Warning: This is NOT about beta release speculation. Do not talk about it here unless it is relevant to the topic. And even then, be careful.
Everyone is excited for the beta, but what are we actually going to get? Bashiok commented about it yesterday:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Without talking about the beta build too much, difficulty will be one of many things people will get no real sense of before release.
So I have two questions:
1.) If we're not getting a "real sense" of game difficulty during beta, how much of Diablo 3 will we be getting length-wise?
2.) I know functionality is a big part of the purpose of public beta (Battlenet, matchmaking, server stability, stress testing, etc), but shouldn't we be testing how difficult boss X is in Hell difficulty? Maybe not. Maybe they don't need us for that at all. What do you think?
For your first question, I assume that the beta will consist of at least the first act. I wouldn't want it really to go for much more than that, as I would love to experience a majority of the game when it is completely finished rather than in its final testing stages.
With the second question, I'm personally not to concerned about difficulty at this stage, and only will be when I actually play Diablo 3 and get to nightmare and hell. For now, I'm satisfied with putting my trust in the dev team.
There are playtesting focus groups that work with game companies to test difficulty and boss encounters and all that jazz. The big stuff is fixed there.
The beta is a wider test for smaller problems that require more people to find. Usually those are with balance, and are more subtle.
I'm torn between a few different content pools I expect in the Beta. We also have to consider exactly what could cause us to not get a scale of difficulty. Many things effect how the difficulty of the game is.
1. Monster HP, attack, AI, and so on.
2. Skill damage, AoE, cast rate, and so on.
3. Gear stats, commonness, stacking, and so on.
If all of these will be undergoing balancing, chances are we indeed won't get a feel for how the final game will play like.
As for the content pool, I expect 45 minutes maximum to run through the available areas. As for rare items, I expect they'll be testing drop rates as well. I feel Bosses can be tested internally with no problem during the beta. Blizzard can feed the information they'll be gathering regarding skill balancing, gear, and monster HP into their internal testing with Bosses and balance them appropriately.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
First act with the possibility of many quests being omitted, and one or two arenas for PvP. They will want to preserve as much lore as they can for release.
Less than the first act is even better. I don't see any reasons why they wouldn't implement the arena, its a perfect chance for Blizzard to test a lot of the gameplay mechanics without leaking any bit of the actual game.
I am really surprised by the limited scope of the beta. I am not even entirely sure why they need a public beta at all if they can test everything internally.
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This thread is depressing
I hadn't viewed the beta like this up until this point. But hey, the good news is if they don't need the public that much for beta then the beta won't last very long, right
I am really surprised by the limited scope of the beta. I am not even entirely sure why they need a public beta at all if they can test everything internally.
Balance requires a lot of data to get just right. They can probably tune systems and mechanics balance from PvP for the most part, so I imagine it will be the biggest focus of the beta. Resource costs, weapon damage, ability damage ratios, range, cooldowns, every aspect of each class's abilities will need tweaking.
Internal testing probably got them in the ballpark for most of their numbers--which is generally good enough for PvE--and with the beta they'll fine-tune them, so they'll be reasonably balanced for PvP.
I know they're not trying to super-balance PvP, but even with minimal balancing they'll need the number of people the beta provides.
As I said before in another thread before this blue post:
1] Diablo 3 beta will have just a very short part of the game. I think it will have something like 2 hours gameplay (think about the first two quests of D2 and it's respective areas) pluss a few arenas.
2] Diablo 3 is a game were the campaign is the core of the game. Games like those don't need public testing (the game is tested by professionals) AND the public testing would potentially spoil the whole game.
The beta test will not aim stuff like:
* Skill, Item and Class balance
* Game difficulty and monster balance
D3 beta test will problably try to:
* Find compatibilty issues
* Find Bnet issues
* Creat INTENSE hype for the main release
* Simulation of a mini player economy.
I think a big focus of the beta will be getting the first few hours of the game to "feel" right, to welcome in the crowd new to Diablo. Make sure that monsters are challenging, but not difficult. Making sure that you can find some nice gear early into the game. Also, having your skills ramp up enough to start to feel like you're becoming powerful.
Another big focus will be PvP balance. Not sure how this will work if you can't level to 60, or get high end gear in the beta. If they don't set you up with pre-determined PvP characters, already decked out with godly gear, it may be hard to see what needs balance in PvP, unless they plan to do that in-house.
I'm the only one who thinks blizzard is overestimating D3 difficulty? Seriously, its just a matter of time until the uber builds are figured it out and which runes go where and bam, its D2 all over again.
Get real, folks, the diablo you all knew is dead, a few years ago i said right here in this forum that D3 had a pretty good chance of being blizzard first bust (i was flamed to death ofc), and what you know, its not even beta and its already looking that way.
I too think the beta will be focused on hardware/software compatibility issues and server stressing.
Trade and PvP mechanics may benefit from the beta too, while PvE has probably been tested internally since otherwise the game would be spoiled.
So I guess a couple of Act 1 quests and some arenas will be in the beta.
hopefully this beta is short and sweet, just enough to satisfy until the real thing. I am anxious to see what this new engine can deliver in terms of IQ and advanced video settings. Also, let's not forget that a major part of a compelling video game is its game mechanics or unique controls. Those will be interesting to experience first hand.
I'm not worried about the content as much, as I doubt they're going to let only a "few" people have access to extra lore information. I think we'll be plopped into an irrelevant world or something, and just have us go through a few places to kill stuff.
I think most agree that the Beta is going to feature more testing to the other mechanics of the game (AH, PVP, Bnet2.0) rather than the PVE balance.
So to those more learned in the ways of the Beta - I can see them using a longer period of testing, to implement patched changes to test, for instance, the trade system. Is that a common practice in a Beta - to patch in significant changes as the testing period progresses?
