![]() I think there's already something kind of like that here with bug reporting? I don't know if that applies to live servers though, probably just beta? In any case, perhaps a system could be designed where player rewards are distributed via codes that are then redeemed in a server of the player's choice. 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.Īlong with this, I think something that could be done if it's not too technically challenging is offering some sort of 'beta rewards program' that offers players incentives in their live cities for helping to beta test things. 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. 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. To go along with this, with every testing phase players can start out in a specific state, rather than from the beginning. 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.Place older GBs in the build menu and allow them to be built at level 1 for free. Reduce building costs and shorten timers potentially even including the FP bar. The obvious exception here would be new ages, which should use their planned live values in order to collect feedback and measure pacing. 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. 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.I feel like beta needs to be significantly sped up compared to a normal server. 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. However, again, I don't have the time to jump in and test them directly. It might even be the case that folks like me actually make things worse, offering feedback on things we have no actual experience with. I imagine I'm not the only one like this. 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. A lot of potential candidates are locked out from participating because of the time requirement.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. 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. Many players have to fully commit to this server in order to get established.How can new beta testers contribute to testing new features when they have to focus on building up their city from scratch first? It takes time to progress, especially when first starting out. I see this as a problem because FoE is a very slow and now very long game. Gameplay here is identical to a normal server.Why is this? I believe most of the reason is because in most respects, this isn't really a beta server. To me, this indicates that the beta server seems to be suffering from a lack of testers to gather feedback and data from. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |