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Closed Beta for Genesis


MightyBanana

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Closed Beta for Genesis

Can we have a closed beta for Genisis, at least for people that prebought the expansion. Good companies always put closed betas pre lunch. For community feedback which yields in a smoother lunch :) 

# A beta test will help you stress test, your team will never be able to fully test what the community randomly experience ingame. 
# A debugger should be online monitoring what the players are going through " detecting and generating dump files as needed " per crash/ exploite or whatever you call it. 
# This way you won't have a fail lunch like on extinsion ...  " Remember the kiting of corrupted dinos? Remember osds crashing the server? Remember veins crashing the server? ...

-Such stupid bugs can be negated via beta tests, where you reduce the hate you recieve on release day. 

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I like the idea of a closed Beta as a reward for purchasing the pass in advance,  but I would be fine without one, too. Betas are for namely bug squashing, admittedly, but I am not sure how much I would want to deal with Ark Beta level bugginess. Also, it is not like it is necessarily abnormal to not have one either.

I am not expecting one and even if I might not partake myself, I would like to see the information from the Beta.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • yes it needs a serious QA beta going forward
  • doing a beta is not a sign of whether a company is good or bad.
  • community feedback does not yield a smoother launch
  • a closed beta with the entire preorder community is essentially a launch that isn't going to be called a launch, same scam as calling a game early access.
  • I don't trust the Ark community to thoroughly test for bugs, i trust the exploiters to though and most of them are going to keep any bugs they find to themselves if they can benefit from it.
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22 hours ago, Kaprosuchus said:
  • yes it needs a serious QA beta going forward
  • doing a beta is not a sign of whether a company is good or bad.
  • community feedback does not yield a smoother launch
  • a closed beta with the entire preorder community is essentially a launch that isn't going to be called a launch, same scam as calling a game early access.
  • I don't trust the Ark community to thoroughly test for bugs, i trust the exploiters to though and most of them are going to keep any bugs they find to themselves if they can benefit from it.

That is pretty skeptical, don't you think? I mean, I certainly agree there is a need for serious testing and the details or lack thereof of a beta do not tell you much about a company. However, I do think community feedback has the potential to affect launch details of a game and positively, too. I am not sure about Ark Genesis in this particular case, but just to name a game I kept up with recently that did is Planet Zoo. Did it take advantage of all its feedback? No, but it did make adjustments prior to an official launch based on feedback from a preorder beta and one of the best things that came out of it was a brand new career game mode that did not require online market interactions with challenge conditions not found in the offline sandbox mode. This is not a given consequence of a beta, but it is certainly possible for a serious one.

Also, I do admit a beta is akin to launch, but I don't agree that it is automatically the same as early access. To use the example from before, Planet Zoo only had certain items, modes, and content in general available for the beta. They also closed the beta around a month before the official launch. I don't know what Ark Genesis would do, especially considering its past as an early access game, but the same rules do not necessarily apply since early access is supposed to be a playable game regularly updated until completion while betas are for bug squashing and technical adjustments; two pretty different purposes.

As for the beta being a scam, I assume you mean using it as a perk to sell preorders of the season pass. Planet Zoo got its own flak for that by bundling the preorder beta with the deluxe version of the game, but I would not really consider it a scam. Nor early access games, really. People sign up at their own risk and the potential outcomes of early access should be more well known now than when the practice first began. In the Planet Zoo example, people were upset that they had paid for the beta and it was neither the whole, smooth game nor continued access. What they had wanted was an early access version, not to bug squash, and I can only be so sympathetic with the people that decided to pay the extra money without knowing what they were purchasing. I agree, it is usually better to wait the game out for a safer, smoother experience. However, it is hardly the same as say Fallout 76 where people dropped $60 or more for better editions and then it was practically unplayable at the official launch date. If businesses want to sell and consumers want to buy, why not if there is no deception?

