Releasing Unfinished Games: Are you tired of being a Beta Tester?

[Dejablue]

First of all fuck Ubisoft, they have lost 20 or so of the games I bought from them when they changed account systems. I will never, under any circumstances, by another Ubisoft game ever again.

I am very tired of unfinished buggy games.

WoD is THE buggiest WoW iteration so far.

I do not mean a lot of huge game breaking bugs, which it has had some of those and even down time ostensibly due to DDoS attackes, but I mean all of the little bugs, all the little shit that just annoys the hell out of me.

Furthermore, outside of WoW, I am tired of paid betas.

I will use WildStar as an example, but take your pick of any game that could be competitive.

"Beta" tests used to be server stress tests. There was the few that were in full beta and that is cool. With WildStar the entire first tier of 20 man raids was in beta for months, 6 months IIRC. Perhaps not all bosses in full form, but once the paid beta came out it was mandatory to buy in if you intended to even be a bit player in a guild that planned to raid at all let alone server first. World first WildStar raids were a forgone conclusion. Some guilds raided for 6 months and even tested Datascape bosses.

I know that the world contender, was it Voodoo?, stopped because it turns out that WildStar's "hardcore" philosophy of changing the boss's mechanics every week just was not worth the effort. Hell, did anyone ever clear all of 40 man Datascape?

Let alone the terrible attunement requirements (I am all for attunements, but not based on needing others to be a good player - WHOLE other discussion). But I digress.

Then there are games like Everquest Next:Landmark that is in alpha, although they are calling it beta, and asking for money for the privilege to play it.

And it just keeps going and going.

Then you get kickstarters..."Hey guys I was sitting on the shitter and thought up this awesome idea for a MMO, give me some money and I will make you an exclusive backer hat and you will get pre alpha access and can help design the game!"

Hell with landmark above, they make it clear that the players are BUILDING the game.

They put out art themes for say Wood Elves or Dark Elves and tell the community to build stuff with the stylistic quirks of said race. And they do. Great now they have the starting city for Dark Elves, made by rando player X, with promise of credit in game.

Anyway I am ranting now.

Yes, I am annoyed and tired of it.

Cheers!

[George Costanza]

Aside from WoD. I will say having played through some of the ubisoft games, I know that Ubisoft is generally a company I want to avoid.

[SodiumChloride]

Pre-orders. They have already gotten your money. Why bother releasing a good game?

Consumers bitch a ton on the Internet but still buy (and pre-order) like it's going out of style. There are effectively no consequences to releasing bugged to hell games.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I hate it. That being said nothing is going to change. Video games used to be a 'for us by us' type of industry and now it is like any other form of entertainment. Once you go pop you never go back.

[SodiumChloride]

First of all fuck Ubisoft, they have lost 20 or so of the games I bought from them when they changed account systems. I will never, under any circumstances, by another Ubisoft game ever again.

I am very tired of unfinished buggy games.

WoD is THE buggiest WoW iteration so far.

I do not mean a lot of huge game breaking bugs, which it has had some of those and even down time ostensibly due to DDoS attackes, but I mean all of the little bugs, all the little shit that just annoys the hell out of me.

Furthermore, outside of WoW, I am tired of paid betas.

I will use WildStar as an example, but take your pick of any game that could be competitive.

"Beta" tests used to be server stress tests. There was the few that were in full beta and that is cool. With WildStar the entire first tier of 20 man raids was in beta for months, 6 months IIRC. Perhaps not all bosses in full form, but once the paid beta came out it was mandatory to buy in if you intended to even be a bit player in a guild that planned to raid at all let alone server first. World first WildStar raids were a forgone conclusion. Some guilds raided for 6 months and even tested Datascape bosses.

I know that the world contender, was it Voodoo?, stopped because it turns out that WildStar's "hardcore" philosophy of changing the boss's mechanics every week just was not worth the effort. Hell, did anyone ever clear all of 40 man Datascape?

Let alone the terrible attunement requirements (I am all for attunements, but not based on needing others to be a good player - WHOLE other discussion). But I digress.

Then there are games like Everquest Next:Landmark that is in alpha, although they are calling it beta, and asking for money for the privilege to play it.

And it just keeps going and going.

