Beta Journal #4

[Hamma]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/?newsid=192

[Psyklone]

Looks like all those stealth fans will be happy with this! Should the rant between Incompetant and Molecular continue? :D

[SVoyager]

hmm this is weired or i dont understand some things.


In the last producer letter, they said they had about 720 players on but on this journal they talk about 150 players!?!?!?!?

have i read something wrong or what?

[Yetskii]

Well, it is suprising that so many did not play. They may have not downloaded it yet, or were busy.

[Zatrais]

It's 740 testers total, but in that battle 150 of them participated....

Annyways, stupid max for getting mined inn hehe.

[SVoyager]

thx zatrais for info.

and yea lol that engie mustve been LIAO seeing the max blowing up.

max guy reaction: "wtf. must've been a bug" :P

[Revulsion]

stealth attack! :o

[mr_luc]

Spork already mentioned that most of those testers had *just* been notified they were accepted.

Remember, 3 CD's. That's a huge download. At 100kb/s SOLID (that's kb, not k, and it's rare to sustain such a rate unless you've got an excellent line) it will still take approx 6 hours to download. I doubt that even in a group of exceptional testers they would be able to average anywhere near that for download speed. Realistically, it will likely take several days for the majority of the testers to get up and running.

The next playtest will probably see a much higher percentage of the people that had downloaded the game actually playing the game. I'm guesstimating a good 100 that don't download it, and another 50 that can't make the playtest. But the next playtest will probably still top 500.

[SpaceDrake]

Luc, keep in mind that this phase probably doesn't have EVERYTHING in it to keep the download sizes sane. :p I'd still expect a 1-2 hour download, though.

[Shark]

Hmmmm...concerns me that MAX and Inf seem to be the dominant armors...IMO, they should be specialists, not the norm.

-shark

[diluted]

ya i dont know where that's going to go. lots of max/inf will not be cool

[mr_luc]

Probably an issue of scale there.

If I'm going to be going one-on-one, I'd want a more specialized armor like that. The more dense the action gets, and the more wide-ranging the conflicts are, the more time people have to run around and engage in general combat, people are going to want something that will give them more general abilities.

Playtests that last multiple days, even weeks (*cough* Open Beta *cough*) are going to be necessary to determine what classes people will play the most.

[Flameseeker]

Those two armors are only dominant in Beta because they need to be tested. With 700 people, if 10% went Max thats only 70 people testing the armor. They need it more equally divided right now to test each armor thoroughly.

[Destroyeron]

:drool:

[Incompetent]

mr_luc, i think at this stage they might have already started sending out the CDs, so it's very possible that only a few of them have even gotten the discs yet.

[NapalmEnima]

That hadn't occured to me, FlameSeeker. It's entirely possible that the dev's asked people to go heavy on infiltration and MAX armors this time out.

After all the aspects of play have been beaten on through this sort of direction, I'd expect the devs to have a better idea of how everything balances out.

Good call.

Or maybe not. CERTAIN PEOPLE would know, but they can't talk about it. Feh.

[mr_luc]

Originally posted by Incompetent
mr_luc, i think at this stage they might have already started sending out the CDs, so it's very possible that only a few of them have even gotten the discs yet.


Lalalalala I don't hear you.

OPEN BETA IS THE ONLY THING THAT WILL ANSWER THESE PRESSING QUESTIONS!

[�io]

I assume it's both to test and because people like them that they are so popular. But don't worry in most pics we see reinforced armor or agile so i'm sure the open beta and released game will be fine, if not they will balance it. No worries. (other than release date ;))

Soon enough, we will host the open beta and more people will have the opportunity to be a part of these stories

Typo? I think he meant not soon enough, right?

[AztecWarrior]

They need continent-wide conflict! :wantbeta:

[OmnipotentKiwi]

MAX size I can understand as it is the mini-tank of the game, and I doubt will change much.
Howest stealth use will probably go down. As players learn more, they will get better at spotting stealthers, and many many will get the darklight implant. :)

It probably just hasn't happened yet in beta.