130 replies to this topic

[Duma]

Major Tom, on 12 June 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

actually its a job with responsibilitiies. Which is exactly why it shouldn't be random.

There you have it. Folks are ******** about BETA keys like... it's a game ready to play. Wrong answer. It's a closed BETA test. Key word being "test". Not "play".

People seriously need to do something besides live on the forums.

[SpiralRazor]

Armored Core was actually good bro....Dont think battletech, think Heavy Gear.

yeah.. AC was good.

The other two games, agreed..garbage.

[AdamSteiner]

Thats funny that this guy has no clue what Closed beta means. Im sure Open beta will be opened up for all to play that way they can focus on the servers. right now its just in a stage of testing only, fine tune the game and find the bugs. usualy people get paid for this task but feel honored if you get a closed beta key.

[T FreeLancer]

Can't say that I have an issue here. The Devs are good at what they do. They are professionals that undoubtedly have experience in this area. I do testing all the time in IT and it hard to not succeed when there is that kind of talent present. So I didn't get a key, no worries. I'll get in eventually and that is what I am looking forward to. If I find a bug then, I'll report it and go on with life. It's just that simple.

[Slab Squathrust]

Yeah I can’t say I really understand the sense of entitlement on these forums for a beta key. Many games have closed betas and people don’t get all bent out of shape when they don’t get into those. I know everyone on the forums want this game to succeed, and are eager to help out, but the developers are PROFESSIONALS (I’m not brown nosing here). The literally get paid to make games. Just like they don’t come into the lab where I work and tell me how I need to do my job, I will respect their chosen course of development. If they ask you to help, feel honored that you get to contribute to a project that is meaningful to you. However, all this whining and fake outrage is just pathetic.

I understand it’s been about ten years since mechwarrior 4 came out and of course there is MWLL but the launch is almost here and its summer time in the northern hemisphere. Get out there and enjoy it. I'm sure once the game launches most of us here will have serious vitamin D deficiencies.

Edited by Slab Squathrust, 12 June 2012 - 11:34 AM.

[Kyle Knightraven]

I have been in 3 beta test situations (lucky me ). Beta testing can be painful - the number of bugs, glitches, graphics horrors, etc. can be hard to bear. Crashing, computer restarts, freezing are often the order of the day. The earlier you become involved the worse it can be. So, if you are looking to hop in and play a fantastic, polished game - you are, most likely, in for a big dissappointment. You are the little piece of grit that will help to polish the game, and THAT is the cool part.

Personally, I can wait for the finished product. But if my number comes up, I will get to be a part of the development of what will be a great game!

[CTec]

I am looking for a solid game. I am looking for Devs who listen to the player base. I am looking for a company who stands behind the game and makes every effort to make THIS game worth while, not to publish MWO and move on to the next project leaving us swinging in the breeze.

Some of us have been playing this game in one form or fashion since the mid-to-late 80's. You think the Lord of the Rings freaks knew every aspect of the books and the producers knew the movies had to be close or they would be boo'd out of the theater, Some of us know this game that well. Earlier publishers crapped out poorly coded and designed product under the auspices of BattleTech or MechWarrior names so some of us have buckshot still stinging our backside.

Ya'll make a friggin outstanding game and we will sing your praises.

Beta, yea I want in, but if I don't so be it. In the same breath hold the ones in the beta accountable to being there and making use of the slot they were given.

[Amarus Cameron]

Glory, on 12 June 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

I have never seen a Beta for a game before that had this many people feeling this entitled about their right to be selected. O_o

It gets more and more common every year as companies decide to use Betas for a publicity campaign more than anything else.

[Russ Bullock]

This beta is no publicity stunt trust me. We are building a game we hope will have Millions of registered users so we need to program the back end in such a way that we can handle it. We are getting there, day by day, but it will take some more time.

I should also point out that we know there are so many crazy MechWarrior fans on these forums and I wish we could let everyone of you in but again it is a process that we need to ramp up to.

