP.

As it is, the bi-weaves are back and AI are going to cease being a threat (by virtue of being stripped of any upgrades at all). Hopefully this doesn't mean the AI is also taught how to be a vegetable again. I am concerned they will swing from being a bit buggy, to potato again.

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They should have a phase of beta testing where everyone has access, to ensure the most thorough testing possible, but keep premium beta access for the majority of the testing period. They did this with the CQC update and I think it's the most sensible solution.

Yeah, I'd be okay with that. Alpha. Beta and (effectively) Release Candidate builds as they did with CQC. Thing is, CQC was an entirely new game type; 2.1/ 1.6 is an update; not sure Frontier want to delay updates that much because the overwhelming demands for 2.1 to drop sooner sends an opposite message, really.

There are a lot of threads demanding to know why 2.1 was delayed. Can't have endless posts like that then expect the developer to slow down development and updates to a crawl.

 

[fennster]

CQC open beta was designed as a server stress test, that's why it doesn't happen with other builds.

 

[Bostlabs]

The bugs that everyone is throwing a wobbler about were not apparent in the Beta.
Simple as that.

It all seems server side though so win, I guess.

Very true. I didn't run into any 'One Shot' NPC's while in beta. the NPC's were very tough, then not so tough, then tough enough.
Weapons got adjusted from Godlike to pretty good but not OP.

I hope my data was helpful to FD, and I certainly had a good time doing it.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Too many testers could complicate development. And the current system is certainly a good source of revenue for Frontier

 

[StiTch]

For a company developing a game like Elite with considerably lower reputation and assets than the majority of the big gun developers, we're remarkably lucky they've put together a game of questionable precedent that relies to no extent on in game purchases and the like.

Even the expansion format is unusually good value; people are happy to pay £30 for a CoD update with three or so online maps, and meanwhile we've been forking out £20 for a year's worth of hard development.

It's the only game I've every bought something in-game for, because for once I don't feel I'm being shafted on the money I pay vs. content-and making my ships pretty=infinite free awesome screenshots If they want to charge a few quid for beta access that's cool with me. I actually don't want the beta access, so it acts as a natural barrier- I think the majority of people see it as "yay time to play the content early", but I would rather enjoy the finished product (okay maybe not polished though) and because I love the challenge of gaming, I have something against being able to try all the big ships like the cutter I can't afford in game yet.

Now that the beta was made available for purchase I imagine they're getting the results they need, and the Open world is empty enough as it is without filtering every other player into beta when its on. And of course, sometimes...bugs just happen on release, beta tested to death or not.

 

[Varrag]

I would expect them to allow all players to participate in future beta testing. With a lot more players involved, chances are that they would be getting better feedback. It's a no brainer really.

 

[Brimstone]

Thanks for the cool and civil responses so far guys A lot of great points being made to my question.

 

[anikaiful]

I would expect them to allow all players to participate in future beta testing. With a lot more players involved, chances are that they would be getting better feedback. It's a no brainer really.

Or worse feedback. But in general, all the noise put aside, yes, might be for the better - and we'd avoid, maybe, a lot of shocking surprises.

 

[babelfisch]

Just my opinion:

3 weeks premium beta testing
1 week open beta testing

If there are still problems after the 4th week extend open beta by another week. This has also advantage that those who don't have premium beta will not complain that the update got delayed again.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

Its just a revenue stream for them, nothing more (not a bad thing).

Volume of testers really isn't the problem though, what is the problem is timescale of the beta's being to short and the mess that is the feedback forum. The beta testing comes too late in the day so any meaningful feedback ends up being implemented by firefighting methods.

The biggest issue though is the lack of a real bug tracking system to prevent the same thing being posted so many times the whole place looks like a tornado has gone through it. The current system works for a couple of hours then degenerates into farce and "many" people just stop bothering.

 

[anikaiful]

The biggest issue though is the lack of a real bug tracking system to prevent the same thing being posted so many times the whole place looks like a tornado has gone through it.

A good bug tracker. Yes, that'd be vastly better than simply letting more people in.

 

[Mephane]

Beta testing went very well actually. The things that are big problems are mostly from one of the following categories:
- Surprise bugs apparently not present in the beta and only introduced in the final 2.1 live patch (e.g. NPCs with machine gun plasma accelerator)
- Made easier for the beta and never given the actual final values and enough time to test them (e.g. meta-alloys, Liz Ryder invitation mission, upgrade material and commodity cost).
- Reported and just not fixed (e.g. uncompletable missions, missing bi-weave shields)

That said, I still would be in favour of opening it up for everyone anyway.

 

[Jack Schitt]

• Many of the current mission bugs were in beta from day one and survived all iterations right into the launch version despite repeated bug reports by the beta testers. Numerous pleas not to launch in this state went unheeded.
  
  
• The OP NPC weapon bug was introduced straight into the release version post-beta; testers didn't even get to see this crippling bug before it appeared on the live server.

As long as FD continue to operate in this way then it doesn't matter who has beta access or how much they paid to get it. If the developers -- or the management, as it's unclear who sets policy on this -- are going to ignore critical feedback in favour of hitting fixed launch dates then the beta tests are always going to give mixed results. In which case they might as well carry on charging a premium for access, then at least the one thing that's guaranteed to come from it is a temporary revenue increase.

 

[CMDR Mansoul]

Yes. I have the lifetime pass, but really couldn't be bothered to test properly. I just spent about 100 tons of fish for fun and not much else. Let the more eager beavers out there test more.

 

[kalniel]

and whether the amount of beta testers was enough.

Pretty sure there is more testing than solely what the customers provide.

 

[scorpyon]

Personally, I'm not too bothered about BETA access, since it is on a different "server" so has no effect on the real game.

 

[anikaiful]

Personally, I'm not too bothered about BETA access, since it is on a different "server" so has no effect on the real game.

XD if it was on live server, oooboy we'd be neck deep in trouble when something broke.

 

[Marcus Franconium]

By Premium Beta access I mean paying extra so that you may beta test features before their release. Horizons was sold for 45 USD (If you already owned season 1) with beta access being 15 dollars more.

I'm curious how many people actually bought and used their beta access to test, and whether the amount of beta testers was enough. Would you prefer if Frontier had more open beta testing?

One of the downsides I could see for this would be that constructive feedback in the beta feedback forums would be more diluted, more difficult to sort out from the poor feedback. Basically, it'd look like the Dangerous Discussion forum At the same time, does paying that $15 premium make your feedback more valuable?

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. I'd like to think that the game could benefit from having wider participation during the beta phases, but I can see how it could make it more difficult for the developers to track down legitimate bugs.

What do you think?

Premium Beta was the backers tier in 2014 with the life time expansion pass why should we give up our Beta acces and lifetime expansion passes