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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Suggestion - Testing Incentives
VortexRPM
Member, Alpha Two
Disclaimer: I'm not an Alpha-1 tester, but based on the videos I have watched, I haven't heard of anything like this suggestion being done already.
Background
The main goal for the Alpha/Beta is to have content tested and get feedback from a variety of player types. Obviously Intrepid pays some professional testers, but they are relying on many testers who are paying for the opportunity to experience and test Ashes of Creation.
While we want to play/get access to the game, many players may not explicitly want to provide feedback or participate in every event for the sake of testing. But, no one sensible would ever suggest Intrepid pay thousands of testers.
Suggestion
Give testers opportunities to earn the default in-game store currency, or a special currency to acquire unique items/cosmetics/etc.
Incentivizing these pay-for-a-chance-testers with a chance to earn cosmetics for 'free', or a special currency used for exclusive items costs (ignoring opportunity costs for the in-game store currency) Intrepid very little, but could drastically improve the volume and quality of feedback/data.
Potential Currency Sources
- Certain goals can be created for a variety of systems or activities such as clearing a quest, killing x mobs of type y, exploring a zone, reaching this level, or completing a specific event.
This could prevent the necessity of some server resets, but also encourage players to test everything, even if it means making alt characters. We can't not acquire all the unique cosmetics given to people testing after all.
- Varying amounts of currency could be awarded based on participation and impact in spot-testing or priority events.
This could maximize the efficiency of gathering feedback for all spot testing, and an event in need of particular attention.
- A small amount could be awarded for reports that provide the correct information, with a bonus for being the 'first' to report a bug/issue.
This could be a double-edged sword, but hopefully requiring the correct information for a payout would increase the overall quality of any bug reports. I imagine there is an in-game way to report? If not, well, that can fix a lot of issues by just auto-collecting a lot of the data (game version, class, zone, time, activity log, etc), and making the rest (reproduction steps, expected/actual, etc) a mandatory fill-in to submit the report.
- Suggestions/ideas, that are liked and/or taken, could be rewarded with a bonus *cough cough*.
Reward the players who are invested in making Ashes of Creation as good/enjoyable as possible.
Closing
Honestly, the team can certainly come up with more ideas of what could be rewarded than me, as they know what they need more/better feedback/data on, so I'll leave it at that.
If you do go the route of a special currency for unique content, perhaps it could have a backup purchase option of buying in-game currency for those, particularly dedicated testers. It would be unfortunate if they ran out of things to purchase, or didn't like what was left to buy, and their incentive currency stopped being an incentive.
Background
The main goal for the Alpha/Beta is to have content tested and get feedback from a variety of player types. Obviously Intrepid pays some professional testers, but they are relying on many testers who are paying for the opportunity to experience and test Ashes of Creation.
While we want to play/get access to the game, many players may not explicitly want to provide feedback or participate in every event for the sake of testing. But, no one sensible would ever suggest Intrepid pay thousands of testers.
Suggestion
Give testers opportunities to earn the default in-game store currency, or a special currency to acquire unique items/cosmetics/etc.
Incentivizing these pay-for-a-chance-testers with a chance to earn cosmetics for 'free', or a special currency used for exclusive items costs (ignoring opportunity costs for the in-game store currency) Intrepid very little, but could drastically improve the volume and quality of feedback/data.
Potential Currency Sources
- Certain goals can be created for a variety of systems or activities such as clearing a quest, killing x mobs of type y, exploring a zone, reaching this level, or completing a specific event.
This could prevent the necessity of some server resets, but also encourage players to test everything, even if it means making alt characters. We can't not acquire all the unique cosmetics given to people testing after all.
- Varying amounts of currency could be awarded based on participation and impact in spot-testing or priority events.
This could maximize the efficiency of gathering feedback for all spot testing, and an event in need of particular attention.
- A small amount could be awarded for reports that provide the correct information, with a bonus for being the 'first' to report a bug/issue.
This could be a double-edged sword, but hopefully requiring the correct information for a payout would increase the overall quality of any bug reports. I imagine there is an in-game way to report? If not, well, that can fix a lot of issues by just auto-collecting a lot of the data (game version, class, zone, time, activity log, etc), and making the rest (reproduction steps, expected/actual, etc) a mandatory fill-in to submit the report.
- Suggestions/ideas, that are liked and/or taken, could be rewarded with a bonus *cough cough*.
Reward the players who are invested in making Ashes of Creation as good/enjoyable as possible.
Closing
Honestly, the team can certainly come up with more ideas of what could be rewarded than me, as they know what they need more/better feedback/data on, so I'll leave it at that.
If you do go the route of a special currency for unique content, perhaps it could have a backup purchase option of buying in-game currency for those, particularly dedicated testers. It would be unfortunate if they ran out of things to purchase, or didn't like what was left to buy, and their incentive currency stopped being an incentive.
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Comments
So, it’s on the table, VortexRPM.
Players should be crystal clear that Alpha 2 is about testing … no special rewards for “just playing the game”.
That's certainly a fair point. Perhaps just giving bonuses to the first to report a given bug/issue. They can obviously make the decision based on if they feel they have the man-hours to go through them all, and honestly whether or not they have an in-game reporting feature. In-game reporting is just so convenient for filing it all into a database, enabling you to quickly filter duplicates or spam. As well as the reasons mentioned in my original post. They apparently have in-game reporting based on a video I'm finally watching now.
That's why I focused on the idea of in-game store currency, which would only be an opportunity cost of what people might spend. Or a special currency for exclusive items, which would have no opportunity cost, but it would still have a budget cost of needing to design said purchasable items. But it seems like based on what Taleof2Cities said, they already plan to have some "goodies", so it may not be too difficult to expand upon that if they don't have a full system planned.