No replies to this topic

[Kassatsu]

Fine, let me rant on a few things, the fact it's here (the MWO official forums) does not mean I'm referring only to MWO, though I indirectly am for one or more of my points, I'm not singling MWO out specifically in any way. Perhaps I'm just narrow-minded, or maybe I just refuse to accept the changing times, anyways... No tl;dr here either.

Crowdfunding, kickstarter and "founder" packages:

Seriously? I'm fine with kickstarter and accepting pre-purchases of some limited time benefits, forum badges, titles etc. in a game... But why would you specifically include beta access as part of that deal? I personally would review a game the instant I had access to it, "closed" beta or not, if I paid for it and part of what I paid for was "early acces" or "guaranteed beta access". This applies to any game that has "founder" packages, guarantees beta access for kickstarter supporters etc.

The instant the game is released in a playable state, if the people playing it have paid for it, it's not a beta. It's a fully release product ready for review. The same goes for releasing the cash shop. You can't honestly call your game a beta anymore if you're confident enough to release a fully functioning cash shop and items. You've released the first non-beta version the instant you add your cash shop, and once again, have no right to complain whatsoever if anyone decides to review your game as-is, expecting a fully-featured, finished product. If you've promised features that aren't around at the time you released your cash shop... In my eyes, you've just slapped every single one of your players in the face, saying "this is what you get, now give us money and maybe we'll give you what we told you we would".

Testing phases:

Alpha: Generally a very controlled test done almost exclusively by the developers themselves, or carefully-selected players that are not directly involved with development. Nearly guaranteed to have an NDA in place.

Closed beta: This one really gets me. Far too many developers mis-use the term "closed" beta. Closed generally implies it's not open to anyone that wants to sign up and play (See open beta), and usually means only a select few (randomly chosen or not) players that sign up will actually get to play during this phase. NDA may or may not be in place, depends entirely on the developer/publisher. NDAs are, in my opinion, completely pointless past very early alpha testing.

Stress test: Usually a 2-3 day weekend between closed and open beta phases, with the goal of allowing anyone that wants to try the game out do so. The idea is to test the stability of the servers under the most stress possible, as well as let anyone who is unsure of buying the game (assuming it's buy to play or subscription-based) try it before-hand.

Open beta: This one is mis-used quite a bit as well. Generally speaking, most companies will run open beta very shortly before launch, often without wiping the data before then. "Free headstart trial" is a more applicable term in this case. There's generally nothing that actually needs to be tested, and it's very common for there to be a fully functioning cash shop during this phase of "testing" as well. Occasionally in subscription-based or buy-to-play games they'll offer a "headstart" to pre-orders. This is often a few days before open beta actually happens, and I honestly do not understand the point of it. Open beta has all but lost it's meaning in the past few years.



Just a few things that have become extremely annoying to me in terms of MMOG developers/publishers lately. Especially the whole "foundation release" or "open beta with cash shop" things. If you were running a game, could you honestly say it's still undergoing any phase of beta testing when you're charging people a subscription fee, are running a cash shop, or requiring players to purchase the game to do so? With very few exceptions (such as how Battlefield 3 handled it's "beta", or as I would call it, "early demo" for pre-order customers), I would think not. I mean sure, you could say it's still in beta. But is it really? The answer, in my opinion, is a very definitive "no". By letting people use the cash shop, or by having them pay for access to the "early" beta, you're confident enough to sell your game in the first place.

A bad analogy would be a restaurant (not fast food), you generally order your food, eat it, and THEN pay for it. You don't pay for a steak and receive it nearly raw, and the restaurant certainly doesn't expect you to stick around and pay more for them to finish cooking it so you can finally eat it as it was promised to you when you first ordered it. The biggest difference I see is that you generally pay for a finished game before you play it, whereas with restaurants you pay after you've eaten.

Unless it IS fast food. Then you pay for your food before-hand and aren't handed a half-cooked hamburger and expected to pay more money and sit around waiting for them to finish cooking it for you.

The reason it's a bad analogy is because MMOGs are constantly adding new content, whereas at a restaurant you generally get what you order and nothing more. And also because it generally does not apply to F2P games unless you buy something in the cash shop during it's "open beta test", or fell for one of the "founder" packages that offer little more than a forum badge, an icon in-game or a slightly differently colored or named something or other that's available to anyone else in the game.

I also realize different people have different values for things. They just shouldn't complain when the buggy, unfinished game they paid for in that state gets an unfavorable review from some well-known publication based on what is playable at the time the reviewer was able to pay for and play the game.

If you actually read all of that, congratulations, you get absolutely nothing but my personal opinion.