State of the beta

Old McDonald had a faaarm...

 

So I told my brother that the beta was on it's way, and I told him about how some of the farming mechanics seen in the video would be scrapped, and I know what the devs say is probably right, but he said he was looking forward to that. There are the people that just like 'minecrafting' as it's commonly called out behind base, for them there is just something satisfying about it. Anyway, that's my two cents on the issue.

 

If that farming and war stuff is crappy, why not start doing Adventure mode (if its coming in the future)...

 

(assuming you mean overworld) No it will not be coming in the future as far as I know, it might be modded in, and good luck to those who try.

 

I get its exciting, but what concerns me is why exactly is it exciting?

How does this behaviour effect the people involved and the community as a whole?
Also, how does it manifest in people outside the game?

I'm going pretty deep with this, but having experienced competetive play for over 10 years, most commonly with Soldat, been in various competitions, observed competetive people both online and offline to see how the game effects them, along with the glaring horror of xbox live messages (kids doing death threats and worse over a competetive game loss), not to mention some hostile communities of competetive-heavy games...

...with all of this stuff, when it adds up and when you look at the why, it gets pretty fucking scary right there.
Seeing all that, I stop and ask myself, "what do competetive games and behaviour promote, and why is this the norm?"

While sure there are other aspects that contribute to this besides the competetive games themselves, but I wouldn't say they don't play a huge part in this.

 

Competing with actual people in most cases is far more fun and thrilling then versing AI opponents in co-op situations, considering how AI is always going to act the same. They are predictable, and after a few co-op matches you understand and predict what it does. With players it is different, since there is no one player that plays the same as another. All players are unique, even if with the slightest of differences. This applies to clans as well, ther is good and bad clans, with players who vary in skill and play style. Due to the unpredictably of actual people, you need to adapt your play style to counter theirs, while they are doing the same. ( If said people or of the same level of skill) This can lead to very enjoyable competive fights no matter who is the loser.

 

I still find it hilarious that people are still clamoring for public test builds. They've TRIED public test builds, and it was a disaster. Some of you were around for this (I'm looking at Neat here) and KNOW it was a monumental disaster.

 

@Shad + Geti

That's my point, you can't represent everyone's views based on only a few testers views, you don't know what will happen until you take it to a wider audience. I'd like to think testers know what they're doing but that's the whole point of a survey or a public alpha/beta, you try not to add in features based on only a few peoples opinions. How do you know what you decided is fun for everyone? You've made an assumption, not a true test.

I mean, you say in your post Geti that it would be boring if the cover was stronger than knights shield. How do you know? You're saying what you think is boring and generalizing it to everyone else. I'd find it fun because i'm watching the battle unfold around me, and seeing what other people are doing, plus lmao at the idiot archers on the other side wasting their arrows. I know for a fact it would be fun for me because I already have fun blocking arrows and watching the reactions. I've even done this for periods of 10 minutes at a time, until everyone has stopped attacking. The video never got uploaded by me because I kind of got lazy, but in the [HA] vs [YB] clan match second round, we were defending most of the time, and the atmosphere was intense, even though most of the time we were just standing around, waiting for the right moment to strike. Of course, my view alone is nothing but the fact that someone can have an opposing view means it's worth testing.

I'm not trying to make the testers look like idiots. I was a tester once, and I had a lot to say. I would arrogantly say this was right and that was wrong etc. But the testers aren't there to change the entire design of your game. The design surely, is to be faithful to your image of what the game should be, and to make money. If you're letting a few people change that over the majority, major features getting dropped before public, then i'm not really inclined to return for long. Though, you'll probably get support for whatever you do, it's just saddening to me that original fun-sounding ideas are thrown out the window before the public can even see them. If changes that are boring to the player-base are reverted soon after they are made public, there is no loss of loyal fans. It's not a bad thing to test the waters.

Modding... yeah modding is fine, but that's no excuse to cut corners on the default game-style. Unless you're very very efficient with mods, (like minecraft) the default game still needs to hold up on its own.

In any case, i'm still pleased to hear beta is well on its way, and so long as knights combat is properly net optimized for it, it sounds like it will be fun. I'll be back at that point whatever happens.

 

Over the past few months, there have been over 40 testers come through. Most games you get off the shelf have a testing team from 20-100 people before they launch. I'd say this is a fairly good sample size.

And yes - you will "always" make an assumption on what is "fun for everyone" when making a game - regardless of how many people test. That's just a fact of software/game development.

We're not doing that, for sure. But I can tell you that if the game devs say "We'd like X to affect the game positively in Y way", what we do as testers is to see if that happens. If X ends up affecting the game in Z way, rather than Y way, we tell them that. And then the devs debate themselves whether X was even a good idea in the first place. As testers, we always test from the frame of reference of what the devs intend first before testing what we would like to see. That's our obligation.

No, none of the testers are causing major features to get dropped. In fact, i'd say no major features have been dropped so far; all the major changes promised in Beta are still there. Are minor features getting dropped/adjusted? Yes. That's part of game dev.

To be honest, have you made software/games before? This scenario that you describe *never* happens in real life. If you release a feature to the public - in test or beta mode even - if you remove it later, lots of people will whine about it and you will get negative press, no matter how dumb or bad the feature was. Someone will want it back.

