Searched through the forums for a similar topic, but couldn't find one. Also don't have a bnet-account, so posting there isn't possible./rant off.
First off. The F&F- and Closed Beta is about a 1/3 of the first act and is mainly focussing (+/- 85% ?) on whether blizz's servers can withstand the strain of 1000's of people playing D3 online at the same time, and not with the testing of the game mechanics (except AH) and bugs (+/- 15% ?).
Blizz also stated that a big part of the game's mechanics & bugs were thoroughly tested via internal testing a month or so before F&F testing started. Even though the beta is just 1/3 of act 1, and the whole game has been through internal testing before, there were still a good number of bugs reported.
My question is: How will blizz handle the bugs in the rest of the game? Through internal testing at the same time as the closed beta or are they just gonna release a patch (when full game is released) when necessary?
I honestly have very limited knowledge on this topic, but my best guess would be that they will fix what they can with knowledge from the beta, release the game, and then have a giant patch a few weeks in that deals with any other major bugs/glitches in the later acts.
Really the most important things for now are computer compatibility so to ensure that people can even play the game on various machines. Specific act bugs can later be fixed with a patch, but I'm hoping there won't be many since they have already performed internal testing.
Here are my totally un-educated guesses on the topic:
Alot of this stuff has likely already been found / fixed. If you look through the Bug report forum, a very large chunk of the "bugs" are listed as already known and "fixed for release.
That says to me that they have fixed them, but aren't going to patch them into the beta client as they aren't game breaking.
Also, I wouldn't be supprised at all if the QA folks have focused almost entirely on the last 2/3 of act 1 and on. Basically everything after Leroic. Reason being, that they knew the Public / FF beta would be working through the first part of Act 1.
Lastly, the biggest bugs, are exactly the kind of bugs you would expect to not see untill you oopen it up to the masses, The Public Game Finder not working, the Auction House having problems. These are brand new, likely not widley tested systems. I'd say don't worry too much. I personally still feel everything is going good.
Blizzard have a good pool of in house testers that could play the other Act and find bugs there. Those testers were probably focus on finding issues that were particular to those act.
The thing you got to see is that every Acts are based on the same mechanism, and issues found in Act 2, will be present in Act 1, and vice versa. So by making F&F and CB (soon) test part of Act 1, they have enough to see most of the mechanism being massively tested. The other untested stuff are most probably being tested in house.
Also Blizzard Beta for Diablo 3 is not about finding mechanism bugs, their prime concern is the server load, see how people computers are responding to the game settings. Yes they are ""happy"" if they find bugs, but it's not their prime concern (they got a big in house team for that)
Lastly : Betas are known in the industry not to be the best way to find bugs in the game. Betas are there to stress test the servers, test the patching systems, find issues with balance and the likes. Most bugs associated with the game, mechanism and other found during Betas were most of the time found with the in house testing. It was just not fixed in that build. The build with what you play (beta build) and build for in house testing might be different, for various of reason.
What I said here is only reflecting what I saw in the industry (I have been a game tester for many years and I am now a game developer), and not all companies are the same.
I imagine that a lot of the bugs that show up in the first bit of Act 1 are similar to a lot of bugs that might also show up later. So despite the fact that the beta is only 1/3 of Act 1, they are still in theory testing the rest of the game. All the collision detection bugs, or things like loot not dropping properly, or bad pathing, etc.
The only bugs that the internal testers need to find are things related to the scripted events/quests that occur and are area-specific, and only a few testers are needed for these because usually the bug is glaringly obvious. (Like the skeleton lore not playing the audio file, or that random mob boss that doesn't path properly.)
What I said here is only reflecting what I saw in the industry (I have been a game tester for many years and I am now a game developer), and not all companies are the same.
Thanks, it's kind of obvious now that you mention it...the game mechanics being used thru out the whole game and such. Don't know why I didn't think of it that way... <_< Yeah hopefully the internal testing will eliminate most of the act/quest bugs before release. Just can't wait!
Hehe don't worry, it's one of those things that makes sense once you've been told about it. Its not intuitive that two places we think of as being very different both visually and spatially (the illusion they are far apart because our characters are constantly traveling) are actually almost identical in many ways for a computer.
