Make Reborn dungeon/raid/boss content beta-testable

Suggestions
#1

A growing trend in multiplayer games is to have public test servers to test patches before deployment. Similar to how reborn will be tested before deployment, do this for the dungeon/raid content as well to ensure minimal bugs for the rest of the community.

People will be able to provide feedback on whether boss mechanics feel right for Orbus, tune the content, and provide feedback on critical issues that would be game breaking.

It will improve the community and game overall for everyone and squash bugs before the content is released.

#2

This. Pushing progression content feels like beta testing as we try to get bugs fixed along the way. If not this maybe hire a testing team that can clear the fights as intended before they’re implemented.

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#3

I would also support either having a beta testing team or open it up like you are going to do for reborn to test bosses and get feedback.

#4

So we would either open it up to everyone or not at all, I don’t think it would be fair to have a specific group just for that as it would obviously be a huge advantage.

I think I mentioned this during the interview we did a few weeks ago, but I have been thinking about doing this for sure. Obviously the downside is that it sort of ruins the surprise of doing the Raid after it comes out and the “world first kill” really just becomes who can execute their pre-planned approach the most perfectly/fastest.

But yeah I welcome thoughts on this, as it’s definitely something we are leaning towards doing.

#5

I think your best option for compromise is to hire a testing team. A group of 10 players capable of clearing your content that you pay per testing session. Then those players do not compete in the release. That way you still get you bug elimination at the same time as preserving the race for world firsts.

#6

The whole idea of opening it up to a wider group is to catch a lot more bugs and things that you can’t catch in normal testing scenarios. Having 200 people run through a piece of content and all try it “their own way” is going to cause a lot more stuff to shake loose than having 10 people do it even if they try everything they can think of.

Obviously we already have an internal testing team and we will likely continue to expand that, but I’m not really sure that having 10 people run through the game really gets the same result as having it as a part of open beta testing, even if their able to put in significant time doing it. A lot of the bugs that we miss right now are less about “this specific mechanic doesn’t work as designed” and more about “oh it turns out someone had the idea you didn’t think of to do A, B, C, and D while doing the boss and that causes X to happen which isn’t right.” You will likely only see A, B, C, and D all happen together ahead of release if you allow a very large testing group access to the content.

#7

Agreed completely. You definitely won’t get the same kind of testing out of an internal team but it would be about as close to the bug elimination you’re looking for without giving up the world first races we have had so far.

#8

Yeah, so I guess it’s kind of up to the community to let me know if they prefer that sort of “surprise” race and we just try and do a bit better job of testing different angles with a bit larger team, or if they are wanting every bug pretty much squashed pre-release, but at the expense of that. Kind of like how WoW does it vs Destiny I guess.

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#9

I think the Devs just need a better/longer QA on the Boss Fights.

I feel like a lot of the issues could have been avoided with more time spent on comparing damage values and testing more in-depth on the mechanics.

3 Examples of many:

  1. Expert - Boss 5 killing the tank in 1 hit (How does this go unnoticed?)
  2. Export - Boss 2 adds being impossible to kill in time
  3. Boss AoE’s not damaging in their respective areas

I’m not 100% for an open boss fight testing even though it already feels like that’s what is in place lol.

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#10

Not only is this not obvious, but sometimes it’s so not obvious that it feels untruthful. Basically -> /Castsvoteformoreinternaltesting. I don’t want to feel like I’m the primary bug tester in a raid/dungeon. I also agree that I would rather not beta test boss content. Playing it for the first time in the actual raids/dungeons, and figuring out how to do it, is the best part of the game imo…

“Try dropping the pools on the pillars…”

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#11

I’m not even really sure what the difference between doing beta testing of raid bosses would even change, as it is now we are the primary testers anyways. Would the difference be more attentiveness to what we are saying are bugs, or just the devs telling us how the fight is supposed to go and then us just doing it? But at that point what’s the point of trying new content if w are just being told the exact specifics of it and doing nothing for ourselves

#12

Well … I guess that’s kind of part of my point. It already feels that way…

#13

Okay, in an effort to get this thread back to a place where it’s actually helpful, let me just re-iterate the same things I’ve already said on the forums before and in the interview I recently did. We have a testing team, but it is not 10 people, which makes it hard to test raid content fully. In addition to that, obviously there are a lot of people who play the game that are better at it than we are/I am, which makes it especially hard to test some of the highest-end content, because it’s tuned for people who are playing the game for thousands of hours. If I played the game for thousands of hours, we literally wouldn’t have a game, because I have to spend thousands of hours making it in the first place.