Then you get kickstarters..."Hey guys I was sitting on the shitter and thought up this awesome idea for a MMO, give me some money and I will make you an exclusive backer hat and you will get pre alpha access and can help design the game!"

Hell with landmark above, they make it clear that the players are BUILDING the game.

They put out art themes for say Wood Elves or Dark Elves and tell the community to build stuff with the stylistic quirks of said race. And they do. Great now they have the starting city for Dark Elves, made by rando player X, with promise of credit in game.

Anyway I am ranting now.

Yes, I am annoyed and tired of it.

Cheers!

I believe, traditionally, betas are to catching obscure bugs that have slipped pass the radar during alpha testing. During beta the software should be feature complete and free of obvious bugs ... Traditionally.

As for Everquest Next, it's not really in beta nor alpha.

Landmark is a separate thing. It's effectively Minecraft Online with better 2015 graphics. It's not much of an RPG from what I have seen, you mostly just gather resources and build stuff and it's only of interest to people who have some level of artistic talent - square people like me who can't even draw decent stick figures, need not apply.

It's an opportunity for artistically inclined EQ fans to get their creations into the Everquest Next when it does come out God knows when.

[May90]

I hear this complaint a lot but I do not see it really. In contrary, remembering what kind of bugs released games back in 90-s - early 2000s had, I would say modern games are mostly very polished. Remember that Age of Empires 1 patch that broke save system (every save made when a projectile was flying got corrupted) and had NEVER been fixed? I don't think there is anything like this present in modern releases. The worst bug I've seen in the latest 8 years or so was the memory leak in Dragon Age: Origins which wasn't really bad, as long as you restarted the game, at least, every 2-3 hours.

[Deleted]

Consoles ruin pc gaming for games where their publishers are bribed to release games that are console exclusive for certain amount of time. Also consoles are bad in general.
They should make retard PCs for console users so they don't have to install or have brain or anything that will just work for games and nothing you can do about it, like consoles but it would be pc so you won't need to optimize games for pcs that much.

[Fencers]

None of these games in the OP are unfinished. They just had performance issues post-release. Which is common in the history of video games.

[kail]

Pre-orders. They have already gotten your money. Why bother releasing a good game?

Consumers bitch a ton on the Internet but still buy (and pre-order) like it's going out of style. There are effectively no consequences to releasing bugged to hell games.

For the most part, yes. There is little point in pre-ordering a game that is printed far beyond the demand or going to be downloaded straight to the computer. They still hold a practical use when it comes to low supply games/hardware, especially the collectors edition.

One of my biggest gripes is the term "beta" being used rather loosely. I'd prefer devs going back to strictly closed betas where they can actually use it for feedback instead of simply releasing a buggy game early via open-beta. There tends to be very little difference between open-beta and release, and people can actually spend money on an open-beta.

Overpriced early access is another pet peeve of mine.

- - - Updated - - -

None of these games in the OP are unfinished. They just had performance issues post-release. Which is common in the history of video games.

If it's a server issue then sure, that's expected. If its simply because of terrible optimization that requires patches to fix, I call that unfinished (i.e. ACU).

[Sheperd]

To add to this the rise of early access is one of the most blatant anti-consumer decisions that I have ever seen. Paying for a game that admits its not finished and might never be finished is sickening. The day it dies out will be a good day indeed.

[Krawu]

Depends on whether we are talking actual full price AAA games or Steam early access. With the major publishers, who will release a game as finished and then quietly patch in the missing half and fix most major bugs a year later, then yes, that shit is not ok, and is part of the reason why i never purchase AAA games on launch day anymore. By the time they are playable, they're also 50% cheaper, so patience pays off.
It's a different story with early access, which many people are currently also complaining about. I can't understand why, because people are being warned beforehand that the game in question is not finished, and by this point everyone knows that it very well may never be, so it's a risky investment. But you know what you're getting into, and if I like a game and a company, I will happily get their product early on and help them beta test things.

[Fencers]

To add to this the rise of early access is one of the most blatant anti-consumer decisions that I have ever seen.

How is it anti-consumer if it gives the consumer both choice to participate and transparency?

It is the most consumer friendly practice the VG industry has ever had short of giving you free games & development after point of sale.

If it's a server issue then sure, that's expected. If its simply because of terrible optimization that requires patches to fix, I call that unfinished (i.e. ACU).

