**Poll** Brink Beta ?

(Tystys03) #41

Wasn’t there an interview where one of the heads of development stated that they wouldn’t be doing a beta outside of the internal testing team and family members of the team? I mean, I would love to be able to participate in one because anything that helps this game come closer to release would be amazing to be a part of, but I think they already discussed this…

(3Suns) #42

Darth, good question. Gears 1 was full of exploits and gameplay mismatches (e.g., weapon sliding and an incredibly overpowered melee), but with extensive patching and house rules, we were still able to have a lot of fun with it. When Gears 2 was released, it became evident that Epic had grabbed the Gears 1 pre-patch code, and developed their new game and the upgraded UE3 based on that. When we put Gears 2 in the tray for the first time, it was astonishing that many of the old bugs they had patched out of Gears 1, were suddenly back, all over the place in Gears 2. With all the new features and the upgraded rendering engine, the game should still be at the top of the xbox live charts, but there were so many critical gameplay issues, exploits, and bugs, that many of the gamers just sold their game before Epic was able to patch it sufficiently (5+ attempts and 1 whole year after the fact).

Go to any GameStop and ask how much you can get for a used copy. Nothing - you can hardly pay them to take it off your hands. Nobody except the new Gears 2 hardcore gamers are playin’ the thing now. In contrast, until the release of MW2, CoD4 used was $40, new $50.

(iwound) #43

closed beta testers also think that way somtimes that its just a chance to play but couldnt be arsed giving feedback. the difference between the two is just numbers. more testers = more feedback = more to sift through.

so. they punished themselves why should we care. its beta not demo for if you like it.

summary : make it open, get the numbers and then ban all who complain about the type of game it is. ooh hang on, that would be me.
well hire an army of monkeys to sift through bug reports. hey its just my opinion.

Love Quake Wars, Hate Activision.

(AnthonyDa) #44

Yeah, after UT3 and Gears, EPIC was too busy to count the money earned by the UE3 than supporting their game, they kinda lost all fans after those to 2 games, sadly.

(brbrbr) #45

actually, yes.
they focus on engine licensing and imrovement this time.
and have NO plans to develop/pulish OWN game in near future.
and very possibly they scrapped UT IP at all.

p.s.
but im don’t thing its actual reasons for lack of support.

(darthmob) #46

[QUOTE=3Suns;217559]Darth, good question. Gears 1 was full of exploits and gameplay mismatches (e.g., weapon sliding and an incredibly overpowered melee), but with extensive patching and house rules, we were still able to have a lot of fun with it. When Gears 2 was released, it became evident that Epic had grabbed the Gears 1 pre-patch code, and developed their new game and the upgraded UE3 based on that.
<snip>[/QUOTE]Thanks for the explanation! I didn’t know of any of these issues but then I only played the first GoW in coop mode (best coop game there is in my opinion!) on the PC. I wouldn’t expect MS to look for such issues but only check if the game works the way it is supposed to work (online functionality, achievements, controller support and that kind of stuff).

(tokamak) #47

The game also lost players through that.

(GlobalWar) #48

I’ve been in quite some beta’s and have seen a lot of complaining about everything you can think of.
In my opinion a beta tester should test what the developers decided to build not try to convince the developers to make something you want.
So I think you should only be invited if you want to commit to this game and it’s gameplay and help the devs to iron out the last unfound bugs.

A large scale public beta should only be used for testing the infrastructure…

So yes to a Closed Beta but only for the people who are really commited to Splash Damage and want to make this game a success. Use NDA and stuff and kill anyone who sells out or leak anything :slight_smile:

(Voxie) #49

You’re missing the point. Because the beta felt rushed and bugged, plenty of people thought the finished product would be bad as well, which of course led to lost potential sales.
All I was saying is that some people judge betas as a 100% representation of the final product. If the beta has big flaws, people won’t buy the game and they’ll talk about their negative experiences to others. You’ll be amazed how many times I’ve seen people severely bash Quake Wars on gaming forums, despite never having played the game themselves. Word of mouth really can make or break an entertainment product.

