CIG could set up a "contributor" store where people earn points for bug reporting and time spent in the PTU, points that can then be spent for specialty items.
Congrats on a refreshing take on the 3.18 launch. Instead of just reading verbatim from CIG's statements, website, spectrum posts etc., you have actually provided some thought provoking content. A neutral yet thoughtful viewpoint. Thanks.
Dude, when I play star citizen in its live version, it feels like I’m already a PTU participant finding alllll the bugs for the eventual full release. But having some kind of incentive would definitely make me want to help out in the real PTU. Thanks for adding positive feedback instead of complaints!
Tbf (I should’ve clarified) I’d love to see the bug reporting rewards be available in PTU and PU. I think both are just as important. I just think some bonuses for PTU would help.
An improvement in support would likely help to some degree. Getting canned responses that don't address or flat out ignore information given in a submitted ticket is frustrating.
You got very good ideas. CIG should be listening! From the moment I started years ago, I thought bug reporting had 2 main problems: 1- The lack of incentives, people don't feel rewarded for reporting. 2- The lack of accessibility, most people don't want to take the time to tab out of game, open the browser, look for issues than confirm or report on it if it's a new one. If I was CIG, I'd have built in a temporary alpha bug report tab integrated in-game into the mobiglass similar to what the issue council looks like but including drop-down menus for preset infos and with settings/hardware/game related info being automatically sent with your report. As incentives, this could easily be added up toward a temporary alpha Reputation giving you access to in-game perks as you level up.
I really think the answer is pretty simple. We didn't do much in PTU because once you did an hour or two of sight-seeing, you were done. Your earnings would be gone soon anyway. But what if the auec we earned in the PTU was reflected in our starting money post wipe. I would have lived in the PTU if I knew that even a percentage of my earnings would be start-up funds after the wipe.
Or, bear with me, they could implement content in the game that is sufficiently interesting to keep people playing outside of the "grind for credit's" loop. For almost all of the game content that currently exists, they could be botting it just like gold farmers do for MMOs that are in production.
Great vid Loud. Soo much whinging going on about this, it's nice to hear a balanced proactive view... I'd like to see a button to report a bug on the Escape menu in game. I played a lot in PTU, but didn't report a single bug as I can't be bothered trying to find out where to put it. (my shame :( )
Great video. As someone who has watched SC for years and finally decided to buy a Cutty Black starter kit 12 hours before 3.18, I was pretty disappointed with the rollout and my subsequent inability to play the game. However, as a person that works in the software industry, I also immediately recognized what had happened. This very likely was not a failure by the devs, it was most likely the result of a lack of code coverage in testing and load testing. That is not something that a developer can really account for without help from their user base. When I saw this video I immediately thought of three ways to promote PTU participation: 1. Provide unique cosmetics for everyone that logs n hours of playtime in the PTU. Not just logging in, but actually participating. 2. Pay people using in-game currency for PTU participation. Not a lot, but enough to encourage the 10%-15% of the user base that thinks about logging into the PTU, to actually do it. 3. Create the ability for PTU players to have medals, badges or ship decals that identify significant contributions to PTU time, bug reports or most features tested. My son also suggested giving away a one-of-kind ship for the person that reported the most legitimate and fixable bugs in a PTU cycle.
Every Ptu server i tried to join in with friends.. Was full. People were testing it.. live servers had 90+ frames and were empty.. Even in global chat.. We told many on the thursday, before the weekend PTU stress testing, among others.. Please use the PTU on the stress test weekend.. People did.. I hate how they are trying to say it was our fault for not testing it enough! It was even the same issues they have had since all the updates before :D Rather than admitting it was an issue on their side.. 10+ years in the making, Every big update has bugs... This being one of the worst.. They knew full well there would be an influx of users, as their user database shot up tenfold.. The fact that they can't even roll back to 3.17.5 just so people can actually play the game, its bad.. I think accepting this issue is wrong... 10 years, issue council is consistently full of issues throughout all the updates. Same Damn issues! I'm not supposed to feel bad for them for making mistakes, im supposed to feel bad for the amount of money i spent, and not being able to play! Thank you
@@jasonz2736 But you literally paid to be a QA tester when you clicked the button saying you understand that SC is in an Alpha state and that you would be considered a tester. To be fair, they do lay out very clearly what to expect.
@@MadcapActivityDomain That's right, I've known this for a long time, and I mean a really long time. But at the end of the day, all that players need is a functioning game, being a tester and helping out is one thing, thinking it's your obligation to do it is another. We don't owe game company a dime for developing games, we are consumers after all.
