EA wants your input re: open beta patch

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  • imported_AbblePC

    #31
    Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

    The thing that disturbs me the most is that EA decides to do something such as an open beta test, submits it to the public by announcement that such is about to happen. Then suddenly they retract that by asking a silly question in the regards it may appear to facilitate all the complaining morons on these forums.

    If your going to do something and make a wide public announcement but later retract that movement by asking the whiners and complainers of any EA work what they think is best.. I mean come on.. get some balls EA.

    I say do the public beta.. I work with a Dev team and have since the start of BF1942 and worked closely with EA in the process. WE too had a public beta testing program. Yes you get some who think that reporting bugs and exploits means explaing how they thought it hard to fly a craft or learn new improvements or they would make nothing but suggestions on what they felt was a better implementation of a new object or code and how they would go about enforcing it. But for the most part they understood the true meaning of BETA testing.. they would report bugs and issues with the product and in return many may have already been comon knowledge among the Devs but at least they were confirmed and marked as top priority.

    Many of the bugs reported would be minute in size of causing any delay in development or effect it had on public play, but none the less there were some that were very useful and could not have been found even with exhaustive testing within the developement team. However with all that said and with a public release with thought finished and complete release, there were still issues that arose beyond the testing of a closed beta system.

    So in regards to opening a public beta release.. it is a good thing.. it opens a wide variety of cirumstances that can not be obtained in a closed environment.

    I say at least if not a wide public beta, then allow experienced testers, developers in a test format that enables progressive test reporting and developement such as a CVS system which is even used by EA in the infamous closed beta tests.

    The mod teams devoted to creating good content and meaningful gameplay while maintaining a fun factor and being experienced in what to look for should be top prioroty as a basis of a open beta program. The reports should be in an open obtainable format that all can access and resource such as a wiki and files should be in process versions to keep everything in a flow-chart situation whereas reported bugs/issues/exploits are converted repaired or redone before release to the next version. All remaining issues would be top priority in the next version, etc. etc. Until an open beta could then be released for even wider testing.

    Overall the more people testing and those with exact emphasis on reporting only the issues at hand should result in a better more complete playable version for all.

    Comment

    • imported_Tren
      Member
      • Aug 2005
      • 880

      #32
      Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

      I see it both ways.

      A bad thing - Because EA/DICE should have their own testers, but from past patches, we know that this isn't going to happen so...

      A good thing - At least we may have a bug free patch after the community tests it.

      Comment

      • Copy_of_Blah

        #33
        Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

        Just remember that not everyone has been exposed to a beta before for the sole purpose of helping another FIX something.


        All a lot of them know is that sometimes their computers don't work the same or some other negative aspect of them when they download and install a beta.

        They download a beta for themself and wouldn't know what a debug log was if they were looking right at one.


        Just ignore them and when you release the beta make sure to have some page that informs what the beta is about and where and how to post problems when they are caught.

        Comment

        • solofowaffles
          Member
          • May 2006
          • 4306

          #34
          Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

          ill suport the open beta but would rather they identiy bugs instead of us.

          Comment

          • Nightf1yer
            Member
            • Jun 2007
            • 673

            #35
            Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

            Originally posted by Fuman
            how the hell is this a bad thing? sorry but this is a GOOOD change for once

            sorry there are too many configurations out there for a closed QA team to tackle, this way we can see any incompatible issues that can come up to

            how can you say this is bad?????? really........
            Well said Fuman, this is definatly a good thing. The game is far to big/complex/diverse with so much going on to be tested properly by a limited number of testers in a limited time. There will always be bugs, there is probably bugs that will never even be found. Asking for testers to be able to test every inch of every map in every different type of way is just silly. So stop complaining and get testing :)

            Comment

            • Dan

              #36
              Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

              Mmm.. DI-CE and EA finally think they are doing the correct thing for the community. 90% of players in bf2 only play it for fun and will still be interested in this beta test. 90% of BF2 players probrably don't understand what beta testing is - It's finding the bugs of the software, trying to find anything and everything that is wrong. For example, entering the € sign into a server message will cause you to crash to desktop - Sure, no-one is really going to do that, but it is irrelevant. What EA don't seem to understand is the fact that many BF2 players won't beta test the beta testing process. They'll just think it's cool and rave about having the new version of BF2 to their friends.

              EA need to have a beta testing team - whether it be members of the public or not - It doesn't matter - I can bet you this would work more efficiently than asking the public to do so. Perhaps EA should have an online form in which you can sign up to the beta testing, providing you have a decent sort of "resumé". I don't know - Maybe I'm typing this idea in the hope of EA reading this and taking it into consideration, but what can I say - What can one person do ?