As for community bug testing, I don't see why the skills would be relegated to specific motives. For sure, exploiters will always push the boundaries for their own gains, but that does not mean they will be the only ones to find the exploits or that the number of reports be will be too insignificant to be useful. I do not know the whole Ark community, but it is pretty sizeable to say they would be completely useless here. If you are right, though, and a public beta is completely useless on a technical level and just another level of early access, it does not mean there should not be one. On the contrary, if it is just for fun anyway why not go ahead and release some of it for those willing to pay? Like I said earlier in the thread, I am pretty indifferent to Ark getting a beta and do not expect it, but I do not think it would be a bad thing or completely useless either.

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4 hours ago, Calico45 said:

That is pretty skeptical, don't you think? I mean, I certainly agree there is a need for serious testing and the details or lack thereof of a beta do not tell you much about a company. However, I do think community feedback has the potential to affect launch details of a game and positively, too. I am not sure about Ark Genesis in this particular case, but just to name a game I kept up with recently that did is Planet Zoo. Did it take advantage of all its feedback? No, but it did make adjustments prior to an official launch based on feedback from a preorder beta and one of the best things that came out of it was a brand new career game mode that did not require online market interactions with challenge conditions not found in the offline sandbox mode. This is not a given consequence of a beta, but it is certainly possible for a serious one.

Also, I do admit a beta is akin to launch, but I don't agree that it is automatically the same as early access. To use the example from before, Planet Zoo only had certain items, modes, and content in general available for the beta. They also closed the beta around a month before the official launch. I don't know what Ark Genesis would do, especially considering its past as an early access game, but the same rules do not necessarily apply since early access is supposed to be a playable game regularly updated until completion while betas are for bug squashing and technical adjustments; two pretty different purposes.

As for the beta being a scam, I assume you mean using it as a perk to sell preorders of the season pass. Planet Zoo got its own flak for that by bundling the preorder beta with the deluxe version of the game, but I would not really consider it a scam. Nor early access games, really. People sign up at their own risk and the potential outcomes of early access should be more well known now than when the practice first began. In the Planet Zoo example, people were upset that they had paid for the beta and it was neither the whole, smooth game nor continued access. What they had wanted was an early access version, not to bug squash, and I can only be so sympathetic with the people that decided to pay the extra money without knowing what they were purchasing. I agree, it is usually better to wait the game out for a safer, smoother experience. However, it is hardly the same as say Fallout 76 where people dropped $60 or more for better editions and then it was practically unplayable at the official launch date. If businesses want to sell and consumers want to buy, why not if there is no deception?

As for community bug testing, I don't see why the skills would be relegated to specific motives. For sure, exploiters will always push the boundaries for their own gains, but that does not mean they will be the only ones to find the exploits or that the number of reports be will be too insignificant to be useful. I do not know the whole Ark community, but it is pretty sizeable to say they would be completely useless here. If you are right, though, and a public beta is completely useless on a technical level and just another level of early access, it does not mean there should not be one. On the contrary, if it is just for fun anyway why not go ahead and release some of it for those willing to pay? Like I said earlier in the thread, I am pretty indifferent to Ark getting a beta and do not expect it, but I do not think it would be a bad thing or completely useless either.

