Re: Player Council

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. 

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@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.

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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.

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.

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@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 friends 

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I 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.