For starters maybe they get more testers if they give longer "previous notice" of the weekend stress tests since many have plans. Also could benefit from more of these weekend stress tests. We know from game events that people have problems with event times across time zones. Same applies to tests
This is by far the best and most thought provoking take I've seen on the 3.18 disaster. I really think you are on to something here. Especially as someone who can't afford to be shelling out on anything apart from a basic starter I think the idea of rewarding bug reports is great, not only to up the amount of active testing players do but also to provide players on a strictly limited budget with an alternative way to "pay" for cosmetic items that would otherwise be out of the question.
It took so long for PTU to open to the point I could join that I was basically was resigned not to bother with PTU. I have always been interested in hunting down and isolating causes for issues. To the point after watching and hearing how everyone in bunker mission in 3.17 always had elevator problems or other bugs with npcs, I found a way to push my occurrences of the elevator or npc bugs to less than 10% with one act before getting into the bunker. I landed outside the circle of lights for the bunker. Anecdotal yes, but it was a lot of bunkers to find what had an effect. For getting me into the PTU, give access early enough that it is worth it and not just, be a body in. Easy insentive for PTU joining, >bumper sticker with a simple hours listed in the PTU. just another flare item. Just a 'hey, I helped'.
I like the thought of an incentive, its a nice way of thanking a player who may have gotten involved. very much always willing to help my self toward a game i love.
I agree. There really needs to be incentives to get people to test on the PTU. Skins, participation credits that can eventually earn small vehicles like a bike or buggy, or something bigger if saved over multiple PTU iterations... Something, because installing a whole separate game install, having no progress gained for your time spent, and working through the frustrations of often non-functional builds is not exactly rewarding. Couple that with the need for documentation for the IC, and it's like being an unpaid employee of CIG's QC department. Everyone wants the game to succeed, few people are willing to work a second job to make it happen though.
For real this is why I don't play PTU just too much hassle for no reward. If they even just did skins for verified bug reports in the PTU then I'd totally do it!! Funny thing is with all the money I put into the fame I have wave 1 access and I never use it.
Love the ladder idea LG. I for one didn’t participate in the PTU, there are however reasons for this. 3.18 is basically 9 months late… I had full rep for bunkers at MT and Crusader, plus full bounty rep and Full delivery rep throughout Stanton. 100mil in the bank and all the ships I wanted bought in game. 3rd wipe in under a year announced triggered me…. Lesson learned. This is the first PTU I didn’t participate in since I pledged …. Shame on me
I think in game currency being rewarded for time in ptu that can be used in the pi, plus rewards for bug reports would be a good incentive. I imagine you would have to cap the currency reward so it isn’t heavily abused. I’m sure that would get people to play. That would get me to play in ptu.
Great vid! I totally agree with your view on this. I get involved in the PU (reports bugs, contribute to existing one) simply because I am not loosing my progression. I don't have a lot of time to play due to RL commitments and if I have the choice between playing a patch that will become obsolete (3.17.5) , a PTU patch where no matter what I do will get lost or advancing my game of SnowRunner, I'll favor the later.
I worked for years in IT and QA/QC, addmittedly, back when the software industry (in general, not game dev specifically) was very different. This wasn't the 1970's, mind you... Things have changed dramatically in a very short time frame. Just ten years ago, developers weren't expected to understand much less configure or maintain server environments, but building testing into code was also not very common. These days, developers are referred to as engineers and are expected to have expertise in and full control over every phase of the software development process. This is not in and of itself a major problem, but in many companies it can be problematic. Instead of being experts in one field, developers are expected to basically do what used to be two or three jobs, but they get to call themselves "engineers." ...Unless they reside in a state or country where there are laws against calling yourself something you are not. Speaking as someone who has tested some very large projects and worked for some very big companies, a basic rule of testing is that the test environment must match the live environment. I suspect that is not at all the case with CIG. Imagine building software on the bare metal of a Macbook expecting it to work on a Windows PC or server. You can't really be sure it will work properly until you load it up in your target environment, right? If the PTU is not built to exactly mirror the Live environment, problems such as what we saw last weekend are to be expected. As for simulating the extra load of X number of live users, that's just another form of testing that is not difficult to accomplish. More PTU testers just aren't needed for that. I don't think that was the problem with the 3.18 rollout. 99% sure it was environment alignment. That being said, rolling out code on a Friday is just simply a rookie mistake. This should be obvious by now to anyone familiar with Star Citizen updates. 3.18 should have been rolled out on Monday, and when there were problems it should have been rolled back quickly and fixed. That we did not see that indicates a lack of respect for the customer experience or a profound lack of experience among the people responsible for this update. Additionally, as writing testing into code became more standard practice, the expertise and experience of the QA/QC teams became less important. To certain kinds of management, since more money and time was being spent on testing by the people writing the code, less should be spent on the traditional testing methods. This is a mistake that seems particularly common in gamedev, especially when studios rely on their customers for a significant portion of their testing data. CIG clearly has a very casual attitude toward bug reports and testing data. CIG appears to be using JIRA for their project management and it is most likely they are organized using some form of Agile. It should be trivial to open up that software and workflow (with any sort of privacy permissions they choose) to their customers, but instead they have firewalled us off completely from what's really going on under the hood. That is not to say they just didn't turn on certain features... they spent money to build interfaces to keep their work private and internal only. This is not how code monkeys think, in general. Reserving the ability to lie to customers is typically something the sales and marketing departments insist upon. ...and I believe that's the root of the problem. Mr. Roberts clearly has gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble talking with his customers about his work, something I think he truly enjoys and believes in. I think at some point the decision was made to offload much of that responsibility to sales and marketing, as customer interface is literally their job description, in order to protect the company from the backlash caused when Mr. Roberts makes predictions and promises that place the company in a bad light. Unfortunately, when you give people that don't actually create things power and influence over the people that do, that power tends to increase and creativity suffers. CIG simply lacks a dedicated executive structure, which is not entirely surprising. The industry of software development emerged under the thumb of traditional business environments. Agile development workflows were invented to solve the problems created by this specifically. Mr. Roberts likely prefers to work under his own steam because he does not want his work hindered by executive interference. Totally understandable. What's not working is the power sales and marketing have over the company. I think he just needs to hire a real CEO to run his company.