Blizzard has a huge inhouse team of testers. The entire SC2 single player was not tested publicly at all, but was mostly bug free at launch. This beta test is pretty much only needed to test various computer hardware they don't have inhouse (video cards, processors, etc.) and to test out the new Battle.net 2.0 (auction house, public game matchmaking).
Blizzard has a huge inhouse team of testers. The entire SC2 single player was not tested publicly at all, but was mostly bug free at launch. This beta test is pretty much only needed to test various computer hardware they don't have inhouse (video cards, processors, etc.) and to test out the new Battle.net 2.0 (auction house, public game matchmaking).
Wow i never even thought of that. This whole time i was expecting something similar to the SC2 beta, which i was in for about 4 months, and i've been expecting a similar beta.
One thing noteworthy was that in the SC2 beta there was a somewhat small amount of testers, i think they were hitting 4000 average online at any one time for quite awhile. It sounds like a lot but for a blizzard game wasn't a heck of a lot. I got my key from a friend working for a company underneath activision.
I played it, and it stayed like that for about 3.5 months, about 4000 average online users. It wasn't until a couple weeks before launch that they did their "closed external beta" that everyone who preordered it and had beta keys promised, got theirs, a ton of people who opted in got theirs, and the servers were basically flooded: For only about a week, 1 week later, the game launched.
This is what keeps me positive it may release this year, the SC2 stress test slowly ramped up, then one day BOOM it was flooded, then it launched. Maybe when everyone who opts in gets a beta key, they'll just flood the servers then release? it's a hope.
Searched through the forums for a similar topic, but couldn't find one. Also don't have a bnet-account, so posting there isn't possible./rant off.
First off. The F&F- and Closed Beta is about a 1/3 of the first act and is mainly focussing (+/- 85% ?) on whether blizz's servers can withstand the strain of 1000's of people playing D3 online at the same time, and not with the testing of the game mechanics (except AH) and bugs (+/- 15% ?).
Blizz also stated that a big part of the game's mechanics & bugs were thoroughly tested via internal testing a month or so before F&F testing started. Even though the beta is just 1/3 of act 1, and the whole game has been through internal testing before, there were still a good number of bugs reported.
My question is: How will blizz handle the bugs in the rest of the game? Through internal testing at the same time as the closed beta or are they just gonna release a patch (when full game is released) when necessary?
Sorry again if this subject has been addressed.
I think the best advice, not so much on how they deal with bugs (hope they kill as many as possible) BUT...
Always be prepared for random server restarts, issues, bugs in the first month, more so first week, no game is perfect...even if made by Blizz.
More on Topic: I do feel a little more skeptical about the issues at launch though; here's wishing for the best.
I quote
"We don't have any plans to extend the beta beyond the Skeleton King fight. Some of the beta content, or items, could change as we make tweaks, but overall the beta is intended mainly to test system compatibility (how the client runs on all the different hardware/software configurations out there) and work out all the kinks of the new hardware running the servers.
It would be foolish to say we'll be able to squash every bug, but we have a QA department that is large enough to test a massive online game like World of Warcraft, and so we feel very confident that we'll be able to test and release an extremely high quality four player co-op game like Diablo III without having to open it up to public testing."
This was just posted today check the recent blue posts. If that doesn't clear things up for people, I don't think you are reading clearly... this game will be out sooner than everyone thinks.
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Searched through the forums for a similar topic, but couldn't find one. Also don't have a bnet-account, so posting there isn't possible./rant off.
First off. The F&F- and Closed Beta is about a 1/3 of the first act and is mainly focussing (+/- 85% ?) on whether blizz's servers can withstand the strain of 1000's of people playing D3 online at the same time, and not with the testing of the game mechanics (except AH) and bugs (+/- 15% ?).
Blizz also stated that a big part of the game's mechanics & bugs were thoroughly tested via internal testing a month or so before F&F testing started. Even though the beta is just 1/3 of act 1, and the whole game has been through internal testing before, there were still a good number of bugs reported.
My question is: How will blizz handle the bugs in the rest of the game? Through internal testing at the same time as the closed beta or are they just gonna release a patch (when full game is released) when necessary?
