What was the point of beta testing 1.3?
- Thread starter Lukozer
- Start date
The entire point, judging by the number of threads started and merged, was to see all of the whiners cry because they weren't in the test group. FD was conducting a market survey to see how much interest there would be in selling access to future Betas, didn't you get the memo when they passed out the tinfoil hats?
Is it that obvious?Oh OK. You're a fan then?
What bugs me is that Beta 3 was super short, we were all surprised to see Gamma released so quickly.
What bugs me is that Gamma was super short, we were all surprised to see 1.0 released so quickly.
What bugs me is that 1.1 beta was super short, we were all surprised to see Community Goals released so quickly.
What bugs me is that 1.2 beta was super short, we were all surprised to see Wings released so quickly.
Seems we have a pattern here...
As I have said before, and presumably will get plenty of opportunities to say again, pensioning off the DDF was a dumb idea.
Being one myself, I'm usually one to stick up for developers in small teams. Ours is about as small as you can get - which means I have a hand in developing new features, bug hunting, testing, documentation...basically everything. In our case that leads to what I think of as a pragmatic approach to software development - we do beta testing, but we know from the outset we aren't going to find all the issues and that every new release will need to be patched. But there are diminishing returns for us in large scale beta testing - our users are typically rubbish at reporting bugs, nor do we have the manpower to collate hundreds of badly reported bugs, or fix users problems when they inevitably use the beta in production, even though we tell them not to. IN that respect, I can understand short betas and patching.
However, although not the largest, I'm guessing the FDev team is bigger than ours. They also have a good batch of beta testers giving detailed reports on issues. So I was also surprised at the length of the beta, given the throughput on the bug reporting forum. I can only surmise, as others have, that other commercial aspects were/are in play ...most likely being able to take PowerPlay to E3 I suspect.
I'm probably more prepared to be leninet to FDev though given we use the short-beta-patch-the-release approach ourselves
However, although not the largest, I'm guessing the FDev team is bigger than ours. They also have a good batch of beta testers giving detailed reports on issues. So I was also surprised at the length of the beta, given the throughput on the bug reporting forum. I can only surmise, as others have, that other commercial aspects were/are in play ...most likely being able to take PowerPlay to E3 I suspect.
I'm probably more prepared to be leninet to FDev though given we use the short-beta-patch-the-release approach ourselves
Come on lads, it's no more buggy than say Frontier or First Encounters were. Both were awesome games, but seriously complex and with the complexities up-front so the bugs were in our faces. ED is the same, so we will likely see bugs, bugs and more bugs.
That's why we beta-test! Maybe the tests could be longer. But then again, the best place to really test is in the live version of the game. So we iron out details in the week(s) of beta testing, then do the final varnish in the live game.
Works for me. I'd rather have complex, buggy games (Daggerfall comes to mind as well) than a smooth 10-hour ride with no lasting appeal.
S
That's why we beta-test! Maybe the tests could be longer. But then again, the best place to really test is in the live version of the game. So we iron out details in the week(s) of beta testing, then do the final varnish in the live game.
Works for me. I'd rather have complex, buggy games (Daggerfall comes to mind as well) than a smooth 10-hour ride with no lasting appeal.
S
Cheers, I didn't catch this one, but having seen it now, he confirmed something I suspected about the rank progression missions. I did a Midshipman mission the other day for the Feds, and I'm still a Cadet a couple of days later.
I couldn't agree with you more. As a relatively new (Steam release) player, I've wondered about helping th beta testing since I've been putting in so much time with the game lately. No option to do that. I'm surprised by that, and even more by the open release so quickly with all these problems, now being slowly patched daily.
With other companies, like Valve, I've been used to staged betas where they give out passes in waves, slowly expanding the beta player base wider and wider, usually lasting many weeks before finally going release version. I've had friends on Steam point out bugs like this and not know what to make of it.
and that would be where the credibility of your post goes out of the window no matter the quality of it. You have basically done the forum equivalent of firing of an argument and sticking your fingers in your ears and exclaiming "LALLALALA I CANT HEAR YOU UNLESS YOU AGREE!".
PP does have its bugs, some of which should never have made it to release like missions not actually listing locations but listing the game variable instead, rewards not matching what the mission claims etc etc. Just report them and carry on playing either Elite or something else, your blood pressure will thank you for it.
Looks like FD didn't throw enough money into the server racks, and the consequence came.
I've came also to believe that the client is tied is some tight ways with the server, which can severely impact the performance you get from the client if the servers are overloaded. Of course, if you get 50-60 fps, you might not notice when you go down to 40-50 but when you get 20, you can feel it. There were also a few instances where the client would display the network server and it would end with "UnknownName" or something similar. That looked a bit weird.