I'll be looking to take a more active role in PTU testing once I recieve my new GPU in April along with the few members of my new Org I will also hopefully be streaming it... i'm interested in giving Star Citizen more coverage and to build peoples understanding of Star Citizen and why it's existence and success is important to the industry as it's development by CIG is always pushing the boundaries of technology in online virtual spaces particularly MMO's one such tech I find to be most crucial not just for the future of MMO's but perhaps even the potential of a metaverse coming sooner than later rests on Star Citizen's server meshing being a success, so I found it good someone gave a more nuanced understanding other than "Alpha, it is what is it is" for this recent difficulty! I believe within the next 5-10 years MMO's will follow SC's suit and hit the upper limits of what traditional game server architecture can do and that's a big problem most games already have to limit physics, objects, entity spawning & much more this is the reason why it's so important that star citizen succeeds it had been struggling with optimization for so long because the OG server tech can't handle what they're trying to achieve... other games will eventually reach that same restriction! SC doing server meshing and succeeding gives everyone an out! game servers in the future will all use server meshing... if Star Citizen succeeds that is... you see When your a developer with an ambitious game but you don't have the millions CIG has, or the staff, or the playerbase and support and then you see them fail at server meshing... to anyone with less than CIG has in resources their failure to capitalize would render Server Meshing in games as a risky business decision... sure others may try it but it would be considered too resource and capital intensive too grand on scale! because of the grandstanding that CIG has done they've put Server Meshing in games in a dangerous position it's up on a big stage and if the show goes wrong well no one else will invest! now I could be wrong about all this frankly I hope I am! But that being said even if it doesn't damage the chance of the future I can see for videogames... it would damage the chance of that future coming far sooner... which is what makes this current point in star citizen's tenure the most important time thus far for a number of reasons, 1. Their dream of the scope of the game can't succeed without server meshing they were already hitting a wall with classic servers, S.Meshing is necessary in order to create it how they envision it! 2. When they succeed the effect would be quite immediate within the next 5 years other games would see star citizen as a proof of concept for Server Meshing being viable in games as currently unless theres some sleeper games out there I never heard of... Star Citizen is actually the closest thing to achieving this goal! 3.Unofficially this would make Star Citizen the first prototype to the true metaverse using the same kind of server meshing technologies that fiction verses like SAO and Ready Player One! (it depends if IBM are planning to use the same tech or not for their VR SAO game) 4.This wouldn't just revolutionize games it could revolutionize simulation technologies for multiple real life situations if it could be applied more to a virtual environment on such a massive scale! 5.They simply would have to it makes no sense for them to fail when they got everything else going for them they got all they need including time we just need to be patient and watch this baby grow, it's not just the devs baby it's ours too everyone who contributed or played the game or fixed a single bug it all comes down to this! I just hope that more can realise the domino effect this game is gonna have... I put a gpu into a pc back in 2014 my psu couldn't handle it and broke down I sent it in for repairs borrowed my mom's laptop and got electricuted by the time I recovered from the after effects I got turned down by my college for continuing maths and english... so I searched around and met someone i'd met years ago a teacher at a different campus he said "sure we can teach you maths and english, do you remember when you said you wished there was a course for games design, now there is one and I run it" That one choice to put a gpu in my pc that shouldn't of been in there had a domino effect on the next 10 years of my life, I now have knowledge in games design, coding, computer hardware, media industry as a whole, business, maths, english, art, graphics design, along side I took up other activities and learned voice acting, piano, dance, violin and many more skills, met hundreds of people and made friends I never would of met all because of that choice! So it's my strong belief that 1 small thing can change everything and send ripples through the future and affect many lives... and SC is sat on a big ripple in fact I think it's more of a wave and I intend to be one of the people who surfs it and helps bring the future SC will make to all of us!
