Gameplay: DEV PS2 BETA Surveys.

[Noivad]

I looked back through the posts to mid 2011, and did not see anything about this topic, and no similars from the board.

I have been in a few BETAs now, and currently I am involved in a BETA with War Inc Battle Zone, a FTP FPS / TPS Twitch Shooter, with classes, and modular weapons, ect. Nothing on the scale of PS2.

But they have a neat BETA Survey System where when they make changes to the game, instead of using Forums / polls/ to ask about what I think of the change, or about game features, or things I want to see or not see in the game, they use a web based service called Zoomerang, which has merged with SurveyMonkey, that provides Surveys, made up by the developer, to be answered by the people doing the Beta.

When I log out of the game, the web survey page initializes and it takes a few mins to answer specfic questions that the DEVs want information about.

Sometimes there is only one question, and sometimes multiple questions. They are all multiple choise.

It offers the DEVs Multiple custom reports on all the answers. So the Devs know the tabulated results of the survey.

They don't ask questions everyday either, just when they are looking for beta testor answers to something.

It gives me as the BETA testor a closer feeling of involvement, in the decisions that are being made by the devs as they make changes to the games.

And its a lot faster and eaiser then logging on to Special Beta Forums, where the devs then have to skim the comments, which sometimes have nothing to do with what they want to know.

I'm not sure how you guys did it back in 2003, but this, at least from my prespective is an effective way to gather info about the game experience, as the beta testor leaves the game and its still fresh on his mind.

Not sure if you can target specfic beta groups or not.

Here is the link - maybe other programs out there of this type, did not look.
this page is price and feature info.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/...om_hpc_pricing

If your not using this, or something like it, I am curious how you will be getting information from PS2 beta testors. Will it be polls on Beta Forums, posts on Beta Forums, ect.

Hopefully one of the DEVs will read and respond to this.

[Purple]

i was doing a beta a few weeks ago for a upcoming game and the surveys poped up in game after you did the thing they want feedback about.

[Toppopia]

This is an awesome idea, maybe even when you log in a survey pops up and gives you maybe a resource reward for completing, because we know some will skip it to get to the fighting faster, but feedback is always important.

[Garem]

This concedes some accuracy/specificity but makes feedback significantly easier to acquire and in greater quantities.

Forgoing the concern about the lie that is statistical data ("there are lies, damned lies, and statistics") this is a great idea.

[SoNaR]

Originally Posted by Purple

i was doing a beta a few weeks ago for a upcoming game and the surveys poped up in game after you did the thing they want feedback about.

Beta tested a lot of games down through the years. When I tested Swtor, they had an ingame survey system similar to this. I think SoE should replicate this when the Planetside 2 beta comes out.