164 replies to this topic

[Blackadder]

saying the game is a beta does not make it one, when a company is accepting money for a product, its no longer in beta, outside of something like a pre-order/founders setup. Currently MWO is live, and has been since its soft release last year. that does not mean its anywhere near feature complete, but the fact remains the game has at least soft launched and is released to the public.

As to it being a good strategy or not, who knows in the long run. Given the lack of content in the game, they might burn out the subscription base before they reach the clan mechs/clan wars system they want to create.

[jakucha]

And now everyone's arguing semantics which really doesn't matter.

[Rakashan]

DCLXVI, on 04 April 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

if it was beta they would be banning people for farming, tking, ect.. a lot faster with an invitation to come back and fool around when its released

This is an example of someone who *really* does not get what a beta is. In fact, this is the time that devs hope they have every cheater that they can possibly get because it's the time that they are coding and testing their metrics to catch the cheaters once live actually happens.

[El Death Smurf]

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

MWO is not in Beta...

1. MWO is open for play by anyone who wants to sign up. It already has thousands of players.
2. MWO's developers are selling products - MechCredits - and the game is producing revenue.
3. MWO is not a closed trial of code being tested and readied for launch, with a focus on reporting of bugs, analysis of balance, and incremental patches addressing bugs and balance issues. In fact, MWO's developers are focusing on earning income first, adding new content and features second, and squashing bugs third. (If MWO was a Beta, their order of priority would be reversed.)

I'd hate to argue semantics here, but here i go
1) your first point is an arguement between the words OPEN and CLOSED, not BETA.
2) this is something that needs to be tested. and has been tested, and we have even gone through refunding stages, with painting mechanics. Microtransactions need to be tested on a large community to crunch some real numbers. I have seen other games that do the "pay us $60 dollars and get into BETA" ... mind you MWO doesn't ask you for a cent to play their game.
3) yes, rather than trying to find bugs, we get posts like these that contribute to the testing process in no way what so ever.

So lets continue the truly pointless arguement over the deffinition of what a BETA is so we can all hear our sleves talk and quibble over a stage of development.

[Appogee]

I should have mentioned: this thread is in Open Beta.

That means I can progressively add more content, whilst failing to address its original flaws, with impunity.

Please continue to be patient. I am committed to eventually adding the pillars of logic, originality and grammar to my thread.

In the meantime, if you would please send me some money, I will spend (some of) your money hiring logicians, artists and linguists to help me improve my thread.

Edited by Appogee, 04 April 2013 - 02:19 PM.

[Love Rhino]

Well! Either the game isn't a beta, in which the devs need to get thier act together regarding bugs and content.

...or the game is a beta, in which case the devs need to get their act together regarding charging your beta testers for content.

So looks like they need to get their act together! I'll start paying for this game again once they do.

[xhrit]

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

1. MWO is open for play by anyone who wants to sign up. It already has thousands of players.

That is kinda the point of an open beta; the beta is open to anyone who wants to help test.

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

2. MWO's developers are selling products - MechCredits - and the game is producing revenue.

Transactional systems need to be beta tested too.

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

3. MWO is not a closed trial of code being tested and readied for launch, with a focus on reporting of bugs, analysis of balance, and incremental patches addressing bugs and balance issues.

They have a very clear development roadmap; until their roadmap is finished the game and the game is released as designed, the game is in beta.

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

In fact, MWO's developers are focusing on earning income first, adding new content and features second, and squashing bugs third. (If MWO was a Beta, their order of priority would be reversed.)

How do you know what their order of priority is? How do you know what their priorities need to be? I can only assume you have never worked on a large software project, nor run a small business before, because your statements are extremely ignorant.

[Appogee]

El Death Smurf, on 04 April 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

rather than trying to find bugs, we get posts like these that contribute to the testing process in no way what so ever.

Riiiight... Because those bugs which have been in the game for months are already the subject of dozens of threads are so hard to find, and this thread is stopping the developers from finding those threads or bugs.

Srsly.

You made a couple of good points (eg testing of micro-transactions) but ultimately failed to grasp the main point of my thread before going for the gratuitous insult.

I blame myself for allowing two separate ideas (the definition of beta, and the claim of beta as an excuse for poor QA) to co-exist in the same post. Two ideas is clearly one too many for any internet thread

I am half-joking, of course. (Numerically this nets out at 1.)

[Appogee]

xhrit, on 04 April 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

How do you know what their order of priority is?

You only need to observe what has been in the last few patches to see what their order of priority is. Things to spend money on, a few new free content items, and some ongoing bugs, in that order.

xhrit, on 04 April 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

I can only assume you have never worked on a large software project, nor run a small business before, because your statements are extremely ignorant.

Incorrect. But I'd rather my ideas be judged on their merit, rather than my personal experience running a business or software projects.

I will extend you the same courtesy. For example, just because you lazily resorted to an Ad Hominem attack at the end of your post didn't necessary mean that the rest of your arguments were inherently wrong.

Edited by Appogee, 04 April 2013 - 02:18 PM.

[The Last Blade]

It's a Beta... because they want it to be in beta and test new patches because the game is incomplete and falls short on many fronts, on purpose??

If it was a real release.. there would be more players and they'd have media outlets promoting it.. but... it's still in beta? wtf? who are you to say when the game designers think a game is set for release? This game is still completely broken, not even close to balanced, and they haven't even implemented Community Warfare, one of the main aspects of this game, how is this NOT beta? It's not even close.

