Just which bit of Premium beta is being tested?

Rafe Zetter

Banned
Rafe Zetter
I'm curious to know just exactly WHICH bit of the premium beta multiplayer is for testing?

Trade, fight or Multiplayer interaction?

Trade - I think the option of a larger trader type ship should be available - 4 tonnes just isn't enough if you are testing the ingame "living economy" supply / demand / redistribution aspect of the games mechanics.

Fight - having several "unknown signal / conflict zone" things which seem to always have a combat aspect but only being given a n00b sidewinder with 1 pulse laser and nothing else just isn't going to get it done - tried one - not doing it again, my ***** isn't anywhere near hard enough to go looking for trouble, and with the buyback prices of n00b ships costing 17,000+, not including whatever upgrades you've added, = 5+ hours trade playtime cost per death.... yeah no thanks, let someone else waste their time. (yes I know the basic ship is free but only a masochist goes into a conflict zone in that.)

Multiplayer interaction - same reasons as above, trade will take far too many hours to get anywhere near a point whereby looking for other players to kill will be assured with gear, conversely any player trader will have small chance to defend themselves if they run into a human player killer.

Basically you need to introduce new entry points whereby people can either get a halfway fitted ship and go looking for the conflict zones to test the large combat mechanics & push the servers, and larger trade ships to make it worth doing trade runs with a good amount of cargo to test the "real economy" aspects of the game.

With those options they can then make better multiplayer choices as well.

It looks like a great game with massive potential and I'm really pleased with how my money has been spent, but I'm a little frustrated with the limited testing options I've been given considering my toon will in all reality be wiped on launch leaving me with having worked hard for an iron ***** and nothing to show for it.

The reality is many of us just don't have the time to spend working our way up to a point where we can get things done effectively for testing, so if this really is purely a testing session then give us better tools to test with.
 

deej

deej
I don't think the Beta release was designed as a pure test platform. It's more of showcase release but with the added benefit of increased server load from a larger group of players travelling about a tiny universe.

Come monday morning they're going to have a interesting time digging through server stats/logs from this weekend.
 

Bellerophontes

Bellerophontes
Multiplayer interaction - same reasons as above, trade will take far too many hours to get anywhere near a point whereby looking for other players to kill will be assured with gear, conversely any player trader will have small chance to defend themselves if they run into a human player killer.

Basically you need to introduce new entry points whereby people can either get a halfway fitted ship and go looking for the conflict zones to test the large combat mechanics & push the servers, and larger trade ships to make it worth doing trade runs with a good amount of cargo to test the "real economy" aspects of the game.
Click to expand...

I agree.
 

Alex614

A
Right now it seems as if it's a general server test. Like a stress test for server capacity. Also, I've gotten plenty of kills (and credits) in the combat zones with the starter ship. Yes, it's hard, but since the starter ship is free, you can use it to gradually save up credits. Just keep practicing and you'll get it
 

Memnoch

M
Rafe Zetter said:
I'm curious to know just exactly WHICH bit of the premium beta multiplayer is for testing?
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All of it, really. Not one specific part of it. Even down to the launcher application itself.

Having lots of credits to play with certainly gives you increased scope to test stuff. You don't have to be as concerned about losing things when you can so easily replace them.

For instance, last week we had a number of incidents where players were dropping over 400 canisters inside and around a station. That's from a fully loaded Lakon. That is more than a million credits worth of equipment and potentially hundreds of thousands of credits in cargo. This causes some problems, they were reported, and FD then implemented some changes to mitigate the situation.

This would not have been discovered if this money was not sloshing around. It doesn't just come down to credits as there are so many things that can be tested but it does help.
 

trekman

trekman
Rafe Zetter said:
I'm curious to know just exactly WHICH bit of the premium beta multiplayer is for testing?

Trade, fight or Multiplayer interaction?

Trade - I think the option of a larger trader type ship should be available - 4 tonnes just isn't enough if you are testing the ingame "living economy" supply / demand / redistribution aspect of the games mechanics.
Click to expand...

The Cobra MK3, Lakon type 9 & Anaconda are all available in the beta and have larger cargo capacities than the 4 tonnes of both the Sidewinder or the Eagle. You'll just have to work your way up through either trading or combat until you can afford them. As others have said I think the purpose of this part of the beta was to see how the game and servers handle the vastly increased numbers now playing.
 

Alric

A
I don't know, of course, but testing isn't necessarily about the high level game mechanics. There's tons of stuff behind the scenes that underpins all that and if it works, those things will be much easier to get right. If there are underlying problems then a release is a disaster waiting to happen.

Things like what happens when a lot of players are in the same place at the same time. How things run on a huge range of different hardware setups (one of the things that's very hard to test internally). How does the networking hold up when you put players from here with players from there, etc. That sort of thing. Putting the systems under strain, and seeing where they break rather than testing the working as intended gameplay.

I suspect they have enough information on the main gameplay elements as they stand already. But you can't for example, have a good trading system and a super-high concentration of players at once. If you add more systems for trading, you disburse players etc.
 
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