Promoting and Improving Beta

[DeletedUser]

First, please see the post that in part prompted the creation of this thread.

There is no doubt Beta is an important part of our game as a whole, and the more we can improve Beta the better it will be for the game and all of the live communities.
One of the limitations Beta has is we have a small community, and can not always represent the conditions of larger live markets.
I think the best way to improve upon this is to increase our active community's size, and increase awareness of Beta among the live communities.
This will in turn allow us to better reproduce live server conditions here, which will also improve our ability to test different scenarios and content, and get better feedback and identify more bugs.
So I want to hear any ideas any of you have to help us promote and improve Beta's visibility to attract more active players to the server. I am sure many of you have good ideas on this subject, so please share. I am looking forward to it.
Thanks all

 

[Pafton]

One thing that could be done would be to spread the idea of the free diamonds given on beta. A large percentage of the people get attracted to freebies and those who are willing to come here should be encouraged with forum competitions etc. The beta lottery is a positive step ahead in this direction.

It is extremely difficult to find out about beta for s new player. Indeed, the way I managed to find my way here was due to the 'In the meantime, section at the end of an update announcement. I feel this is one area which can be worked upon.

 

[DeletedUser8277]

I would use the same method they use to advertise for Mod positions. The in game messages and the emails. Periodically an in game message could be sent to the live servers with information about the importance of beta and instructions on how to find it.

 

[vesgouo]

What often discourages beta players is the fact that the changes are released without making a brainstorm with the beta players.
The news is released already formatted, pre-defined, plastered. And Rarely any change is made after release. Mainly with the events.

 

[DeletedUser8501]

I have an idea - delete this game once and for all

 

[DeletedUser5429]

So I want to hear any ideas any of you have to help us promote and improve Beta's visibility to attract more active players to the server. I am sure many of you have good ideas on this subject, so please share. I am looking forward to it.
Thanks all

Just advertise. On the news of the live servers.

Something like :

We recruit for beta.
Advantages :

• free diamonds with each events / important release
• get all the new content before it is released on live servers
  
• help us find bugs and improve the game
• international server => confront to other cultures

Of course most people that will try will not stay, but some will, and you will increase beta's visibility and population.

 

[DeletedUser5429]

Now, I'm not trolling, but if you'd like to recruit more active players, you should start heeding their advices.

The one example that comes to mind is the quests window. Many feedback were done, some were not adressed, but the one about speed for aborting quests was very well taken care of. With the first versions you would have had many complaints, I guess with that final one the reception was quite good (?).

Heeding players'advices may be

• in an open form (everybody suggests something),
• in a closed form (you suggest some choices, players choose among them),
• or by statistical means you seem to have (check how many times daily challenges are tried, for example, if incidents are clicked on, or not...)

 

[BRUDAN]

Inno should create a link that will have all the explanatory content about the beta server is its advantages, similar to the invitation link to the game by email.
Beta players share this link in the live server world.
Simple and objective!

 

[xivarmy]

One of the issues with oracle testing is that it was very difficult to get them up in a very short time on beta. Mostly all we could comment on was the bonuses. I did notice it was cheap to level but (silly me) assumed the people who had access to the numbers for levels past 10 would've made sure they weren't as broken as they were. I figured it might've been stupidly cheap to level to 60 with access to arcs (and maybe that that would've been fine as a leg-up for new players). I didn't figure it would just be flat out profitable because that would represent an extreme gap in the understanding of the developers in how their own game is being played by players at the high end. The fix where any building that was being power-leveled (apparently faster than 1 level per day?) got knocked down to where it was when kraken came out further demonstrates this point though (that this pace was nothing out of the ordinary for high level arc owners going about their normal business and somehow criteria for being flagged as exploitative).

Perhaps a longterm fix to this whole situation would be to nerf the arc - mostly this would be unfair to people in the process of getting to where they could use it though as the people that have had one for a year already have most if not all of their buildings through the 'easy zone' in the 30s-50s and able to use them even without insanely cheap levelling to keep advancing their stuff.

 

[RedRed]

What about a "did you know" message on the loading screen? "We have a beta server where you can contribute to make next updates better and more stable"

Another step to encourage the users to trust and therefore make appealing to join the beta server would be to really test all things here before releasing on live servers

 

[qaccy]

@xivarmy I think the only part of your post that might be relevant to this thread is how the Oracle was 'tested' on beta (or more accurately, not really tested at all).

When something new is introduced on the beta server that doesn't have an age requirement, it should be made available to all beta testers regardless of what limitations it may have in the live game. The Oracle quests should have been enabled for all players regardless of research progression, or at the very least give players ineligible for the quests a full set of blueprints so they can build their own and get a better look at it. With how beta is set up, there are no other worlds for existing players to make new cities on so the only ones who were eligible to obtain one were those who either joined beta after it was implemented, or already play beta but just happen to be below mid-Iron Age and could receive the quests. How many players was that? I'm guessing not very many. It ended up not being a very good testing situation because beta still follows the same 'rules' as the normal servers and I feel like in a testing environment, some of those rules should be altered or just not apply at all. Player freedom (within reason, of course) is a fantastic way to discover things that the developers would never have dreamed of being possible in their original designs, and I personally feel like beta is a pretty good 'risk free' place to test things out since it's not expected to be marketed as a normal server.

