Soooooo....... Beta?

[s7venrw]

Are there any plans for a public beta, or are you guys (Fraxis) going to do all that internally? If it's the former, you know you guys will have an army of uber-geeks ready to fall on the sword and lose days of their lives to make sure you guys have a sold game. Including this one.

I assume you guys don't even have a solid schedule for a beta yet, being that the game doesn't even have a solid release date yet. I was just wondering if you guys had kicked around the idea of a public beta.

I know I'm jumping the gun, but you guys knew what you were doing. You know you could rattle our cage and have the fanboys frothing at the mouth with those screenshots.

[TheMystic]

No news yet, but that'd be great wouldn't it?

[Zhenon]

I imagine they already have their beta testers. From what I can tell many of the folks beta tested both civ3 and civ4.... so why not civ5?

[Bantams]

I imagine they already have their beta testers. From what I can tell many of the folks beta tested both civ3 and civ4.... so why not civ5?

well if its the same beta testers as in BTS they are doing a great job at keeping it shut this time Zhenon you should know you beta tested that twice according to the manual

[RobC]

I'd volunteer to beta test any part of this...even if all you want me to do is sit around and count the number of units rendered in each hex to make sure they aren't missing any!

[SPART1AT]

I'd volunteer to beta test any part of this...even if all you want me to do is sit around and count the number of units rendered in each hex to make sure they aren't missing any!

hahahahaha... thats the spirit man^^... :P.... this statement is so nice.

but seriously nothing better than a open beta - will make a lot of work to pull out the serious reactions and reports i know, but should be worth it.

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes I'm not sure what Firaxis's plans for a final test, as I have tested for them before, I would think that some sort of wider test is in order to stress test the game at this point in time at approx the R-6 month time frame. But it may be an invite only or it could be an open test that they just haven't announced yet. Guess we will just have to stay tuned.

CS

[Nextgenneo]

I need to get on the BETA!

[TheBadSeed]

Well, as far as Beta testing goes, I think it's essential to have a good solid stress test on it.

Having never been part of a beta testing, I don't know what a good number is, but I would think that between several hundred or a couple thousand would be needed to work every scenario possible, test for bugs, game-breakers, etc..

Sign me up!

[libertas]

I love this game!
I have all versions since original civilization. I believe I bought it in '91.
However, I was very, very disappointed when civ IV came out. It was soo buggy in multiplayer that I wondered if Firaxis had beta testers and/or quality department. It appears that in-house beta testers always played over LAN and never over Internet and the game was almost impossible to play.
Consequent patches fixed major problems, but even today there is problem with starting game in multiplay, oos, etc.
As a computer nerd and sr. programmer/sr. manager, who plays civ IV multiplayer quite often, I would love to help you guys to deliver better game to the market.
So if you decide that you need a responsible out-of-company beta tester to test game in the real user setting, I would love to become one.
Take the above critique lightly, even with all those bugs, Sid and consequent programmers made Civilization the best game ever.

[Bob Ilyani]

All I can say is, the guys who got to beta test Civ 3 and 4, you are some of the luckiest gamers out there. I'd love to get into Civ V beta.

[JefA]

All I can say is, the guys who got to beta test Civ 3 and 4, you are some of the luckiest gamers out there. I'd love to get into Civ V beta.

Yes could be interesting.. its being in a smaller group so comments have better chance of being noticed. This forum is aleready a forest and in this case they may miss a particullaly good tree cause of the forest...
..A case of not seeing the tree for the woods ;p

[Blue Oyster]

I hereby volunteer to test.

[Strife40k]

If there is a beta, consider this my opt-in. I have been a civ fan for years and beta tested several games in the past.

[DrFedora]

There isn't really much of a reason for a stress test. A group of 20 internal testers would be perfectly fine for this game.

This isn't an MMO where the developers are pushing thousands of people into one server. One server here is equal to..like...12 players. If that.

[Ellestar]

There isn't really much of a reason for a stress test. A group of 20 internal testers would be perfectly fine for this game.

This isn't an MMO where the developers are pushing thousands of people into one server. One server here is equal to..like...12 players. If that.

Yeah, and with that mentality we got Civ 4 and had connectivity problems for like a year, and we still have out of sync probems on big maps.

One really nasty bug was when someone wasn't able to connect to someone else, and their Civ 4 locked in so it wasn't able to connect to anyone at all until you restarted Civ 4. In addition to that, any Civ 4 that tried to connect to that bugged Civ 4 got the same bug too until restart. So, one connection problem spread like wildfire until noone in the lobby was able to connect to anyone else. And they fixed it in several months at best. I think such blatant bugs that completely shut down online play shouldn't be in supposedly AAA-quality games. The reason why this bug wasn't noticed? Not enough beta-testing.

Besides, there is a reason why GalCiv1/2/expansions got progressively better reviews with each game/expansion. Stardock allows all paying customers (the ones who made a preorder) to join beta and tell what's good and what's bad in their game, and how to make it better. That way, Stardock makes exactly what their customers want. I think 2K may also follow that good practice, considering that it's obviously working.

[Gunslinger79]

Yup, I must beta test, because waiting for November to get my hands on this game is going to kill me! I want to test the online multiplayer aspect. If anyone gets wind of an open beta please post it on these forums and tell us how we go about doing it!

[Deathwing00]

I would also like to test the game and find bugs that need to be squashed.

[Pry87]

I don't think there is a single person on these forums that wouldn't love the oportunity to beta test this game, sid/firaxis/2k just need to decide how many testers they want, and they could probably do most if not all in house. Although I would love it if they allowed all pre-order customers to beta test.