I stopped testing on the PTU because I had to spend all my time trying to get off planet after every wipe. Getting to the thing I was trying to test just wasn’t possible with the time I had. Maybe letting us choose stations as starting locations would help.
Part of it is knowing anyone CAN join the test branch. I've been playing for about a year now and had no idea that was an option. Got bored while logging in one day and found the test branch option on the main menu. Even then, I assumed you had to have an invite for it to work.
I definitely think rewards are the way to go. For me personally, I couldn't even log in to the PTU until two days before it went live anyway, having all the same errors I'm getting now with the servers (30009, 30015, 30018, 60015) Maybe some in game plushies or a fancy undersuit or suit of armor, or a brightly colored gun. Or maybe something like a free ship rental up to a certain value based on participation and IC contributions. But I also think just not releasing on a Friday would have been wise. I honestly think it could have used another week or two in the cooker, even if that meant pushing back the Free Fly dates or waiting until it was past them. Not announcing as early might have also helped, since once the next patch is announced with an almost certain wipe, players have less incentive to keep grinding it out in the PU until the patch hits.
That's actually a great idea, I'm not doing any videos as you do or streaming for that matter but I am very active on Spectrum and I've been doing a lot of bug reporting and it would be great to get something in return for all the hours that I'm putting in this game. I just can't get enough of it, I bought myself the Cutlass Black too, it's such a mighty ship and the sound it makes is just awesome, big improvement from the Anvil Pisces C8R that I got to start with, it's grown on me and I love that little ship too... One thing that I got from being so active is that I made a few friends and I'm already a member of 4 organisations that invited me which is really cool because now I never have to fly alone if I don't want to, I even found people who want to be one of my crew how cool is that to have someone always there on the turret and have someone to back you up that's great if you ask me. At this moment of writing I've already played the game and got to finish my first mission and I was finally able to log off in bed in my new ship, as I said big improvement. Last thing I want to say this game looks so good, it's mind blowing and even in this state that it's in the awesomeness far outweighs the bugs that we see to my honest opinion. There's just nothing like this game, nothing comes close to this game.
Unlock most if not all ships and/or set aUEC to 30 million in the PTU. It's going to be wiped anyways and it lets players experience all the ships available. Sure, you might have 50 people in a server demo derbying their 890s, but what a great way to test a servers ability to handle that.
A time in testing account reward…. Each hour spent in testing gives you a 100 (or whatever) UEc addition to your starting balance. Also all new ships should be available to all for the first 3 months for testing (there’s too much focus on money) Also a report bug ingame button
They need to give the players an incentive. Now I'm NOT talking about free thank you gifts in the PU. That just leaves the people who didn't get into the PTU feeling left out. Give everyone in the PTU 50M credits. Then they can go try out ships they wouldn't be able to afford in the PU. If there's a new ship coming out, like the Antares, give it to EVERYONE in the PTU to try, not just a few select streamers.
I can definitely get onboard with the point on the Antares. The issue with the 50m credits in PTU is (for instance) that wouldn’t incentivise an experienced player like me at all - I’ve at points previously owned every ship in game. I would say bringing back a larger amount of starting cash would make the constant PTU wipes less painful though. On the point about people who can’t get into PTU - everyone can get into open PTU. If the bar was low enough that you could start to earn rewards just by playing a few hours everyone could feasibly earn some if they were motivated.
A couple of thoughts : Star Citizen is an early access game. Using the test branch is important to having a working main branch. One of the early access games I play has what is named as "bug tracker skins" for a reward for being the first to find & report new bugs. I have a feeling that most SC players forget that it's early access so all they want to do is play PU and progress earning game credits. I'm going to assume something (I know it maybe wrong so don't burn me in the replies take a look & think about this) a large number of players only partake in one type of playing in game. Whether that be mining, bounty hunting, box delivery etc & they don't try everything the game has to offer so they don't see any reason to go into PTU to test salvaging or any other new parts added unless it is part of their SC profession. To close up you make a good point about encouraging players to partake in testing because without it there will be more updates that will go to main branch unfinished like 3.18 has.
I think its important to remember that the Live PU is also still a test environment. Launching to live is not something done after the bug testing is finished it is part of the bug testing so I would say as long as they manage to fix the current issues then this launch is successful. So the answer to this question is the very thing that inspired it to be asked. How do you get more people to show up to stress test a patch? You release it to live.
it also seems like there may be a targeted trolling campaign attempting to cause as much trouble as possible, EVERY SINGLE SHARD i have been on has an obscene amount of ships abandoned in armistice zones just floating there, it looks like people are intentionally "littering" as much as possible to try to take the servers down. just a thought, but seems like it could be an attack.
