Suggestion: Change in Beta Reward / Process

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Froglok, Aug 5, 2021.

  1. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I called ALL the hats stupid, and it was clearly a tongue-in-cheek response to the poster above me so there's your context.

    Besides if you are going to get SJW on me at least defend them all, I'm an equal-opportunities disrespecter after all.
  2. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Pretty cringe reply man using those buzz words. If, you want to play that tired old equal opportunity offender line you would have included other cultural/religious attire.

    It’s a weak defense.
    Viciado likes this.
  3. Shredd Augur

    anything but hats!
    Yinla likes this.
  4. Strawberry Augur

    You know, I don't care about betas, I have no time for them.

    But betas have never been some kind of selfish or noble cause to help tune the expansions.

    For guilds it has always been a way to get more information about fights, to get ahead, to get a lead, to get an edge. Or to get some kind of in-game reward out of it. This has been the case for decades in Everquest, it's the carrot on a stick to sell pre-orders, it's about getting your foot into the door before others. Game developers selling pre-orders know it and players who are honest about themselves know it too.

    Players end up seeing issues and help tune the content, but that has never been the reason why competitive guilds are competing with each other to join betas in MMO. It's simply a way to get ahead, a way to have access to content no one else has.

    And that's fine, it happens in many competitive games. Developers are happy they can sell preorders and hopefully get some valuable information, and players are happy they can get their foot in the door before others, or get an in-game reward.

    But let's not pretend players are joining betas out of the goodness of their heart.
  5. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    Let's not blanket statement people we don't know hmm k?

    Do you think Brewall and Good (both raiders btw) maps are helpful? They make them during Beta. they may tweak them after live happens, but I know they spend most - if not all - of Beta painstakingly making the maps for everyone's use because they LIKE helping. I'm sure Good does this too, but as a guildee and friend of Brewall, I can attest to the fact that he spends raids making sure his maps of the Raid encounter/Mission encounter rooms are spot on.
    I join Beta every year because I want to help make this a game people enjoy, if they enjoy, they stay longer, EQ stays alive longer, thus I have people to play with and a game to enjoy longer. I LIKE helping find issues in the game and making sure the appropriate people find out about them. I don't stop with Beta either. I turn in graphics issues, quest issues, typos, whatever all year long.

    Yes I am in a raid guild now. But I was doing Beta when I wasn't a raider, nothing there changed for me. I started doing beta either the year before TSS came out or the TSS year.
    Skuz and Yinla like this.
  6. Warpeace Augur

    You left out the team over at EQ Resource - The Resource for your EverQuest needs that bang out all the walkthroughs, mob, and gear info so many use on expansion launch. Apparently Strawberry feels they are also Selfish people just their for themselves.
    Skuz, Yinla and Elyssanda like this.
  7. Strawberry Augur

    I didn't say it's "selfish", but let's not pretend it is selfless either when you generate money from it. He's not Mother teresa.

    [IMG]

    The times I played in betas, I was one of the few people doing group content in actual group gear, every raider I know was doing it in raid gear.

    This is why cooling chambers ended up being one of the most ridiculously overtuned zones ever made. The zone was almost empty during the whole beta, the few people that played in it were in full raid gear. No one was trying to correctly tune this zone, raiders were too busy practicing the Beast raid to make sure to get their server first on live. When the expansion launched, group tanks with max group gear were one-shotted in one round.

    This zone had to be completely retuned after launch. And the same people I met in betas, who played in the zone in raid gear, were now arguing on live that the zone needed no change and was tuned correctly. I was disgusted by that.

    This is why Ashengate group weapons had to be changed months after TSS launched, because no one bothered to notice they were complete crap, because no one actually did the group content in group gear.

    This is why group weapons fell behind 8 expansions compared to raid gear, where I argued on the old vet forums that it was easier to 2-group OOW raid bosses than to do the group content for inferior weapons. Because no one in beta bothered to play in group gear to realise how crap group weapons were.

    No one bothered to actually do the things you claim happen during beta.

    This idea that people do betas out of the kindness of thier heart. Sorry, I don't buy this story for a second.

    That's great of you. But that's not why people join betas. EQ became a top-heavy game, where betas are invaded by top-heavy raid players, where the goal is getting an edge on raid content and getting the rewards.

    Where instead of making sure "people enjoy the game" like you said, many people were busy gatekeeping groupers to make sure the content was overtuned.