Sorry again if this subject has been addressed.
Really the most important things for now are computer compatibility so to ensure that people can even play the game on various machines. Specific act bugs can later be fixed with a patch, but I'm hoping there won't be many since they have already performed internal testing.
Alot of this stuff has likely already been found / fixed. If you look through the Bug report forum, a very large chunk of the "bugs" are listed as already known and "fixed for release.
That says to me that they have fixed them, but aren't going to patch them into the beta client as they aren't game breaking.
Also, I wouldn't be supprised at all if the QA folks have focused almost entirely on the last 2/3 of act 1 and on. Basically everything after Leroic. Reason being, that they knew the Public / FF beta would be working through the first part of Act 1.
Lastly, the biggest bugs, are exactly the kind of bugs you would expect to not see untill you oopen it up to the masses, The Public Game Finder not working, the Auction House having problems. These are brand new, likely not widley tested systems. I'd say don't worry too much. I personally still feel everything is going good.
The thing you got to see is that every Acts are based on the same mechanism, and issues found in Act 2, will be present in Act 1, and vice versa. So by making F&F and CB (soon) test part of Act 1, they have enough to see most of the mechanism being massively tested. The other untested stuff are most probably being tested in house.
Also Blizzard Beta for Diablo 3 is not about finding mechanism bugs, their prime concern is the server load, see how people computers are responding to the game settings. Yes they are ""happy"" if they find bugs, but it's not their prime concern (they got a big in house team for that)
Lastly : Betas are known in the industry not to be the best way to find bugs in the game. Betas are there to stress test the servers, test the patching systems, find issues with balance and the likes. Most bugs associated with the game, mechanism and other found during Betas were most of the time found with the in house testing. It was just not fixed in that build. The build with what you play (beta build) and build for in house testing might be different, for various of reason.
What I said here is only reflecting what I saw in the industry (I have been a game tester for many years and I am now a game developer), and not all companies are the same.
The only bugs that the internal testers need to find are things related to the scripted events/quests that occur and are area-specific, and only a few testers are needed for these because usually the bug is glaringly obvious. (Like the skeleton lore not playing the audio file, or that random mob boss that doesn't path properly.)
Edit:
Are you the guy from Grandma's Boy !?!
(Sorry I couldn't help myself, love that movie.)
Wow i never even thought of that. This whole time i was expecting something similar to the SC2 beta, which i was in for about 4 months, and i've been expecting a similar beta.
One thing noteworthy was that in the SC2 beta there was a somewhat small amount of testers, i think they were hitting 4000 average online at any one time for quite awhile. It sounds like a lot but for a blizzard game wasn't a heck of a lot. I got my key from a friend working for a company underneath activision.
I played it, and it stayed like that for about 3.5 months, about 4000 average online users. It wasn't until a couple weeks before launch that they did their "closed external beta" that everyone who preordered it and had beta keys promised, got theirs, a ton of people who opted in got theirs, and the servers were basically flooded: For only about a week, 1 week later, the game launched.
This is what keeps me positive it may release this year, the SC2 stress test slowly ramped up, then one day BOOM it was flooded, then it launched. Maybe when everyone who opts in gets a beta key, they'll just flood the servers then release? it's a hope.
I think the best advice, not so much on how they deal with bugs (hope they kill as many as possible) BUT...
Always be prepared for random server restarts, issues, bugs in the first month, more so first week, no game is perfect...even if made by Blizz.
More on Topic: I do feel a little more skeptical about the issues at launch though; here's wishing for the best.
"We don't have any plans to extend the beta beyond the Skeleton King fight. Some of the beta content, or items, could change as we make tweaks, but overall the beta is intended mainly to test system compatibility (how the client runs on all the different hardware/software configurations out there) and work out all the kinks of the new hardware running the servers.
It would be foolish to say we'll be able to squash every bug, but we have a QA department that is large enough to test a massive online game like World of Warcraft, and so we feel very confident that we'll be able to test and release an extremely high quality four player co-op game like Diablo III without having to open it up to public testing."
This was just posted today check the recent blue posts. If that doesn't clear things up for people, I don't think you are reading clearly... this game will be out sooner than everyone thinks.