Making it so that all our possessions and money doesn't constantly get erased would be a big incentive. I recently watched a video in which a database technician argued that there was absolutely no reason why it's not possible for CIG to allow us to keep our stuff from one patch to the next.
No matter what state 3.18 PTU was in (obviously very bad) they had to release because the 3.18 sale wont fully land within the quarter/EOM window, which will skew their end of financial year reporting (April to March) and have ramifications for next 24 months (under-represented 2022 income, over-represented 2023 income, and incorrectly benchmarked growth targets for 2024). That (for CIG) will be far more of a driver than whether or not a build is stable enough when a latter 3.18.x patch could be released to address any temporary issues
Perhaps they could enable a free-fly mode for the PTU when they need a critical mass of testers. Let people check out literally every flyable ship, or maybe limit access to the ones that can land on a medium pad. All the RU-vid ship reviews in the world can't substitute for walking around the interior yourself and getting a feel for how she handles. Now that we've seen the cluster of 3.18, I think most people who bought limited ships like a Vanduul Scythe or an Aegis Redeemer would see the collective benefit of such an enticement.
This would likely just generate a pile of fresh "This is what Star Citizen looks like after 10 years of development!" hit vids on RU-vid. It would be a public perception nightmare.
Has CIG or RSI every talked about what kind of server/bandwidth/database infrastructure they have in place for even a PU-level of players? Something that works silky smooth on the PTU != the same performance on the PU, or dare I say, post-release population. The unk-unks are undoubtedly many, but my question is, what do we know about their current back-end horsepower?
Thoughtful video, I regularly play in the PTU but only so far as, as you pointed out, you know it's not leading to anything long term in terms of your game progression. I have already paid to back the project, I am in this for fun, not to be an unrewarded tester. I will admit I am not particularly good at raising tickets with CIG. Honestly an incentivised program of rewards would encourage me to be much more active in testing/raising tickets. Would also perhaps make me feel better about CIG generally as their somewhat cynical approach to raising funds, how overpriced everything is, is a constant source of irritation for me as someone who likes value for money or at least a fair return on purchases. Thanks for posting this vid.
The only way to get people to join the PTU is to make it available in the main menu, like PU & arena commander. We are very lazy and if we have to download a second launcher and download the game a second time - we won't.
I’ve worked in IT for almost 30 years now, yes unexpected things happen(more than they should). But from the start of this patch in the PTU to live, I’m not sure I could justify the issues by saying the devs just didn’t have enough data. Yes there are some things that will only pop up with a large load of users clicking the same button at the same time or the backend services running out of memory while trying to track actions for 10,000 active users. But from the start of the PTU I’ve heard about very basic bugs everywhere. What I would like to Know, was there a basic test (QA) plan that is being regression tested (automated or manual) before they release builds and patches. Showing an honest summary of those completed test results from the beginning of the PTU would give me a sense that they really tried with internal testing and only Large PTU tests will find the bugs going forward (due to PES).
Maybe they could do something like a raffle as well, if you submit a report that enters you in the raffle. Whether it's once or 20 times, everyone has the same chance. Then during a video Jared can spin a big "Wheel of Ships" like wheel of fortune to see what ship the winner gets. "Congrats Loudguns! You just won a Drake Herald!" Womp wooommmmp.
I love this idea as long as it’s an “also” - I think it would be more effective to guarantee a small unique prize than an entry in a raffle - just for the same reason most people don’t play the lottery!
Honestly I don't believe the testing environment is 1:1 of live. CIG are the only ones who have metrics on this so I am just speculating but from what I saw there were far more people active on the PTU than on live during the 3.18 open testing phase. The problem is almost entirely backend services that have blown up. Those don't just miraculously happen. On how to get more players to stay testing in the PTU it's simple. Offer more starting money or make it so the missions/jobs/pay for things is 10x more than normal. No one wants to go on the PTU and grind for a day for a ship only to be able to use it for 2 hours before the wipe. It's as simple as that. Currently the PTU is just a sandbox playground for whales to fly their expensive RP ships around.
Agreed on the lack of equivalency between live and testing branches. This happens with nearly every release of a SC patch and considering "bugs" present and fixed during PTU suddenly reappearing when going to LIVE supports that they are "fixing" on backend and not in code. They are bandaids under specific conditions and CIG has to T/S and resolve again once it hits Live.
Personally I have no desire to get to the PTU. I don't want to be tired of all the new features before they're even in the PU. That's especially the case with 3.18. It feels like 3.18 has been in the PTU forever.