  • yeah it is pretty skeptical.  I have very little confidence in most of the people I have met in the community.
  • Community feedback has the potential to affect launch details but usually not positively because that rely's on the developers to sort who is being loud from who is actually representing a majority of the playerbase, that is very difficult and often catastrophic.  If a project leader is willing to make wide sweeping changes late in development they are making a huge gamble by either pushing back the schedule or releasing with some first month patching. 
  • I'm glad planet Zoo had a fairly uniform player base that wasn't trying to pitch territory wars with eachother due to diametrically opposed game modes.
  • I do not feel the concept of Early access is a scam in itself i was not clear and i apologize for mis-speaking.  I feel that doing a soft launch and calling it early access is disingenuine.  They will do the beta without keeping progress and only get people who want to scout out the maps and look for exploits to give themselves an early advantage when it goes official, I don't feel i need to explain what would go down if they did keep progress :P
  • I agree with your deception point completely, but most people nowadays feel that paying for a game is just a rental fee that they are entitled to at any point in the near or far future when something rubs them the wrong way.  It doesn't matter if they are honest, they will have to deal with a large part of the player base treating them as if they had lied anyways.
  • I do think they need to do a beta for quality assurance and bug squashing. I think they need to vet the people the invite to this not blanket offer it to all preorders this was the core of my disagreement. 
  • I think that a preorder beta would only serve as a possible stress test for new server architecture if they are going to release anything like that (which i doubt)
  • lastly, I don't really care if they do one or not I just think it's a waste of time and resources to include the entire community in it.
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4 hours ago, Kaprosuchus said:
  • yeah it is pretty skeptical.  I have very little confidence in most of the people I have met in the community.
  • Community feedback has the potential to affect launch details but usually not positively because that rely's on the developers to sort who is being loud from who is actually representing a majority of the playerbase, that is very difficult and often catastrophic.  If a project leader is willing to make wide sweeping changes late in development they are making a huge gamble by either pushing back the schedule or releasing with some first month patching. 
  • I'm glad planet Zoo had a fairly uniform player base that wasn't trying to pitch territory wars with eachother due to diametrically opposed game modes.
  • I do not feel the concept of Early access is a scam in itself i was not clear and i apologize for mis-speaking.  I feel that doing a soft launch and calling it early access is disingenuine.  They will do the beta without keeping progress and only get people who want to scout out the maps and look for exploits to give themselves an early advantage when it goes official, I don't feel i need to explain what would go down if they did keep progress :P
  • I agree with your deception point completely, but most people nowadays feel that paying for a game is just a rental fee that they are entitled to at any point in the near or far future when something rubs them the wrong way.  It doesn't matter if they are honest, they will have to deal with a large part of the player base treating them as if they had lied anyways.
  • I do think they need to do a beta for quality assurance and bug squashing. I think they need to vet the people the invite to this not blanket offer it to all preorders this was the core of my disagreement. 
  • I think that a preorder beta would only serve as a possible stress test for new server architecture if they are going to release anything like that (which i doubt)
  • lastly, I don't really care if they do one or not I just think it's a waste of time and resources to include the entire community in it.

Fair enough, I suppose.

I do agree that is absolutely depends on the developers being open to change and picking what changes are actually possible and will work to benefit the game. It certainly has the ability to be pretty difficult to discern the opinions of the majority and still balancing with the minority, but I cannot really speak much more on a general level here. When it comes to making changes and balance, it is really on a case by case basis, but I do believe all customer feedback should have its due. Not the same investment, of course, but I don't like the thought of completely ignoring any consumer because they are not part of the majority. I would just want a public acknowledgement for a big enough issue and a confirmation that the game is going another way and, better yet, why.

I am not actually sure how uniform it is. It is nothing like Ark PvP versus PvE, of course, but I certainly feel like that is a divide between those that prefer a top down management game and those that want some ground level interaction with the animals. I really think the main reason it was not an issue for the new game mode is because the online market did not function well or, really, at all at times during the beta. They aspired to have a purely player driven economy for purchasing all animals with absolutely no controls and the price gouging and scarcity of community challenge animals especially began immediately. Personally, the online market made a whole mode of the game nearly unplayable in the beta and obviously I was not the only one that thought that way.

I do not think I was ever a part of a disguised early launch, but if there are no substantial additions and it does not follow the early access model it does sound disingenuous. I just do not understand the goal of disguising a soft launch as early access, since it be selling the game at a traditionally cheaper price for what benefit? Selling a preorder beta perk makes money through extra preorders and maybe higher tier editions or season passes, which is why I would think developers may consider it, but this I am not sure about the motivation.

