Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives
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I'd be fine paying $100 for alpha access. I've never liked kickstarters where they have donation packages for like $10,000 USD. The game loses all of my respect at that point.
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Well I mean the game costs $20~$30. So at $20~$30 you should at least get a copy of the (final) game. I could understand $50 ~ $100 for earlier alpha access though.
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problem is you don't want everyone in testing. many people will just 'play' the game but you want actual testers. people who feel committed to giving detailed feedback.
the higher they place alpha the better chances of getting qualified testers. they can put beta access at the lower tiers, imo, because most of the testing is complete, the features are in, etc.
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@jetah That's not right tho. I like to test things especially spells and builds and everything related to combat (bot pvp and pve). If I need to buy a bundle for 10k USD well I will not buy it to test the game. Putting an high price does not guarantee that buysers will be good testers.
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did i say pre alpha at a 10k tier? you don't want it at a 100$ tier but 500 is about right.
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@Jetah I disagree.
Price range has nothing to do with how many "testers" are in the game. Majority of the people that buy into games in general aren't doing it to provide any feedback, they literally just want to play the game.
@Prometheus (i think it was him) has already said the kickstarter packs won't be in the thousands or hundreds of dollars anyway, so there's really no point in arguing about that.
The main thing here for me is this is the only game I've been excited about in several years, and I hope it succeeds in all aspects because i'll be buying the highest tier pack regardless of price just because I want to support the devs.
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@vezin said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@Jetah I disagree.
Price range has nothing to do with how many "testers" are in the game. Majority of the people that buy into games in general aren't doing it to provide any feedback, they literally just want to play the game.
@Prometheus (i think it was him) has already said the kickstarter packs won't be in the thousands or hundreds of dollars anyway, so there's really no point in arguing about that.
The main thing here for me is this is the only game I've been excited about in several years, and I hope it succeeds in all aspects because i'll be buying the highest tier pack regardless of price just because I want to support the devs.
I think the point that @Jetah has is that if anyone can buy into alpha at say $20, you are much more likely to get the "non-testers" you're talking about. Putting it at say "$250", you are much less likely to get those casual players that have no interest in testing. It's more likely that someone willing to pony up $250 to test alpha would have more interest in the longevity of the game and therefore more chance to provide good testing feedback.
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The main thing for a successful game kickstarter is to have a minimum viable product vision in place prior to any stretch goals
Stretch goals should be able to be added AFTER the minimum is completed and only if the game is working well and stable.
No point having tons of stretch goals if you cant produce a minimum working product, just look at how much of a mess star citizen has been in
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@Vezin it's what @kellewic said.
higher tiers deter those people that just want to play.
I'm not saying putting alpha in to a 1k+ tier but putting in a 200-500 tier would be best for feedback reasons. put beta in the sub 100 tiers, those are the people that just want to play the game and let them but at a later date.
I agree.
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@kellewic said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
(...)Putting it at say "$250", you are much less likely to get those casual players that have no interest in testing. It's more likely that someone willing to pony up $250 to test alpha would have more interest in the longevity of the game and therefore more chance to provide good testing feedback.
I don't think there's a direct correlation between people able to test (being willing to do something doesn't ensure you're good at doing something) and the money people invest. That said, there is a benefit to 'having an entry barrier', namely when you want your testing to be under NDA (because people who invested are more willing to 'forgive' in the beginning of development and less likely to wager with their investment by breaking the NDA).
I think the developers are planning a smart move by polling their existing community, because based on these replies, they can get a rough estimate of a maximum profit (best price to amount ratio).
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you're saying that offering alpha at 5$ is going to get DS some great feedback?
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@logain said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@kellewic said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
(...)Putting it at say "$250", you are much less likely to get those casual players that have no interest in testing. It's more likely that someone willing to pony up $250 to test alpha would have more interest in the longevity of the game and therefore more chance to provide good testing feedback.
I don't think there's a direct correlation between people able to test (being willing to do something doesn't ensure you're good at doing something) and the money people invest. That said, there is a benefit to 'having an entry barrier', namely when you want your testing to be under NDA (because people who invested are more willing to 'forgive' in the beginning of development and less likely to wager with their investment by breaking the NDA).
I think the developers are planning a smart move by polling their existing community, because based on these replies, they can get a rough estimate of a maximum profit (best price to amount ratio).
I agree there's no correlation between ability to spend and ability to test. I guess my qualification of "good testing feedback" simply should have been "testing feedback" since it may not necessarily be any good.
My main point was the lower the price point, the higher chances of getting people who have zero interest in testing at all. Of course there's always the chance, even at $1000, to get those who just want early access to the game with no intention of providing testing feedback.
Maybe during testing they will have a private forum where those included must post feedback at least weekly or dropped and make that known during the kickstarter.
Personally, I love testing, but that might be due to my proclivity to break stuff - one of my favorite jobs was penetration testing before I left the infosec world for the big data world.
