#38 - Dec. 6, 2013, 1:26 a.m.
This has been a really interesting Beta test for a lot of reasons.
First, we've never done a Beta quite like this before. Normally, our Friends & Family Beta phase goes relatively under the radar, because it's locked down with an NDA and includes only folks who have been recommended internally for testing. This time, however, we've opened up invitations to major community influencers in addition to another 3000 of our most active players. On top of lifting NDA restrictions, we're aiming to allow the community at large the chance to provide input at an earlier stage than we've ever offered before.
The best thing about this level of transparency is that we're receiving a massive amount of feedback at an incredibly early stage of development. Forums are lit up, videos and livestreams are coming in, and our inbox is bursting with constructive criticism and positive feedback alike. Weekly reports are compiled that go directly to our development team to make sure they're able to stay on top of community sentiment, concerns, and mechanical feedback while they continue to work. It's definitely a busy time over here, and we've already addressed several legendary item effects, disabled Crushing Blow, and are continuing to making tuning adjustments to skills, difficulty, and monsters as a direct result of player feedback. For a very small glimpse at these changes, you can view some of the hotfixes we've implemented
here.
However, an unfortunate side effect of inviting a larger audience of players to the Friends and Family stage (a phase which is historically not supported with forums, patch notes, or even routine patches) is that people are making assumptions off of a limited amount of information. For example, items are dropping in droves right now. That’s in part because of intentional over-tuning for testing purposes and in part the result of several bugs, making loot acquisition much more rapid than what players will see when
Reaper of Souls ships. A lot of fixes and changes have gone under the radar because, at this point in testing, adjustments happen to the Friends & Family Beta so quickly that compiling and maintaining a patch list for them is not entirely feasible. A tweak that goes in in the morning might be reverted a few hours later. These things happen in multiple iterations and waves and at an extremely fast pace. As the Beta progresses, however, the process slows down a bit and becomes less frantic. For Closed Beta, for example, we'll be able to provide regularly updated patch notes to keep you all up to date and give you a better idea of how your feedback is affecting development.
There's only a certain amount of comfort I can lend, and I know showing is generally easier to accept than telling. We've been hard at work here, and hopefully (very soon), we'll be able to share the fruits of our labor - much of which are directly a result of your feedback.
Because blizz uses betas only to chop, never to add.
Other games added alot thoroughout thier betas, at this point, blizzard is just honing & balancing some stats w/ thier PC team, everyone else is plaforming. Something is'nt working right? Chop it.
You’re right. This is what we’re doing with Beta, because that’s how we utilize our Beta process. Not every company has the same exact goal or process for their Beta testing. Our goal is focused on fixing or removing broken things, so that when the game ships, we deliver a sturdy base game that’s both fun and works.
Betas are a start to a great foundation, and as with all Blizzard games, you can expect us to build on that foundation by continuing to evolve and tweak the game well after we've released
Reaper of Souls.