I sort of agree here, but I always somewhat have to blame the publishers/developers/etc. for the emergence of the rental mentality. Live service, especially at its worst, and full on subscription games do feel like a rental. Not to mention subscription services like the Xbox game pass and streaming attempts like Stadia, which I feel have their place but are still separate from engaging with an individual game. I am still at more of owning the product mentality, or want to, but I avoid those sort of games usually. As for the negative reception and deception accusations, I think there is always going to be some negative with everything and it just has to be dealt with. The nature of dealing with the public, I suppose.

Here, I do not know. I understand your point is that you would want it as fruitful as possible and theoretically that means using the best of the best, while limiting the ability of exploiters to profit. However, if they are spending the time and resources to vet potential testers I would assume it would be in their best interest to do it internally with hired beta testers. I don't think there would be a good way to balance the two in the same beta. Either do it internally or open the flood gates, more or less; both have their pros and cons. I do not really care either way, so long as its a solid final product.

I could see a stress test, though I would consider bug squashing somewhat a part of that. I could also see it as testing the waters for reactions, more so if they were open to change. Then again, I could also see it as a cash grab. Not saying the latter is right or probable, but I doubt it is too far outside of the realm of possibility for games in general. For Ark, while I am not sure they are above the behavior, I do not think we are getting that consumer beta.

I would think it would be easier with just pass holders, compared to the entire community, but I have no clue how many they have sold. Theoretically speaking, I would assume the more eyes and bug reports the better, but I have to give it to you that compared to an internal beta who is to say which would be better without results to go off of?

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Just to point out, they do have in house testing but in that same vein, it's a small handful of people testing a rather massive project. I definitely support a closed beta prior to release, simply because it would help the QA / Dev teams nail down any issues prior to it hitting live and causing an uproar in the community. Personally, I've been a part of a few titles now, and I have never not had a closed beta prior to release but who knows.  It wouldn't take much to put together a registration page for closed beta, select IP address/email addresses for selection and then offer closed beta key access, but that's something that Studio Wildcard would need to dedicate time to, which may detract from the development of the expansion.  Maybe in the future?

 

P.S - not beta key access, but maybe steamID selections.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/11/2019 at 4:51 PM, MightyBanana said:

Closed Beta for Genesis

Can we have a closed beta for Genisis, at least for people that prebought the expansion. Good companies always put closed betas pre lunch. For community feedback which yields in a smoother lunch :) 

# A beta test will help you stress test, your team will never be able to fully test what the community randomly experience ingame. 
# A debugger should be online monitoring what the players are going through " detecting and generating dump files as needed " per crash/ exploite or whatever you call it. 
# This way you won't have a fail lunch like on extinsion ...  " Remember the kiting of corrupted dinos? Remember osds crashing the server? Remember veins crashing the server? ...

-Such stupid bugs can be negated via beta tests, where you reduce the hate you recieve on release day. 

Naaa they will just do it when the expansion launches.

I've been a beta tester since Early Access.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/23/2019 at 4:22 PM, Kaprosuchus said:
  • community feedback does not yield a smoother launch
  • I don't trust the Ark community to thoroughly test for bugs, i trust the exploiters to though and most of them are going to keep any bugs they find to themselves if they can benefit from it.

Pretty much these 2, on top of what @Demerus said.  @MightyBanana, I know it sounds too harsh but in reality this is probably the truth.  Few bugs will probably get reported by those chosen to beta-test.  The reason I say "chosen" specifically is because if access was given to everyone who pre-ordered, then the vast majority of the ARK playerbase would dump onto the Genesis Beta servers and the experience would be total crap-ola, because a lot of people have bought Genesis and they wouldn't launch NEARLY enough servers to slake the thirst of the whole preorder group.  At that point it would (as mentioned by Kapro) indeed be like a terribly bad soft-launch, and I don't think they are willing to put up with the accompanying headache of 5-10k people pissing and moaning about how their new Indy Forge and Parasaur Army is getting wiped.  Or they'd call it New-New-Legacy, and say other more creative stupid things about how "disrespected they feel" by a company that would wipe their stuff.

 

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