Is there an internal Testers / Beta Tester Group?

[SiThSpAwN]

Originally Posted by MadTommy

Jeeze chill out. I read your post and understand your view. Sorry i didn't quote you and caress your forum ego. My only agenda is thinking that a dedicated team of testers would help fix and find issues, why you are so hostile to this only you know.



I think public beta testing is a good thing, but what is better is to have closed testing as well. I've been around the block, been involved in internal testing and such like in the past, its far for productive and focused than an open forum beta test, which serves a different purpose.

Having a volunteer, i.e not paid, team, testing specific changes to the game not only improves efficiency but relieves the developers from this work. The devs & testers share info on a closed forum under a NDA.. this is the kind of setup that I think could only benefit CloD...BS like 'don't download the patch if you don't want to test'.. is well BS.

If this game hadnt been released yet, and we were talking about testing for release I would expect them to do enternal testing with their team, then start inviting people in from the outside to test, much like many other games have done in the past.

BUT we are not before release we are a year into it. I and everyone else here have atleast 60 buck invested in this puppy, so an open Alpha/Beta of the new graphics engine is honestly expected on my part. If they were to do a closed testing session under an NDA the forums would just implode more so than they already have by people wearing tinfoil hats and screaming conspiracy.

And lets be honest, most closed Alpha/Beta testing is only moderately successful, when games go full release or full open beta thats when you start seeing the fixes, I think at the point this game is at, and what it needs as much quality info as it can get, open release testing is always going to get you more of that.

Maybe before BoM comes out, or before they release playable vehicles a closed testing session should be considered, or they start adding a volunteer testing team from the community that will see releases in the future before general release, but I think they are approaching this current situation in the best possible way right now.

Imagine these forums if only a handful of players had seen the recent patch/hotfix? Now imagine the patch/hotfix without the amount of data they have collected because the only had a handful of people testing...

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by MadTommy

Jeeze chill out. I read your post and understand your view. Sorry i didn't quote you and caress your forum ego. My only agenda is thinking that a dedicated team of testers would help fix and find issues, why you are so hostile to this only you know.



I think public beta testing is a good thing, but what is better is to have closed testing as well. I've been around the block, been involved in internal testing and such like in the past, its far for productive and focused than an open forum beta test, which serves a different purpose.

Having a volunteer, i.e not paid, team, testing specific changes to the game not only improves efficiency but relieves the developers from this work. The devs & testers share info on a closed forum under a NDA.. this is the kind of setup that I think could only benefit CloD...BS like 'don't download the patch if you don't want to test'.. is well BS.

It's certainly not BS when you've been clearly informed beforehand that it's a test patch and not a final "fix X issue" patch: the purpose is to try things out in the code in order to pick the best solution and some of those things, well, they will not work. And that's how they get to pick the solution, by getting feedback about what doesn't work during testing.

It's not something we install to go fly for 10 hours on multiplayer. The fact that many do so without problems is not because that is the purpose of the testing patch, but just a side effect of it working well on their systems.

I agree on some of your other points though.
Internal testing is good for a simple reason: dedicated testers and focused feedback.
Public testing has a harder to evaluate feedback range, but it has the advantage of a larger sample pool.

I think having both is the way to go and by the looks of it, that's what we have currently.

Also, what Sith said (again).

[MadTommy]

I'd like to point out.. not once have i said open beta testing is a bad thing! In fact i've only said it is a good thing! The fact that I personally don't want to spend my time testing this software has no relation to it.

However i cannot understand how dedicated testers with a direct link to the developers can be a bad thing. Maybe someone can answer that! I'd like to think maddox games would be using every option available to them at this point, clearly there are many dedicated fans of the series who would likely relish being testers and help a great deal. And clearly there are many issues with the game.

If you think a handful of test machines in Russia can do the same job as 30-50 serious fans at testing bugs.. well so be it.