That is not unfinished. Unfinished would mean unplayable or missing features of design- not operates poorly or buggy.

[Deleted]

Oh I don't buy anything from EA and Ubisoft without letting at least a week or two pass after release and checking out metacritic and forums for reviews and impressions. I'm not going to be burned again by these douchebag companies with overhyped, rushed and buggy games that most often also suffer from Consolitis.

Glad I dodged the Shit of Mordor and Dragon Age: Shitquisition, the latter was really close to burning me but then I made an effort and waited a few more days. Never bought any Assassin's Creed game cause I know it's mainly meant for consoles and is likely to have shit controls and terrible camera on the PC.

[lordzed83]

I say FUCK THEM ALL 2 Year long paid betas. Not playing any of them.
Ubisoft games only deserve to be torrented

[Sheperd]

How is it anti-consumer if it gives the consumer both choice to participate and transparency?

It is the most consumer friendly practice the VG industry has ever had short of giving you free games & development after point of sale.

Early access is just a cash grab by developers that have no faith in their game. They would rather get people to buy a poorly made and unfinished game for full price then offer beta testing. This allows them to sell a lot long before the games flaws come to light then run with the money and theirs no way we can trust these devs. It breeds bad behavior within the indy scene with the idea that its OK to sell unfinished games. Thats something that we as consumers need to kill off as soon as possible.

[l33t]

Yes, I am tired of paying for unfinished buggy products at release.

To fight that idiotic system I just stopped pre-ordering at all.

If you want my money, devs, do your job. I don't care about "founder" titles or idiotic cosmetic stuff. All I want is normal, functioning product at release.

[Coldkil]

Bugs and issues after release are a common thing - i will ever be like this because as much as you can test stuff out, tehre will always something that goes unnoticed and may be potentially breaking.

Anyway, what i'm tired of is that games seem to have just become a product rushed to stay inside deliver dates and that quantity has overcome quality by a good margin. We get a new chapter of "insert your favourite game brand here" every single year if not more - games that last a very short time but hey! we got a new one ready fr you here!

It seems to me that we're being overflown by titles over titles and getting lost in the mess - overloading the market with so many options that is becoming difficult to actually play those games you bought. How many of us have a good Steam library and not the material time to play all the games that possess? or you bought a new game only for trying it a little time and forget it for a new one?

In addition to all of this, the DLC/Season Pass/Early Access market is becoming utterly horrid. We're not only going to pay for the game, but also for features that in many cases don't justify their price. Early Access is only monetizing what previously was free and just additional income for developers, and has very little to do with the released game quality.

i don't understand the gaming world anymore, seriously. new games seem to need to have a ludicrous amount of features that most of the times are just cluttering everything up, like every single freakin game now has RPG elemnts and character developement, like it needs to be a baseline concept.

Keep stuff simple and efective. Stop this nonsense which is growing and making only more chaos in an already complicated world

[Rukh]

Take half a second to do some research before you buy something. if its incomplete and buggy and you don't want to deal with it, then don't. People act like they're chained to their computer forced to play things.

[Deleted]

Sick of it. Preordered Civ:BE and the game was bugridden from the start. Some have been fixed, but right now I still have to rely on mods to properly play the game with no major patch in sight

[Fencers]

Early access is just a cash grab by developers that have no faith in their game.

This seems like a rather dubious statement based on your personal subjective view that is against facts.

Many games in Early Access had releases of great success: Wasteland 2, Divinity Original Sin, Shadowrun Online, FTL, Don't Starve, Planetary Annihilation, Ziggurat, Neverwinter, Card Hunter, Smite, Plaentside 2-- these are off the top of my head without checking any external sites. All were well received, reviewed and would not have been published without Early Access support.

So it is clearly the case that EA does benefit games to release. Relative to the practice of EA becoming common in the retail space, the long dev time of gaming the track record of EA games even at the conservative estimate of 25% reaching market is very high compared to less than 5% of independent publishing.

Further these are OPT-IN games- where the consumer is advised beforehand and the game's DD/T is often transparent.

Your claim doesn't hold water other than to say you "dislike" (I am assuming?) the practice. This does not equate to the EA practice being consumer unfriendly in an absolute or even a relative sense.