I love how SOE picks their beta testers. - Page 4

RadarX · 10-10-2006, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pronoia

I care when, even after 'beta testing' the released raid content is full of fucking bugs that a moron should have found.

yep, it's their game and their choice but I start to doubt the objectivity of the testing when so many raid zones are fucked at release and some remain fucked for months.

Off the top of my head :Tarinax, bugged encounter making him easier then he should be - reported for 5 months or so before it got fixed. Vyemm - multiple script changes - at one time changing once per week. Venekor - clusterfuck from release.

"If it's not tested right? It's also their fault" We all know who's fault it is, but why is it not corrected. If some of these bugs / script issues were subtle or hard to spot I think raiders could understand it more. They are not, the ones mentioned are in your face from the start of the encounter balls ups.

If their test process with KoS let so many fundamental issues through, the process is inadequate for purpose. Let's hope it's changed for this expansion.

Pro.

Whether or not the bugs should've been found is subjective. When you say Tarinax was reported for 5 months before he was fixed, do you mean it took 5 months to fix him, or 5 months for them to even notice he was broken. I doubt it was the latter. SOE determines the priority of what gets fixed, and that may have just been further down the list than you guys would've liked it. What you consider "fundamental" someone else may not give 2 shits about. I don't know how they "fix" raid encounters, but my understanding is those individual encounters that have their own scripting. It wouldn't take a large mistake to completely break it and may take numerous tries to get it where you want it.

KoS wasn't just about raid content. They had issues near release with lag, broken quests, etc.... which would affect a lot more people at release than an end game encounter MOST raiders wouldn't see for months. They very well could have determined the bugs in testing, but didn't have the resources to fix them before release. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but raid content takes a backseat a lot of times. SOE has admitted for instance when Ferral asked if they could get more raid instances using the same template as single group instances (Courts is a good example), that SOE builds group instances first and IF it has time adds raid content.

Take that as how you want it. I think testing should be done extensively but this expansion is going to be HUGE. If they can get all this stuff working by launch and have everything where it needs to be? I'll be satisfied.

I'll go ahead and annoy you further. I heard a rumor the Estate of Unrest won't be ready at launch.

Crazedmutha · 10-10-2006, 10:48 AM

The thing that gets my goat is, they have to have a limit on the amount of beta invites that go out. At the moment it is random, so from a sample of 10 you could maybe have someone that cancelled their account before invite, a couple that will never get time to play beta, a few that might play an hour or two a day to explore new content, a couple that play a few hours and bug test a few things and one player that plays 3 hours+ a day and thoroughly bug tests, gives feedback and particpates in Beta forum discussions. So in essence a significant % could be wasted on players that wont contribute anything.

Now for my mind, this is an exceptionally "hit and miss" way of doing things. Why not set up an application form where you can say what type of player you are (solo, grouper, raider), what your playtimes are and what your playstyle is (crafter, adventurer, instances, writs etc) and then they hand out x% invites to the more casual solo players, y% invites to the grouper and z% to raiders. They could also take into account things like /played, or how many times a character may have /bug or /feedback on live or test server to determine who is more likely to contribute something positively the the Beta.

I don't know, I guess too much work for SOE to determine all these things about a player before letting them in, but at the moment there is no quality control, many people who wont contribute anything get in, whilst many who are happily prepared to put hours and hours in to testing properly get left out.

Kinda stupid imo.

Pronoia · 10-10-2006, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MeridianR

I think most complaints stem from the fact that the same guilds (Second Dawn, Fires of Heaven, etc) are getting into beta over and over again....even though it was stated it is going to be random.

That's not a problem for me except that, whether it's the guild or the test methodologies applied, the content does not seem to be adequately tested. I don't believe that's the responsibility of the guild but the responsibilty of the test leader. They should contstruct a robust test program based on their knowledge of the ecnounter.

Pro.

fixed your quote - Cal

MeridianR · 10-10-2006, 11:02 AM

Oh I am not gonna disagree with you there. If the content was tested the way that it should have been Tarinax wouldn't have been broken for 5 months.

DMP back in T6 wouldn't have had the issues it had either (beta testing with 15 people for the mother fucking win)...

Not saying it's the guilds fault either, and I have no issues with Second Dawn and/or FoH....but the fact remains, the same guilds shouldn't be used for testing over and over again.

