Do you think Premium Beta access should end?
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
What do u mean? I am a Premium Beta owner with LEP. If Premium beta privileges are removed that means I loose LEP. That was the main reason I purchased Premium beta in July 2014, just 2 days before it was removed. So NO. I don't want to loose a privilege I already paid for 
[mad] .
[mad] .
I think some form of incentivised beta process would be more productive than more people. Some sort of prize for first bug finding. A prize for a bug confirmation. Not sure how it would work. Frontier store credits or something maybe. My first thought was ingame prize-money, but that'd be shot down by the community I'm sure.
We have the people, Frontier just have to learn how to make better use of them.
We have the people, Frontier just have to learn how to make better use of them.
Last edited:
There are an awful lot of people who backed this game at (if we are talking P. Beta and up) from £100 upwards, to get the game made in the first place without those people there wouldn't be any bugs to complain about as there would be no game .. and now we want to remove one of the bonuses they received because the launch had some bugs ... really?
OP, your title should be "Do you think seasonal Beta access sales should end?" - Premium Beta was a thing sold in 2014 after Kickstarter and before the game launched.
What you're referring to is sales of seasonal Beta access post-launch.
I'll be voting No to this - as the game needs as many testers and sensible bug reports as possible.
There are two types of Beta customers:
1) "I'll test the new stuff and report back my findings"
2) "I wanna play the shinies! / Where's the new Meta!?"
We need more of type 1 than type 2.
IMO what is probably needed is for a Community guy from FDEV publishing a "So you want to be a Beta Tester" HOWTO - so that we can differentiate and root out the two types of Beta customers.
What you're referring to is sales of seasonal Beta access post-launch.
I'll be voting No to this - as the game needs as many testers and sensible bug reports as possible.
There are two types of Beta customers:
1) "I'll test the new stuff and report back my findings"
2) "I wanna play the shinies! / Where's the new Meta!?"
We need more of type 1 than type 2.
IMO what is probably needed is for a Community guy from FDEV publishing a "So you want to be a Beta Tester" HOWTO - so that we can differentiate and root out the two types of Beta customers.
As said above, the problem was not at all the lack of bug finding and reporting, but of multiply bugs not being fixed, new bugs introduced in the live update that never went into beta.
.. which is actually a good thing to have a beta for, because:
Just think of what type of hell would break loose if a game destroying bug like "NPCs with gatling plasma accelerators and railguns with no power requirements or heat generation" would make it into the release build....
Oh wait...
This I think is one of the prime mistakes of Fdev.. they invalidate all their beta-testing if the version they show to the testers is something different than what actually gets installed to the live servers.. Quite beats the purpose of testing in my eyes.
But according to people who have been in beta and who said they didnt enncounter the gatling plasma bug in there, it almost looks like exactly this happened.
On the other hand, I have been observing more and more companies during the last couple of years who turned the idea of betatesting around by about 180 degrees.
In my imagination, a tester is a PAID person who has the job to test... in recent years the wording "test" is more and more used as an extra selling point... and the testers are charged a premium fee to be admitted into a "betatest".
Most of the times, the testers use the test only to have some sort of early accesss and be what I call a "content tourist" (or as someone above me put it.. "a little kid in a candy shop").
Im afraid most people taking part in the latter type of betatest might not mainly be interested in actually finding and reporting bugs - but more in "figuring out where and how to get the best loot before everyone else does" (if i may use an analogy of typical mmorpg-betatests)
Im not directly against Fdev using the label "beta tester" as another selling point to create a bigger revenue stream... they could do as they want. But I for myself would never give extra money for a permission to actually be WORKING for a software company - I either expect to be paid - or I would maybe agree to test free of charge If I like the product..... but in the end as I said at the beginning... all the testing efforts are useless if the game version that is being tested is NOT actually the version that gets put onto the live servers.
The hardness of Ai was discussed on beta forums and current bugs that Ai has were reported during beta (no reload times on Pa or missiles/rails etc), same with bugged mission and most other bugs we currently have, but FD ignored them and released the update. The hardness of AI is relative and most beta players have played game since launch. Also in beta Ai run away when it lost it shields so it didn't keep hammering players like it do now.
For engineer modifications beta test was misleading because we never saw the requirements we now have during beta and they have changed stats for many engineer modifications between beta 6 and release version of 2.1.
Fdev isn't giving tester change to test the update like it would be when it goes out. And then they release it without fixing many bugs we reported (like mission and npc having rapid fire PA).
Having open test won't change anything if Fd doesn't change their attitude towards beta and testers feedback and stop releasing stuff before they have fixed bugs that have been reported during beta.
I like this term. Perfectly describes what I've been getting at...people don't currently beta test to beta test, they do it because "ooh new shiny toys I can play with before everyone else".
Whether or not the beta testing is free matters little to me because I don't want to do it either way, but if there's an issue FD don't do themselves any favours by spewing out fish so that the majority of the later beta testing was a chunk of cmdrs sitting in the laps of engineers and seeing what awesome loadouts they could roll...
Still, the actual premium for beta testing doesn't disagree with me. I can see that they need some more revenue (and actually need it), so I'm not going to pretend I know the business model well enough to complain. But I can say that from a bug solving perspective they look to be up against a hell of a task, so I'm not going to crybaby that this short into a game with little precedent, considerably less resources than most game developers and a very reasonable cost for the content you get, there are some bugs that don't get hammered out instantly (and would probably be easier solved with better revenue...)
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
voted "other".
