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Will you have a beta testing version?

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#7
All quiet on the Eastern Front....

Pa-CHA!
finger-drums-electric-drums-on-rockstar-set.jpg
 
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#8
Kipper said:
By beta, you mean "free game for a few months before anyone else gets it" right? Because beta tests are only good for publicity these days. People apply just to play early rather than beta test.
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I'm telling you right now I'm going to buy the game. I'll pay for it in advance if Tripwire would like. I'll pay in full forward before they give out beta keys.

By the way, the reason you do beta tests is because it is a test. It isn't for fun, it's to get feedback from players regarding the gameplay mechanics, game balance, map layouts, and most importantly, BUG REPORTING.

I've got about a dozen bugs or exploits in Ost Front I can list off the top of my head. I would have reported them and they would have been fixed pre-release if I had been in a beta test for Ost.

In case you're still confused on why beta testing is so important, go look at Modern Warfare 2 on PC. People are constantly complaining on their forums, particularly the PC forums, about exploits, networking issues, hackers, and game bugs. They also complained that there was no beta and no demo for their brand new proprietary matchmaking service, IWnet. Another case in point, go look at Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360. It's a raging pile of ***t. Basically it takes forever to get into a game via matchmaking and when you do there is blatant "host advantage," bugs, networking issues, and most of all you have a tendency to skate around the map or randomly blow to pieces (lag). Neither of those games had open betas because they felt it would affect their development schedule.

Beta testing is important, get it through your skull. It ensures a quality product when the game hits the market so I can yell at all my friends until they buy it. People don't like buggy games. It affects review scores, it affects public opinion, it pisses your most dedicated player base off the most, and it affects the lifespan of the game significantly.

There are things you just can't detect in internal testing....apparently, anyway, considering how many games without betas get kicked out the door with glaring bugs and issues.

Edit: I should also mention that Red Orchestra used to be a free Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, so effectively people were playing Ost Front years and years prior to the retail game's release....in fact, if I'm not mistaken, you can still play it. Likewise with Killing Floor....they were both free mods that people were playing before their retail releases.
 
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#12
Kipper said:
Various, I agree with you. That was sort of my point. Beta tests are important, but the way public betas work out is that everyone just signs up to play the game early. "Free game woo!"
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So when you said "beta tests are only good for publicity," what you actually meant is that beta tests are good for bug testing and player feedback?

Why would the fact that people sign up to play the game early in any way be an issue?
 
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#14
A beta test key as a preorder bonus to a reservation deposit is very standard industry practice and I tend to think it serves both parties considerably.

But yeah 5 dollar discounts upon preorder are much more standard practice than $5 extra upon preorder. For the most part retailers and publishers want to entice your purchase rather than turn it away.
 
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#17
I AGREE!!!!!!

BETA=FULL OF WIN

Not for just being able to play,but know it works on your type of PC

l4d2=EPIC NO open beta test =other pcs with other hardware and software could NOT be tested :mad:!!
I couldn't get this POS game to work for half a week same problem as 100s others had, 10,000s kept crashing on 2 maps took them a month to fix that! Now I know your nothing like valve or activision YOUR TW!!!!!!! AND I ****ING LOVE TW OMG LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE YOUR GAMES!

I tried to get a beta key ages ago. I think I said I loved tripwire a lil to much in the forums around that time.......and kinda got silenced a few months.......sooo that probly made me get NO BETA!!

AND I should of gotton the beta b/c I had zero life but RO at that time....I mean I spent like 17-20 hours a day playing with limited sleep to play more......I found so many bugs and glitches in ro i could reported quicker!

UMMM IDK I NEED BETA ^_^ my addiction for the greatest game makers of all time is well....im jones'n baad man really baaadd

Well hmm now that I sit here and think about it.....Im going to find a way to get a job for TW!!!!!!!!:cool:
 
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#18
Garbonzo said:
Not for just being able to play,but know it works on your type of PC
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This is the point of demos. How can you test preformance on your PC when the product is not finished? It won't represent the final product.


Not sure why people actually want to play a buggy game (beta).


If there is a beta testing period, the testers should be required to post bugs or gameplay suggestions. If not, they should be removed from the beta. Otherwise the free beta thing is just a waste of time, IMO.
 
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#19
Beta is needed in my opinion. Demo's are meant for people thinking about buying the game, but want a "demo" to try it out.

Alpha testing is for the bare essentials of the game, mainly by developer testing and probably close friends of TWI.

A Beta IS meant to test a close, but unfinished game. It minimizes errors before the game releases. This results in a newly released game with less errors for players to encounter.


The point of a beta is to release the game with minimal errors. The last thing people would want is to buy a newly released game and encounter many bugs. This is bound to happen to some people regardless, but it's better to have some hundred complaints than thousands. A beta would also provide TWI some feedback to make their newly released game awesome as much as possible on the first sight. For many people, the first time playing matters a lot.

Fix through patches after released? Won't work, esp with a demo. If people were to try a buggy demo, they wouldn't bother buying the game at all.

If TWI were to cast beta testing, it should obviously be a "closed-beta" consisting of TWI picking qualified testers based on these traits:

1) System specs ranging from minimal to maximum requirements. - Various system testing
2) Original RO players - To test it's trueness to the RO series
3) And first time RO players - Test it's appeal to new time players. (Remember, they are trying to bring in new customers while remaining true to RO returners.)

That's how I see it.
 
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#20
Its true, a closed beta is needed. Now about an open beta, not too sure. At least for MMOs, open betas mean that the game has already gone for "printing" to the dvd makers but needs some more tests (like how well can their servers handle huge ammount of players) and usually start 2-3 weeks before release and last about a week. Since we are talking about a fps though, Im not sure a completelly open beta will be much more than playing the game early. If its not a big deal for TWI to have an open beta though, sure why not :D
 
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