              I've beta tested software before (even my own) - It's practically testing and actually attempting to break it. Some programmers used to hate me because they hadn't put a maximum limit of characters on a certain textbox for example - which would end up in an overload.

              Comment

              • Fourty-Fizzle

                #37
                Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                Originally posted by $kelet0r
                a bad thing - it's the culture of DICE accepting shoddy quality coding that needs to change not the beta testing
                The beta tests before did their job - the problem lies in that DICE did not correct many of the bugs when they arose and shipped a patch regardless
                No amount of open betas will change that - they will if anything make things worse
                I disagree. Its generally a good thing. Developing large scale software for a living, I understand how difficult it is for a QA/Test group to simulate real world testing. Sure, they may fire up 10 or 20 servers, load them up with bots/people, and try and test key componets, but its impossible to test everything. Just thinking about fully testing something such as BF2 is mind numbing, there is just no possible way you could even come remotly close to fully testing something of this scale (with a normal sized QA group), and to do it by July? Absolutly no way. Then to think about taking into account different hardware, OS's, and setups... Insane isnt the word.

                As for the known bugs not being fixed, I wouldnt put the blame on the DICE developers. Generally, in my experience, the way this type of situation rolls is as follows; EA sets a timeline for DICE, they need this release by such and such a date. There are x number of known issues, all of which are given a priority, Critical, High, Medium, Low. The priority of issues will vary between Product Management, engineering, and QA. Unfortunatly, the engineers/developers generally dont have much say in what should get fixed first, while PM usually has the most, and QA's influence is somewhere inbetween. PM's generally know little to nothing about development, and dont understand why a developer cant snap his or her fingers and make everything work. Much like MOST OF THE PEOPLE I SEE COMPLAINING, PM (sometimes QA depending on the group) has even less of an understanding in regard to bugs. Just because a bug is known, does not mean its easy to fix. It may be an easy one and take only 15 minutes to fix, OR it may be an issue that is very complicated to debug, and take hours, days or even weeks (or more) to find and fix. Its just not as easy as many think it is. Its often times one of the more difficult parts of being a developer. Not to mention its generally boring, and developers would much rather work on something new than go through old code trying to track down a bug.

                As for bugs that get introduced in new patches, it happens, unfortunatly its expected to a degree, and the blame shouldnt always be on the developers. Take for instance the browser in the 1.3 release, its probably a pretty easy bug to find, and most likely has already been fixed. So why did such an easy to spot bug get into this patch? Probably for one of two reasons; PM said "its not a showstopper, we need to get this out, we have a workaround, work on something else", or QA simply didnt test the browser. There have been many times when I had a new version of software "approved" by QA, only to find out 2 weeks later when its released that there are obvious bugs. When I would go talk to them and ask how in gods name the software was approved, and the bugs were not brought to my attention, reasons ranged from not using clean test machines, to not installing it right (copy vs install), not having enough time to test that feature, forgetting to submit the bug into DevTrack, or even testing the wrong version. Many many many times I have wanted to grab a QA guys/gals head and beat their skull in with a brick for making such stupid mistakes. But ultimatly in the end, its just that, a mistake, and had more time been alloted for testing, or had I explaind something better, it would have been found and fixed.

                Developers are at fault sometimes as well. Code was poorly written, memory conservation was not thought about, etc etc etc. Such issues should not be upto a QA group to find, and should be taken care of by the developer. They are technical issues, and QA's main task shouldnt be to run engineering tests.

                Everything boils down to a few factors. Time and resources. Not enough time to test, not enough testers, too few developers, to few test setups, etc.

                So, why is a public beta a good thing? Many, many reasons. Instead of a 10 man QA group (which, suprisingly is considered fairly large) spending 400 man hours a week testing the software, you have THOUSANDS of people testing the software. With those thousands of people testing the software, come tens of thousands of different setups. Different video cards, different network connections, different OS's, different soundcards, different CPUs. Along with that huge testbed, you now have thousands of people using the software in a real world scenario. Each person will use the software differently, and code coverage goes for measly at best with a QA group, to near complete coverage. The completely off the wall things people do never ceases to amaze me. Take for example the hotel glitch. Unless the testers were looking for an issue specifically such as that one, the chances of finding that bug are very slim. Many testers wouldnt think to try that, its just how it is. Along the same path, no developer can think up every single instance of how a cardrop may be used. With an public beta, you get more people using cardrops in different ways, so you get a more complete coverage of scenarios.