I have premium beta. I would not feel hard done by if FD chose to give it away for free, but seeing as they charge a few groats to give people access I also have no issue FD charging for it either.
basically I vote let FD decide
out of curiosity........ (i have no opinion, i am just curious)
those who had beta access for season 1 but not for anything else.... did they get to access 1.6 when i had access to 2.1? or was it only the horizons beta owner who got to beta test either 1.6 or 2.1 (i am not certain but i think I have 1.6beta as well as 2.1 beta as an option to install)
I have premium beta. I would not feel hard done by if FD chose to give it away for free, but seeing as they charge a few groats to give people access I also have no issue FD charging for it either.
basically I vote let FD decide
out of curiosity........ (i have no opinion, i am just curious)
those who had beta access for season 1 but not for anything else.... did they get to access 1.6 when i had access to 2.1? or was it only the horizons beta owner who got to beta test either 1.6 or 2.1 (i am not certain but i think I have 1.6beta as well as 2.1 beta as an option to install)
Last edited:
I think where it's especially needed (testing something like CQC, which really does need a large number of testers) they have opened up the betas to everyone in the late stages.
I'm not sure it would improve things though. If you look at the bug reporting forums, you can readily see bug-finding isn't the bottleneck, it's likely reproducing, triage and resolving them.
Perhaps more of interest are issues such as AI difficulty balancing. That's an area where you probably want feedback from a wide area of the community, perhaps separately from bug reporting. Though, again, it may be of mixed helpfulness. During the Betas some appealed for easier AI, it was made easier, some appealed for more difficult AI, it was made more difficult again. I'm not sure "more voices shouting" would improve things.
I'm not sure it would improve things though. If you look at the bug reporting forums, you can readily see bug-finding isn't the bottleneck, it's likely reproducing, triage and resolving them.
Perhaps more of interest are issues such as AI difficulty balancing. That's an area where you probably want feedback from a wide area of the community, perhaps separately from bug reporting. Though, again, it may be of mixed helpfulness. During the Betas some appealed for easier AI, it was made easier, some appealed for more difficult AI, it was made more difficult again. I'm not sure "more voices shouting" would improve things.
Its OBVIOUS that the beta-testing being sold is hurting FD, just look at the launches, each ones a wreck. Very few bugs get worked out, many carry over to launch. FD cannot have it both ways, either the finances are good and everythings ok OR they are scrabbling for every dollar because the sales are not as expected (I do know Horizons didnt sell as they had hoped). Asking people to PAY to test a game goes beyond the pale, and obviously does NOT work well.
I would say that mayhem event was bad idea. Players sat on engineer bases and rolled dice with fish. They didn't go around doing stuff they would do in live game, they didn't collect materials like we need to do in live servers. Players fight with NPC while in ultra modded ships. They didn't do missions or other stuff. More people in beta wouldn't change this. It would have gone same way as it went now. Most focus on modding their favorite ships and don't beta test.
not really... loads of bugs were found in beta testing....... The question of whether these were all fixed before going live is valid, but more testers would not have solved the problem of "known" bugs making it out of beta.
there would be room for a half way house of course.... last week of beta testing goes open to all maybe?....... Was the insane ai bugged with super fast firing weapons found in beta and just ignored for launch, or did it only show up after it went live?
Last edited:
Dev teams several times the size writing games that already have preset templates for writing them still release content with bugs. Of course they need more money, what the hell kinda company doesn't to improve...but it doesn't merit an "ermahgerd everything's collapsing" stance. And you haven't actually made any improvement suggestions, just "it's a rubbish model it doesn't work we shouldn't be paying blargh".
There's reasoned arguments on forums, and then there's...well.
digitalscream
Banned
This is the problem - the beta was weeks-long, and yet within a couple of days the main player base found problems that were either ignored or not revealed, which FD felt significant enough to address with fixes immediately on returning to work.
The problems with the current method are:
1 - The beta schedule is sacrosanct, which led to the issues of material proliferation and lack of testing of the RNG leaking into production (ie the fish phase).
2 - Too many beta testers aren't actually testing, they're just using it as a feature preview.
3 - Not enough testers.
I think it's clear at this point that my original observation is correct, ie the guys at FD test the game like developers and testers, not like players. That shift in perspective means that things they consider as "perfectly acceptable" or "gameplay-enhancing" are endlessly frustrating for the players themselves, which inevitably leads to unrest in the community and rushed post-release hotfix patches.
This would all likely be fixed by a proper beta-test phase. You can't do that and have a fixed release date, though; something has to give.
Fixed that for you
Nice to see those massive assumptions are still alive and kicking. I posted regarding the action of SELLING access to beta testing, and the ethics behind it, I didnt say FD was sinking, please grow up, you might hurt yourself one of these days. In reference to the sales of Horizons, that has been said by FD, so go ask them - - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Couldnt have said it better myself, cant rep you twice
Last edited:
Fixed that for you
And we wonder where the drama came from? I haven't assumed anything-you still haven't added anything to the conversation. Complaining that you don't think a system works isn't debating ethics, it's forum whining. Plenty of it about kid.
I actually agree they could do beta testing a lot better. The difference is I'm happy to bring suggestions and logic to the table; your previous post was effectively the pigeon playing chess.
Last edited:
It is voluntary. No one holds a gun to your forehead and demands your CC or PayPal info.
The more people who play beta, the better the feedback and hopefully, the better the number of bug reports. Those people paying for the beta access are doing the rest a huge service. If you don't want to pay the extra, don't. Simples.
Yes its voluntary but so is murder, doesnt make it right does it? The fact is that we would have all the testers we need if FD didnt gouge the players who want to help out, instead we get content tourism and glitter chasers. This is not good for the game OR FD, yes it adds a tiny bit of income but does that balance out? I dont think so. Open beta for all, period. I will add that if FD is THAT desperate for cash that it has to charge players for actually doing a job for them, we are in dire straits my friends. If not, well then it comes down to greed. Open beta can ONLY do FD good, its clear the current model for Beta has failed.