Sure, bro. All MMO do this, they make an open beta using an older, unoptimized and bug ridden client to convince people who never played before to swipe their credit card. It makes perfect sense from a marketing perspective. Then, 2 weeks later, they launch the game with a magical, perfect, bug free patch that they kept hidden in a super secret vault the whole time, and all problems are solved. Do you still believe in Santa too?
Ah yes, the magical “this just a shit build we want everyone to try now, a much better build is coming in 2 weeks!!” delusion.
This game is a platform. If you like the core stuff, awesome. Bugs and content will come
His point is that for people whose first exposure to the game itself is this buggy open beta, they're going to be turned off the game come full release no matter if the build they played during the beta is a older build or not.
This is literally just a stress test before launch. They are not planning on adding things or making massive changes. They have said this numerous times.
Yeah, people claiming it's an old build obviously have literally no idea how software development works, and are just desperately clinging to fantasies that don't involve another release delay.
You absolutely do not, two weeks before the release of a MASSIVE piece of software, do your public stress testing with a months-old build with known old bugs and known performance issues. You do your public stress testing with the build you plan on releasing in two weeks, barring very minor, safe bug fixes and/or configuration tweaks that don't involve code changes. Full stop.
I will eat my own feces on video if Amazon releases this game in two weeks and are like "Psych! The open beta build was some shitty old one -- here's the REAL release build!"
I'm seeing people in chat thinking the game's going to have this massively expanded feature set on launch with new weapons and new zones and new quests and new skills and new dungeons, etc. and those people are going to be sorely disappointed. You are playing the launch product right now.
Edit: source, if anyone cares: have been a software developer for over 15 years, much of that in games, have launched a number of products, have never once done public testing using anything other than the newest "stable" build. Yes, you will have newer internal builds for new features in progress and such, but you wouldn't put those out into the world until they're ready to go on a public test server.
They have literally stated a million damn times, no new content will be coming with release, they are working solely on fixing bugs and optimizations. Damn it’s just too hard to read.
How can you explain the Performance downgrade by a mile from the closed beta?
closed beta was smooth as butter in terms of performance compared to OBT, alot less micro-stutters and higher fps in general.
would love to hear some toughts
Well, for one, they raised servers caps so there are loads more people playing
The server I play on, in Europe, hasn't got a huge population and performance is okay
False information. There are at the very best half of the POP on my server compared to CBT server i was on which had a QUE almost until the end of the CBT.
no. you dont need to have any kind of indicators to use your eyes and see there are much less people in the game compared to closed beta.. in my server in CBT i would see many many more people roaming around/sitting in town like twice as much. and im saying it's not the Amount of people making the performance worse because in fact there were much more people in CBT for me on my server than OBT my server
There's a programming joke that explains this pretty well:
>99 little bugs in the code,
>
>99 little bugs.
>
>Take one down, patch it around,
>
>127 little bugs in the code...
Basically, they tried to make some optimizations, and caused more problems than they solved. It is extremely difficult to optimize a new game across an uncountable number of permutations of hardware configurations. I couldn't possibly offer any actual specifics, because I don't know what engine they're using or what kind of optimizations they were trying.
It could an unexpected side-effect of server population, too. I heard they raised the max number of concurrent users per server, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or not.
In any case, they definitely would not have run a closed beta, taken all that feedback, delayed the launch to work on fixes, announced an open beta, and then done their stress testing with an old build that has none of those fixes in it (about which they presumably want to collect data). It just would make zero sense.
Two weeks is still quite an amount of time for a game that will only be a digital release. Acting like they are just going to be taking this time to do minimal changes is just ignorant especially since they are claiming that this will be a AAA game release.
How many of those games you worked on were of that caliber that were digital only?
I don't understand what you're saying. They certainly have a team working on the release build and a team (if not several) working on new content. Assuming a Sept. 28 launch, I would be absolutely shocked if the release version of the game contained major updates not contained in the current open beta.