PTU hours + meaningful contributions to the issue council=skin, they should make 1 for every ship so there is something to appeal to all testers, same pattern/colors for each, unique enough to be obvious that its a "PTU tester skin" but not fancy/flashy enough to make non testers upset they cant have. make it not "easy" to get, 100hours+10xIC reports or something make them take progressively more hours/IC contributions to unlock subsequent skins so people don't just stockpile them and there is always more motivation to play the PTU with no need to continue producing new skins constantly.
I like this idea. I stopped playing for a while because of IRL stuff taking a load of my time and not wanting to sink what time I had in to get wiped at the update. I think it's important that the game be playable for people like me who want to play the game and have a good time, but want to enjoy it because there is limited time to do so. Personally, I'd prefer they delay patches even more if needed to release these things in a good state, but that requires testing, which may require incentives to get the data they need to get that level of fidelity.
I think the solution to this is to make the build public right away and do away with Evocati. Just put the broken build out there and get it out the door right along side the previous stable patch.
People are tired of testing after 10 years. This does not seem to move forward. Pyro, quanta, science, exploration, more and more promises that are not fulfilled. This ends badly.
I absolutely agree that incentives should not even be a discussion. I have play tested games from Elite Dangerous, Subnautica and many more, because I was very interested in the product being worked towards. My incentive was getting to be part of development of these great games and enjoying the process. I didn't have to spend a small fortune, while testing in ED, Subnautica or others, to get something in the games, unlike Star Citizen that charges thousands of dollars for in game, untested, unflyable ships. People aren't stupid. CIG does want or need testers. If they did, you wouldn't have to pay your way in to be one. CIG just wants money
I assume you meant absolutely disagree. In which case my point to you is covered quite early on - respectfully (I think your motivations are very noble) you are in the minority and we need to win over more people from the majority to the world of testing somehow.
@@LoudGuns I agree with those you say are saying the same as I did. Sorry, but as a long time SC backer, I can honestly say that no great games ever needs "incentives" to have interest in testing games. I have been part of testing some of my favorites games. You clearly missed my point that a a good quality game in development never has a shortage on free testers. You have to spend a fortune to become a "tester" in SC lol. One word... Evocati Even then, it is all a pyramid scheme to keep me spending. Perfect example (and again) Evocoti lol. This isn't game testing😂 No offense. I love your videos and am dubbed. I'm just a realist
3.18 is unique bc we anticipated the long testing period which made players, like myself, even more averse to entering the PTU. On one hand you want to help provide data that’ll quicken bug fixing, on the other you still want to enter the PU with the update feeling “fresh”. If they want to move towards longer testing periods, incentivizing participation would help retain test players. I really like your suggestions and appreciate the feedback but I feel pessimistic about such changes coming to SC anytime soon. For how much the community team has grown, rewards for concierge, referrals and participation have continued to be extremely lackluster. P.S. maybe promotional materials for new updates should wait until they can guarantee adequate performance. Backers who are close to the project already understand the update and know of its live release. Their RU-vid promo is therefore mainly targeting newer backers who are less likely to put up with the crashes. Waiting a few days could have helped distribute some of the traffic
Eve online gave you skill points that carried over to the live server, cig could give up uec that carries over to the live game and patch to patch. It's cheap it rewards players for playing and contributing to the community and it doesn't just get lost next reset.
I've never been a game developer but I am a 25yr developer. I've never used a customer or end user to test what I expected my code-set to do. They may be asked to run the solution/app for acceptance reasons but always in a tested, bug free and polished state. Your use cases and deliverables should always be in bite size, testable units with known expectations. QA also plays a part with this. I think Star Citizen is a wonderful game. But how do you test 11 years of alpha code and ever expect to move to a beta/release state? I get new technologies are being developed for the game but core development practices are not being followed thus we got what we gots.
PTU tesing, all msssion payments are doubled and you keep 5% or whatever when back to live, with a cap. If stress testing folk need to be able to create those more complex obhect packages for the databases to manage. and some of that simply boils down tio having the cash for stuff.
I discovered a terrible thing about myself during the PTU. I can't do anything just for fun anymore. I used-to-could but that part of me is gone now. Maybe if it didn't last 3 months I could have held on longer...
While this doesn't apply to everyone, there are still a lot of people who like to earn/collect unique things. I like the idea of a rank structure similar to the referral system. Could give unique titles similarly to how there are different titles for concierge or referral. Even IAE gives a new unique title for each day you play in it. That or unique pants could attract players. Not even saying they would need to reward players with free ships. I'd think just simple unique cosmetics associated with helping the PTU would incentivize a lot of players. At the very least one would think that would be an easy enough place to start and see if it helps enough.
yeah I haven't been testing in the ptu because I take it as my opportunity to actually play some single player games in my limited free time. If there was a system that could be used to earn credits and exchange them for LTI token referral bonus type ships, that would probably convert me to testing, and talk me in to spending even more in the game.
