Quote:
Originally Posted by The Kraken
It's not degrading, it's "constructive criticism". After all, if we'd all say that every post is great and perfect, how would that help posters to improve their contributions here?  |
Good one, i LOL'ed
On the matter of open beta, i've only participated in one recently. It's a totally different game genre from a totally different type of company( Startcrfaft 2, a real time strategy game by Blizzard), but some comparisons can be made.
I think that all of the poll's options are correct to a certain extent and that's why i didn't vote. The way i see it, an open beta tied to pre-purchase of the release version is a very good idea that will generate funds and help hunt for bugs IF there's a dedicated team to moderate the beta process and safety mechanisms exist to prevent leaking of the code.
The Stracraft 2 open beta was strictly multiplayer on a handful of maps, with the aim of testing the balance between different units in the game and hunting for the occasional bug.
Since SoW is a flight sim we don't adjust things based on balance but based on historical documentation.
If we had a strictly multiplayer beta on 3-5 custom made, fictional dogfight maps for SoW it could work. The beta version would be highly incomplete, the only things it would be useful for would be:
1) getting a feel for the system requirements and how it scales on a variety of systems
2) possible bugs
3) gathering specific feedback from the knowledgeable people in the community about how stuff works and wether it's close enough to how the real thing works
Serious testing and feature change requests would be reserved for the internal team, but having the benefit of a wide range of people who work as pilots, mechanics, etc commenting on how close it is to real life would be the advantage of the open beta. It's also a source of indirect and in many cases viral marketing.
During the SC2 beta people were allowed to post replays and commentaries of their multiplayer matches on youtube, going so far as to have post-match analysis sessions just like in real-life sports. This built much more sales than the official marketing campaign, because a few thousand players are more likely to find and present every nook and cranny of the gameplay experience than a small team of advertising executives on the publisher's payroll who'll only show a few pretty cinematics and some screenshots on maxed detail settings, with no context as to what they mean or how fluidly they run and on what system. Watching someone comment on the game on youtube however, you can see both why it's fun to play and how it runs on the commentator's system and you can extrapolate from there.
Of course, SoW doesn't have the potential market base that SC2 had. Nevertheless, the same thing can happen on a smaller scale to attract either newcomers or simmers from other genres.
Imagine videos of complex engine start-ups and systems management being posted on youtube, then circulating in the avsim forums where all the FSX pilots lounge...that's an easy few thousand sales extra right there
But then again, in order for this to work there should be a strict moderating team that will keep in line all the people who participate in the beta, by walking the thin line between a relaxed NDA (eg, permission to post videos and such) and complete chaos due to what you guys called the "whiner's club" before.
I'de be all for it
as long as people could lose their beta privileges if they were being disruptive jerks (after all, they wouldn't be paying for the beta but pre-ordering the game and getting the beta as a gift).
In fact, it's one of the handful of cases that i think an online authentication model would work well. I hate this model for release versions of games (i have neither RoF nor DCS because of their copy protection choice), but a beta is not a release version:
1) a beta is free, so even if it's down there's no grounds to complain (as opposed to buying a game and being unable to authenticate online, which sucks)
2) by issuing renewable weekly "tickets"/product keys by email and having the beta client expire and require an updated key to renew every week, you can easily cut down on the amount of disruptive players by cutting them off from the automatic key generator mailing list and banning them from the beta subforum