Speaking of beta as a whole, I think it would be helpful to outline what specifically the 'point' of beta testing is, as far as Inno's concerned. Are beta testers only here as a focus group intended to find bugs? While feedback is very often responded to, I can't help but feel sometimes like updates are already 'set in stone' once they're published to beta. What factors determine whether feedback is acted upon by the developers? Crystal Villas back in Arctic Future, to name one recent example, were reported as being unbalanced shortly after their release on beta, yet it wasn't addressed until long after the update made it to the live servers. Why do things like this happen? I feel like having something like this addressed promptly (ie; before it leaves beta) plays a lot into what a beta server should be doing.

I guess my point is that, before we can start talking about promoting and getting new players into beta testing, I feel like we should make sure that players will feel like their help in testing is actually making a difference rather than just being a 'sneak peek' server where they get free diamonds every once in a while. Unfortunately, while communication here on the forums from community managers is fairly excellent, the actual game itself does not really feel any different from a normal server and I feel like that should change. We're here to help make the game better, and while a lot of our feedback ends up just being 'noise' that ultimately isn't very helpful, it's disheartening when more legitimate concerns or reports of bugs/imbalance go seemingly unnoticed even when it's reported that the feedback is being passed along to the developers.

 

[HuscarlTW]

Instead of just testing for bugs you should be using it to also test the game for balance issues.

I quit playing beta because inno clearly ignores our input on things like balance. I remember people saying that space needle was severely underpowered, and now, lo and behold, it's one of the least popular GBs in the game. Just as an example.

Here on beta, we are taught by the developers that our input is close to meaningless, so why should we bother playing?

 

[GidoB]

Here on beta, we are taught by the developers that our input is close to meaningless, so why should we bother playing?

That best reflects the situation.

Add to that the many language barriers (only English - not all "frequent players" can speak English).
If there were areas in the forum for several languages would also test a lot more ... In the game it can stay that way!

 

[Logain Sedai]

If Inno wants more beta players to be involved, these players' feedback should be more taken into account.
As Huscarl has said :

Instead of just testing for bugs you should be using it to also test the game for balance issues.
Here on beta, we are taught by the developers that our input is close to meaningless, so why should we bother playing?

The example below of the crystal villas is very good and very telling.

@xivarmy
What factors determine whether feedback is acted upon by the developers? Crystal Villas back in Arctic Future, to name one recent example, were reported as being unbalanced shortly after their release on beta, yet it wasn't addressed until long after the update made it to the live servers. Why do things like this happen? I feel like having something like this addressed promptly (ie; before it leaves beta) plays a lot into what a beta server should be doing.

And there are a lot of complaints on the live servers of players who wonder how some changes "passed the test" on the Beta.

 

[SirSmithy]

One thing would be as a motivation, the bug hunt. (I guess there was something similar exists)
You attract live server players here. And for each found bug you provide them some benefit on their live server. It can be based on the severity of the bug.

Like this Delphoi would have the highest severity and the highest reward.

Smithy

 

[DeletedUser8150]

Whey not just send a beta invite to players after X days of play on the main game.

 

[DeletedUser6705]

Personally speaking, I have given up on Beta, as there have been far too many instances where scores of players all said "Don't do it...", all of which was ignored, only to fail a couple of weeks later on the live markets.
If Inno genuinely wishes to attract feedback they shouldn't ignore so much of the feedback they are getting.

 

[GidoB]

Personally speaking, I have given up on Beta, as there have been far too many instances where scores of players all said "Don't do it...", all of which was ignored, only to fail a couple of weeks later on the live markets.
If Inno genuinely wishes to attract feedback they shouldn't ignore so much of the feedback they are getting.

That and the language barriers are the two biggest problems, why so few want testing !!!!
But nobody answers here in the thread thereon...

 

[Andi47]

First of all Beta needs a stronger server. E.g. when it takes three times as long as on live servers to spend a huge amount of forgepoints, where will not be many people who will test things which would involve spending many forgepoints.

 

[qaccy]

First of all Beta needs a stronger server. E.g. when it takes three times as long as on live servers to spend a huge amount of forgepoints, where will not be many people who will test things which would involve spending many forgepoints.

This probably has to do with server location. I imagine similar issues would arise if e.g. someone playing in the US was trying to connect to a UK server or vice-versa. Since Inno's based in Germany, I'd wager the beta server is located in Europe and so anyone outside of that area probably suffers from worse performance than anyone located nearby.