Thanks Veldmaarschalk! And for those who don't know: Balor is Johan's home account.
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Only that many? Ouch. I would have suggested a larger beta pool, but I guess hindsight's 20/20.
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What are the evidences? Do you know that Irl sometimes i give Johan my account to post from home. Did you know that that Blue Emu?
I believe he's mentioned it a few times when addressing the community in dev diaries, such as "Hey it's Johan at home", don't quote me on that though.
i've seen it before in beta tests i was in in other games. the large majority of testers are not really testing stuff, just checking a game out and commenting from the perspective how they want to play the game instead of considering the test setup and intended balance or simply what the designers intend and sticking the tests out until the end because adjustments inevitably take time. many of them are basically 'zapping' between beta tests because it's free.
i bet that the large majority played with little else than their favorite country for example -and i have a pretty good guess which the most popular one was- while they did not even bother to check what was going on in those other nations.
though there might be other concerns. i know why i gave up after revision 4 or 5 of the 1.3 beta patch: besides a limit on my bandwidth my rig is not fast enough to test this game for everything i can think off when revisions are made daily :rofl: and besides that the developers were focusing on principles which i don't really find that important for the fun of the game.
that's the danger when using professional testers: they're often IT professionals or semi-professionals and might concentrate too much on partial and technical aspects of a game but in the process they might loose touch with the game and fun part itself which is the prime concern for players.
anyway why not keep a list of those 20-25 "tested and approved" active testers and use them as a double check besides using professional testers?
i bet that the large majority played with little else than their favorite country for example -and i have a pretty good guess which the most popular one was- while they did not even bother to check what was going on in those other nations.
though there might be other concerns. i know why i gave up after revision 4 or 5 of the 1.3 beta patch: besides a limit on my bandwidth my rig is not fast enough to test this game for everything i can think off when revisions are made daily :rofl: and besides that the developers were focusing on principles which i don't really find that important for the fun of the game.
that's the danger when using professional testers: they're often IT professionals or semi-professionals and might concentrate too much on partial and technical aspects of a game but in the process they might loose touch with the game and fun part itself which is the prime concern for players.
anyway why not keep a list of those 20-25 "tested and approved" active testers and use them as a double check besides using professional testers?
If possible I think this should be done, have dedicated testers for the technicalities and for the gameplay/balancing aspects
I am sure both will find very different bugs and problems
The 1.3 patch "broke" more things than it fixed for my own game. It was "semi-playable" with 1.2, although absolutely absurd in a number of respects, but I can't stand to play 1.3 at all. I even considered re-installing and updating to 1.2 again, but it's just not worth the hassle when so much is wrong. Until 1.4 at the very least, my copy is gathering dust, and I'm NOT a happy camper.
There's nothing wrong with using non-professional testers as a base. There are bound to be enough of volunteers who happen to combine their professional IT work with their spare volunteer work. The main issue (from our experience within CORE itself) is that quality and dedication vary widely amongst volunteers. So if you want to rely on volunteers as a base, as we have to ourselves, you have to make sure to separate the wheat from the chaff wherever possible. I'm safe to say that, during our last development cycle for CORE2 0.4.0 - which took a whopping two years! - there was little doubt about the quality of our testers after reviewing their performance during the first year, and rotating whenever possible. Those that stayed on could be relied upon without any reservations whatsoever. What stunned me myself at the time was that - according to Johan's statement - we were having more dedicated Betas for CORE2 at the time than Paradox was having for HoI3, despite the overall complexity of the HoI3 testing effort being much higher. And as a result there was hardly anything in need of fixing once we - finally - were able to release 0.4.0.
Anyway, for the initial development of HoI3 it's pretty much a moot point. Right now it's mainly about making up lost ground - it's mainly to evaluate and learn for the future, since what's in the past is in the past. I'm confident that we will. It's somewhat unfortunate that we have to, in part due to a less than succesful Beta process. The main thing is that we learn from it for the future - that's why I'm sharing our experiences and measures from within the CORE team for one - after all our situation is not that different from that of Paradox...
i think the game is great. im using 1.0. yes there r a few probs but it makes the game more fun trying to work round the bugs. i tried 1.3 but found it worse than 1.0. ive been playing the same game for a week now 18hrs a day. just cant put it down. i get the occasional CTD.and lag now and then but thats not a prob. but for some reason the game didnt end in 48.im now in 52. so having lots of fun as the war is still going on. i think ppl should report probs their having but in a nice way. being nice gets more done. im using windows 7 that has less probs than other OS running the game. most of the probs i had went away after a windows update. so its the OS just as much as the game that is causing the probs. so dont put all the blame on PI. i think their doing everything they can to fix the probs. at least they have a forum for ppl to tell them about it unlike bigger companies. dont moan just say what the prob is and let them fix it.
