Should NRS be doing public beta testing?

[Gesture Required Ahead]

LBSH, both MK9 and IGAU has had problems scaling from something as small as the hero cards not working right to huge game-breaking glitches like invisible projectiles.

What would be so bad in opening a beta testing field? It would also improve online-related problems such as desyncs, server issues, better netcode.

Has any other FG done this, actually? Besides releasing in-development builds in tournies and gaming events?

EDIT: To prevent me from saying this any more times, I think there shouldn't be any balance fixes. You're all missing the point. There are broken things in these games that shouldn't be and it ruins the experience because the game doesn't look polished. It feels like a F2P game in its early builds and the team who works on it is small so it takes a long time before stuff gets fixed.

 

[AeroGrunt]

It's kind of hard to do on consoles. You see this kind of stuff mostly only on PC games, especially Valve games like Team Fortress 2.

 

[Rathalos]

It's why their games should be day and date on PC.

They could have public betas, and even private betas only letting in certain tournament players much earlier to get their feedback.

Hopefully with MK9 selling as well as it did, and Injustice coming to PC soon, we will move closer to this being a reality.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

It's kind of hard to do on consoles. You see this kind of stuff mostly only on PC games, especially Valve games like Team Fortress 2.

Halo has done it twice, I believe other games as well.

 

[Duck Nation]

They are.

I'm sorry someone had to do it

 

[KIllaByte]

Halo has done it twice, I believe other games as well.

Playsation All Stars, both Uncharted 2 and 3, Resistance 3, Gears of War 3, Homefront I think? MAG also had a beta..

 

[LEGEND]

They are.

I'm sorry someone had to do it

^i came in the thread specifically to say this

 

[Rathalos]

Halo has done it twice, I believe other games as well.

Most of the time console betas are just glorified demos.

They can get a lot of information from it, but its very hard to update a console demo on the fly, like you can do with PC betas.

This might all change with the new consoles, but I kinda doubt it.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

Most of the time console betas are just glorified demos.

They can get a lot of information from it, but its very hard to update a console demo on the fly, like you can do with PC betas.

This might all change with the new consoles, but I kinda doubt it.

It's not really improving it on the go. I mean like taking notes of what people see wrong in the beta and correcting it in the final version.

 

[Ironsoulsmasher]

never heard of a FG beta.

all-stars is the only thing i guess would come close.

 

[Rathalos]

It's not really improving it on the go. I mean like taking notes of what people see wrong in the beta and correcting it in the final version.

Ya that's fine too, but I would prefer a much grander PC style betas where they can get constant feedback.

 

[AeroGrunt]

I miss-understood the thread, I thought you were talking about beta testing for patches like Team Fortress 2 does.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

Ya that's fine too, but I would prefer a much grander PC style betas where they can get constant feedback.

They should try to do what they can to get as much feedback as possible.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

The difference between releasing a development alpha/beta build and releasing a buggy and incomplete game is that in one case you are making a lot of money for rushed work.

There will always be people stupid enough to buy an incomplete product and test it full time with no salary. That's what we've always been doing and we're all cool with it because deep down we know NRS can't make a quality game without our help anyway.

We are charity QA testers.

 

[kabelfritz]

and if the beta test is full of clueless whiners? will NRS listen? and if not, what is won?

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

and if the beta test is full of clueless whiners? will NRS listen? and if not, what is won?

Balancing should be left alone no matter how many are crying. It should be focused on the problems that SHOULD NOT even be there in the first place.

If MK10 still has stupid bugs like input bug or the preset issues I might just give up on NRS.

EDIT: Also I'm not touching IGAU until they fix the stupid shit where I have to re-empty my cache every time I play.

 

[Jeffreys]

If NRS did public beta testing Black Adam would be shitting rainbows, and Deathstroke wouldn't exist.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

If NRS did public beta testing Black Adam would be shitting rainbows, and Deathstroke wouldn't exist.

Like I said, no balance fixes.

 

[Minh Giang]

Doesn't Japan always do it on arcade??? NRS can do it with PC version.

 

[Compbros]

No, we see what the majority ask for (Deathstroke/Kano nerfs) and they clearly don't know how to balance a thing. Who is NRS gonna listen to, the handful of "competitive players" who MAY know what they're talking about based on a few weeks/month or so of playing or hundreds of people asking for the same things?