I understand your thinking here, but just because they are doing a stellar job releasing new content at breakneck speed, and setting up a way to get income (at a waaay to high price, they really need to lower it) doesn't mean it's ready for release. This game is broken like crazy, who would actually want to release this as is? Craziness

[Love Rhino]

When I go to a friends house and he makes me a free meal, I don't complain if I find a hair in it. I might mention it to him so he knows, but I don't complain.

When I go BUY a meal, and there is a hair in it, I complain. I expect a certain quality for my money.

The moment my friend starts charging me for my meals, however he wants to describe it, I expect a certain quality. I want that gross hair removed.

[Hekalite]

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

You only need to observe what has been in the last few patches to see what their order of priority is. Things to spend money on, a few new free content items, and some ongoing bugs, in that order.

Incorrect. But I'd rather my ideas be judged on their merit, rather than my personal experience running a business or software projects.

I will extend you the same courtesy. For example, just because you lazily resorted to an Ad Hominem attack at the end of your post didn't necessary mean that the rest of your arguments were inherently wrong.

Your statements have already been judged on their "merit." You just don't like the judgement.

[xhrit]

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

Incorrect. But I'd rather my ideas be judged on their merit, rather than my personal experience running a business or software projects.

Your ideas have no merit, and if you claim they were made from personal experience you are clearly suffering from the Dunning–Kruger effect.

[Roadbeer]

Appogee, on 04 April 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

You only need to observe what has been in the last few patches to see what their order of priority is. Things to spend money on, a few new free content items, and some ongoing bugs, in that order.

Oh good, now we can get into my other favorite fallacy that people argue on the forums. Development priorities

Since the people who are making the "pay content" are completely different than the ones who are writing code, squashing bugs, etc, it stands to reason that at some point in development (kinda where we're at now), swag is going to come out faster than fixes.

Those who make the 'pay' items have an entirely different skill set than those who squash bugs. So while the Swag team is moving forward, the bug team needs to go back and identify, replicate, and squash the bugs. It's like expecting your plumber to fix your light socket.

Soon, we'll be coming to the point where the bug squashers start to get caught up, and the patches are largely bug fixes but content isn't rolling out as fast, then the forums will explode into "MORE CONTENT" kinda like where it was 5 months ago.

Rinse... repeat.

[krash27]

Roadbeer, on 04 April 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

Anyone who thinks this game is release when 2/3 of it's 'pillars' haven't even been implemented yet, is completely off their rocker. And anyone who says that that fact doesn't mean anything when it can be released as DLC expansions doesn't understand the concept of what a 'Release" product is.

Interesting, since PGI stated that the game would not be going to open beta until it was 90% stable. Anyone think its at 90%?

Along with many I have been a BT fan for almost 30 years and a I have been beta testing games since UO.
It used to be that once you could sink money into a game it was no longer in a beta of any form. Look at EQ, they still release patches and what not. Is it still in beta? Hell no, it was out of beta the day you had to pay to play beyond the initial cost of the game discs.

Now apparantly the criteria for a beta have changed, how and why are beyond me, but everyone keeps saying it /shrug

[Gremlich Johns]

Kooler, on 04 April 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

It's an open beta with microtransactions (or macro depending on if your buying assault heros)

I have discovered the definition change recently, this is considered a soft launch AND it gets to still be considered a Open Beta despite the seeming contradictions of accepting your money. Blame it on the advent of F2P games.

[Roadbeer]

krash27, on 04 April 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Interesting, since PGI stated that the game would not be going to open beta until it was 90% stable. Anyone think its at 90%?

Along with many I have been a BT fan for almost 30 years and a I have been beta testing games since UO.
It used to be that once you could sink money into a game it was no longer in a beta of any form. Look at EQ, they still release patches and what not. Is it still in beta? Hell no, it was out of beta the day you had to pay to play beyond the initial cost of the game discs.

Now apparantly the criteria for a beta have changed, how and why are beyond me, but everyone keeps saying it /shrug

So you tested UO too.. then you saw my previous post about having to pay for the disc and the shipping to get into that beta. It's really no different than what us founders did, or the micro transactions going on now.

The EQ argument is somewhat correct, in that most games, there are always bug fixes. You're writing code to work on a myriad of systems, it's not like an XBOX or PS3 where all equipment basically is the same. There are tens of thousands of combinations of PC configurations.

But that's where the similarity ends because in the case of those games, you were paying for the game and paying a subscription... but most importantly, the game was sold as a Release version, not Beta. I don't see anyone FORCING you to buy anything in the game, so you can take it as Beta testing, F2P pre-release, or pay for developement. But calling this a release version is absurd.

They have CLEARLY said that the release version is planned for the end of summer. Last time I checked, it's April. When we hit October, then you can have this argument.

[JSparrowist]

Definitely not a beta.


We are profit, not testers. Proof? ECM. Nearly everyone ******* or has bitched about it at some point... did they take our feedback or ideas on how to change it? Nope.

It's an unfinished release but not quite a beta. Certain elements have to be in place for a beta.. like testers..

[Zolaz]

Test if MWO is in Beta or not ...

[Roadbeer]

Ummm....

By downloading the game when it has the Beta title, you are basically agreeing to be a tester. The fact that you are playing and not reporting what issues you find has nothing to do with the status of the game.