Kiara · 10-10-2006, 11:10 AM

If SOE wants their raid content tested reliably and well with people they know are motivated and work well together, why not go with an established raiding guild with whom they have worked extensively?

Beta isn't really all that long in the grand scheme, and they don't have the time to get a group of people together and working well. They need stuff tested and tested hard as much and as fast as possible.

Doesn't mean that it doesn't rankle a bit * shrug * But there's sound reasoning there.

As for Tarinax being broken for 5 months, once again, just because they didn't fix that right off the bat, doesn't mean they didn't know. Something doesn't stay broken just because they don't notice or don't pay attention. I'm sure it was tested and bugged all to hell. However, they have to fix things in order of importance. A broken quest, hellacious lag, etc. are going to affect a LOT more people in a shorter amount of time than a broken uber mob. I agree that it's annoying from a raiding perspective. I hate broken raid mobs. But I have to understand that the game doesn't revolve around what I want and what is important to me. There are hundreds of thousands of OTHER players. SOE has to set priorities, whether a relatively small segment of the playerbase agrees with those priorities or not.

Pronoia · 10-10-2006, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RadarX

Whether or not the bugs should've been found is subjective. When you say Tarinax was reported for 5 months before he was fixed, do you mean it took 5 months to fix him, or 5 months for them to even notice he was broken. I doubt it was the latter. SOE determines the priority of what gets fixed, and that may have just been further down the list than you guys would've liked it. What you consider "fundamental" someone else may not give 2 shits about. I don't know how they "fix" raid encounters, but my understanding is those individual encounters that have their own scripting. It wouldn't take a large mistake to completely break it and may take numerous tries to get it where you want it.

KoS wasn't just about raid content. They had issues near release with lag, broken quests, etc.... which would affect a lot more people at release than an end game encounter MOST raiders wouldn't see for months. They very well could have determined the bugs in testing, but didn't have the resources to fix them before release. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but raid content takes a backseat a lot of times. SOE has admitted for instance when Ferral asked if they could get more raid instances using the same template as single group instances (Courts is a good example), that SOE builds group instances first and IF it has time adds raid content.

Take that as how you want it. I think testing should be done extensively but this expansion is going to be HUGE. If they can get all this stuff working by launch and have everything where it needs to be? I'll be satisfied.

I'll go ahead and annoy you further. I heard a rumor the Estate of Unrest won't be ready at launch.

If there are so many issues that require fixing that it takes 5 months - not days or weeks but MONTHS to fix (or get around to fixing) a fundamental bug in the centrepiece of their flagship raidzone, they really do have some issues with the core of this game.

KoS released with many raid bugs. Most of the time they aren't even acknowleged. That gets very frustrating. Again, I don't a shit about the small stuff, that happens. It's encounters that are obviously fucked up badly from release I find unacceptable. It might be forced upon the content teams by unrealistic release dates. Like I said before, let's hope they did something different this time.

Oh and a zone being late doesn't annoy me. I applaud and appreciate that if it means yet another zone doesn't go out with fundamentally broken shit in it.
Maybe the current team has learned something from much vaunted 'WoW Polish' approach.

Hell, who knows, maybe next they might actually get around to acknowledging broken raid content and saying 'sorry guys, we know it's broken but we are working on a fix'. That's better than fucking silence where you don't even know if a problem is acknowledged or not followed by undocumented fixes.

Pro.

RadarX · 10-10-2006, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pronoia

If there are so many issues that require fixing that it takes 5 months - not days or weeks but MONTHS to fix (or get around to fixing) a fundamental bug in the centrepiece of their flagship raidzone, they really do have some issues with the core of this game.

KoS released with many raid bugs. Most of the time they aren't even acknowleged. That gets very frustrating. Again, I don't a shit about the small stuff, that happens. It's encounters that are obviously fucked up badly from release I find unacceptable. It might be forced upon the content teams by unrealistic release dates. Like I said before, let's hope they did something different this time.

Oh and a zone being late doesn't annoy me. I applaud and appreciate that if it means yet another zone doesn't go out with fundamentally broken shit in it.
Maybe the current team has learned something from much vaunted 'WoW Polish' approach.

Hell, who knows, maybe next they might actually get around to acknowledging broken raid content and saying 'sorry guys, we know it's broken but we are working on a fix'. That's better than fucking silence where you don't even know if a problem is acknowledged or not followed by undocumented fixes.

