Testing: "Betas" When is it work and when is it "Freeplay"

oXYnary

To make a long story short. What are all your opinions on testing Betas? I make no qualms it leads to a better product if developers listen. However. At what point does it leap from the tedious bug testing of a professional, who isn't payed enough, and has to deal with crap from others higher up. To the fanboys getting first dibs as there consolation?

Someone who gets paid ESPECIALLY when its a large Publisher. Else when possible at least gets credentials in the game (are they hmm? [Answer: no]). Dont try to dress this up as free play. They are there to show the bugs and exploits the QA and internal testers missed.

I have nothing against having public testing. In fact its what we have done. However. I wont try to dress it up as some glorious thing when its tedious sometimes and not fun. (Oh all our testers got their names in the credits).

The only "fun" testing is public betas. When your making the kids sign NDAs and such (and I admit being too tired to research your protocols) that's a private beta. Internal. If its still in that stage the above especially applies

http://www.rctech.net/forum/chat-lounge/453995-new-fps-needs-testers.html

Im open to change my mind. Mostly just the guy tiffed me off with his spam posting. So agree or disagree. Where do you draw the line?

EDIT: To make clear the quoted part is me. His posts are in the link if it interests anyone.

hobodactyl

Don't sign up for a beta if you don't want to, it's as simple as that. Even if you sign up and feel "this was more than I was expecting!" you could just stop playing, there's no penalty whatsoever. So anyone complaining about betas being a free way to get QA, of course that's true, but lots of people also get free enjoyment out of it (not just from playing the game, but helping with the development). If you're not getting enjoyment out of it, just stop doing it. Sure that's annoying for the developer, but also part of their bargain for getting free QA :P

crazyfingers

Depends on a lot of variables, mostly on the company releasing the "beta" as Unknown worlds does a good job of pointing out recently:

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010/11/ns2_closed_beta_status

Bigjohn

I've been in the closed friends/family beta for quite a bit of MMOs. WoW vanilla, WoW cataclysm, Warhammer, LoTRO, etc, and honestly I don't really know the point.

The only beneficial thing that comes out of them seems to be the ability to test how the servers handle a lot of players. But other than that, I don't think they're very useful. Most of the major comments the testers made during the early beta phases were largely ignored, often rightfully so, but I can think of some cases where the game would have been better for it if they were listened to.

It has mostly been a way for the developers to test server loads, and to see how the players react to their systems. But not so much to gather input from the players. So in MMO betas, I feel like you should be playing it just for fun really. That will also allow you to make comments as to what's not fun, and who knows, maybe it'll get heard.

oXYnary

crazyfingers wrote: »

Depends on a lot of variables, mostly on the company releasing the "beta" as Unknown worlds does a good job of pointing out recently:

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010/11/ns2_closed_beta_status

I totally support unknownworlds method (and have that beta as well). However. I don't know how a feel about a third party representing LARGE companies using testers.