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I'm sick of hearing "It's only a beta"...
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
I mean really I know what a beta is, infact it's when the core game is built and the final touches are going on the game. So really nothing much is going to change other than polish and a few things added here or there. However I'm pretty sure if you do not like the core game design, then you will never like the game. In fact the core game design has been done by alpha, it wont change and will just be built upon, so again if you don't like the game in alpha then you probably wont ever like it.
I've been apart of betas for MMOs and many games for the past 15 years now and I can safely say any game I've hated in alpha/beta I have hated after launch. Also guess what they've barely ever changed from beta to launch, other than server stability and a few bugs here and there.
The miracle patch never comes, despite how many times you people keep saying it is coming. The latest one I experienced was for CS:GO and yet they didn't even have a patch from beta to launch lol. Game design is done far early on, way before the alpha and we never experience that side of it.
I really think people have a misconception of how games are made.
The other thing I hate is people saying you need to play like 200 hours before you can judge an MMO. No......... you can pretty much judge if you will like it right away before playing by the look of it and from the features described. Once you get into the game you can get a feel of the mechanics and how the game plays pretty much straight away. Also I'm not going to grind away from the start to end game to get to the "good bit"..... it should be good from the get go.
I really find it funny why F2P has come so popular, I don't pay with my money, I have 15quid a month easy to pay for an MMO, I pay with my time. I will only devote my time to games that I like, so the subscription model isn't dead, I think the only advantage the F2P has is there is no barrier to entry. I mean if games released for free and the only payment you had to make was after the first 30 days, it would be as popular as the rest of the F2P market. Though I reckon only a tiny percentage of the audience actually buys stuff for F2P games, I just reckon they buy so much they make up for the like 70% of people who aren't buying stuff.
Comments
However nothing. This thread ended right there, because apparently you actually don't know what a beta is, but you're going to prattle on as if you did.
Beta phase, in a software development phase, has little to do with final touches. A Beta can reveal incredible large problems especially when related to networks or a grand number of hardware configurations it will be presented to. Also beta tends to expose a piece of software outside of a development team, usually to a closed or open public for feedback and appreciation. It has little to do with polish.
Sometimes a Beta can last years with much software, or even regress it into a state that requires rebuilding entire sections of code. A beta can, in rare cases, scrap a project entirely depending on funds. For a game as large as many MMOs, a beta is a unique phase in development as it puts the major networking elements into practice for monitoring, something not easily simulated in-house. Final touches? A networking team could only be so lucky to view a beta as a final touch.
There is no software nor networking program that can truly show what that network can do in a real life topography. Many times networks overestimate, and still find themselves unable to handle the load. From a technical viewpoint, months of efforts can be undone by hardware driver support from manufacturers who though working closely with a dev team (or not at all in smaller games) can still find themselves unable to properly render, initialize, or support a feature on a system.
As such a beta is far from a polishing of code, it is in itself another phase of the cooking process. If we were baking a cake, you're comparing a beta as the addition of frosting, when for many MMOs, the cake has just been put into the oven. It might still be in the oven when the game is released in the case of a poor game or tight production schedule.
You're belittling beta due to a severe lack of understanding of what it is.
That's why you're sick of it. Expectations. Your expectations of beta aren't being met because you don't quite understand what it is. You don't quite know what a developer requires, or what kind of publishing entanglements are a part of it. You have no idea what the development cycles are, or how problems are being handled on the application or network layer, or how a developer is communicating with development teams from hardware manufacturers around the world. You don't know. You don't care. You just want to eat cake.
....and the thread goes on with 1 more post.
I believe he is referring to gameplay mechanics, not backend coding. Lets not disolve into metaphors here, we can speak plainly. GW2 wasn't about to add defined roles, SWTOR wasn't going to add a space sim and WOW wasn't going to add mechs with lasers.
Core gameplay rarely changes from beta to retail release. They don't usually scrap the main idea the game is built upon for another entirely different idea.
Truthfully I have no clue what programming expectations are from beta to release. I've never run into a beta that completely refocused core game design though, I would love to hear of an example.
Firefall disagrees with you.
I'm sorry but you not entirely right.
Finding out of the game is for you right away? I guess that depends, but you can be damn sure to not know and have touched upon many of the feautres by only playing a handful of hours. For many the first impression is everything and that is okay, and other times the game is so incredibly boring, bad or both the first hour that you just give it up, it happens I know. But a few hours rarely justifies a big conclusion imo.
Too damn black and white with you
What bugs me the most about these people saying, "It's only a beta..", are the ones that then go on and say, they WILL change this, they WILL add that, they WILL balance the other, as if they've got some fantastic insider knowledge that the rest of the beta players have missed. It's just wishlisting, like saying Christmas is coming and I WILL get an X-Box and WILL get a Plasma TV...
It just really bugs me as all it sounds like is a blind fanboy response, putting so much faith into the developers to change things to the way they want them to be. Has nobody learnt from previous betas?
Actually, maybe you should wait trying a MMO until a few months after launch.
It is true that if you hate a game in the beta you most likely wont like it after launch either, but a MMO in beta and 6 months after launch are still rather different. Betas always have annoying bugs that will make you feel worse about the stuff you dont like anyways.
And all MMOs release early, some earlier than others. Waiting a while is not a bad idea and you will get a free trial to any game by then.
In my book, if they accept money for it, or if the "beta access" requires a purchase (full price), its a launch. I have been involved in games that were half price specifically because they were still in beta. In the end I received the full version aswell.
It was the best 6€ I've spent on a game. Cheers Taleworlds*!
*(developers of Mount & Blade)
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
No two betas are the same. Every game, every company tests different, for different reasons. Some is technical, some is market, some is financial. There are always bigger butts to be kissed and shown how well (or in some cases how poorly) a game is doing.