It's just like Ironman's daughter said in that Avengers movie, you gotta whisper "I love you 19 thousand", then the game will work. And Gwyneth Paltrow will be jealous.
The biggest issue I see with providing incentives based upon bug reports is that people will just do the minimum required to get the rewards. Meaning that they either copy/paste reports other people have made making a small issue seem way more prevalent than it actually is, or they will mass report every small issue burying the major game breaking bugs in a sea of non-issues. An example of this is with CDPR and the release of Cyberpunk 2077 where the company hired to do quality testing, Quantic Lab, mandated unrealistic bug quotas to their staff. Instead of trying to find major game breaking bugs, they ended up mass reporting stuff like graphical issue or weird physics within the game. They basically overwhelmed CDPR with so much useless information that CDPR eventually ended up ignoring the reports of their quality testers to focus on other issues.
Thanks for a balanced view. This seems to be shared by most of the streamers and content providers I wish so many of the players would get this and understand that the game is in Alpha which means its a test bed and prone to breaking.
I'll add one more comment here that is directed at the people who just complain; Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "How much can I suck today?". I am pretty sure CIG wanted the release to go well and I am even more sure that the devs who worked on it didn't want to see their work end up like this. So, if you're not here to help, then keep quiet while others try to help, or just find something else to do.
Wouldn't mind being a full-time tester. With that said. I also play another alpha game called 7 days to die. Enjoy the hell out of killing zombies. With every patch there will always be growing pains. It is what it is. I do agree with you that an incentive based approach is needed. Like possibly the ability to cross over from the live servers to the ptu never having to have lost progression, money, and resources. Just my 2 cents. Here is the soap box back.
Hi, I totally agree. I'm a developer myself and the problem I feel is : What to test? Just 'go and test' to me is uninviting. When I go in I like to have a goal. Maybe a test org might be a good way. With a discord structure. There you could organize by game function. Like ships, ingame functions like trade or mining etc. Or these super large access tests or object managing in the ptu. ( It gives people focus on their interest) And yes, it would be nice when your effort will visible. Maybe specific signatures on your ship or space suites. I do think that the test effort should rewarded. Testing that works is just valueble as finding the bug.
id love to test the game about to have a monster of a machine but heres the thing ive spent 9 hrs trying to get into my fn ship today and then prolly a 3rd of that time waiting on a ride to get to nbis then i cant claim my ship but if they manage to get it fixed this week that be great and id be interested in testing
for me its pretty simple: yes it can be frustrating to get in and get an hillarious amount of problems but in the end crusader daymar microtech lorville ect gives sights where you only can see them there like dawn dusk ect while in a ship and stuff and hay there are for the meantime other games that want to be played too so taking a breether in another game is ok when i know: in a week or so i return and it will maybe have an better state to play in. were too old to work ourselfs up like 5y/o when they dont get thair sweet stuff in a supermarket.
Its not just incentives that would be needed to bring ppl to play on the ptu, it needs to be easier to access too. Keeping a whole second game on my drives for occasional testing of new features is a no go for me personally, im already out of space as it is.
3.18's problems have nothing to do with the amount of testers they had in the PTU and Evo. What they've officially said is "We knew that a live release was necessary to continue testing at a scale only possible in the live environment". The release of 3.18 has brought back players that have been eagerly awaiting these new features. You'll never hope to amass that type of interest without the promise of release. This is why nearly every MMO struggles on release week, because its simply guess work to see how well their product works under LIVE stress conditions. Even if 70% of us regular players were to play on the PTU, it still wouldn't be emulating the LIVE experience that they want, because this patch has brought back 10's of thousands of players that all support the game, but only play for a few weeks come update day. I'm a concierge player. So I can get on to the PTU as soon as it releases to WAVE 1. I've been waiting for salvage for years.. with a vulture ive been waiting to fly for many years. That being said I waited for LIVE because I just don't have the time anymore to dedicate to the PTU. With a full time job, a wife, kids and a home to look after, I choose to use what little time I have, to play a game that won't punish me if I choose to play it. I love unique things I can show off, but a new skin.. or moving me up some rewards ladder, is definitely not worth my time, as time is something I value far more than a cosmetic. It's not a terrible idea to award players who do test, however every item they give away, takes pledge away from the production of SC. Every new skin that is designed, is time away from production of the game we are all backing for completion. 3.18 has had a rocky start... but what's new. What really did any of us expect. If you're a regular SC player, then you're already forgiving of anything CiG does.
Historically, by the time they get past Evocati, they don't even look at IC when they are preparing the .0 patch. They're only concerned about the well known blockers at that point. After years of contributing to IC in wave 2 PTU and never seeing issues that were important to me fixed, I've stopped being active on IC. Why should I spend so much time when it's only the Evocati who affect the release version? Like you said, no incentive to waste my time.