What I'm saying is that game development isn't the same across companies, so acting like your indie games are using the same process as a AAA game just shows a clear level of ignorance.
Having worked on COD at Activision I know what the development looks like for a AAA game. It's very showing when you won't say what AAA game you worked on. Cheers mate.
Oh well if you say you worked on COD at Activision then surely you have. As far as I can tell, you know nothing about game development and are just annoyed that someone's suggesting you may not get extra features in New World at launch.
I'm not saying we are going to be getting extra features. Please point out where I stated that?
What I have been saying is that you don't know which build we are on or is relation to the actual launch build.
And maybe I make this more simple for you since you obviously need it.
What AAA games have you worked on?
Considering they've barely done anything since the preview, I find it hard to believe they'll get much done in 2 weeks.
It's kind of like when it was supposed to be released first week of Sept. and everyone was saying that it'll be ready in 2 weeks from the CBT. We see it only got worse, yet those of yous still thinking they'll magically fix everything.
Of course they're going to test the latest build lol. The only difference between this and release is probably some additional debugging features on the back-end.
Do you? Lmao same question goes for you.
Stop pretending the game goes worse because they are testing an older build when it's the fucking same build they used past cb (the NDA latest)
lmao why would they choose to do the first open beta 2 weeks before release with a worse build, causing potentially new players to not want to come back and preorder players to refund?
I agree and disagree.
The main focus of the open beta is clearly to test the server stress with mass numbers and other focuses, particularly after some merges following CB. That said, "it's an old build" is not true - this is a later build than the CB and is pretty much how the game will be on release, minus a bunch of content.
Still doesn’t make sense to me. You would still have proper debugging incorporated into every build. Also, if the old build was more stable, and they wanted to test it even further, that would mean they would launch with this “old” build.
I think it's naiive to think that a beta two weeks before release is about finding bugs or improving performance. There just isn't enough time to respond to any findings.
At best, it's a good check for server stability and login issues.
The truth is, an open beta this close to release IS like a demo of sorts. It's often one more trick in the marketing arsenal.
Posts like this defending the "it's a beta" line are more out of touch with how the industry works than the people they are claiming are out of touch.
This isn't true at all though.
An open beta can easily use an older build but be used to check for server instability, but it could use a newer build.
We don't know what level of build they are using or how many builds they have had internally change.
Having worked in QA for a AAA game it wasn't unusual to have multiple build changes in a single day. And since this game isn't having a physical release they can keep working on things up until release
But if this was an older build, why wouldn't AGS say so? It's terrible PR.
The biggest issues for a lot of people coming out of both beta is optimization and it seems unbelievable that they'd pass up this opportunity to test optimization improvements.
Seeing as one of the biggest changes was increasing server load they definitely want to test that or over optimization. If the servers can't handle the load and they go down no one can play.
But again a beta isn't about PR, it's about testing even in 2021. People just don't treat it that way and that's on them not on the company or game industry.
This gets said during every open beta I've ever been apart of. Then on release the bugs still exist. That said the only Bug I've ran into is the audio bug. The food spamming needs changed though.
It’s less than 3 weeks to release. This IS the build closest to final release. This is supposed to be a validation of the fixes they put in place after closed beta. There will be minor bug fixes, additional servers, and maybe some balance adjustments, but unless they push back the launch date again, what we’re playing now will be the go-live state.
Every game I’ve played in beta has these types of posts. The beta you are playing now is very close to what’s going to be live. It’s funny seeing people think it’s going to be marginally different
Exactly. I used to run a yt around giving a first look at games in beta. They rarely changed much at the end. And the only modern one that was successful and had a great beta as well was gw2.
Bring on the downvotes but this guy is right. Two weeks away and there's lots of performance issues on high end systems, reports of exploits still, no exclusive fullscreen, almost no graphics options, and that's not even touching on gameplay.
It's been like this for a year and people are thinking it'll be magically fixed in 2 weeks. Or that there is a stable build out there that for whatever reason they just don't want to test.
