So we have an impending beta coming, like every fall. And if history is any guide, many problems will go live that should be caught in the beta. I'm talking the disaster that is Skyfire, a zone universally detested that got little to no scrutiny. The dumb ideas of this zone (vampires procing drunk effect on tanks, terrible wizard port in, drakes bombing groups) would have been caught if people actually played in the zone. But they didn't. I was in the beta. I saw what happened. Listen up DBG: no one tests the adventure zones. ROI, MS, Triton, TR, etc, will all use the beta to learn strategy for the raids so they can clear them on launch day. I know, I saw it. I was recruiting with a top 5 guild at the time and was totally put off by it. There was no talk about how ridiculous Skyfire was, or the Majestic Cockatrice in OT, the insanity of level 109, or any other issue raised after the game went live. They weren't grinding. People were boosted to 110 so they could raid and that's what you saw, people from top raiding guilds all gathering in POK at the temporary quest givers. No one went out and exped in OT, SF, Goro, HS or ST. After another wipe on Cactiki, I actually heard an officer say in TS that he did not want us to be the only guild not to clear this on launch day. Is that what beta is supposed to be about? Uber guilds working on raid strat so they can win the race to be first? What about the rest of us? So here's a modest proposal. Trickle out the beta, grind zones first. Let's say the expac has 8 new zones. Release two per week for a month and somehow, make it so you have to play in the first zones to move on to the second pair, etc. After a month, then release the raids. So by the time the raid zones come out, yes, ROI, et al, will still use them to work on strategy, but at least the exp zones will actually have been tested.
Your idea would probably have caught the rez bug at least...far too many people were just betafished up to max level and didn't had to deal with exp-loss! I propose no betafish allowed(only copies) and xp loss on death the first week, but give a triple(or better) exp-bonus instead. After that grind period people can betafish as usual... Kinda off topic: I peeked into last beta and noticed that a lot of the new items on beta-vendors were locked behind baylemark prices and no obvious ingame way of obtaining baylemarks, whats up with that? was it just to browse the items on vendors without actually testing the items?
I don't know if it's a terrible idea or not, but it just won't address what OP is saying is the issue: People only forming raid strategies instead of testing out other content. People could just then wait until the raid zones were unlocked. Doesn't sound like there's an obligation to play the other stuff. Jumbur's suggestion of accelerated experience rather than a command to bump to the new level cap immediately is one good suggestion, at least superficially to me, but what if the new expansion doesn't increase the level cap?
Here's an idea, get the group content and tuning up to snuff during the beta period, then roll out the raids after launch. Of course, that would require the group missions to not just be lazy ctrl-c/ctrl-v of the raid events with slightly fewer adds. On the plus side, that would avoid something like End of Empire 2.0 or the Firiona hail-a-thons in TDS which is really a positive, honest. If there must be raid tuning done during Beta, maybe tune one to give the top end guilds something to chew on, but don't let them do the testing. Get some decent secondary raiding guild that's clearing EoK but hasn't beat RoS yet test the raids to make sure the scripts and mechanics are working, then just adjust mobs at launch to be on line with a current parse from RoI. There's no way to keep them out of those guilds to get a peek, but don't let them have a good look at the whole deck of cards before day 1. Test the group content with a mixture of classes, don't assume every named is being killed by a perfect group with all defensives burns up and proper ADPS. Every once in a while you run around the corner and smack into a named, let it happen. Sometimes your group is a shadowknight, two healer mercs, a ranger and a boxed shaman. Don't penalize them, reward them for managing to overcome it.
This doesnt apply to me or a few people from all around servers. Regardless if zones are locked or not ive been doing progression, quests, tradeskil and everything else they have in beta. If people here would do actually some testing they will know that there are good chance that working on a quest from start will get you stuck every few updates waiting for the next day or 2 to get things fixed after reporting it which may also bug again the next update.
We definitely played the zones enough to at least go through the progression sequence. There's no way anyone is going to grind in a limited life beta though.
So OP's whole post is invalidated because of an incorrect assumption that no one played non-raid content in beta?
Beta's biggest problem last year was the developers ignoring all the posts in the forums that described bugs, play difficulty, etc. You can have half of Everquest live in Beta...but if the devs won't read and act upon what people are posting in the forums, it just doesn't matter how many people test. Go look at the Live Update Patch threads from RoS release...half the bugs link/mention posts in the Beta forums that simply went ignored. I know several active Beta RoS folks who told me they would never participate in Beta again because of the posts that were missed/ignored. And there were several posts about the wasteland that is Skyfire, the problem with the Cactiikii mission, etc. in the forums. They also lost a number of willing and ready Beta participants with the never before needing previous expansion armor for the new expansion. 95 percent of my time allocated for Beta was instead spent plowing through T2 named to grab armor because the HH Seb stuff wasn't going to be upgradable. I know it was a rushed Beta (while the period was longer than EoK, they seemed to have less done than they normally did before Beta started...especially in the spell and aa department) and a great many issues/problems got squished. Excepting raids (since I'm not a raider), I cannot recall a single issue about RoS that wasn't mentioned at least once in the Beta forums. I'd like to help for this upcoming Beta...but honestly, until I see some statement from the devs saying that they will do a better job digesting the input they receive, my time is probably better spent enjoying Live. The bugs will be there regardless...unless there is a commitment to listen.
I did and so did 37 of the guild. We did not have access to be boosted and actually wanted to see how it would be without all the new gear/fancy AA. Can count me in on that group of folks, doubt I will be buying next expansion at beta stage.
I remember looking around in beta with my copied 105 wizard and thinking: non-red mobs are very rare, they must want moloers to level up in EoK zones... My hunch was correct, there was a lot of complaints about overtuned trash mobs and RoS lacking a manageable entry zone/area. There were a lot of players who stayed in EoK until level 107-108.
This. I have never bothered with the Beta, due to not returning to the game until after RoS was released...but I remember happening into OT at 106 and things feeling like trash mobs were just shy of EoK namers >.<
There were piles of bugs fixed and content tuned during RoS Beta. I know several groups of folks who did the entire progression line (including myself), and that's just in my circle of friends/acquaintances. I can almost guarantee that any tuning/balance complaint you may have had during RoS was probably mentioned at least once during Beta. Whether or not it was addressed is a different story. The developers are going to decide what makes sense to listen to and what makes sense to ignore. Modifying the beta's raid release "schedule" isn't going to change that. People who want to test group content will test group content. People who want to test raid content will test raid content. If anything, I'd like to have the exact opposite of what the OP suggests. Raid content released earlier, and in a working state, so that we can avoid post-release raid bugs like we've seen several years in a row.
