Question about being a game tester
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I want to know if the devs have thought about character whipes during alpha/beta testing. Pretty much got a guaranteed spot in the pre-alpha and will buy my way into alpha testing in the kickstarter.
I have lots of experience in testing alpha version of games, but haven't done it in a couple of years. In some games it drove me mad that they whiped my character after every new build. Those games had grind in them and I needed to grind again to be able to reach the previous bug location and check if they where gone/back. I'm a patient guy, but after +100 character whipes even I get frustrated. I know it is sometimes needed, but plz try to avoid doing it with every new build. Fractured doesn't have grind, but it has exploration in procedurely generated content. Don't want to run for hours after every build before I can contine testing. Well let's say 10x is okay during an alpha/beta, but not 100-200x
Can you plz take that into consideration?
Edit: Just thought of something else that might be an issue. If the game has procedurely generated content, I might not find/unlock the same abilities and thus I might not be able to reproduce a bug under the same conditions after a new build. Is that correct?
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I'm not 100% sure, but if I remember correctly, the procedural generation is just a tool the devs use and then manually build the map on top of it, which would mean the land would stay the mostly the same between builds.
About the resets, maybe the devs could give the alpha testers access to some pre-defined characters that already have some skills unlocked to make testing easier. Obviously this would be useless when testing skill acquisition, but when they want us to test combat, exploration and such, it might be quicker this way.
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always assume they will wipe often.
it'll depend on what changes in the build whether they need to wipe or not. remember there isn't any grinding but i'm sure we'll be ganging up on npc's!
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The only issue is that knowledge takes a long time to get.
But I'd assume that in Alpha / Beta there will be a way to gain knowledge "faster", to be able to test everything.
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Always assume you will have to start fresh at launch.
However, also assume that if the cash shop is available in beta, you will get back your purchase value for launch. Some games even give you extra back like Warmonger.
If the game has procedurely generated content, I might not find/unlock the same abilities and thus I might not be able to reproduce a bug under the same conditions after a new build. Is that correct?
It is not!
Procedurally-generated is different from pseudo-randomly generated. Procedurally-generated just means the content is not technically there yet and is built from a "seed". If that seed remains the same the content will be identical no matter how many times it's generated.
However, most games mix the two. For instance, a treasure chest may be in the same place every time, but what's inside of it is RNG each time it's opened.
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It would surprise me, when in the Alpha not always are wipes over wipes.
Also a experienced and thinking devteam will know to set the people on the places they want to test with the things they need to test.
Your experience sounds like a poor devteam with no clue.
Our ones seems to be clever
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i'm sorry but you can only demand so much and tbh the more times they wipe the more consistent and reliable the game will be with each optimisation patch, tbh you should be recording/logging all gameplay as you test anyway, so there is no need to 'recreate' a bug/glitch as you say, tbh this just screams of lazy testing.
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@torrenttalon said in Question about being a game tester:
i'm sorry but you can only demand so much and tbh the more times they wipe the more consistent and reliable the game will be with each optimisation patch, tbh you should be recording/logging all gameplay as you test anyway, so there is no need to 'recreate' a bug/glitch as you say, tbh this just screams of lazy testing.
the more times you wipe the better the starting part of the game will be. if you want to test mid or late game then you need to no wipe so often or allow a way to recreate that stage of the game. Crowfall did that with 5.5 testing where they sped up the training of skills and did find bugs for late game that wouldn't have been found if they kept skill training at 'release rate'.
with Fractured i wouldn't mind having 'pre built characters' for specific testing.
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@torrenttalon said in Question about being a game tester:
i'm sorry but you can only demand so much and tbh the more times they wipe the more consistent and reliable the game will be with each optimisation patch, tbh you should be recording/logging all gameplay as you test anyway, so there is no need to 'recreate' a bug/glitch as you say, tbh this just screams of lazy testing.
I think you misunderstood. If I find a bug at build 0.1234, then If there is a new build of the game, 0,1235, I need to repeat the bug to see if it is gone, right? So my problem was I need to grind for two days before I could repeat it again. I've had examples of bugs I found, that would get solved, and reapeared 3 builds later. So the work kinda builds up the more bugs you find.
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@nelchael I absolutely support this. While part of the testing should be about how the character progresses and the overall balance of the game, when there are 100,000 people (exaggeration) the balance may be off or stuff will be found that was not found in testing. It would definitely reduce the burden on the players, I agree with MMO alphas and betas it can be very taxing to play the game a ton only to have to do it over and over again and while the finished product might be quite different from the testing, it just somehow seems reduced in quality due to the repetitiveness.
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Being a game tester isn't always fun. You are basically working as a QA for the developers. Writing detailed bug reports on stuff you find, checking maps for gaps, glitches etc. basically doing things other than plainly playing the game in order to find the rare bugs in the game.
Especially for alpha games, as a tester you will focus more on the core of the game. Balance skills and other minor tweaks isn't the place for alpha, those can easily be fixed in beta. For an alpha testing the most important is to get the backbone for the game ready and preferably bug free as that would be a lot harder to fix later on, without having to wipe progress.I myself really enjoy this kind of work, but it certainly not for everyone.
