Re: General Outline of Alpha and Beta Testing
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 2:53 am
As he is a member of the red jacket brigade I'd be surprised if the developers in the team would feel the need to exclude Nathan from being involved in testing. I find the idea of such an exclusion of the CM more than a little incongruous and rather sad.
That is exactly how it will be seen.Flatfingers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2018 1:23 amThis is always such a difficult perspective to address for any game whose developers have been friendly to regular gamers.Black--Snow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2018 12:39 am"frak all you beta backers these guys get the game first for free".
A lot of gamers look at alpha access or some similar friends-and-family testing phase as a special reward for a favored few. The thing is, though, the developer perspective Alpha is more like "OK, I think this is finally playable, but I'm too close to it and I need some friendly/professional folks to give me their unvarnished opinions before I let the high-expectation general audience see it."
In other words, the Alpha testing phase IMO is best understood not as just one more perk purely for PR purposes (even if that's how some developers of conventional AAA games treat Alpha) but as the last opportunity to get serious private feedback that helps an indie developer deliver the game he really wants to make. Gamers who are only thinking about "what's fun for me?" can't help with this -- what's needed in the Alpha phase are objective testers who have the developer's interests in mind even if they don't personally share those interests.
Beta testing, by contrast, is about opening up the game to a limited but representative subset of the full range of gamer types who'll play the game. These testers emphasize the player's perception of the game. This is also an extremely valuable perspective prior to the full release of a game... but it's not the same thing as what Alpha testing delivers.
It was a Kickstarter reward, so I'm not sure why you would think that.Black--Snow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:21 amI wasn't even really thinking there was going to be a beta of any real substance.
Err Alpha. Brain fart.Dinosawer wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:23 amIt was a Kickstarter reward, so I'm not sure why you would think that.Black--Snow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:21 amI wasn't even really thinking there was going to be a beta of any real substance.
I agree with you, except for this part.
I'm still finding the door stuff a bit tricky, Nathan.
I've had difficulty with that one since very early on in this project. I'm not even sure of the concept of "close friends" when it comes to Josh. That's had me scratching my head on more than one occasion during what seems to be a lifetime of being here, Nathan. I'm sure he could trust me though.
Thank you, BFett! I have in the past given indications of what I consider to be a Freelancer experience. In fact, I've been asked directly by Josh to confirm if he was "getting it right". It's a while ago now but I still feel confident that the coding warrior understands what I'm looking for. There is likely to be quite a lot of additional gameplay which I'm not particularly interested in but can understand why it has been added. I'm not the only backer here who would like to see a game which fulfills his or her needs.BFett wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2018 12:00 amVictor, you are certainly one person, and perhaps one of the very few orange coats, who should certainly have access to the alpha if Josh were to do that. I for one could not tell you what does and doesn't feel like freelancer, and I'm sure, after reading your comments over the years that you know what items Limit Theory must check off the list to be a proper successor.