    Where even a developer said that it was "easier to tune the difficulty of the content down than up" after I argued that cooling chambers was ridiculously overtuned. Beta forums where you were shouted down if you suggested that maybe not every grouper had max group gear and max augments, and that the "group gear" that was used in betas belonged to the 1% of groupers and was not an accurate reflection of the actual players in the game.

    Betas where participants and developers were completely out of touch with groupers.

    Many groupers didn't "enjoy the game", that's why so few are left, and this is in large part due to the non-existing voice they have had in betas, their voices overshadowed by raiders and raid guilds fighting over power, too busy gatekeeping others.

    A game where group content has consistently been one of the worst tuned content I have ever seen in any MMO, and betas have a lot to do with that.
  8. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Some folks reach so hard they must walk on their hands while still upright...
  9. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    As for EQ resource asking for donations, it costs money to keep servers up. No one charges for the information, but if people want to help, why shouldn't they?

    I'm sad that you have such a angry pessimistic viewpoint of people who Beta. It's not the same as it was 15 years ago. We fought before TBL to NOT have most of the content locked behind those stupid Smoke trials.. that should have been put between like the last 2 zones..We all fought before TOV to get it tuned down because we KNEW it was too hard for group geared people, and it was.. Originally it was MUCH harder. We also asked for it to be geared to group people who are in a mix of group gear from at least the last 2-3 expansions.. not TOP end group gear only from the last expansion.

    Depending on what I am testing, I do test raids in raid gear, and group content on an alt bard in group gear. I've only raided the last 5 years. The raiders I know, understand that without group people and group content this game will go away. I group with non raiders regularly helping them with anything they need. I remember some of the old raiders (from 10+ years ago) with their *if you are not UBER you don't count* attitudes, but I don't see it being that way anymore.

    Oh and in case you didn't notice.. I count as a person. and you can discount my motives as you do not know me, but those who do know me, including the devs I've worked with, know I really do want the best game for everyone.

    Now, feel free to try tearing me apart again, I won't respond, I know who I am and how I play and your bitterness and anger isn't going to change me. I will keep helping to try and fix things to make this a better game for everyone.
  10. Strawberry Augur

    This isn't about you, nor have I mentioned your name anywhere in any of my posts. You decided to quote my post, not the other way around.

    The only time I addressed you is when I said "This is great of you" in response to your statement that you care about the health of the game.

    The argument I put forth is a valid one. Betas in Everquest became about which raid guild can take most advantage of joining beta to get an edge over another guild and which rewards one could get.

    Actually tuning the game, became a secondary objective, especially when it came to group content. This is evidenced by the fact that both the beta servers and live servers consist out of top heavy raid players and group players have mostly moved on to games that are more considerate of their needs.


    They seem to be far and few between. I remember spending multiple pages on the beta forums asking to tune down cooling chambers, after getting flack for it from literally ever raid player, and even developers ignoring the problem and saying content that was being tuned harder was better than easier.

    It took another multiple months after launch before some developers finally admitted that getting one-shotted in max group gear might be a problem.

    Instead of beta testing Everquest, I ended up beta testing Rift because developers did listen on those forums.

    There are countless exaples like that of horribly tuned content. I, and many others, gave up on betas.


    We don't have the Battleblade VS grouper threads anymore because I think there are little to no groupers left on these forums.

    The last time group discussions appeared in a large thread was regarding the OMM missions, which I vigorously defended because groupers enjoyed that content. That was until developers decided to nerf them to the ground in response to requests from mostly raid players. Everquest has little to no group players left at this point.
  11. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    Software Betas are not for Design changes. It's to catch things like crashes, data corruption, etc. only high severity bugs get fixed at that point. Design tweaks are for post-release patches/X.1 versions.
    CrazyLarth likes this.
  12. Froglok Augur

    Wow, has this thread gone completely off course.

    Beta Awards are for those who participate in Beta. If you don't want to do that, that's cool.

    The suggestion was merely to provide Beta players, who earn Beta Tokens, the option and ability to acquire past (or present) Beta Awards (their choice) using the Beta Tokens they earned in Beta.

    Particularly since many of the past Betas have NOT been open to everyone (invitation only, or apply / approve only). These days, it has also been Pre-Order only (which not everyone can do, either).

    As a note, I play Beta and do so primarily in the group setting.

    In the past, reading Beta Forums, myself, and others, do post about Group content stuff (zones, pathing, items, MOB's, tradeskills, spells, etc.), in addition to the raid content. In fact, in Beta, the group element is often in place and active before the Raid stuff is.