                While a public beta wont ensure a complete bugfree release, it will allow for a much bigger test bed, and will allow for more bugs to be found. This doesnt mean the bug will be fixed, but if a bug isnt found, it will never be fixed, unless by mistake or the developer just stumbles across it while doing a code review. A public beta will allow for more bugs to surface, and general feedback.

                Both microsoft, google and AOL, three of the biggest software companies in the known world use public betas. Vista has been avaliable to developers as beta for several years, and public beta for a while now. Gmail has been public beta for several years as well. AOL always has public betas of AIM. Same with google earth, office 2k7, windows live, IE 7, google desktop search, the list goes on. How about the beloved Firefox/Thunderbird... beta for YEARS!

                There is a reason why they are all releasing public betas... because they really do help, a lot! As I said, not all issues get fixed, and not all bugs are found, but, the more people testing the software, the better.

                Also, while sure, people would like to be rewarded (with stats in this case) for testing the beta... it might be a bad thing, and I wouldnt be surprised if it doesnt happen. Think about the karkain hotel bug. In a beta, people are supposed to be looking for bugs. Where does the hotel bug lie in that light? Would it be something you get banned over? Again, one of the reasons you are beta testing is to look for issues like that. I dont know if it should be something someone beta testing should be turned into BFROE for. But, I dont think its fair to let them pad stats as a reward for finding a glitch.

                And for those who read the whole post, im sure my opinion is very different from yours. Hopefully you agree, and think the public beta will lead to a much more stable next patch, making it a fun and enjoyable game to play. For those who dont, flame me, call me a fool, say im an idiot, tell me my momma is so fat when she steps on a scale is says one at a time... whatever. If you dislike the game so much, think DICE does such a crappy job, and you know whats so great, what are you waiting for, go write your own game!

                Comment

                • WDA_Endless954

                  #38
                  Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                  GOOD THING.

                  How often have we all found bugs/issues with new patches they missed? Every time, right? Well, now we'll get to catch them BEFORE it's released! This is a win-win for everyone.

                  Comment

                  • ponton
                    Member
                    • Oct 2006
                    • 228

                    #39
                    Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                    I vote for open beta. We should give it a try. We already know what results are with closed beta testing

                    Comment

                    • BIFF EXPLODER
                      Member
                      • Jul 2007
                      • 1136

                      #40
                      Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                      problem is that some ppl are nevery happy with anything, if u geve them the open beta they say its bad even if the reason doesnt make sense, if u dont give them the beta they say its still bad because of some other reason....

                      thing is, ppl are never happy, if u dont like it, dont download it.

                      Comment

                      • Jaxx

                        #41
                        Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                        My question is where and when will this take place and how will we implement the response to EA. Open forum>?

                        Comment

                        • tazman311

                          #42
                          Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                          I found that most of the beta testers are not listened to. I was a beta tester for novalogic and they really never listend to there testers. I hope ea listens to their testers. By the way how to you go about being a tester anyways

                          Comment

                          • Kattspya

                            #43
                            Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                            Originally posted by Forest
                            Now instead of having a small group of beta testers, you have thousands of people who are playing the game and creating different scenarios and finding different effects/bugs of the patch that would have never been found before. How the **** is this a bad thing.
                            I can count eight serious bugs when thinking about it for one minute. Four of them are very serious IMO (name tag, getting into houses, shooting through vehicles and prone buging) and have been known for several months. three of them have been known since the first patch and DICE has tried to correct two of them (pronebugging and getting into houses) in various patches. There is no need for a beta test if they can't even fix known bugs.

                            The only good thing that can come out of an open beta is exposure to more hardware/software configurations. But my hopes are not high since it took them three patches to enable patching on windows systems with special characters in the windows username.

                            EDIT: Refer to the known bugs list somewhere on this forum, it was started by Indian Scout.

                            Comment

                            • Fourty-Fizzle

                              #44
                              Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                              Originally posted by Kattspya
                              But my hopes are not high since it took them three patches to enable patching on windows systems with special characters in the windows username.
                              Please tell me you dont use "Кâ77ŠPΫά" as your win username!

                              Comment

                              • Kattspya

                                #45
                                Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch

                                Originally posted by Fourty-Fizzle
                                Please tell me you dont use "Кâ77ŠPΫά" as your win username!
                                No, just plain Kattspya so I didn't have a problem with ze patches. However ÅÄÖ are pretty common characters in the swedish language so there was alot of fallout in the swedish community

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