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I dont understand why duplicate reports are a bad thing?
I see it like voting
lets say you have 100 Beta testers
80 report a AI Bug
30 report a Resolution Bug
5 Report a performance problem
and so on
wont that help prioritize?
Open/Closed betas before release
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I dont understand why duplicate reports are a bad thing?
I see it like voting
lets say you have 100 Beta testers
80 report a AI Bug
30 report a Resolution Bug
5 Report a performance problem
and so on
wont that help prioritize?
Because you have a database of 8000 reports, which covers 687 bugs/issues. 12 reports on average, all worded differently, that means, that actually someone has to consolidate the 8000 into the 687.
because there would be:
AI not attacking, when it should.
During war, 2/3 of AI fleets are defending a planet.
While attacking the AI, 1 fleet, representing 40% of their power was on pirate duty.
AI declared war on superior strength me they did not attack.
On W10, graphics mods enabled, after declaring war on 2 AI empires, they just stood still. I think they try to follow each other.
Not to mention, spelling mistakes, or things on displaying properly or calculated properly would be there dozens of times. Wouldn't really help with priority, because, except the sliders not aligning, those things don't make the game unplayable.
In my personal opinion it would be beneficial to get the community to test updates, that are this game changing, before the release.
If such an update is accompanied by a DLC, maybe just have the pre-order customers be included in the beta. Pre orders would spike, while people are informed that it's likely buggy.
However, only the "free patch" should be subject of that beta, not the DLC. Core changes could get more feedback, before the DLC is released. PDX would still make (maybe less, but still) money, but it would be perceived as a more honest approach.
This should result in a higher quality free patch as a better foundation for the accompanying DLC, which will likely also sell more because the better quality is reflected in reviews and recommendations.
If DLC content is still buggy by that time, at least the people who did not buy it will still give good reviews because the free patch works.
This goes in line with the following:
If such an update is accompanied by a DLC, maybe just have the pre-order customers be included in the beta. Pre orders would spike, while people are informed that it's likely buggy.
However, only the "free patch" should be subject of that beta, not the DLC. Core changes could get more feedback, before the DLC is released. PDX would still make (maybe less, but still) money, but it would be perceived as a more honest approach.
This should result in a higher quality free patch as a better foundation for the accompanying DLC, which will likely also sell more because the better quality is reflected in reviews and recommendations.
If DLC content is still buggy by that time, at least the people who did not buy it will still give good reviews because the free patch works.
This goes in line with the following:
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Well, while the idea is definitely good I predict, that it's not going to happen. For the same reason other good ideas like world peace or getting rid of corruption are not happening.
Currently the community is dissapointed after people bought the DLC. With the beta test dissapointed people simply won't buy the payed content. In the first scenario company gets more money and worse attitude from the community. In the second, better relationship with the customers but less money. And no matter how much we want to believe that companies are interested in the customers interests, any time they conflict with the profits - customers interests will be sacrificed. Not because the company is evil, just because market economy optimize for earning money rather than anything else.
Currently the community is dissapointed after people bought the DLC. With the beta test dissapointed people simply won't buy the payed content. In the first scenario company gets more money and worse attitude from the community. In the second, better relationship with the customers but less money. And no matter how much we want to believe that companies are interested in the customers interests, any time they conflict with the profits - customers interests will be sacrificed. Not because the company is evil, just because market economy optimize for earning money rather than anything else.
There is a high probability that these are the same people who would also not buy the paid content at full price on release anyway, which I think weakens your argument a bit. And you miss that a better relationship with the community is not exclusive with less money. I'd argue just the opposite. Happy customers come back, and recommend.
I partially disagree with this. My modus operandi is: you mess up, you go into a "time out". After SW7, I did not watch Rogue one, after Last Jedi, I will not watch SW9.
Ripples in the community lose you money in the long haul. You can't bet, that eventually we will forgive, forget and buy anything blindly.
If what PDX said was true, then I don't know how they manage to comb through their live bug reports. There is a greater order of magnitude more bug reports on a live game than a beta one. With regards to reporting bugs, PDX puts many barriers (inconveniences) in place which makes it a hassle. There's no in-game bug reporting button, so you have to tab out and write up a report on their website. (Which you have to log into) Furthermore, it requires information like version#, checksum, and in some cases the player needs to find where their screenshots and saved games are kept.
These don't seem like much of an inconvenience, but the chances are that a majority of the people who might report a bug will give up upon immediately learning there is no bug reporting button and that they have to go to a website to do it. Having a beta also culls out a large amount of people, especially if you have to opt into it.
What you're describing is basically a Friends & Family alpha, which PDX probably already has. I have participated in a few of those and one of the biggest problems that you run into is leaks and security. Close friends and families of developers can be trusted, but can you trust some "high profile" member of the community to not share what's happening to his friends secretly on his clan's Discord? I've seen many futile measures take place to tighten up leaks and at the end of the day it's almost impossible to keep strangers from sharing secrets with their friends.
A bigger problem (imo) is the fact that it's really exploitative, taking advantage of the passion of gamers. Paradoxically (ha!), the more professional and skilled a group of volunteers gets at reporting and diagnosing bugs, the more ethically questionable it becomes. A secret group of volunteer testers is a thankless, perkless job that will often be demoralized by the bugs that inevitably slip through which the community will lambast about.
In my opinion, the fairest way to do a beta is just to have it be NDA free and open. (Or at the worst, opt-in) Good bug reports will rise to the top, and if the program goes on long enough it becomes easier over time for developers to recognize members of the community that are proficient at reporting things.
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What your reasoning for this point? Anyway compare this situations in your mind:
You've been seeing teasers for a couple of mounths lost the ability to play current version of the game and crave for new one with all this juicy payed content. And then:
1) You get free access for beta test and find out that the game is pretty bugged and the payed content isn't that impressive.
2) You meet the release date without any insight of the game state.
I would say that first scenario will leave you a bit dissapointed, and the second rather hyped. And people tend to spend money when they are hyped.
I'm not claiming that the profit of a company is not usually positively correlated with the community attitude. It would be obviously false. Of course relationship with the customers and reputation matters. It's the reason why such good company as PDX exists in the first place. I'm claiming that sometimes there is a conflict between customer interests and company profits and in those occasions customers satisfaction will be always sacrificed in favour of profits. And that the situation with beta test of paid features is exactly this one. Otherwise how would you explsin our situation?
Your strategy is a valid one, yet it doesn't really matter. What matters is the median strategy of all customers and it is turning out to be: getting hyped, buying dlc, getting dissapointed, feeling grateful for the patches and then getting hyped again.
Utopia, Apocalypse, now Megacorp... Seems that you indeed can bet that the customers will forget. Also, too bad you missed Rogue One, it's much better than Force Awakens.
Well......let me re-phrase. Disney did not get any revenue from me for Rogue One....
The number of people with the rolling beta 2.2.3 is a fraction of those running the mainline 2.2.2 patch.
Only a small fraction of people would elect to update to an optional beta. Those who found the beta “broken” would have the option to swapping back.
But if it was the ONLY way to get the new content (ie: a pre-release of a new expansion, even if it didn't allow people to play the DLC-only content) the opt-in would be much, much more universal.
And the howling would be legendary.