Expanding the testing team internally (which is already planned to occur) will help with that to some degree, but obviously we’re still going to catch a lot more bugs with external testing. Yes, to some degree that’s what happens now, but it would simply happen sooner in the process such that hopefully more of those bugs are fixed before “it counts” from a world-first standpoint (if you care about that sort of thing).

At any rate, it seems like the opinion on this is somewhat more divided than I initially though it would be based on my previous discussions with folks, so I will give it some further thought, but unfortunately this seems like a situation where some folks are going to be unhappy no matter what the outcome is, realistically.

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#14

didnt mean to come off rude in my earlier post, i was just wondering what a beta testing period would actually look like. would it be it is just released earlier with a disclaimer that there will be many bugs and that the devs will be spend the next x amount of time focusing solely on fixing the bugs, or more like a sign up event for the beta testing that you need to opt into, and then u tell everyone how the boss is supposed to work and let the people in the test run wild, or… etc etc

#15

World first international fellowship meet up. -> Alphabet. +12 points

1 Like
#16

Sorry, didn’t mean to imply I was replying specifically to you, that was more of a general post, it’s just that if you reply to the last post in a thread and then someone posts before you do, it acts like you were specifically replying to the person above that.

I’m not totally sure how the whole thing would work at this point. My assumption is that no I would not specifically tell you all how the fight is supposed to work, it would just be generally available for feedback, similar to how it works now when the raid first comes out. The main different I would think would be that a) there would be less impetus to have to get on and test it right when it drops since it’s not the start of a race timer, b) people might be more willing to group up with people across Fellowships, c) I could make tweaks and fix bugs immediately instead of having to wait for the reset to make it fair, that kind of thing. Basically I imagine it being more of a relaxed environment to get that all worked out, then it launches for “real” and that’s when the craziness begins.

That said, we could also consider doing stuff like tuning the bosses down to be easier so that we can concentrate on the mechanics and less on the difficulty – of course that also opens up the possibility the tuning isn’t as well-tested when it launches. And of course there will be some sort of cosmetic reward I’m sure for participating in the testing as well to reward folks.

But again, all of that does put a pretty big damper on the thrill and excitement of just going into a raid “fresh” and not knowing what’s going to happen on launch day. Which I get is the strong appeal for a lot of people.

#17

This might make the most sense. I’m sure its a lot easier to tune a boss up or down, rather than trying to fix a broken mechanic at raid launch. I think the main thing is to get feedback on the mechanics.

Taking on a new raid the first time is fun, but when you are fighting bugs or a poorly designed fight, it is not fun at all. Take expert mode for example, it is just riddled with bugs and some poorly designed fights where it’s not really fun at all. We are barely raiding b/c it’s not fun dealing with these bugs. I’m pretty confident all 5 bosses would have been taking down within the first week if it wasn’t for the bugs. It’s kind of a running joke now as we try to guess how many bugs we will run into on each attempt. I think having a boss to fight to just test out the mechanics would make the most sense.

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#18

I can understand the frustration which is why we are trying to figure out a way to make it better in the future. That said, I don’t know that we will be doing 3 levels of Raid difficulty in the expansion. Expert mode had a lot of issues not only because it was very hard for us to test (which I’ve already covered), but basically when things get to a point where the tuning requires it to be that precise, a lot of small issues that could previously be ignored or worked around become run-ending bugs, which has been a painful lesson for everyone involved I think.

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#19

So does this mean that Raids are still going to progress as you need to get gear from Raid 1 to do Raid 2?
Or does this mean that every Raid is the same difficult with just a different set of mechanics?

Also just to put it out there, I would rather the fights be less of a gear check and more of an execution check with multiple mechanics/phases. I’m not a fan of performing literally the same 3 mechanics for a 20 minute fight and would rather there be like 3 phases of different mechanics over 10-15 although I know time constraints are a thing.

I would rather wipe on a Boss because someone messed up on a mechanic rather than them not being able to do the mechanic because they aren’t geared enough.

The reason for gear progression would be to make the fights easier/faster as in you can maybe fail an aoe mechanic and live with 10% health because of your gear.

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#20

Although I guess this leads to more mechanics meaning more bugs to go through which is what this thread is about. :frowning: