Armatsu
Osmon Surveillance
Caldari State
33
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Posted - 2012.07.23 04:24:00 -
[2] - Quote
Sojuro Ryo wrote:Armatsu wrote:Sojuro Ryo wrote:There should be npc missions when the game goes live or even during open beta when we get to test the full game before release. Why in open BETA? Beta's aren't for your enjoyment. PvE will be released when PvE is ready. If CCP is smart, they won't release PvE until the game comes out even if they are already finished with it. PvE testing doesn't get anything done. Beta's are meant to get s*** done. Can tell you have never beta tested before nor have done any programming so I'll be nice. We'll even test npc missions to make sure they work as well. We did this for Eve and we'll do it for Dust. PvE is part of the game.
It's funny you say that because i'm actually interning for a pretty large company currently doing web development. You also struck out on the part where i've never beta tested anything before. I don't think you actually understand why MMO's do beta testing aside from server stress tests.
I'll give an example. Star Wars: The Old Republic did beta testing for quite a long time before they did an actual open beta. Now, to say that there were no bugs in NPC missions would be a blatantly lie because there were. It would also be a lie if anyone stated that 1/4 of the bugs found and fixed by beta testers were missions specific bugs. Instead, an overwhelmingly large amount of fixes came from other aspects of the game such as rendering issue with weapons and clothing, glitches in the map where people would get stuck, fall through the map, or even be able to walk through what seemed to be solid objects. There was even the lone UI bug which was a small single orange pixel by the chat box. Had SWTOR magically developed a game with no problems aside from PvE mission specific glitches the testing could have been done on a lone Saturday and they probably would have found 90+% of the bugs.
NPC missions do not change. There is a specific objective that must be completed for the mission and that is also constant. Any competent programmer will develop large amounts of specific test cases to make sure that the application works appropriately as well as test cases where they try and break their application. This doesn't translate fully into game testing as just software as there are an infinite amount of ways to go about an objective. The advantage they have though is that DUST PvE will probably follow the exact same system as PvP and so any bugs that occur in PvP will translate to PvE. The difference is, its much more important to balance PvP than it is PvE. Especially since balancing PvE can come down to an enemy having more or less HP, or a slight change in attack pattern. |