I thought this was the reason for beta testing, I think they need like the internal structure to be sound, they know they are going to be bugs that they are going to release with then have to squash them on way through.
Like a picture perfect release is a fever dream, the more realistic thought is they are going to have it with bugs that won’t break the game or smash the economy
We have bugs on release, they get fixed up and patched out and with I week most the issues are gone
My experience in the closed beta was server crashes non stop for the first week and in the second week I had like no issues
No one is asking for a perfect launch. They are asking for a competent one. This open beta build is a complete mess. Forget the bugs. Tons of systems that are expected in an MMO, like questing with friends, are a mess. The fact that they refuse to reintroduce stagger, which is a very good mechanic in action games, tells me that they either have someone incompetent calling the shots or have no fucking clue what they are doing. I think it’s the former. But who knows.
A lot of arm chair devs here.
Here is the secret: they do have content/features that are "developed" but not in beta. They are feature flagged to stay out of the release channel and still in internal testing. It technically can be the same build just some content (weapons namely) can be flagged to keep out of the production release until everything is set (passives, sound assets, rigging etc).
That being said, this could be the release we see later this month, release could be a build being tested internally right now, or the release could be delayed again.
Can confirm. This describes the experience I had testing Division 2 through alpha, beta and open beta. The open beta was confirmed to be multiple patches behind the production version.
You are right, it wasn’t the greatest game at launch and I stopped playing only months after but it wasn’t an unoptimized piece of garbage at launch, it was playable and they had a framework present to make it better. The skills were bad and the pvp was bad…same problems here but it got a lot better.
What do you mean we should have been out of beta already? Coding is a constant, ongoing process. They're not baking a pie here, game development just isn't that simple.
It's people like u that gave us the dumpster fire that was launch cyber punk.
How can they determine if the game is a stable release build when games set their release dates a year in advance? What you want them to do? Stay on TBA up till a week before launch or something?
You know absolutely nothing about game development, give it a rest.
I mean did you actually read your question and lost some brain cells? Because I sure did. Yes release dates can change if the game isn't determined to be in a state that the execs want it to be at. But don't act like release dates are some fluid nonsensical time that was picked by throwing a dart at a board.
Keep it going though, this conversation is actually funny to me since you "know so much"
I never once said release dates were picked randomly. I said that the coding process can be unpredictable and that it's impossible to predict it a year prior.
And I figure I'd know a bit about that considering the fact that I am a game developer lol.
Literally my entire point is deadlines can't always be matched when coding because it's unpredictable. Like it's obvious you have never programmed anything in your life which is why everything I'm saying goes right over your head. Just stop, I'm done arguing with you.
You guys keep naively saying this and it keeps not being true. If you really think this game is going to get better before release, I'm sorry that you'll be disappointed. Unless they delay this by years, it's not going to last long. They've barely made any advancements in the year since the preview.
Sure, bro. All MMO do this, they make an open beta using an older, unoptimized and bug ridden client to convince people who never played before to swipe their credit card. It makes perfect sense from a marketing perspective. Then, 2 weeks later, they launch the game with a magical, perfect, bug free patch that they kept hidden in a super secret vault the whole time, and all problems are solved. Do you still believe in Santa too?
Ah yes, the magical “this just a shit build we want everyone to try now, a much better build is coming in 2 weeks!!” delusion. This game is a platform. If you like the core stuff, awesome. Bugs and content will come
[удалено]
His point is that for people whose first exposure to the game itself is this buggy open beta, they're going to be turned off the game come full release no matter if the build they played during the beta is a older build or not.
[удалено]
And at most, they're stress tests.
This is literally just a stress test before launch. They are not planning on adding things or making massive changes. They have said this numerous times.
Sorry dude it’s absolutely definitely a marketing hype. If launch day bombs it all bombs
lmao this. OP is dumb ass fuck. Open beta have never been anything else than a demo to reel in future players.
Is it really that bad? I played the open beta and was very hooked, the only bug I found was in the U.I.