This is why all sorts of game dev shops, from the big ones to the small ones, are so hesitant about revealing too much about their final game before it's released. People will unfairly attach moral value to the features without understanding those features are "ideas" rather than planned realities - and even then, sometimes feature X conflicts with game design Y, and feature X has to be removed. I can point you to *many* major games that have been released in the past year that said in dev there may be feature A, and when game was released, feature A wasn't there because feature A ended up sucking/causing problems.

Straw man - no one is cutting corners. I've worked closely with the devs on testing the API and modding stuff, and I can say with assurance they're committed to doing it right. They've fixed stuff not only when it's broken, but even when it doesn't perform in a way that would encourage modding and/or better gameplay. That's commitment; these guys aren't planning on releasing a half-baked game (if they were, you'dve had beta 4 months ago).

Let's give the devs some slack guys, they're trying to make a game that is not only fun, but long-lasting and extendable as well. As a tester, I can say with assurance they're getting there. They're not totally there yet, which is why we don't have a public beta yet. Once we're there, and things work the way the devs envision them to work, you'll get your gold at the end of the rainbow.

 

This sums it up:
KAG Non-testers = The People/The Fools. (edit)
KAG 1.0 Testers + Staff = Government/Sekrit Society/Powerful.
(The gamers should not be afraid to their devs, the devs should be afraid of their gamers.)
This?

 

I fully agree with you about the beta test. We can not predict how the game develops, what players they do not want, and what they will like them. Limitation runs generally in an easy way - a group of smaller, less opinion. I do not know if others think the same.

From what I can see, the developers are trying as much as possible, but it seems that the effect of receiving a REALLY what we wanted in this game. Drill as a replacement ram? I do not see it too well. Modifications? I think it's a great implementation, I hope that it will facilitate modifications to the game, do not block our creativity, but not limiting to a group of people who have Angelscript in a small finger. I understand perfectly that rewriting the entire game to another engine takes a lot of time... However, the KAG seems so inviting as the game was promoted at the beginning (when it was the first "newspaper" premium, which showed what we can get when the game is finished)?

Then, the main reason why I bought this game, it was a mode called 'Overworld'. For the record, this was the mode in which you would most likely be to the great worlds that were connected to each other, we could become the most dangerous criminals, create an army and fight against the army of necromancers, have in my hand the whole trade, or explore lost temples in search of ancient magic. Probably, it was the thing that I was thinking all the time. The rejection of this mode, however, that the KAG processesing stopped for me to be a more important game. I'm not saying at this point that I do not like this game, but lost 'its value' in my eyes.

 

Yeah thats what i wanted! I was able to ''try'' that in the KARPS server, there few different maps with some dungeons and stuff, but those were only maps.

At first i thought about this game that there will be like strategy and wars, breaking into the base and some camping and surprise attacks, NOT randomly running into enemys team with bunch of archers spamming arrows, knights just running to death and builders just laddering walls. It did dissapointed me, but you just can't find another game like that. Modding KAG is easy but you can only do little stuff, like only adding health, and letting some team use only 1-2 classes. I thought in the KAG 1.0 there will come more like ''RolePlay'' update beacuse look at that, farming, different kinds of blocks, inventory, cool water but ''factories'' are like shops not workshops...

I still hope in the KAG 1.0 there are smaller ''workshops'' in case when you are near enemy fire in a castle or wall.

 

@Splittingred,

That is hopeful that there are more than just a few testers, 40 people sounds a lot better than 10. I think what I had an issue with was the way MM had described the process. From what he described (and past experiences) it sounded like he would present a feature to the testers and they would say that said feature is boring and they don't like it. A better process is like you described, testers saying what has happened rather than taking excess control given to them. If it turns out a boring game, then i'm quite happy to say someone got it wrong somewhere. What I don't want to see is people saying "Well we tested this and found it was rubbish" using "test" in a very loose sense of the word. If you are assured the devs are indeed not cutting corners and not simplifying the game unnecessarily, I will take your word for it. But I think i've made my point clear now that the general public should not stand for "Don't like it? Just use mods" attitude.

Also, as for people whining about features being removed this can be circumvented. As I described, the model that I think would work best would be "Come on KAG at this time, we are testing X out" making it clear that during those few hours, default servers are changed with the new features added, and take opinions after. Or even a whole day devoted to new features, to account for people in different time-zones. This way you are not actually implementing features, then removing them, you're giving a short demo of them. What we had before was a test build, but I can understand if that got ditched, it's not including free members and segregates golds and frees, requiring gold servers.

 

I know when I was actively testing, I was posting screenshots, videos, and experiences with certain elements, additions, subtractions, etc. It's not just a bunch of us jerking off on each other, you know.

 

But don't games and other activities define the said culture?

The point here is quite simple: a competetive game pits a human against another human. Only one can win, others lose. Loosing sucks. People are encouraged to become superior over each other, which means they have to win, eventually or theres no point in it if all you do is loose all the time.

This naturally drives people to strive for victory and the more serious it gets, the more brutal the methods become to do so, introducing stress, hostility, trashtalk and what other strategy to overcome the opponent. It may start innocent and well-mannered, but its basically programmed to degrade into destructive behaviour eventually.

So what I'm saying is that competetive design is inherently destructive and unhealthy. In a sense, a competetive game breeds the problematic culture.