A Guide on How To Be A Good Beta Tester

[SavageB]

I know beta testing could be a while away, but I figured Id post some key points on what/what not to do during a beta test for when it hits.

Points to keep in mind if you are chosen:

1. DO report bugs with vast amounts of information, screenshots and timestamps.
2. DO test as many features as possible in as many ways as possible.
3. DO consult with other tester's for answer's to potential problems you maybe experiencing in-game before making an angry post in the forums.
4.DO suggest as many changes with as many justifications for your creative suggestion's. ( this is a big one, it's one thing to complain about a feature or lack of then just saying "this sucks" and not give a creative explanation or remedy for the problem)
5.DO support creative new approaches to in-game abilities,play styles and progression types.


The DO NOT's of beta testing:

1. DO NOT play the beta like a shareware demo - It's a beta, not a opportunity for F2P free ride.
2. DO NOT come to the forums to complain at dev's and players because the servers maybe down, usually a reason for it.
3. DO NOT expect conformity within feature sets and game play. As in comparing one game to PS2, this is a different game.
4. DO NOT play the beta for 1 day, then come and make final judgement's on "how utterly terribad this game is" because your experience was not what you expected (this is pretty common). Be realistic.
5. DO NOT talk about the game outside of beta test forums allotted to you. IE. do not tell your friends family anything about the game as it can get you in trouble under the NDA.

If any one here does not know what an NDA is, it stands for Non Disclosure Agreement, its a waiver that you must sign confirming that everything during the beta test much be hush hush.


If you are selected for beta, I hope you test it for the right reasons, the more feedback SOE receives during the beta the better this game will be.

Best of luck!

[Bags]

6.) Break everything.

[Sifer2]

Is there even a beta coming soon? Anyway kind of pointless to post as people will play it like its the real game anyway. That's why more MMO's are waiting until really late to do a open beta anymore. Sometimes only doing it on weekends to save costs. An pretty much treating like a demo/marketing tool.

Most of the testing will be done by professionals an small selected groups of outfits I imagine during closed beta.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Sifer2

Most of the testing will be done by professionals an small selected groups of outfits I imagine during closed beta.

>implying you can test a game of this scale with small groups of players.

Smed has said current subscribers will be among the first into beta. suck it

[Roy Awesome]

Originally Posted by Bags

>implying you can test a game of this scale with small groups of players.

Smed has said current subscribers will be among the first into beta. suck it

You can. Basic software testing for bugs is done via code, not human testing. What they probably want is a group to stress test the server. They will get that

[SurgeonX]

Originally Posted by Roy Awesome

Basic software testing for bugs is done via code, not human testing.

Crikey, you must work in some sort of amazing development utopia

If you are talking about unit testing, then yes, it can be used to ensure that the code is correct before being checked in. But where I work, bugs are still identified by manual and automated scripts, and ad-hoc testing.
I can't imagine any Test Team Leaders in our place trusting only unit tests to find bugs.
But then, we do have 20 year old spaghetti code with a mish-mash of UI, business and data layers.

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by Bags

>implying you can test a game of this scale with small groups of players.

Smed has said current subscribers will be among the first into beta. suck it

I'll believe it when I see it. Did he say ALL subscribers would be the first into beta? Cause if not then I could still be right. That they will pick certain outfits an do most of the testing with them.

I do see your point about it being hard to test large scale combat without thousands to actually slug it out. But that doesn't mean they will open the floodgates for a year or more of testing to every subscriber. Well if you had to stay subscribed then maybe since it would pretty much be a pay to play Beta then.

[SKYeXile]

In a game like planetside, it will need thousands of players to stress test it but also since the game is based around pvp, it will need alot of players to test the flow of a battle its game systems for capturing, and playing it like it would be played on live, and spending alot of time doing that, the developers cant spend that much time playing to test that shit. and im sure SOE dont want to pay extra people thousands of dollars to test that shit when they can get us to test it for free and look at the metrics.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Sifer2

I'll believe it when I see it. Did he say ALL subscribers would be the first into beta? Cause if not then I could still be right. That they will pick certain outfits an do most of the testing with them.

I do see your point about it being hard to test large scale combat without thousands to actually slug it out. But that doesn't mean they will open the floodgates for a year or more of testing to every subscriber. Well if you had to stay subscribed then maybe since it would pretty much be a pay to play Beta then.

You're acting like PS1 has a lot of subscribers

[Malorn]

Patience is about the best quality of a beta tester. Its frustrating to play with bugs that can severely cripple your game experience, like crashes, bad framerates and other such things that can make the game nearly unplayable. Horrid balance issues and other such things are also frustrating. Keeping the cool head and being patient, hanging in there and playing it in spite of those issues helps a lot.

That said, you can be the best beta tester in the world but if the devs dont' listen to the feedback or do poor triage of bugs then there isn't much you can do.

[SavageB]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Patience is about the best quality of a beta tester. Its frustrating to play with bugs that can severely cripple your game experience, like crashes, bad framerates and other such things that can make the game nearly unplayable. Horrid balance issues and other such things are also frustrating. Keeping the cool head and being patient, hanging in there and playing it in spite of those issues helps a lot.

That said, you can be the best beta tester in the world but if the devs dont' listen to the feedback or do poor triage of bugs then there isn't much you can do.

Fortunately for us the devs seem to really wanna listen to the playerbase this time around

[SavageB]

Originally Posted by Sifer2

Is there even a beta coming soon? Anyway kind of pointless to post as people will play it like its the real game anyway. That's why more MMO's are waiting until really late to do a open beta anymore. Sometimes only doing it on weekends to save costs. An pretty much treating like a demo/marketing tool.

Most of the testing will be done by professionals an small selected groups of outfits I imagine during closed beta.

An open beta is usually 1-2 months before release, mostly for stress tests. There will be a closed beta for this game, as bags mentioned most likely the current subs will have access.

[Bags]

Yeah. One of the things they've been stressing is how much they want to listen to feedback in beta. It'd be rather silly if they had the shortest beta possible with that goal.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Bags

Yeah. One of the things they've been stressing is how much they want to listen to feedback in beta. It'd be rather silly if they had the shortest beta possible with that goal.

$ makes the rules, sadly. Not everyone can support a years worth of Betas like starcraft2 had.

[SavageB]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

$ makes the rules, sadly. Not everyone can support a years worth of Betas like starcraft2 had.

Ya true enough but I think we will have a decent beta with PS2.