And in all fairness, there was hardly any interest in 0.4, relative to CORE's historical popularity. Why? Because two years was WAY too long. The fan base died off. Lost interest. There has to be a balance. CORE's obsession with perfection during the HOI2 cycle rendered it irrelevant. Based on the amount of time it took to get to 0.4, we could expect 1.0 in 2015. That's unrealistic. It's the death of a thousand cuts. As a longtime fan, I am desperately hoping that the CORE team's approach to HOI3 will be much less ambitious and much more realistic.
There's nothing polite about people quitting on a brand. They either buy the product or they don't. And if you can't provide a product that people want to buy, you go out of business. Being nice or polite has nothing to do with it.
As stated here we want to avoid cycles like that in the future ourselves as well for CORE3. Though CORE2 popularity has picked up considerably once the hype regarding HoI3's initial release quited down somewhat. Besides, with the current team size things look rather different now than two years ago. For the current QA discussion that's all a bit off-topic though...
No, not at all. I'm not a fan of jackassery consumership, i.e., demanding the perfect latte and kicking and screaming until the barista gives it to me. That said, if a product or service sucks, you can expect people to complain about it. So arguing that no one shouldn't be complaining despite the failure of the product or service is a bit rich, in my opinion.
Paradox isn't a service provider, they make computer games, i.e., a product. They live and die by people buying their game, not entering their establishment and sitting down to eat. They just can't tell people to shut up and get out of their building. They either make a good product that people buy, or they go out of business. So, at some level, this means they need to listen to their customers.
That said, I enjoy the game and I'm looking forward to 1.4 (hopefully with the manpower issue fixed).
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Ok, I stand corrected. My impression was that we never had 200 beta testers at any time in the beta but more like 30-40 with some doing alot and others just posting their impressions and a few bugs.
Cannot comment more due to NDA, but blaming everything on the beta-testers is in my opinion not correct since they relied on the design and management team from PI to get input and guidelines and it was obvious that getting the game released by any means necessary was the primary focus.
That is of course what any company wants to do in order to get revenue and be able to continue work.
I think Johan summed it up pretty well... Those that actively contributed during the Beta process did do very well, there were just too few of them that picked up the glove after being selected as a Beta. With a (logical) commercial pressure for release it's hardly surprising that hurt the initial quality level of the game. I'm confident it will be fixed in the future. And HoI3 has quite a lot of good points too, too easily overlooked amongst all the 'bad press' here. Most certainly from a modder's point of view. I'm amazed at what can be altered by us, compared to HoI2.
Once again, I never said "shut up and take it", I said "being civil in your feedback helps more in the long run".
That's not quite what I inferred. I only meant that if you are going to post a complaint about a game on these forums - why not make it polite or at least somewhat civil and not too hard to read. It ought to enhance the chances of someone taking the complaints seriously and maybe even do something about it.
Voting with our feet (or money) is entirely up to each and every one of us and has nothing at all to do with being polite or not.
With the vast majority of products, "if the [product] does not work as expected or advertised, the end user" gets a refund! Or gets an up-front, hands in the air apology. Or maybe gets their "free" sprite packs, in spite of having an @ in their GG username. Or gets some sort of compensation, either in terms of exchange or some sort of voucher.
Beta Testers were too few.
We're working on it.
We don't control Gamersgate.
I've worked in service industries in England. My brother works in the computer games industry in America. Based on his experience and mine, in two countries, one thing seems shared:
Bad business is bad business.
I was the main beta tester for most of the development of Magna Mundi for EUIII. In the beginning, I was the only beta tester. I'm not the most methodical person you'll meet, and my knowledge of early European history had to grow from a fairly infantile level. But it doesn't take a genius to spot glaring balance and gameplay issues. I have been concerned reading that beta-testers couldn't play a whole campaign without revisions being released. Playing a whole game is absolutely necessary to understanding many changes made, which in the short-term might seem insignificant.
My impression, based on public and private conversations, is that many modders are MUCH more open to feedback than are PI. Granted, that was in the context of EUIII, but my impression is that the new so-called "sandbox" philosophy, which was initiated in EUIII, is precisely the same sort of design which features in HoI3. And many of the criticisms about lack of historicism are falling on the same deaf ears which they encountered in EUIII.
Which of course gets defended with the remark, "Yes, it covers mostly European history from 1936 to 1948, in which one of the main scenarios starts on 1 September 1939, but IT'S NOT A WORLD WAR TWO SIMULATOR."
Arg.
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