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What do you think about how Beamdog have handled the beta?

ajwzajwz Member Posts: 4,122
in General Discussion (Spoiler Warning!)
With regards to the beta testing of the patches and platform specific builds, what do you think of how beamdog have handled it?
Do you enjoy having early access to often buggy beta builds? Do you think it was effective at producing a more finished product

@dee wrote a little bit about it here, but what do you guys think?
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DeePennyway/20140416/215595/Rebranding_Beta_Testing_with_Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition.php

Comments

  • jackjackjackjack Member Posts: 3,251
    As of late, I think they could have done a better job with relation to Mac users. In general, however, I've been pleased with the open nature of it.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    I like that they've invited volunteer beta testing for those who might get pleasure out of that, but I myself always wait for the finished version of anything gaming related. I play for fun, and if I had volunteer hours I was willing to give, I'd do that for something in real life, not to a volunteer beta test.

    Also, if I were to be a volunteer beta tester, I think I'd get very sick of the game after the whole thing was done, and would never be able to enjoy the fruits of my unpaid labor.

    The very least they could do would be to give badges to their volunteer beta-testing army. Or do they already do that? While I wouldn't, I bet that there are a lot of individuals who would literally "work for complements" like that.

    I read @Dee's blog article. His position, as I interpreted it, was that the motivation behind Beamdog's open beta tests was to provide something productive to do for the most impatient community members, and to make transparent exactly what was going on with Beamdog's very, very limited human resources.

    From that perspective, I have nothing but praise for what Beamdog is doing, because I don't know of any other game developer who offers to bring users "into the fold" like that, if they are tired of waiting for patches.
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,345
    It's definitely for the best - a development team of a handful people will never be as effective as a gamer community when it comes to finding bugs and weird ways to wreck the game. I agree that a beta isn't always that much fun to play - it tends to turn the games into a grind rather than the immersive experience I like BG to be. It's great that the option is there though, and it is fun to help polish a game you love.

    On top of that, a beta can also benefit players directly in terms of first-hand information about up and coming changes. If you're trying to decide whether to start a game now or wait for the next patch first, say, you can try it out, see how it feels, and then make a more informed decision regarding whether or not it's worth waiting for.
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,315
    edited April 2014
    I would say support for mac testing has been just awful. It was much worse in the private/closed testing days, where you'd get and report on bugs that had been long since patched out of the windows version, but its still not particularly good.

    In the case of BGEE mac users are still two patches behind the windows version. Might not seem like much but for testing its important because in my case 1/4 of my console window is cut off because of one of the text window changes they proposed. They ended up reverting the change but they haven't done so yet for the mac version (to give you an idea from a timing standpoint the change was made 2 months ago). So if I have to type in a console code in BGEE's beta I'm basically just guessing if I have the first 1/3 - 1/4 of the code correct since I can't see it.

    I'm not certain where the windows beta version of BG2EE is in relation to the mac version at this point, but even if they are dead even in terms of their version numbers its still been 2.5 months since they've seen a patch (and its possible it could have been longer than that that just happens to be the last time I was able to get a patch).

    While the concept of beta testing certainly has allowed them to test out new ideas/elements of gameplay, the games slow patching has had the negative effect of making access to the beta the only way of getting patching support for the games. What I mean by this is that its been about 5 months since the last non-beta patches were released for BGEE and BG2EE. If you have access to the beta you there have been updates since then but anyone who purchased either of the games on the Apple Store, Steam, from elsewhere (or who has chosen not to become a beta tester) has basically been out of luck for the last 5 months. That or left to find and/or download solutions for fixing individual problems.

    So I'd while say the concept of engaging the community and testing out different ideas was good, without regular patch support (monthly) for both the beta versions and non-beta versions of the game it just leaves people unnecessarily behind when it comes to bug fixes.
    Post edited by elminster on
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