qaccy
Emperor
Recently, there's been a trend of new features and functionality leaving the beta server 'early' in order to have limited testing in live servers. To me, this indicates that the beta server seems to be suffering from a lack of testers to gather feedback and data from. Why is this? I believe most of the reason is because in most respects, this isn't really a beta server. Here's my reasoning for thinking such:
Ultimately, what I think all of this leads to is a beta server that's treated more like a normal server that gets to see new stuff early. I feel like beta needs to be significantly sped up compared to a normal server. Here are some ideas I have:
In short, right now I feel like beta does provide that unstable 'things can change at any moment' feel like beta tends to do, but not much else. Is the intent really for beta to otherwise feel exactly like a normal server? Because to me that doesn't feel like a very good testing environment. Does anyone else have thoughts to share on this subject? Perhaps this is just me rambling, but who knows, maybe this could get the ball rolling towards something!
- Gameplay here is identical to a normal server. I see this as a problem because FoE is a very slow and now very long game. It takes time to progress, especially when first starting out. How can new beta testers contribute to testing new features when they have to focus on building up their city from scratch first?
- Many players have to fully commit to this server in order to get established. This leads to players treating it more like another normal server rather than a test bench, and I believe this is part of why there ends up being a lot of complaints whenever something gets rebalanced here. The time investment required leads people to forget that this is supposed to be a testing environment, because it doesn't feel like one when everything takes just as long to do as on a normal server.
- A lot of potential candidates are locked out from participating because of the time requirement. Speaking for myself, I don't have the time to add developing a beta city to my routine so my participation here is limited to the forums and ultimately not very helpful as I can't test anything directly. I imagine I'm not the only one like this. It might even be the case that folks like me actually make things worse, offering feedback on things we have no actual experience with. However, again, I don't have the time to jump in and test them directly.
Ultimately, what I think all of this leads to is a beta server that's treated more like a normal server that gets to see new stuff early. I feel like beta needs to be significantly sped up compared to a normal server. Here are some ideas I have:
- Significantly shorten the tech tree by making costs much lower than they are on live servers.The tech tree has already been thoroughly tested as it's the most important feature of the game. There's no reason why any new beta tester has to re-experience it in its entirety when they've already done so on their normal games. The obvious exception here would be new ages, which should use their planned live values in order to collect feedback and measure pacing.
- Make gameplay faster. Reduce building costs and shorten timers potentially even including the FP bar. Place older GBs in the build menu and allow them to be built at level 1 for free.
- This last one is the most controversial, but perhaps even resetting the beta server every so often or not having it open at all times could be useful as well. To go along with this, with every testing phase players can start out in a specific state, rather than from the beginning. For example, when a new age is released, players would start out already in that age and have all the tools necessary to hit the ground running with testing. Keep the testing window running until the feature is ready for a live release, and then shut down and wipe the server until the next testing phase begins. This keeps feedback focused almost entirely on the feature being tested, and most importantly allows anyone to jump in immediately in order to participate in the test.
In short, right now I feel like beta does provide that unstable 'things can change at any moment' feel like beta tends to do, but not much else. Is the intent really for beta to otherwise feel exactly like a normal server? Because to me that doesn't feel like a very good testing environment. Does anyone else have thoughts to share on this subject? Perhaps this is just me rambling, but who knows, maybe this could get the ball rolling towards something!