 

[rev0lver]

i think a problem here is that such a good portion of the good fg players play games competitively. the ones who don't get a chance to enter beta would be at a huge disadvantage.

especially with these games that take more time to figure out than fps games. MU experience is such a big factor whereas maps and such can be figured out relatively quickly.

edit: i know we have testers too, but that's very controlled and they spend much more time doing actual testing than practicing. betas are a different story.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

No, we see what the majority ask for (Deathstroke/Kano nerfs) and they clearly don't know how to balance a thing. Who is NRS gonna listen to, the handful of "competitive players" who MAY know what they're talking about based on a few weeks/month or so of playing or hundreds of people asking for the same things?

i think a problem here is that such a good portion of the good fg players play games competitively. the ones who don't get a chance to enter beta would be at a huge disadvantage.

especially with these games that take more time to figure out than fps games. MU experience is such a big factor whereas maps and such can be figured out relatively quickly.

edit: i know we have testers too, but that's very controlled and they spend much more time doing actual testing than practicing. betas are a different story.

See the EDIT in the OP.

 

[Compbros]

What would be so bad in opening a beta testing field? It would also improve online-related problems such as desyncs, server issues, better netcode.

Netcode is not so easily fixed or teams would fix it, it takes months and years to build a netcode, if it could just be tweaked by doing a few things on a server or changing a bit of code then it would be done. NRS said they were working on the Injustice netcode for two years, even if it's just a fourth of that then we're still talking 6 months on the netcode alone. Server issues is a vague statement, please elaborate. They've released patches to help with "internet stability" and I hardly face any desyncs in Injustice and when I do I think it's my opponent using Wi-Fi more than the game crapping out as they are isolated incidents. Also, betas and demos tend to be months old so it's hard to gauge information based on those things.

 

[Gesture Required Ahead]

Netcode is not so easily fixed or teams would fix it, it takes months and years to build a netcode, if it could just be tweaked by doing a few things on a server or changing a bit of code then it would be done. NRS said they were working on the Injustice netcode for two years, even if it's just a fourth of that then we're still talking 6 months on the netcode alone. Server issues is a vague statement, please elaborate. They've released patches to help with "internet stability" and I hardly face any desyncs in Injustice and when I do I think it's my opponent using Wi-Fi more than the game crapping out as they are isolated incidents. Also, betas and demos tend to be months old so it's hard to gauge information based on those things.

You have a valid point on the things you mentioned. But what about features not working properly? Annoying bugs and glitches that may be game-breaking or not but still annoying? BASIC things that don't work properly. To name a few: Random game lag, having to re-clear the cache everytime the game is booted, controller preset glitches, Hero cards not working properly(fixed, but still), Input bug, meter drain glitch, GLITCHY ASS CHARACTERS(Zod, Reptile, Sub-Zero, Kabal, Smoke, Cyrax), Invisible projectiles(fixed as well). Do I really need to continue?

 

[Compbros]

You have a valid point on the things you mentioned. But what about features not working properly? Annoying bugs and glitches that may be game-breaking or not but still annoying? BASIC things that don't work properly. To name a few: Random game lag, having to re-clear the cache everytime the game is booted, controller preset glitches, Hero cards not working properly(fixed, but still), Input bug, meter drain glitch, GLITCHY ASS CHARACTERS(Zod, Reptile, Sub-Zero, Kabal, Smoke, Cyrax), Invisible projectiles(fixed as well). Do I really need to continue?

Again, they'd be putting out an older build. Maybe those things worked then but new code in the new builds caused it to become buggy. Random game lag can happen for a multitude of reasons: The players connection, the amount of stuff on the screen, etc. That's an Xbox thing so I don't know but has it been happening since the beginning or with recent patches because that means that would mean that NEW CODE after the game was released is causing the problems. Many of the problems of MK9 are deeply rooted in the code, they've said before that to fix some of those things they'd have to start from scratch, a beta test isn't gonna do a thing. Coding is complicated as hell, for every thing that's fixed you could create 3 more problems (Rolento glitch in SFxT), again beta testing is not gonna accomplish nearly as much as you believe and they definitely can't have a beta test for DLC characters or things they're gonna implement post-launch.