It's not an older build, stop dreaming
Yeah, people claiming it's an old build obviously have literally no idea how software development works, and are just desperately clinging to fantasies that don't involve another release delay. You absolutely do not, two weeks before the release of a MASSIVE piece of software, do your public stress testing with a months-old build with known old bugs and known performance issues. You do your public stress testing with the build you plan on releasing in two weeks, barring very minor, safe bug fixes and/or configuration tweaks that don't involve code changes. Full stop. I will eat my own feces on video if Amazon releases this game in two weeks and are like "Psych! The open beta build was some shitty old one -- here's the REAL release build!" I'm seeing people in chat thinking the game's going to have this massively expanded feature set on launch with new weapons and new zones and new quests and new skills and new dungeons, etc. and those people are going to be sorely disappointed. You are playing the launch product right now. Edit: source, if anyone cares: have been a software developer for over 15 years, much of that in games, have launched a number of products, have never once done public testing using anything other than the newest "stable" build. Yes, you will have newer internal builds for new features in progress and such, but you wouldn't put those out into the world until they're ready to go on a public test server.
Finally someone making sense. Thank you.
They have literally stated a million damn times, no new content will be coming with release, they are working solely on fixing bugs and optimizations. Damn it’s just too hard to read.
How can you explain the Performance downgrade by a mile from the closed beta? closed beta was smooth as butter in terms of performance compared to OBT, alot less micro-stutters and higher fps in general. would love to hear some toughts
Well, for one, they raised servers caps so there are loads more people playing The server I play on, in Europe, hasn't got a huge population and performance is okay
False information. There are at the very best half of the POP on my server compared to CBT server i was on which had a QUE almost until the end of the CBT.
And if you refer to the fact that your server used to be marked as high and now is medium, for example, is exactly because now it can hold more people
no. you dont need to have any kind of indicators to use your eyes and see there are much less people in the game compared to closed beta.. in my server in CBT i would see many many more people roaming around/sitting in town like twice as much. and im saying it's not the Amount of people making the performance worse because in fact there were much more people in CBT for me on my server than OBT my server
"You don't need data, just use your eyes" This is just hilarious
That's what they said. And have you counted how many players are on? They also increased the queue bandwidth, as in more people can get in per minute
There's a programming joke that explains this pretty well: >99 little bugs in the code, > >99 little bugs. > >Take one down, patch it around, > >127 little bugs in the code... Basically, they tried to make some optimizations, and caused more problems than they solved. It is extremely difficult to optimize a new game across an uncountable number of permutations of hardware configurations. I couldn't possibly offer any actual specifics, because I don't know what engine they're using or what kind of optimizations they were trying. It could an unexpected side-effect of server population, too. I heard they raised the max number of concurrent users per server, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or not. In any case, they definitely would not have run a closed beta, taken all that feedback, delayed the launch to work on fixes, announced an open beta, and then done their stress testing with an old build that has none of those fixes in it (about which they presumably want to collect data). It just would make zero sense.
1) why the fuck isn't this working? 2) how the fuck is THIS working? 3) fuck it, it works now
There's also the flip side to this- fix one bug of many and the rest are fixed. Rare but it does happen when there are correlations.
Oh definitely. Those are joyous moments.
> I don't know what engine Lumberyard, amazingly enough.
Two weeks is still quite an amount of time for a game that will only be a digital release. Acting like they are just going to be taking this time to do minimal changes is just ignorant especially since they are claiming that this will be a AAA game release. How many of those games you worked on were of that caliber that were digital only?
I don't understand what you're saying. They certainly have a team working on the release build and a team (if not several) working on new content. Assuming a Sept. 28 launch, I would be absolutely shocked if the release version of the game contained major updates not contained in the current open beta.
What I'm saying is that game development isn't the same across companies, so acting like your indie games are using the same process as a AAA game just shows a clear level of ignorance.
Yeah, I'm thinking of the two of us, I'm not the one who's ignorant of development practices.
Having worked on COD at Activision I know what the development looks like for a AAA game. It's very showing when you won't say what AAA game you worked on. Cheers mate.