I got into the SC2 Beta toward the end and I know that many minor changes were made - but these were to balance out units - not large mechanics in the game. I could see Blizz putting the AH/Trade system through several different versions, before the Beta is complete.
I think the beta will be a good amount of act 1 and maybe a little act 2, but both just normal mode so we can see how the mercenary's work etc, but no storyline stuff at all as it will be taken out for the beta
I am really surprised by the limited scope of the beta. I am not even entirely sure why they need a public beta at all if they can test everything internally.
Software testing is invaluable, even more so when it involves thousands of different hardware setups and internet connections. The beta will be less about testing balance and much more about testing their networking system from end to end and finding client-specific issues/bugs/oddities.
So ultimately the general consensus is that this is probably going to be a technical beta test as opposed to a design beta test.
And to answer a question earlier about major mechanic changes in the beta phase, no, that does not happen. Beta means the game is complete (in theory). This phase exists to find unfound problems of any sort. Nothing between beta and release will change something that impacts the game play or mechanics (ie; how the game is played). Everything is just a tweak.
Here is a quick, generalized visual mockup of the relation of beta to release:
Also, it is likely that once the beta begins, we'll be playing on an older version than what Blizzard has internally. We may still be playing, for example, a version that has an incomplete user interface via either unfinished design or literal art content missing.
Everyone is excited for the beta, but what are we actually going to get? Bashiok commented about it yesterday:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Without talking about the beta build too much, difficulty will be one of many things people will get no real sense of before release.
1.) If we're not getting a "real sense" of game difficulty during beta, how much of Diablo 3 will we be getting length-wise?
2.) I know functionality is a big part of the purpose of public beta (Battlenet, matchmaking, server stability, stress testing, etc), but shouldn't we be testing how difficult boss X is in Hell difficulty? Maybe not. Maybe they don't need us for that at all. What do you think?
With the second question, I'm personally not to concerned about difficulty at this stage, and only will be when I actually play Diablo 3 and get to nightmare and hell. For now, I'm satisfied with putting my trust in the dev team.
The beta is a wider test for smaller problems that require more people to find. Usually those are with balance, and are more subtle.
1. Monster HP, attack, AI, and so on.
If all of these will be undergoing balancing, chances are we indeed won't get a feel for how the final game will play like.2. Skill damage, AoE, cast rate, and so on.
3. Gear stats, commonness, stacking, and so on.
As for the content pool, I expect 45 minutes maximum to run through the available areas. As for rare items, I expect they'll be testing drop rates as well. I feel Bosses can be tested internally with no problem during the beta. Blizzard can feed the information they'll be gathering regarding skill balancing, gear, and monster HP into their internal testing with Bosses and balance them appropriately.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
I hadn't viewed the beta like this up until this point. But hey, the good news is if they don't need the public that much for beta then the beta won't last very long, right
Balance requires a lot of data to get just right. They can probably tune systems and mechanics balance from PvP for the most part, so I imagine it will be the biggest focus of the beta. Resource costs, weapon damage, ability damage ratios, range, cooldowns, every aspect of each class's abilities will need tweaking.
Internal testing probably got them in the ballpark for most of their numbers--which is generally good enough for PvE--and with the beta they'll fine-tune them, so they'll be reasonably balanced for PvP.
I know they're not trying to super-balance PvP, but even with minimal balancing they'll need the number of people the beta provides.
1] Diablo 3 beta will have just a very short part of the game. I think it will have something like 2 hours gameplay (think about the first two quests of D2 and it's respective areas) pluss a few arenas.
2] Diablo 3 is a game were the campaign is the core of the game. Games like those don't need public testing (the game is tested by professionals) AND the public testing would potentially spoil the whole game.
The beta test will not aim stuff like:
* Skill, Item and Class balance
* Game difficulty and monster balance
D3 beta test will problably try to:
* Find compatibilty issues
* Find Bnet issues
* Creat INTENSE hype for the main release
* Simulation of a mini player economy.
Another big focus will be PvP balance. Not sure how this will work if you can't level to 60, or get high end gear in the beta. If they don't set you up with pre-determined PvP characters, already decked out with godly gear, it may be hard to see what needs balance in PvP, unless they plan to do that in-house.
Trade and PvP mechanics may benefit from the beta too, while PvE has probably been tested internally since otherwise the game would be spoiled.
So I guess a couple of Act 1 quests and some arenas will be in the beta.
I'm not worried about the content as much, as I doubt they're going to let only a "few" people have access to extra lore information. I think we'll be plopped into an irrelevant world or something, and just have us go through a few places to kill stuff.
Maybe we'll beta test as Deckard Cain! jk
So to those more learned in the ways of the Beta - I can see them using a longer period of testing, to implement patched changes to test, for instance, the trade system. Is that a common practice in a Beta - to patch in significant changes as the testing period progresses?
I got into the SC2 Beta toward the end and I know that many minor changes were made - but these were to balance out units - not large mechanics in the game. I could see Blizz putting the AH/Trade system through several different versions, before the Beta is complete.
Thoughts?
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Software testing is invaluable, even more so when it involves thousands of different hardware setups and internet connections. The beta will be less about testing balance and much more about testing their networking system from end to end and finding client-specific issues/bugs/oddities.
And to answer a question earlier about major mechanic changes in the beta phase, no, that does not happen. Beta means the game is complete (in theory). This phase exists to find unfound problems of any sort. Nothing between beta and release will change something that impacts the game play or mechanics (ie; how the game is played). Everything is just a tweak.
Here is a quick, generalized visual mockup of the relation of beta to release:
Also, it is likely that once the beta begins, we'll be playing on an older version than what Blizzard has internally. We may still be playing, for example, a version that has an incomplete user interface via either unfinished design or literal art content missing.