Siege Testing

It has been a while since anyone has had hands on for any particular testing purpose.

Is there any chance that Siege "Testing" could be put for a short time to whet the appetite again, for no other reason than some fun?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

tautau

Yes, it would be great fun. But if it delays release by one day, let's not do it.

Mag7spy

Im sure you will get that once alpha 2 starts lol.

akabear

tautau wrote: »

Yes, it would be great fun. But if it delays release by one day, let's not do it.

Ah, yes. I should have caveated the same

arsnn

For the may and june Stream QnA i asked about spot test.
"Does intrepid consider a combat spot test before A2?"

Vaknar´s answer was...
"Yes! We certainly have considered this. It is something we would like to do before we release Alpha Two. We'll keep players informed as we progress further in development!"

Later on i asked if he could share some specifics, but they were not ready to say anything yet.

Generally i would expect to see several kind of spot test that focus on 1 system and also short period tests with the entire mmo feature scope that they are ready to show.

tautau wrote: »

Yes, it would be great fun. But if it delays release by one day, let's not do it.

I find this perspective highly questionable.
Imo not testing systems in spot tests before A2 would delay the release by huge margins.
Intrepid needs to move forward and finally start honing some experiences before those can come together in this orchestra of complexity, which their current game design clearly is.

daveywavey

arsnn wrote: »

tautau wrote: »

Yes, it would be great fun. But if it delays release by one day, let's not do it.

I find this perspective highly questionable.
Imo not testing systems in spot tests before A2 would delay the release by huge margins.
Intrepid needs to move forward and finally start honing some experiences before those can come together in this orchestra of complexity, which their current game design clearly is.

Presumably there's more to opening up the test server than simply flicking a switch or pressing a button. I think what tautau was saying was that they'd rather the time and effort be put into the game's development, rather than rushing another testing stage before they're ready for us.

Asgerr

I would imagine spot testing a siege is also incumbent on all other main features being online and using up server space and calculation processes, to accurately represent the experience for a player.

It's not the same to have an instanced siege, than one happening in the open world, concurrently with the entirety of the open world existing and running all systems at once.

Spot testing instanced Sieges, whilst it could be useful for the more mechanical aspects of the siege, would ultimately incur a high opportunity cost for all the data left on the table, by choosing not to have it be active along with the rest of the game.

Warth

Asgerr wrote: »

I would imagine spot testing a siege is also incumbent on all other main features being online and using up server space and calculation processes, to accurately represent the experience for a player.

It's not the same to have an instanced siege, than one happening in the open world, concurrently with the entirety of the open world existing and running all systems at once.

Spot testing instanced Sieges, whilst it could be useful for the more mechanical aspects of the siege, would ultimately incur a high opportunity cost for all the data left on the table, by choosing not to have it be active along with the rest of the game.

Agreed. Nor do they really need to make sure that sieges are working properly prior to A2. So the benefit is questounable as best compared to the effort necessairy

bloodprophet

Last thing they need is another Apocalypse fiasco.
Just wait and do it properly so people that can't understand "testing phase" aren't running around like chicken little again.

Sengarden

https://youtu.be/23GSdvV1dB0

Check 1:08:50

Steven says that not all features will be in the game by Alpha 2. This been generally known, especially regarding the accessible areas of the map, but the way he phrases it here regarding other “additional features” that will come online over the course of multiple updates makes me wonder how many systems and features will not be in A2 at the start after all.

This could potentially bring A2 closer than some may have thought, and serve as a way for the team to “spot test” a handful of features at a time and get clusters of feedback in each system area rather than dumping everything on us at once and trying to organize feedback for every system at the same time.

So, not exactly an answer to your question, but perhaps things are headed more or less in that direction?

Warth

@Sengarden

I'd guess social orgs, naval content, stock trading being some of them as we really haven't heard anything at all about them yet

Mag7spy

I think people are missing the point, they will do spot testing before and I'm sure invite people to make sure things are working fine. Which would also be a indication alpha 2 is closer to begin started.

But simply turning it on for fun is the main note people would disagree with. If they are doing testing its for a purpose not so people can just jump on a game in development and mess around as they have more important things to worry about.