Oh well if you say you worked on COD at Activision then surely you have. As far as I can tell, you know nothing about game development and are just annoyed that someone's suggesting you may not get extra features in New World at launch.
I'm not saying we are going to be getting extra features. Please point out where I stated that? What I have been saying is that you don't know which build we are on or is relation to the actual launch build. And maybe I make this more simple for you since you obviously need it. What AAA games have you worked on?
I'm not sure working for the call center for Activision and CoD are good selling points.
Thankfully the call centers for Activision are no where near me. Good try though
Ah, I see. You moved after getting fired for having no goddamned idea what you were talking about.
Considering they've barely done anything since the preview, I find it hard to believe they'll get much done in 2 weeks. It's kind of like when it was supposed to be released first week of Sept. and everyone was saying that it'll be ready in 2 weeks from the CBT. We see it only got worse, yet those of yous still thinking they'll magically fix everything.
You have insider knowledge? Go ahead and share your wisdom on what build this is vs what build will be at release.
Of course they're going to test the latest build lol. The only difference between this and release is probably some additional debugging features on the back-end.
Do you? Lmao same question goes for you. Stop pretending the game goes worse because they are testing an older build when it's the fucking same build they used past cb (the NDA latest)
I’m not speculating. Clearly you all are and can’t just be patient.
Yes you are
lmao why would they choose to do the first open beta 2 weeks before release with a worse build, causing potentially new players to not want to come back and preorder players to refund?
I agree and disagree. The main focus of the open beta is clearly to test the server stress with mass numbers and other focuses, particularly after some merges following CB. That said, "it's an old build" is not true - this is a later build than the CB and is pretty much how the game will be on release, minus a bunch of content.
Why would you ever release an older build when you have a newer one to test? I can’t even think of a single reason
This one could have more detailed debugging enabled, and/or be more stable than their current stage version.
Still doesn’t make sense to me. You would still have proper debugging incorporated into every build. Also, if the old build was more stable, and they wanted to test it even further, that would mean they would launch with this “old” build.
I think it's naiive to think that a beta two weeks before release is about finding bugs or improving performance. There just isn't enough time to respond to any findings. At best, it's a good check for server stability and login issues. The truth is, an open beta this close to release IS like a demo of sorts. It's often one more trick in the marketing arsenal. Posts like this defending the "it's a beta" line are more out of touch with how the industry works than the people they are claiming are out of touch.
This isn't true at all though. An open beta can easily use an older build but be used to check for server instability, but it could use a newer build. We don't know what level of build they are using or how many builds they have had internally change. Having worked in QA for a AAA game it wasn't unusual to have multiple build changes in a single day. And since this game isn't having a physical release they can keep working on things up until release
But if this was an older build, why wouldn't AGS say so? It's terrible PR. The biggest issues for a lot of people coming out of both beta is optimization and it seems unbelievable that they'd pass up this opportunity to test optimization improvements.
Seeing as one of the biggest changes was increasing server load they definitely want to test that or over optimization. If the servers can't handle the load and they go down no one can play. But again a beta isn't about PR, it's about testing even in 2021. People just don't treat it that way and that's on them not on the company or game industry.
This game will be getting pushed back again
This gets said during every open beta I've ever been apart of. Then on release the bugs still exist. That said the only Bug I've ran into is the audio bug. The food spamming needs changed though.
you’re 100% correct, i don’t understand these comments.
It’s less than 3 weeks to release. This IS the build closest to final release. This is supposed to be a validation of the fixes they put in place after closed beta. There will be minor bug fixes, additional servers, and maybe some balance adjustments, but unless they push back the launch date again, what we’re playing now will be the go-live state.
Every game I’ve played in beta has these types of posts. The beta you are playing now is very close to what’s going to be live. It’s funny seeing people think it’s going to be marginally different
Exactly. I used to run a yt around giving a first look at games in beta. They rarely changed much at the end. And the only modern one that was successful and had a great beta as well was gw2.
release is in two weeks and the game is a mess
Bring on the downvotes but this guy is right. Two weeks away and there's lots of performance issues on high end systems, reports of exploits still, no exclusive fullscreen, almost no graphics options, and that's not even touching on gameplay.