I also need to point out that all of us declare openly that we want this MechWarrior game to be great and to revitalize MechWarrior into a product with the attention it deserves. If we are going to be successful in doing that we need more then the several hundred thousand hard core MechWarrior fans to love it and play it. We need many millions of registrations and playes over the years to play this game. if that happens then there will be future MechWarrior games developed including Single Player ones. But if we only succeed in making the best MechWarrior game ever for us the hard core MechWarrior fans...then we likely will not see those other products.

Therefore we need both hardcore MechWarrior fans in the beta as well as plenty of joe bloe random person who signed up for the beta.

[Ori Klein]

IMHO, since they're launching in NA first, they're reducing their selection to people from that region.

[Eximar]

Russ Bullock, on 12 June 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

We are building a game we hope will have Millions of registered users so we need to program the back end in such a way that we can handle it. We are getting there, day by day, but it will take some more time.

Amen to that.

[WardenWolf]

Russ Bullock, on 12 June 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

We are building a game we hope will have Millions of registered users so we need to program the back end in such a way that we can handle it....

I also need to point out that all of us declare openly that we want this MechWarrior game to be great and to revitalize MechWarrior into a product with the attention it deserves. If we are going to be successful in doing that we need more then the several hundred thousand hard core MechWarrior fans to love it and play it. We need many millions of registrations and playes over the years to play this game. if that happens then there will be future MechWarrior games developed including Single Player ones. But if we only succeed in making the best MechWarrior game ever for us the hard core MechWarrior fans...then we likely will not see those other products.

Wow, you guys are aiming way bigger than I had expected. Kudos for the high goals, and may you reach them for all of our benefit. Will do what I can to help along the way (founders, etc)!

[CrAzzYmrBC]

Russ Bullock, on 12 June 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

This beta is no publicity stunt trust me. We are building a game we hope will have Millions of registered users so we need to program the back end in such a way that we can handle it. We are getting there, day by day, but it will take some more time.

I should also point out that we know there are so many crazy MechWarrior fans on these forums and I wish we could let everyone of you in but again it is a process that we need to ramp up to.

I also need to point out that all of us declare openly that we want this MechWarrior game to be great and to revitalize MechWarrior into a product with the attention it deserves. If we are going to be successful in doing that we need more then the several hundred thousand hard core MechWarrior fans to love it and play it. We need many millions of registrations and playes over the years to play this game. if that happens then there will be future MechWarrior games developed including Single Player ones. But if we only succeed in making the best MechWarrior game ever for us the hard core MechWarrior fans...then we likely will not see those other products.

Therefore we need both hardcore MechWarrior fans in the beta as well as plenty of joe bloe random person who signed up for the beta.

That is a good statement, I think the people who think that the devs purposely aren't picking them and are being unfair need to remember that this is more than a game. The companies reputation is on the line, its their jobs and a hobby. I'm positive if they could let us all on they would. Until then we shouldn't be angry and shouldn't threaten to not buy the founders pack because we're upset.

[Aegis Kleais]

Pretty much if they made the game so that Hardcore players enjoyed it only, they would have to demand $500 per player to justify expenses.

Some things gotta go lax or not by the books in order for less hardcore players to like and enjoy the game to the point they are putting money down on it.

Inception gives pilots a unique opportunity to provide money, but think about it, even if 200,000 users bought the $60 Elite Founder's pack, that would only be $12M, which sounds like a lot of money, but as they pointed out earlier, a AAA game can cost $20-$50M to create.

They need to build MWO in a manner where it promotes the constant purchase of goods in the economy so that it compensates the developers, benefits the consumers, and justifies further development to add new content that the community wants. We can't achieve this by catering completely to a niche market. But at the same time, PGI isn't going to "Call of Duty"-ize the IP either. They know what MW fans like. It's up to us to keep getting the word out about this game.

I've personally got 5 people to commit to buying an Elite Founder's Pack, and I'm telling countless more about it. With the base game being F2P, that allows players to "Try" before they opt to buy cosmetics or the convenience. PGI has to ensure that the game offers many areas of customization, advancement and the like; these areas can translate into opportunities for transactions. And the things they bring to the game down the line need to follow the same format.