Sengarden

Warth wrote: »

@Sengarden

I'd guess social orgs, naval content, stock trading being some of them as we really haven't heard anything at all about them yet

Yeah, naval content being pushed back a bit was the first one that popped into my head. Those others are likely as well. Considering they’ve been pretty silent on the higher node development stages, I could potentially see them pushing those back as well. It could theoretically serve as a way to artificially give players more time with each tier of the other systems in the game, one step at a time, by preventing them from deep diving into everything too quickly for the devs to keep up with all the feedback.

Warth

Sengarden wrote: »

Warth wrote: »

@Sengarden

I'd guess social orgs, naval content, stock trading being some of them as we really haven't heard anything at all about them yet

Yeah, naval content being pushed back a bit was the first one that popped into my head. Those others are likely as well. Considering they’ve been pretty silent on the higher node development stages, I could potentially see them pushing those back as well. It could theoretically serve as a way to artificially give players more time with each tier of the other systems in the game, one step at a time, by preventing them from deep diving into everything too quickly for the devs to keep up with all the feedback.

I mean, its not even certain that we'll see the city/metro stage at all during A2 or maybe just a few adjusted ones for spot testing
Considering, that they want to keep the Max Level at 35 and those stages unlocking higher level content.

AidanKD

it's worth noting that actual people-resources would need to be allocated for this testing. And I wouldn't be surprised if there is a certain level of "finish" they are working towards before they initiate these spot tests. Lets be honest sieges were pretty bare in A1 compared to our expectations for the finished product, so there is a good bit more to expect. Plus while they did end up improving the latency a good bit, we know that since A1 they actually already made improvements to performance.

I am sure that similar to A1, they will have some closed tests for sieges which will then prepare them when they open up more for the A2 release.

Dygz

Asgerr wrote: »

I would imagine spot testing a siege is also incumbent on all other main features being online and using up server space and calculation processes, to accurately represent the experience for a player.

It's not the same to have an instanced siege, than one happening in the open world, concurrently with the entirety of the open world existing and running all systems at once.

Spot testing instanced Sieges, whilst it could be useful for the more mechanical aspects of the siege, would ultimately incur a high opportunity cost for all the data left on the table, by choosing not to have it be active along with the rest of the game.

Spot testing Sieges would indicate there is some major issue(s) the devs need to contend with prior to opening Alpha 2. Also would indicate a significant delay - how many weeks for spot testing before Alpha 2?
And it's just Sieges, rather than an Alpha 2 Preview of the entire Alpha 2, similar to the Alpha 1 preview?

If we're doing Siege spot testing, Alpha 2 most likely cannot happen before 2024.

Dygz

bloodprophet wrote: »

Last thing they need is another Apocalypse fiasco.
Just wait and do it properly so people that can't understand "testing phase" aren't running around like chicken little again.

Apocalypse was not a fiasco, but... yes.
I think Apocalypse was Sep 2019 and Alpha 1 was Jul 2021?

bloodprophet

Dygz wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

Last thing they need is another Apocalypse fiasco.
Just wait and do it properly so people that can't understand "testing phase" aren't running around like chicken little again.

Apocalypse was not a fiasco, but... yes.
I think Apocalypse was Sep 2019 and Alpha 1 was Jul 2021?

For those of us able to understand "testing phase" it was not.
Check YouTube and look at the videos from that time and all the negative threads claiming bait and switch, this is the stuff I would like to see them avoid as they don't need the s kind of hassle. Intrepid has better things to do.

bloodprophet

Any spot testing going on between last alpha and alpha2 will be under NDA most likely. Meaning they could be testing this weekend and only those involved would know about it.

Sengarden

bloodprophet wrote: »

Any spot testing going on between last alpha and alpha2 will be under NDA most likely. Meaning they could be testing this weekend and only those involved would know about it.

Relatively speaking, you don't need that many people to test sieges. Again, relatively speaking (as opposed to a full server for A2) so yeah that's a great point to make. This could easily be going on all the time with dev friends and family or something.

Sengarden

Warth wrote: »

I mean, its not even certain that we'll see the city/metro stage at all during A2 or maybe just a few adjusted ones for spot testing
Considering, that they want to keep the Max Level at 35 and those stages unlocking higher level content.

Oh yeah, I remember hearing this recently too. Was that also in the same livestream? Did he say they'd be keeping the cap at 35 for the entire A2 until Beta?

Child Item