Player Council
What precisely is the "Player Council" mentioned on the Technical Playtest page? Is it related to the Game Changers Program? More importantly, what does the selection process look like?
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@carsono311 wrote:@TickTack121To answer your points sequentially:
1. Everyone with 500+ hours... is a LOT of people. The more people they permit access, the more risk they assume. This is simply not how representative sampling works and this method is used throughout science and industry. I do not disagree with more / longer testing windows, but we cannot control that.
2. Players really can be part of the development, just not every player.
3. There are instances of players finding issues in this larger, more open playtest that would not otherwise be found. The real purpose of the Open Beta is to get as close as possible to release day conditions to really test the servers, matchmaking, team / squad making and balancing, and attempt to find any other bug that would only rear its head in these kind of conditions or multiple iterations.
I am not a EA DICE employee or defender by any means, but I do understand and appreciate the software development considerations that they are wise to follow.
The amount of open-source projects is growing each Year. Most of the internet is an Open Source Project. Dice could just easily Hype the Game even more, get some Feedback and create a Game, that most Players are fine with. Yet they do Not use these Ressources. A lot of huge Potential is wasted. Just Let more People play the Game. They will find more Problems and bugs.
Statistics dont matter here as their Community, that gives Feedback and is asked for is highly questionable. Your third point is also completely irrelevant as you dont just fix code of that size in about 6-8 Weeks.
This is Really just rubbish, what they are trying to tell us. No One in the industry Works like that. This work here is what big Branches, without some serious technical Facts, are doing.
@TickTack121Statistics matter when making decisions. Having data that supports or refutes a stance is helpful when deciding on a course of action, such as how to deploy signed NDA playtesting.
Open Beta versions are the closest to live version of the game EA DICE will test and as such, any bug fixes would be expected to be small… not 6-8 week fixes. That level of issue would delay launch dates and be a HUGE deal. Not that such an issue is not possible, just extremely unlikely.
Again, this development, testing, and deployment model is pretty standard across all software development… so I am not sure what you feel is rubbish here.
At the end of the day, participating in an alpha, and especially a beta is only for stress testing, bug fixing and for game balance. The design decisions are already done at this point and very little will change from that point of view. What would be nice to happen, but won't, is to be asked opinions BEFORE the game is basically done.
@carsono311 wrote:@TickTack121Statistics matter when making decisions. Having data that supports or refutes a stance is helpful when deciding on a course of action, such as how to deploy signed NDA playtesting.
Open Beta versions are the closest to live version of the game EA DICE will test and as such, any bug fixes would be expected to be small… not 6-8 week fixes. That level of issue would delay launch dates and be a HUGE deal. Not that such an issue is not possible, just extremely unlikely.
Again, this development, testing, and deployment model is pretty standard across all software development… so I am not sure what you feel is rubbish here.Yeah, no huge deals in the Open Beta and with Release? Did you even play any recent Battlefield? Age you working for Dice? You dont want to get my point, do you?
Just let a specific amount of core players, that actually play that Game, so those Tests. No twitch or Twitter people, because of maRkeTinG or NDA-reasons. Leaks are Part of the Hype. If you Let players be part of the testing, let them give Feedback and Let them make all the Marketing for free.
Dice won't loose anything, they can only benefit. Free Marketing, huge amount of Data and more realistic Tests. This Model might be Standard, but it is just stupid. All i hear are excuses. Remember, they dont have the tech for 2XP.
I understand how engagement in the testing needs to be ringfenced - there is nothing new here, and as some have pointed out it is standard practice. But, how many businesses can boast this kind of customer engagement? If I was Dice I'd be pretty happy in the way that "customers" consider themselves to be stakeholders and the way they are engaging and expressing ownership of the product. Surely there is scope to leverage this. Perhaps not this time round, but what if R&D has distinct periods of consultation and access to development.
Mind you, we all remember "The Homer".... we don't want Battlefield to become one of those do we?
My fear about the "player council" is that it will probably be an infantry pro dominated group that will support making the vehicles clunky and weakish while making the infantry having a huge advantage against anyone who is not a pro vehicle player.
We saw how that unfolded in BFV with Action Man (https://answers.ea.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/70339iBC5B95C56EE07083/image-size/original?v=1.0&px=-1) and how most tanks are as slow as tractors, have bad 3p shooting, get easily disabled, have bad turret angles and need to go back for repairs after each engagement that damages them.
- @UP_Hawxxeye there are other issues too.
+ Play style from some of the videos I have seen most play a particular way such as on 3rd party comms with friends and always front line infantry action mostly medic or assault.
+ Then there is feedback. We are told they represent players. Yet I never asked for any of the current EA changers(i know of) to represent me and from past action have no interest in representing the community. More feedback direct to the community is need from EA/DICE at times too, often information is pushed by EA game changers is heavily filtered or opinion.
I am talking about post launch.
P. S. A few years ago I thought I might have had a chance to become a influencer but I guess I am to antagonistic towards some. - @UP_Hawxxeye I mostly play infantry tho, they honestly need to stop nerfing vehicles that should be blowing things to high heaven
Another game I play did a player council also made up of mostly influencers and their friends, but it was all framed around quality of life fixes and was possibly more on the technical side rather than game design. Things like this ui is clunky or this clothing is clipping or the button mapping doesn't make sense or this rock has no blocking, or why can't we keybind this.
So it could be it's set up more for those sort of things than the actual game design as a whole and is probably done to a list of specs and desired outcomes already laid out by the devs.
@DingoKillr wrote:
@UP_Hawxxeyethere are other issues too.
+ Play style from some of the videos I have seen most play a particular way such as on 3rd party comms with friendsI do wonder if people fall into that trap though of playtesting in the same room as if it were a couch co-op when most people would never experience the game that way.
- @maskedocelot The problem is bfv had a lot of things in the gameplay that was based on feedback from influencers and look how that turned out.
I do not trust Dice not to make gameplay changes based on feedback from influencers.
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