Thread: Legacy players protest to getting into 2.0 Beta!

Originally Posted by TheVedis

you obviously don't understand how these things work is why

They use them to find and squash thee Elusive bugs. at the Beta stage its always the more the merrier, as the common in your face bugs would have been steamed out in Alpha, Hopefully.

Originally Posted by Valmonte

They use them to find and squash thee Elusive bugs. at the Beta stage its always the more the merrier, as the common in your face bugs would have been steamed out in Alpha, Hopefully.

lol. it's not 'the more the merrier' you can have too many in beta.

you want a happy medium. the alpha tester are generally people who know what they are doing. they can find a problem. figure out how to replicate the problem. pass it to devs adn then get them fixed.

Beta testers are not necessarily this skilled. Often times they are not. I can generally tell what a company is after by looking at the beta sign up sheet.

As an example Mech Warrior online closed beta doesn't ask for any info really. they ask you some questions about how familiar you are with the lore and that's about it. they don't ask for your PC specs. So they aren't filtering by PC specs yet. Closed beta seems to be more about content and how close the game is to the traditional lore. IE: what do the hardcore fans want.

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For FFXIV there was a rigorous application and they wanted very detailed information on your system. IE: hardware compatibility testing. the game was essentially running in debug mode so you needed a serious rig to play in the beta. these people are also generally more tech savvy.

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When i beta tested Hellgate London and TSW there was really no application. they just said 'do you want to beta?' if you checked yes you got thrown into a pot.

This is a server stress-test beta. you want a lot of people to see what kind of load your servers can take.

Originally Posted by Onisake

lol. it's not 'the more the merrier' you can have too many in beta.

you want a happy medium. the alpha tester are generally people who know what they are doing. they can find a problem. figure out how to replicate the problem. pass it to devs adn then get them fixed.

Beta testers are not necessarily this skilled. Often times they are not. I can generally tell what a company is after by looking at the beta sign up sheet.

As an example Mech Warrior online closed beta doesn't ask for any info really. they ask you some questions about how familiar you are with the lore and that's about it. they don't ask for your PC specs. So they aren't filtering by PC specs yet. Closed beta seems to be more about content and how close the game is to the traditional lore. IE: what do the hardcore fans want.

-----------

For FFXIV there was a rigorous application and they wanted very detailed information on your system. IE: hardware compatibility testing. the game was essentially running in debug mode so you needed a serious rig to play in the beta. these people are also generally more tech savvy.

------------

When i beta tested Hellgate London and TSW there was really no application. they just said 'do you want to beta?' if you checked yes you got thrown into a pot.

This is a server stress-test beta. you want a lot of people to see what kind of load your servers can take.

Staying in context here. 2000 Beta testers is not a very happy medium when your aiming for hundreds of thousands of subscribers with over a million possible hardware combinations. if that's all there going to use there going to miss things.

a happy medium would be around 10,000 for a game of this nature.

Originally Posted by Valmonte

Staying in context here. 2000 Beta testers is not a very happy medium when your aiming for hundreds of thousands of subscribers with over a million possible hardware combinations. if that's all there going to use there going to miss things.

a happy medium would be around 10,000 for a game of this nature.

2000 is a made up number. don't use it. I never did. I never will.

I meant in general. you want a happy medium. it is not 'the more the merrier' while it is true you generally want to maximize the number of people to get a better sample.

Also, by asking for specs you can cherry pick certain hardware configurations. there are families of cards/boards/processors that generally behave the same. you don't need to test every possible combination. in generally you want to test the big groups. someone with a rare setup is on their own for the most part. but they generally already know that.

i'm sure they have access to data about what PCs are selling and the most common configurations. you want to test for those. you also want people with high end rigs, because they are tech savvy and will generally help troubleshoot.