I've submitted probably 60-70 unique IC reports. Every one of them have been archived or closed. The bugs are still there, and i can recreate them. Like you said, why waste my time if nothing is going to be done with it.
This attitude is one of the problems. Your contribution doesn't include assigning the priority level of "your" bugs. Many of the bugs that have been in the game for a long time are still that way because that sub-system is going to be refactored in the future and it isn't smart to waste time and resources on fixing something that's going to change down the road. Furthermore, the whole thing is more nuanced than you are imagining. Consider if "your" bug is not only part of a system that is going to be overhauled anyway, but the devs know that if they "fix" that bug right now, it will break another part of the game that they already overhauled. Changing something in a huge system like this game has far reaching and often complex consequences.
They could have a bug bounty. People who find and report bugs get a uec reward. First person will get a larger reward and subsequent reports will get lower
I'd barely want to be in the PU when I know there's a full wipe coming soon™. I don't like wasting my time on things that will all be flushed down the toilet. I play other games. I can go waste my time there and actually have PROGRESS.
I don't get the attitude of those who are mad that the launch didn't go smoothly, let alone the trolls actively stoking the flames. I did several hours of playing in the PTU this cycle and confirmed a few bugs and how I encountered them, but honestly the main incentive was that it was actually going to last more than a few days this time to justify the hassle of setting it up. But I wouldn't turn up my nose at minor bribes like armor, skins, extra starting cash, or being entered into a draw for a free ship. Heck even a free month as a subscriber with all the perks therein.
I didn't know they had a pte. Ultimately if they switched the launcher to public test when they had a new release ready, it would be easy to roll back if they had a problem. It's a weird situation to be sure. Most alpha build games don't get this kind of player base, but it's kinda required when those same players have spent so much money to participate. I will say that when 3.18 went live the launcher kept crashing. I reported a bug and was told that it wasn't really a bug and to follow some steps to fix it. If it was working before but is broken after a new release, it's more likely the update broke something rather than it being an issue with the number of connections or download rate. If cig want people to report bugs they have to take them seriously when they are reported. Maybe consider that what I am reporting is also a result of an update and a symptom of something bigger
I think just reporting the bug is what's important. The engineers and game designers have vastly more knowledge of what's going on in the background of the game than most of us do. Having employees who's jobs are to sift through the thousands of bug reports coming in per hour during a launch like this and trying to have a conversation with the author of each submission would be incredibly inefficient.
A new lti token that can be applied to any ship bought from store at any time as get somthink for time it would cost cig nothing or discount if ex amount houres in ptu year
I didn’t like to say because it sounded snobbish, but giving away the referral ships probably makes CIG money since most people who get them use them as LTI tokens.
As long as I am treated as a 3rd level "tester" I won't put time into PTU so the company can test their stuff. We are paying customers and not testers after all. There are tons of people who "test" their stuff and contribute to IC, and yet there are bugs that remain for a very long time. Don't blame the customers for not testing enough. Normal companies pay dedicated testers.
This is not the problem. The problem is most users are being blocked out of the servers on game startup due to Error 19004, game can't retrieve your entitlement prerequisites. Most of us are blocked out before the game has a chance to load. The servers are massively overloaded with players
Unfortunately the endless 3.18 test cycle turned off players. However they could have developed internal load tests to test the go live. I know developing such tests are tricky, but they simply must be done. I suspect they had old tests checking logins but they were out of date. Dev time was spent on fixing bugs in game (which were numerous) so no effort was put into creating new 3.18 relevant login tests. Hopefully they have learnt their lesson
There are so many ideas ro intensive testing. From Badges over skins, equipment to UEC, a lot is possible just for hrs played. Capped and not incredible amounts, but having 25k starting a 20k for 4hrs PTU would be already huge without giving a too big advantage. But even more important: make the Issuecouncil a better experience. It feels like CIG doesnt care of the reports and a few players blame reports of other players to be non-true or doublicates, even though they clearly are not.
Good points! Yeah I think the IC could be updated considerably - another person commented that if they reported every bug they’d be filing paperwork for 10 hours and playing for 30 minutes 😂
@@LoudGuns agreed on that 😅 The mirrored Liftdoor for example... After each patch just trying out if former issues were solved (mostly they are not) makes a bunch of IC reports/updates. Thats usually my first hour of play.
Literally any bug I ever reported is being archived automatically after the grace period because nobody ever goes there and nobody upvotes bugs except for the most obvious bugs, which should be obvious enough even without players having to report them. Playing this game just one day - back when it even was playable at all - should suffice to fill a long list of bugs ... and we're not getting paid to look for those bugs.
I’ve reported bugs and would report more if the reporting process wasn’t so clunky, particularly as the expectation to search to see if the bug has already been reported. Isn’t there some sort of software the devs can use that automatically sorts key words in bug reports into categories?
