Post by SofaJockey on Jan 22, 2018 18:10:15 GMT
We know that Anthem will get a Beta.
Jonathan Warner @bio_Warner 26 Sep 2017
Yeah we'll have a beta! #PrepareForAdventure
But while we're waiting, and so that there's sufficient time for 'community feedback' to be shared.
To add some context, here are some videos I found on the subject of Betas:
I think it's worth quoting a full question on Open Betas from 'AskAGameDev' (link below to the wonderful site)
Q: Anonymous asked:
What do you think about Open Betas? What are the downsides and the goodsides of making one?
Why not all games try it? And why others put so much effort on it?
A: Open betas are a lot of work and are a gamble with the sales numbers, but they also provide valuable data that’s otherwise unobtainable prior to launch.
"On the positive side, open betas are a way to get a massive number of people to stress test the game. The number of game testers working on most AAA games is never more than a few hundred at most. While they are usually very good at what they do, they can only put so many man-hours into the project. If we can put an open beta into the hands of tens or even hundreds of thousands of players, we get far more man-hours of general stress testing than our QA teams could ever hope to put in. Those testers can report bugs we’ve never spotted simply because there are so many more eyeballs on the product. Furthermore, it’s very difficult to simulate a live environment where thousands of players are all trying to play simultaneously. Getting thousands of players playing can give our engineers valuable information on where the system weak points are during full load and come up with ways to strengthen those weak points.
On the negative side, open betas are an awful lot of work to put together. They are being shown to the public, which means that they have to be nearly complete. Many times this means that the dev team has to spend a whole lot of time putting in and locking off stuff specific to the open beta build, and that is time not spent working on the actual game. Most open beta testers aren’t actually testing - they’re just playing for fun. The vast majority of them won’t give any meaningful feedback, they’ll just play around a bit and quit. In order to gather meaningful feedback from them when most don’t tell us anything, we devs often have to put in telemetry data reporting into the open beta software in order to gather information on player behavior. Most open betas also tend to be limited versions of the final game - only one or two character classes are available instead of all six, or only one stage is available instead of all eight at launch. Open betas run the risk of cannibalizing sales before release - it’s very possible that many players that would have bought the game play the open beta like a demo, get their fill (or think it boring because of the single class they played), and never buy the final game.
So… why don’t all games try it? Because they’re hard to run and require a lot of work - there’s a ton of preparation before the event, live monitoring 24 hours a day during the event, and then parsing the results and making the appropriate changes afterward. That’s both expensive and grueling, especially the live portions. So why do some studios bend over backward to make them happen? Well, those teams find the stress testing data an open beta provides absolutely necessary, especially if the game is using new back end technology and hasn’t been tested in that arena before. As much as we’d wish we could, it’s just not feasible to have over a hundred thousand QA testers all working at once - the wage cost alone would be staggering. Most QA teams don’t go over a few dozen at most. The open beta is an expensive undertaking that each studio and publisher must do a cost-benefit analysis as to whether they believe the data and results outweigh the costs. It doesn’t always skew one way or the other."
askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/157489244149/what-do-you-think-about-open-betas-what-are-the
Jonathan Warner @bio_Warner 26 Sep 2017
Yeah we'll have a beta! #PrepareForAdventure
But while we're waiting, and so that there's sufficient time for 'community feedback' to be shared.
- What exactly makes a good/successful Beta?
- What would Anthem's Beta need to be like to be successful?
- Is a bad Beta just a hate opportunity for an unpolished game (like EA Access)?
- Should a Beta be further from launch and be a genuine opportunity to polish mechanics or is it just a 'promotion' a few weeks before launch?
- Would ME3's multiplayer Beta be a good example or should some story content be shared?
- Is it just about the gameplay or the matchmaking mechanics and events?
- What can be learned from the Betas for Destiny 1/2, The Division or any-other-game?
To add some context, here are some videos I found on the subject of Betas:
I think it's worth quoting a full question on Open Betas from 'AskAGameDev' (link below to the wonderful site)
Q: Anonymous asked:
What do you think about Open Betas? What are the downsides and the goodsides of making one?
Why not all games try it? And why others put so much effort on it?
A: Open betas are a lot of work and are a gamble with the sales numbers, but they also provide valuable data that’s otherwise unobtainable prior to launch.
"On the positive side, open betas are a way to get a massive number of people to stress test the game. The number of game testers working on most AAA games is never more than a few hundred at most. While they are usually very good at what they do, they can only put so many man-hours into the project. If we can put an open beta into the hands of tens or even hundreds of thousands of players, we get far more man-hours of general stress testing than our QA teams could ever hope to put in. Those testers can report bugs we’ve never spotted simply because there are so many more eyeballs on the product. Furthermore, it’s very difficult to simulate a live environment where thousands of players are all trying to play simultaneously. Getting thousands of players playing can give our engineers valuable information on where the system weak points are during full load and come up with ways to strengthen those weak points.
On the negative side, open betas are an awful lot of work to put together. They are being shown to the public, which means that they have to be nearly complete. Many times this means that the dev team has to spend a whole lot of time putting in and locking off stuff specific to the open beta build, and that is time not spent working on the actual game. Most open beta testers aren’t actually testing - they’re just playing for fun. The vast majority of them won’t give any meaningful feedback, they’ll just play around a bit and quit. In order to gather meaningful feedback from them when most don’t tell us anything, we devs often have to put in telemetry data reporting into the open beta software in order to gather information on player behavior. Most open betas also tend to be limited versions of the final game - only one or two character classes are available instead of all six, or only one stage is available instead of all eight at launch. Open betas run the risk of cannibalizing sales before release - it’s very possible that many players that would have bought the game play the open beta like a demo, get their fill (or think it boring because of the single class they played), and never buy the final game.
So… why don’t all games try it? Because they’re hard to run and require a lot of work - there’s a ton of preparation before the event, live monitoring 24 hours a day during the event, and then parsing the results and making the appropriate changes afterward. That’s both expensive and grueling, especially the live portions. So why do some studios bend over backward to make them happen? Well, those teams find the stress testing data an open beta provides absolutely necessary, especially if the game is using new back end technology and hasn’t been tested in that arena before. As much as we’d wish we could, it’s just not feasible to have over a hundred thousand QA testers all working at once - the wage cost alone would be staggering. Most QA teams don’t go over a few dozen at most. The open beta is an expensive undertaking that each studio and publisher must do a cost-benefit analysis as to whether they believe the data and results outweigh the costs. It doesn’t always skew one way or the other."
askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/157489244149/what-do-you-think-about-open-betas-what-are-the