(INF3RN0) #50

Most of those players only saved themselves $50, as they assure me to this day that they would have immediately quit if they bought it :(.

(Sssaap) #51

Will have to disagree on that. If you do an open beta you do not even have 1% of the people actually taking care of bug reporting/structured testing.
not to talk about the avarge quality of what you get reported.

But if you actually have a team(nearly for free) of highly motivated testers which actually know what they do, the output can be immense.

You only need ALOT of people when it comes down to traffic customization and relyability of servers.

(tokamak) #52

Which they base on what?

(Dormamu) #53

Closed Beta + 16 invites, 2 teams, the team who spot the most bugs/help SD iron some shirts/make the game better… wins 8 copies of Brink, or a trip to Splash Damage, or a trip to Disneyland, or a night with Sasha Grey = gang bang , or …whatever. Some “leaked info”: 5-10 pictures, 3-5 youtube movies, 1 post with 2500 words on crossfire.nu …and were done.

(grasnal) #54

As a Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory player I must say that since 2003 any other game didn’t offer such good balance between simplicity of form and complexity of team play concept as WET. I was clanbase Polish ladder member for few year, till natural death of clan players involvement with this title. Since that time every single fps game witch was focused on team play was not able to gather so many people for so long. Splash… please… make Brink successor of that community. Seven years is enough for us, don’t force us to wait longer like kids before Christmas :). If open beta can make this game even quite better by revealing those small annoying bugs and features lack that always show up when community is building up around new title, make it open.

P.S.
English is not my native. Please alert me by PM in case of mistakes in above text - still learning :stroggtapir:.
P.S.2
Damn… 25 year old guy is waiting for game like dog for bone. This must be strange behaviour :D.

(INF3RN0) #55

Vehicles, bad net code, ranked stats, etc. Stuff like that really :tongue:.

(Slade05) #56

Out of those only netcode could be seriously discussed, and even then, there is a fresh new multibillion backed by EA Bad Company 2, which works like a fook.

Vehicles? When two machinegunners can chainsaw a Cyclops?
Yeeeeeah.

(Tystys03) #57

[QUOTE=GlobalWar;217679]I’ve been in quite some beta’s and have seen a lot of complaining about everything you can think of.
In my opinion a beta tester should test what the developers decided to build not try to convince the developers to make something you want.
So I think you should only be invited if you want to commit to this game and it’s gameplay and help the devs to iron out the last unfound bugs.

A large scale public beta should only be used for testing the infrastructure…

So yes to a Closed Beta but only for the people who are really commited to Splash Damage and want to make this game a success. Use NDA and stuff and kill anyone who sells out or leak anything :)[/QUOTE]

I whole-heartedly agree. But about the NDA? You’re always going to have that ONE person, who leaks something and if you ask me, for a game like Brink, I think ANYTHING we can learn about the game could actually help it more then hurt it, XD…

Than again, that’s just me hoping for some more information on this awesome title, ^_^.

(tokamak) #58

It could hurt it tremendously, look at the way people treat the early alpha videos, some really have problems looking beyond the obvious imperfections.

(alias) #59

At least a demo then…

Yet I picked metro2033 right off the shelf, no demo played.
I offcourse have seen various things on youtube and comments on the game.

I personally dont do that anymore this was an mere exception, As too Brink they have some
really pretty amazing cool stuff going on, yet a small demo too show and tell and too also reach a wider audience would/could be only for the better.
i guess.

(Lequis) #60

I would like a beta that comes out between E3 '10 and Sept 7, 2010, but that’s just me.

If people dislike the game, they dislike the game. Imo, the two major reasons for not buying this game are going to be 1) it’s too fast paced and 2) it’s no solo effort.

Personally, I hope this game sells, because the concept is the best I’ve seen yet (the next best having been MW2, but that sort of failed because it realllllly tried to sell out (a beta wouldn’t have saved it unless they upped the health and nerfed the killstreaks (because even the maps were irreparable by that time))).

The game should be fun, I just hope it revolves around flanking rather than the frontlines like in TF2’s non-arena gametypes.

As long as they add enough routes to enough spots, this game should flourish.