[Solis Obscuri]

Kobold, on 12 June 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

Speaking as someone who was a QA tester for a couple years, I assure you that every major developer has at least SOME paid testers. The scope of their responsibilities and how many of them there are may vary from company to company however. Check the credits for any major release (either at the end of a game, or in the manual) and by far the largest list of names is under QA.

Admittedly they don't have time to test everything though. For example, one place where I worked on an MMO, we didn't have enough resources available to dedicate to fully and correctly playing large sized "raid-style" content, so we horribly misjudged some balance issues which weren't discovered until real players started hammering on our content. Those real players weren't super-sleuth bug hunters, but they were just normal people playing like normal people.

Each approach is necessary, because they find different things.

I agree with this, and I've been seeing a fair number of folks on the forum claiming that beta testing should be some exclusive pool of professionals and/or "hardcore pro gamers" looking only for bugs and code exploits. Realistically, the professional debugging should already have been done back in alpha, not by a random sampling pool of end-users. I think the game must be at a point where general playtesting is as important as bug replication.

WardenWolf, on 12 June 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

1) At the moment, I strongly suspect the beta is focused on finding bugs and general balance. Some folks have talked about stress-testing servers, and I think that will come later. At least as of the weight class videos they made there were still bugs / major missing features. Check out the light mech preview, for example:

http://mwomercs.com/...deo/4gEQkyLbCjE

At 2:07-2:10 we see a Catapult get destroyed... and which point it falls over and disappears. Sounds like some missing graphics / effects, and there is no point in stress-testing hardware until the majority of the features are in-game.

Further, at 2:20 - in the middle of a jump - there is some sort of glitch where the visuals change for a split second. Figuring our why those things are happening and fixing them is what the beta is likely focused on at this point.

That actually brings up a good point, in case any beta testers (or future testers) happen to be reading this. If your computer can handle the added load of running a recording program, like FRAPS, it might be a good idea. Then, when you do encounter a bug, you can make a short video clip of it to better help the devs.

2) Because the beta is likely still in this stage, there may be a lot of added debug code running - especially recording info on the server side of things. This would add load on their hardware, making a stress-test of the servers an even worse idea because that debug code will be gone when the full game launches. It also means a lot of data for the devs to pour over, and so keeping the number of beta players relatively low for now means that they have a manageable amount of information to work with.

3) I suspect the devs will want to test on a wide variety of hardware, so that they can get a good idea for what the minimum requirements for the game really are. As such, I would recommend not worrying too much about your system hardware.

This sounds pretty spot-on, really.

TheRulesLawyer, on 12 June 2012 - 09:36 AM, said:

I'm most concerned that random distribution of keys will have an overabundance of people with little to no familiarity with Battletech. This will lead to many suggestions based on non-canon performance of weapons and mechs during the critical tuning phase. Which in turn leads us towards yet another mechwarrior game that doesn't feel like proper battletech. I just hope that the devs remain committed to sticking as close to canon as possible in the face of that feedback.

This is pretty much where I'm at - I really think PGI has a good vision of things, but I'm interested in seeing how game balance is working out. There are some things I'd like to see closer to TT than previous MW games, there are some things from TT that just won't work in a first-person video game, and there are some things that I think could use a serious balance tweak from both the TT and previous MW games to work well and give players a variety of good gameplay choices.

My nightmare scenario is swamping testing with a bunch of "1337 gamer" munchkins with no concept of anything except the value of gear progression, or getting a preview of what cheese to min/max come launch. I don't want to see balance at launch consisting of AWS-9Ms that can't lose to a STK-3F unless the pilot falls asleep on the keyboard, or wolfpacks of 4-flamer JR7-Fs with DHS as a battlefield tactic with no reliable counter.

[Phelan Ward-Kell]

Here's the thing with this. I'm a huge Battletech/MechWarrior fan, and to say it doesn't nag a little that my friend (Not even remotely a fan of the franchise) is playing and I'm not would be a lie.
But I also know that this is neither by design nor intent.

