Perhaps a Beta Test Might be Called For Next Time?
Illydth
Member, Developer Posts: 1,641
Not to come off snide or otherwise obnoxious to a development staff that has taken a lot of time and obviously poured much sweat, blood and tears into this release.
I just can't help but feel, however, that a playable demo handed out (at minimum) to those who pre-ordered two or three months ago might have saved you all the agony of what seems to be a plethora of problems with the release of this software.
I get you had beta folks testing for you...but your controlled beta people will NEVER be able to provide you testing on the VAST ARRAY of machines and machine types a down loadable beta/demo to a populace at wide would.
I get demos taking time away from development of the final product that you can't sell, but the effort behind BG:EE seems to be vastly different than most software release at this point. Whereas a game like Skyrim may have a hard time "Demoing" due to the fact the game is still in development and much of it may not be ready, in this case, what you've mostly been working on is the backend of an already produced game.
I can't imagine there hasn't been playable builds prior to your release a few days ago, and it would have been VASTLY helpful to you to get 5 or 6 thousand people reporting hardware difficulties 2 months ago than on the day of release when the eyes of the community (not to mention beamdog's financial backers and the owners of the rights to the title) are on you.
Removing a key transition point and releasing a demo version that would allow play only through perhaps the initial part of the prolog...or even just the first map screen...would seem to have fixed a boatload of your hardware incompatibility problems long before this point.
Something, perhaps, to consider in your AAR / Lessons Learned meeting following you all getting a few hours of sleep sometime next month for the next time you do this...which, hopefully, there will be.
Good Luck in your next few weeks of hell: We all await the working, playable product we know you will eventually produce.
Save yourselves the trouble next time and open your beta testing process up to thousands, not tens of people.
I just can't help but feel, however, that a playable demo handed out (at minimum) to those who pre-ordered two or three months ago might have saved you all the agony of what seems to be a plethora of problems with the release of this software.
I get you had beta folks testing for you...but your controlled beta people will NEVER be able to provide you testing on the VAST ARRAY of machines and machine types a down loadable beta/demo to a populace at wide would.
I get demos taking time away from development of the final product that you can't sell, but the effort behind BG:EE seems to be vastly different than most software release at this point. Whereas a game like Skyrim may have a hard time "Demoing" due to the fact the game is still in development and much of it may not be ready, in this case, what you've mostly been working on is the backend of an already produced game.
I can't imagine there hasn't been playable builds prior to your release a few days ago, and it would have been VASTLY helpful to you to get 5 or 6 thousand people reporting hardware difficulties 2 months ago than on the day of release when the eyes of the community (not to mention beamdog's financial backers and the owners of the rights to the title) are on you.
Removing a key transition point and releasing a demo version that would allow play only through perhaps the initial part of the prolog...or even just the first map screen...would seem to have fixed a boatload of your hardware incompatibility problems long before this point.
Something, perhaps, to consider in your AAR / Lessons Learned meeting following you all getting a few hours of sleep sometime next month for the next time you do this...which, hopefully, there will be.
Good Luck in your next few weeks of hell: We all await the working, playable product we know you will eventually produce.
Save yourselves the trouble next time and open your beta testing process up to thousands, not tens of people.
8
Comments
Anyway while there is always improvement suggestions to be made I for one am very thankful for the app and I am happy to pay the money for what the software is and does. Im enjoying the game.
Their PROBLEM (I"m guessing at this point) is that they pulled out a couple people with each of the various types of cards (intel, ati, nvidia) and said "Ok, the software works for those people, it'll work."
This is far far far from the case since it's not just the card but the driver version, Open GL Version, driver implementation of Open GL version, and about 100 other factors that go into determination of whether this will work or not.
The ONLY way to properly deployment test a piece of software (as complicated as a game) in today's computer industry is to test on hundreds to thousands of machines. There are too many variables for a test of 10 or even 50 to properly identify a piece of software as "working".
Beta test would have been a fantastic plan.
Shocking to buy a new game and not be able to play it. My PC is fairly modern too.
Windows 8
i7
Radeon 7730m
8gb of ram.
There should have been a small part of the game released (eg. candlekeep) just to test to see if it worked, for all those people who pre-ordered it. For me, it works perfectly on my brand new Win 7 computer. Not bothered to check with my other computers as there's no point. Would have done it weeks or months ago if I was a beta tester.