Pro.

The Devs who work on this stuff don't post on the forums to acknowledge it. If they do they a) get complained at further or b) get complained at for posting instead of working. That's why your stuff doesn't get acknowledged. They have 0 motivation to post there, the stuff is still broken, and still needs fixing whether they acknowledge it or not.

Nobody likes broken content and I agree with you stuff shouldn't be released unfinished, but you know what? People are going to bitch either way. If they don't bitch about the content being broken, they'll bitch the content isn't there. Doesn't make it right, but the Devs lose either way.

Pronoia · 10-10-2006, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiara

If SOE wants their raid content tested reliably and well with people they know are motivated and work well together, why not go with an established raiding guild with whom they have worked extensively?

Beta isn't really all that long in the grand scheme, and they don't have the time to get a group of people together and working well. They need stuff tested and tested hard as much and as fast as possible.

Doesn't mean that it doesn't rankle a bit * shrug * But there's sound reasoning there.

As for Tarinax being broken for 5 months, once again, just because they didn't fix that right off the bat, doesn't mean they didn't know. Something doesn't stay broken just because they don't notice or don't pay attention. I'm sure it was tested and bugged all to hell. However, they have to fix things in order of importance. A broken quest, hellacious lag, etc. are going to affect a LOT more people in a shorter amount of time than a broken uber mob. I agree that it's annoying from a raiding perspective. I hate broken raid mobs. But I have to understand that the game doesn't revolve around what I want and what is important to me. There are hundreds of thousands of OTHER players. SOE has to set priorities, whether a relatively small segment of the playerbase agrees with those priorities or not.

Yes other issues might well affect more people (including raiders, some of us do the odd quest too :P). BUT I still think it's very poor that the Jewel in the crown of the expansion raid content to stay broken for Five months. No content from the release of an new expansion pack should stay broken for that length of time, no matter what it is - trivial or important. And remember when setting importance, when you talk of the raid community, Tarinax was THE top mob. The biggest, baddest mob seen in game. What message does it send when that mobs remains broken that long?

Pro.

Kiara · 10-10-2006, 11:27 AM

It is possible that it can take that long to fix something. Think about what is involved. You have to isolate the problem and find it in the code. Then you have to make sure that fixing THAT problem doesn't break anything related to it. Which leads to other adjustments that have to be tested and tracked to make sure you aren't setting off a chain reaction of new bugs and broken content to fix one bug.

I'm not saying that I don't understand the frustration. I totally do. But we really need to try and look at things from the other side. It isn't possible to just go in and go * poof * fixed. There are other things involved in bug fixes. Just because they are working on the easier fixes doesn't mean they aren't ignoring the big ones. It just means that it's more complicated and takes more time. So in the meantime, instead of neglecting everything and getting only ONE fix in, they fix little things in between working on the one big thing. That gets more done.

I'm not knocking anyone's opinion or points, I think they're all totally valid, but you still have to try and put yourself in the dev's position. There are marketing and PR people pushing for this or that or the other thing, the players on the other side pushing for this and that and OMG THAT RIGHT NOW, and they can't do it all at once. This stuff takes a bit of time.

Pronoia · 10-10-2006, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RadarX

The Devs who work on this stuff don't post on the forums to acknowledge it. If they do they a) get complained at further or b) get complained at for posting instead of working. That's why your stuff doesn't get acknowledged. They have 0 motivation to post there, the stuff is still broken, and still needs fixing whether they acknowledge it or not.

Nobody likes broken content and I agree with you stuff shouldn't be released unfinished, but you know what? People are going to bitch either way. If they don't bitch about the content being broken, they'll bitch the content isn't there. Doesn't make it right, but the Devs lose either way.

The devs who work on this stuff can use the official mouthpiece to communicate through if they need to (community guy_03 - tbd). The fact that some anonymous gameplayer_01 or even a bunch of them complain should not stop attempts at communication. If there's some communication, some people will be satisfied. Silence pisses off everybody.

The only cmoplaints I've ever seen about Dev's posting instead of working were in regard to NGD/gaming forums. That's not an issue I personally have (It would be pretty hypocritical of me to, while I'm typing this at work myself). That is unrelated to getting some response to issues - even if just a 'we know, fix in the works' type response.

Pro.