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@jetah said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@vezin @FibS
problem is you don't want everyone in testing. many people will just 'play' the game but you want actual testers. people who feel committed to giving detailed feedback.the higher they place alpha the better chances of getting qualified testers. they can put beta access at the lower tiers, imo, because most of the testing is complete, the features are in, etc.
That is absolutely not how testing works.
Yes, you do want "everyone" in testing. You're not asking them how they like the game design, you're checking to see if the server can physically handle all of them being on it at once.
You're testing to see if the server(s) can keep track of so many players and their procedurally-loaded content, you're checking to see if you run out of bandwidth or the server DDoS's itself with too much to process, you're looking for any bugs or glitches or oversights that break the game on a basic level when too many people are on doing various unforeseen things at once, and this is not something that any player can proactively help you do no matter how amazing their feedback is, other than by playing the game in as many different ways as possible and filling up your server crash logs.
Even if such "pro feedback" was desired, Kickstarter is not the way to do it regardless of how high you set the entry price. Kickstarter access is effectively an open alpha / beta, because you are not screening participants other than in how much money they're willing to spend, which does not correspond to feedback quality in any way whatsoever. If you want only "qualified" professional testers, then you run a closed alpha or beta where you personally invite everybody you think will be helpful. (Or personally invite them to the open alpha too, and kill two birds with one stone.)
It's the same as how companies don't send everybody a press copy of their game and ask them to review it - they send press copies to specific publications they trust to give them the reviews they want. (The fact those publications are all shills notwithstanding.)
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@fibs said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
Yes, you do want "everyone" in testing. You're not asking them how they like the game design, you're checking to see if the server can physically handle all of them being on it at once.
I'm not sure where you're getting your information but not all pre-alpha/alpha/beta testing revolves around "can our server handle it."
Especially the pre-alpha where they are giving away between 100-1000 keys, which will be directly correlated to how many testers they want to be in their game during pre-alpha.
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@oobenonioo said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@fibs said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
Yes, you do want "everyone" in testing. You're not asking them how they like the game design, you're checking to see if the server can physically handle all of them being on it at once.
I'm not sure where you're getting your information but not all pre-alpha/alpha/beta testing revolves around "can our server handle it."
Especially the pre-alpha where they are giving away between 100-1000 keys, which will be directly correlated to how many testers they want to be in their game during pre-alpha.They are giving away this limited number of keys because they need to gradually scale up the server load. If the server runs for the first time and falls apart with 20,000 users trying to connect, they don't know if the failure point is 19,000 or 300.
They are still performing absolutely no feedback quality-based selection with this system.
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@fibs said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@jetah said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
@vezin @FibS
problem is you don't want everyone in testing. many people will just 'play' the game but you want actual testers. people who feel committed to giving detailed feedback.the higher they place alpha the better chances of getting qualified testers. they can put beta access at the lower tiers, imo, because most of the testing is complete, the features are in, etc.
That is absolutely not how testing works.
Yes, you do want "everyone" in testing. You're not asking them how they like the game design, you're checking to see if the server can physically handle all of them being on it at once.
Only if their goal is load testing and not actual mechanics testing. Saying it's "absolutely not how testing works" is one hell of a faulty generalization since it's absolutely how "some testing works".
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@kellewic said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
Only if their goal is load testing and not actual mechanics testing. Saying it's "absolutely not how testing works" is one hell of a faulty generalization since it's absolutely how "some testing works".
And fancy that, I covered "some testing" in the post you replied to.
The Fractured devs have made it quite clear they are not interested in our feedback on the mechanics at this time. And that makes sense, because none of those mechanics are remotely finished and they must all be together for us to provide any feedback on them. Any feedback we gave at this time would be utterly irrelevant.
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@jetah said in Pre-Kickstarter Exclusives:
you're saying that offering alpha at 5$ is going to get DS some great feedback?
it's not the price to make a good tester but the person. out there mey be lots of poor tester that does not want to pay billions USD. But you are right prolly high prices could keep away lots of players that could be not tester and just people that want something to play. Har choice there. I would prefer cheap pledges for example.
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Absolutely. I think rewarding those who took the time to invest in the game's development early on should be rewarded and those rewards to show 6 months, 1 year, 3 years down the road.
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As others have said, the server is a server. it isn't a 486 cpu trying to handle 1k connections. testing has a few parts: network code, stability, game mechanics and more. Beta is for network code, client and stability for multiple users. Pre alpha is to make sure there are no detrimental bugs that shut down the server, clog the network or crash the client. pre alpha is more of a proof of concept that things can work.
i'm just saying that the more people you get in for alpha the worse your feedback will be. many people will just mention "x is broke" but wont give details on how to reproduce it. they'll say "x skill is OP" but wont mention what other skills they have or gear they had. you wont get as many trolls because the cash required to "buy in". IF alpha has a 25$ price point then people wont care about that loss (or will get their CC to refund it). Putting alpha at a higher tier 150+ is the best option! if they need more people in alpha they can always let in beta 1-x groups! Camelot Unchained is keeping to their alpha groups for alpha but Crowfall has already allowed in certain Beta groups.