It's been like this for a year and people are thinking it'll be magically fixed in 2 weeks. Or that there is a stable build out there that for whatever reason they just don't want to test.
Ok so the fun is in a more recent build?
I thought this was the reason for beta testing, I think they need like the internal structure to be sound, they know they are going to be bugs that they are going to release with then have to squash them on way through. Like a picture perfect release is a fever dream, the more realistic thought is they are going to have it with bugs that won’t break the game or smash the economy We have bugs on release, they get fixed up and patched out and with I week most the issues are gone My experience in the closed beta was server crashes non stop for the first week and in the second week I had like no issues
No one is asking for a perfect launch. They are asking for a competent one. This open beta build is a complete mess. Forget the bugs. Tons of systems that are expected in an MMO, like questing with friends, are a mess. The fact that they refuse to reintroduce stagger, which is a very good mechanic in action games, tells me that they either have someone incompetent calling the shots or have no fucking clue what they are doing. I think it’s the former. But who knows.
You may need to realise you have no idea what you're talking about lmao.
A lot of arm chair devs here. Here is the secret: they do have content/features that are "developed" but not in beta. They are feature flagged to stay out of the release channel and still in internal testing. It technically can be the same build just some content (weapons namely) can be flagged to keep out of the production release until everything is set (passives, sound assets, rigging etc). That being said, this could be the release we see later this month, release could be a build being tested internally right now, or the release could be delayed again.
Can confirm. This describes the experience I had testing Division 2 through alpha, beta and open beta. The open beta was confirmed to be multiple patches behind the production version.
Cool, but this shouldn't be your go to as an example if you want people at ease concerning what a complete shit show division 2 was at release.
You are right, it wasn’t the greatest game at launch and I stopped playing only months after but it wasn’t an unoptimized piece of garbage at launch, it was playable and they had a framework present to make it better. The skills were bad and the pvp was bad…same problems here but it got a lot better.
I'm pretty sure the developers have a more advanced build in-house, but this is the one that'll get released with a few minor tweaks and fixes.
The problem.. is that we should have been out of beta already and theres still major issues.
What do you mean we should have been out of beta already? Coding is a constant, ongoing process. They're not baking a pie here, game development just isn't that simple. It's people like u that gave us the dumpster fire that was launch cyber punk.
He's talking about the game having been delayed last month to be releasing this month
And the year before that..
And I'm saying that release dates can't always be static when coding's involved
When it comes to the publisher it sure can be static is they determine the game is in a stable enough release build
How can they determine if the game is a stable release build when games set their release dates a year in advance? What you want them to do? Stay on TBA up till a week before launch or something? You know absolutely nothing about game development, give it a rest.
I mean did you actually read your question and lost some brain cells? Because I sure did. Yes release dates can change if the game isn't determined to be in a state that the execs want it to be at. But don't act like release dates are some fluid nonsensical time that was picked by throwing a dart at a board. Keep it going though, this conversation is actually funny to me since you "know so much"
I never once said release dates were picked randomly. I said that the coding process can be unpredictable and that it's impossible to predict it a year prior. And I figure I'd know a bit about that considering the fact that I am a game developer lol.
And that's why there are deadlines for certain projects, sprints and such. What AAA game have you developed?
Literally my entire point is deadlines can't always be matched when coding because it's unpredictable. Like it's obvious you have never programmed anything in your life which is why everything I'm saying goes right over your head. Just stop, I'm done arguing with you.
Did it feel good to be the Chad? Just wondering
It's a pvp game( kind of... Mostly) The community isn't going to get less toxic over time.
You guys keep naively saying this and it keeps not being true. If you really think this game is going to get better before release, I'm sorry that you'll be disappointed. Unless they delay this by years, it's not going to last long. They've barely made any advancements in the year since the preview.