Info beta testers will be allowed to share

As I’m not one of beta testers and probably wont be just wondering if there will be at least some info that they will be able to share with us casual people.

  • Screenshots
  • Thoughts about difference between fan preview and current state
  • short video of actual gameplay footage not cinematics
  • anything
Would you want to see some info from beta test?
  • yes of course
  • no we must wait till release
  • beta test info should be a secret otherwise its bad for the game

0 voters

2 Likes

they would be (without doubt) under NDA and this has always been the case with all of DEs beta testing, so no i guess we won’t see an info from beta testers as it will be under NDA (unless if MS allowed them to share certain one)

6 Likes

Probably u are right. That sucks

I wouldn’t want closed beta info out. When open beta happens we will get more info.

1 Like

Hmm open beta. Thats how long usually after closed beta starts? I didnt follow what happened to AOE 2 and 3 DE’s. As i understand thats when every1 can download a game and play and test things out?

Historically MS tend to have a open beta the last few weeks before release. It’s technically just a continuation of the closed beta but with invitations being sent out to everyone who applies. This was true for all the DE’s and for MSFS 2020 as well.

3 Likes

About the only thing beta testers will be able to tell others is that they received an invite.

6 Likes

I’m not a fan of closed betas.
I thing gamers are aware of what a beta is, especially when the UI has written beta on it everywhere. I think publishers are too afraid that people might thing beta bugs will still be in the game on release. And if the game has so man bugs that it would make them look back than they got enough bugs to fix before starting the beta.

Starcraft 2 was in semi open beta for a long time and so were the expansions. The community on a large scale could talk about balance decisions and ideas that lead to them completely removing some planned units and adding different ones instead.

Also NDAs don’t work with a huge number of testers, there is always a chance that someone will leak something, even if it’s by accident. The more people the higher the chance.
But you can’t test multiplayer balance with a small number of players. It’s sometimes hard to get a fair match in AoE2DE or AoE3DE with a lot of active players.

If there is no open beta before release you can basically treat the release version of the game as a beta.

I’m purely talking about the Multiplayer here, the campaign should remain secret until release. Let it be a surprise.

It seems like most folks don’t realize what the point of a beta is. The point isn’t to gain early access (though certainly that is a fun perk), but to provide critical feedback and crash logs to the developers so the game can be improved in these last few crucial months before it’s released to the public. It’s a privilege to better the future of the game, not to have first dibs on posting media about it online.

4 Likes

Well to be fair, after seeing the amount utter shitposts after every preview of AoE4, to me it seems clear people actually cannot see things in perspective. They cannot understand that some things are work-in-progress and will be improved upon. It’s ofcourse ok to state these things should be fixed before release in a respectfull manner, but that’s not what’s happening. People are calling out:

  • Microsoft for ruining the game cause they are cashgrabbers (so why no microtransactions?)

  • Relic for ruining the game like they did with DOWIII (even though they also created good games)

  • The council for ruining the game cause they only care about pro-players (even though the council also consists of casuals)

I would have wanted a more open approach as well, but to me it’s clear that “people” are not ready for that yet. So I’d say, do a bit of closed beta at first to tackle the big things and make the game presentable so we don’t get thousand arrow threads and afterwards a bit of open beta for balancing and refinement. When they game is a succes and graphics/engine is ok they can do a more open approach like sc2 did for DLC.

3 Likes

To be beta tester u need to sign up to play every day or every 2nd days or something like that? Im thinking i could sign up just to get a feeling for a game and ofc share my thoughts (not with every1 ofc). I could play like few hours every week maybe but dont want to sign up to play like 80 hours / month :smiley:

The team cannot chain beta testers to their office chair, at least yet, so feel free to play as little or as much of the game as time allows.

8 Likes

Closed betas generally are for finding and fixing bugs and crash problems. You start with limited number of players and select ones that will likely send good info. Most features are not ready at that time to support constant play and they are frequently down for fixes. NDA doesn’t garrentee anything but it is useful in making info less likely to show by offering a way to penalize the one who breaks it. In a closed beta it is extremely buggy. I did alpha and closed beta on Elder Scrolls online. It was basicly only the start for a bit and it slowly added more. I had to send in reports. If you remember how bad it was at release it was far worse in that state. There were days i couldnt even play. You dont want to play that. It sucked for a while. Open beta is the one were they are testing system limits and server capabilities. Its the fine tuning process.

2 Likes

It depends on MS if they allowed that or not

If you know your game is buggy you got enough on your to do list that you don’t need a lot of testers yet.

But when you want to test balance, you need a lot of people.
At some point NDAs just become impossible. The more people you have to more likely some of them will leak something.
If there is no open beta before release the balance has low chances to be good.
I hope they are already far enough in development that most bugs are fixed and they are not afraid of showing their game.