Can We FINALLY Have a Beta? Dominion Tower showed the benefits

[Tecmaster]

Totally agree with a beta for major updates. Jagex QA has said time and time again that there's no way that they can possibly test every update completely before it gets released. Having a beta for major updates would allow players to test updates in a safe environment prior to their release to allow Jagex to fix any major bugs that might have been missed by the QA team before release. Blizzard does this with Starcraft 2 patches all the time and it works out swimmingly for them, I don't know why Jagex has such an issue with doing this.

[TooOldForRS]

"Do you hoard dragon squares for something that may take two days to two months before it's in the real game?"

 

Uh...........YES!!!!

[Kaida23]

"Do you hoard dragon squares for something that may take two days to two months before it's in the real game?"

 

Uh...........YES!!!!

That's exactly why people started buying up resources as soon as the bot nuke was announced, because they're going to go up in price. Maybe not for several weeks or even months, but it will go up. The same thing would happen if only a small, select group of players were allowed previews of quests/skills/ect.. before the general population. A bit of patience could potentially triple (or more) their gp for no more effort than leaving a couple of select items in the bank.

[NukeMarine]

"Do you hoard dragon squares for something that may take two days to two months before it's in the real game?"

 

Uh...........YES!!!!

That's exactly why people started buying up resources as soon as the bot nuke was announced, because they're going to go up in price. Maybe not for several weeks or even months, but it will go up. The same thing would happen if only a small, select group of players were allowed previews of quests/skills/ect.. before the general population. A bit of patience could potentially triple (or more) their gp for no more effort than leaving a couple of select items in the bank.

Interesting TooOldForRS quotes the D. Square part with the days but didn't quote the part that says they might remove the D. Square requirement altogether. In addition, a "small, select group" this won't be.

 

-Everyone will know what's being tested since there's no reason for Jagex to keep it secret if 1000+ people are beta testing. So yeah, not everyone will be testing but everyone will know what's being tested.

-Players (even those doing beta) won't know what month or day the item under test will be released

-Players won't know if items being important in beta will make it into the real game.

-Players won't know if an update will even make it into a game at all (wilderness tag anybody?).

 

So, if a public announcement is made that everyone can view and act upon, it's pointless to complain that a few will act upon it. Yes, some people last week hoarded commonly botted items. Yes, those people made a profit. However, everyone had the opportunity, not a select few with inside knowledge which happens with every update. Plus, we know you don't have to have the actual update for players to start planning for it. This happens with behind the scenes and announced double XP weekends.

 

All that said, if Jagex wants to try a secret beta with players "double dog pinky swearing" not to talk about the testing, then I'd complain real loud. It's hard enough to hold stuff secret within their own company. It'd be impossible to expect the same with unpaid beta testers and their friends/families.

[@Dan3HitU]

I'm sure they already did this before to "selected" individuals, but I may be wrong.

[obfuscator]

A ton of games (and other software) do just fine with beta releases prior to the production release. Long overdue.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

I'm still of the influence that it really depends on what kind of content they need to test. I'm not against beta tests, though.

[highlanders]

I'd say yes but only if everyone has access to the beta. If they only allowed a select group of people to test, armed with the knowledge of future updates those people would be at an advantage over everybody else, which isn't fair.

[ixfd64]

Jagex actually used to have an alpha server that they made available to select players back in 2001. IIRC, it was hosted on a laptop and was only accessible shortly before an update. I think Jagex should definitely start doing this more!

[bladekill133]

Just to be clear, having small amount players who payed money and went to a particular physical location spend a very small amount of time tested in a very restricted environment doesn't resemble at all what a beta would be. Furthermore, there was an extremely small amount of time between the first information about dom and the release, as far as the economy goes, there was very little to happen at all economically from this update (the major things were the dagannoth bones) that wasn't already happening since the behind the scenes (armor). And besides, Dominion tower still had major problems (endurance mode, nomad), and still has major problems after the first fix (top of the tower, journal pages, etc).

 

Your argument - that it worked at runefest and so would always work - is extremely weak.

[NukeMarine]

Just to be clear, having small amount players who payed money and went to a particular physical location spend a very small amount of time tested in a very restricted environment doesn't resemble at all what a beta would be. Furthermore, there was an extremely small amount of time between the first information about dom and the release, as far as the economy goes, there was very little to happen at all economically from this update (the major things were the dagannoth bones) that wasn't already happening since the behind the scenes (armor). And besides, Dominion tower still had major problems (endurance mode, nomad), and still has major problems after the first fix (top of the tower, journal pages, etc).

 

Your argument - that it worked at runefest and so would always work - is extremely weak.

Nice strawman. At no point did I say the play testing at RuneFest is 1:1 what happens with a Beta. At no point did I say the small amount of public testing found all the problems. At no point did I say it would always work. So, yes, those arguments are weak, but I was not the one that proferred them, you did. Comments about impact on the economy have been discussed already, in that any thing all a beta would do is shift the impact date.

 

Now, have there been cases with major online games where an open beta had a negative impact? That would be the best evidence toward keeping beta closed. The case of Dominion Tower is also positive evidence to the benefit of an early beta because, as you pointed out, all problems discovered could not be immediately fixed given the small lead time.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Just to be clear, having small amount players who payed money and went to a particular physical location spend a very small amount of time tested in a very restricted environment doesn't resemble at all what a beta would be. Furthermore, there was an extremely small amount of time between the first information about dom and the release, as far as the economy goes, there was very little to happen at all economically from this update (the major things were the dagannoth bones) that wasn't already happening since the behind the scenes (armor). And besides, Dominion tower still had major problems (endurance mode, nomad), and still has major problems after the first fix (top of the tower, journal pages, etc).

 

Your argument - that it worked at runefest and so would always work - is extremely weak.

Nice strawman. At no point did I say the play testing at RuneFest is 1:1 what happens with a Beta. At no point did I say the small amount of public testing found all the problems. At no point did I say it would always work. So, yes, those arguments are weak, but I was not the one that proferred them, you did. Comments about impact on the economy have been discussed already, in that any thing all a beta would do is shift the impact date.

 

Now, have there been cases with major online games where an open beta had a negative impact? That would be the best evidence toward keeping beta closed. The case of Dominion Tower is also positive evidence to the benefit of an early beta because, as you pointed out, all problems discovered could not be immediately fixed given the small lead time.

 

Bladekill has a point, though. You haven't provided a convincing argument outside of the implied, "It happened at Runefest, why not other updates?"

 

I'm still of the influence that beta testing would vary by update. Is there any reason to doubt that an update which introduces a revolutionary change in experience or money making would have different, mixed results? I'm convinced that it may not, but you haven't provided enough evidence of it yet.

[Cow]

Not sure I would want to beta test through presumably hours of content like Dominion Tower/Livid Farm/whatever minigame for no reward or anything. Not many things would I do for nothing but the fun of it; rather, the reward/xp/rank/whatever. However, maybe other players would. I think this could be a good idea if implemented right.