Do you think that players who have now access to the beta will have the full game replacing the beta or are we gonna have the game + the beta so they can keep trying new things without messing up the game for less understanding players ?
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
There will always be an internal beta, but this is indeed quite intriguing to still have a public test version to run alongside the released version... However, it might cause a small split as well in the community...
They already have an internal playtesting group on top of the beta. I think they'll probably "try things out" with them, as well as by spectating/playing in pub games, and watching the stats.
One thing to realise with the whole beta-stuff is that it's not the 'normal kind of beta'. If you take World of Warcraft for example, before each patch (at least when I played) they had the PTR where people could toy around. This served as a playground for players, and Blizzard would get some feedback. However, before this point Blizzard would have tested that patch internally many many many times.
UWE / NS2 doesn't have the end-beta (PTR) that wow has, at least not as of now. What we have is an internal beta, that gets updated on a daily basis (as in lots of bugs gets added). When we try out 'new stuff' (which has been some time now, that lockdown!), it's often to find the big issues. This may be graphical glitches, mechanical faults or game crashing features. Normally balance will be discussed a bit, but it's not the major part of it. So the 'new big' things are far and few between, at least in the scale that you see a PTR, which often has loads of new content. For that reason I don't think we'll see a public beta. But who knows, I might just be drunk and blowing out random gibberish!
I think public beta would be a good idea once things settle out a bit. Allows for much more extensive testing of balance and bugs than an internal or dedicated external team can do.
Comments
UWE / NS2 doesn't have the end-beta (PTR) that wow has, at least not as of now. What we have is an internal beta, that gets updated on a daily basis (as in lots of bugs gets added). When we try out 'new stuff' (which has been some time now, that lockdown!), it's often to find the big issues. This may be graphical glitches, mechanical faults or game crashing features. Normally balance will be discussed a bit, but it's not the major part of it. So the 'new big' things are far and few between, at least in the scale that you see a PTR, which often has loads of new content. For that reason I don't think we'll see a public beta. But who knows, I might just be drunk and blowing out random gibberish!
//Tq