What I also know is that my friend is a very capable gamer, with plenty of experience beta testing, and is very dedicated to testing features and submitting bug reports for any issues found.
Knowing this, I have to believe that he's not the only person like that in the couple thousand currently testing, and I have to believe that they are doing their best to help PGI get a friggin awesome MechWarrior game on the market.


So really, lets sit back and relax. Take a chill pill, and eagerly wait for the best MechWarrior game ever to hit the market.

[Adrienne Vorton]

ya know what gets ppl on the barricades? the fact that some greedy f2p grinder mmo´s overused the word "beta" and make it look like "beta" would be an instrument to get paying customers into the game, inviting nearly everyone in to a so called "closed beta" , when it actually was a "open to registered customers" entry... that took away the realistic view of many gamers from what a beta REALLY is... a TEST for a limited audience to get things straight...

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 12 June 2012 - 11:56 AM.

[Chuckie]

Russ Bullock, on 12 June 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

I think your concern might be a little misplaced, yes there have been some NDA violaters but it is a mere handful of the thousands playing the game. For the vast majority of beta testers they are playing, putting in huge hours doing so and are effectively finding and reporting bugs. I agree with you this IS MechWarriors last big hope to re-establish the brand going forward. We really do take it that serious and understand the ramifications for both the brand and our company. I'm sure the days feel like they are just dragging by as you wait, trust me I feel the same way not to play because I get that honor but to release it! I really want this game to be out there, but I must remain patient for a while longer.

Russ (and Bryan too),

I understand, but you guys KNOW there is a small group of us (well under 500) that have been HUGE Fans, and been spending countless hours promoting this game and giving it the word of mouth it justly deserves.. Most of us have over 150 posts (some a few more than that..) , most joined before February, have been personally trolled by Paul, and have been active for months on everything from facebook to twitter, etc..

Even a few of us even bought GDC T-shirts during that small window they were available.. so you KNOW we are going to be around a while.. and spend at LEAST $60 but probably a good bit more.

So YES, I understand the whole "fairness" thing.. and making it random. Also understand in not wanting to set a precedent for those that want to complain, and beg, etc..

But there is also a Fairness quotient for those of us that have been supporting you guys and spreading the good word for MONTHS. At this point almost 5000 keys have been issued, yet many of your hard core supporters sit here hitting F5.

So just saying it wouldn't hurt to give a few of us keys because if anything we will be the most tight lipped, and probably provide a lot of really good feedback that the random 12 year old will not..

I mean if you can do friends and family, you can obviously manually add some people to the Beta.

PhelanPatrickKell, on 12 June 2012 - 11:48 AM, said:

So really, lets sit back and relax. Take a chill pill, and eagerly wait for the best MechWarrior game ever to hit the market.

OK fine... I will quit begging.. because if this rational argument doesn't work, no amount of begging in the future will either. I know I seriously quit being rational in regards to MWO a while ago.. but thats beside the point.

Edited by Chuckie, 12 June 2012 - 12:00 PM.

[Steelo]

hey man dont bash chromehounds, despite its server flaws and abuses, the mech lab and gameplay was absolutly amazing.

[Aegis Kleais]

All entitlement aside....

A hardcore BTech/MW fan is no different the the developer than someone new to the series. In actuality, the player who is more willing to spend money on the product is the most valuable. This isn't greed, but it is the nature of the beast. There is a fine line the developer tries to walk in order to get as many returns on investment (transactions) but to keep as true as possible to the unique characteristics of the series.

There's going to be ups and downs during these developments, and PGI has shown that it's willing to hear what is being said, we just need to understand that though being heard is a free commodity, putting a dollar behind our words will always speak louder.

A million people playing the game for free and never spending any money isn't as valuable as 10,000 players who spend $10-20/month on the game. In this business to keep the game alive, they will need some scrillage. If done right, players will convert over to transactions because it benefits their entertainment's bottom dollar.