The failure of the beta defense

Well Said.

Absolutely agree with the article. Sadly, we're seeing the same blind excuses from fans of STO, at the moment. According to these apologists, anyone who criticizes is either a troll, hasn't played it, or they have forgotten this is beta.

STO is having the same problems as Champions Online had, Cryptic is running things the way they want without listening to the players, and they're making sweeping changes to fundamental game mechanics. This is leaving many who have pre-ordered the game or bought lifetime subscriptions feeling lied to or like they were the victims of bait-and-switch.

I'm sure apologists of STO will come in here and say how every game has done this, and how no game is perfect, and blah blah blah.

The beta defense especially doesn't work when the company is selling lifetime subs only before launch.

An Open Beta should not be for completing a game's mechanics. It should be to test how the servers handle the load of a full onslaught of players.

Every patch is gonna break a few things so a broken quest here and there is no big deal but to have giant sections of the game missing or buggy is inexcusable.

And there are plenty of bad companies willing to throw unfinished software at their users but that's no defense.

That being said, Pandora's box has been opened. There's very little chance of us seeing any company willing to wait until it's product is actually "finished" before releasing a product.

Game quality and readiness can be very subjective - at best. Unless you provide a black and white list of things to check off, one person's experience can vary wildly from another. That's not necessarily a BETA defense.

I had zero expectations from STO. This game wasn't on my radar. Now that I'm poking around it's fun for what it is - a very casual MMO-lite experience. I've decided to pre-order. That doesn't make a beta defense. I simply don't see overwhelming issues if you play that game for what it's worth and others could be looking from the same perspective. *shrug* It will be something to play for a while until...no idea what since I don't have anything on my "looking forward to list" at the moment.

P.S. Personally, anyone who does life-time subs for anything that's not Sony (keeps lights of forever) or Blizzard (get your money's worth) is insane. Too many holy grail shiny new toys are completely missing the mark and are folding much too soon, for people to be jumping on lifetimes subs.

I laugh whenever I see someone use the "it's a beta" excuse over on the STO boards. STO hasn't been in development beta since the holidays. The "open beta" period is nothing more then a payed preview/stress test of the game that's going to launch.

I'm sure a Cryptic "it's a beta" defender will reply and claim they just released a huge patch this week. But they would still be wrong because most of that patch was already available in Closed Beta back in December and was rolled back to an earlier more stable build at the start of OB, because they didn't want to scare away the new incoming preorder customers with that build being extremely unstable and having many players frequently disconnecting.

Back on point, in my opinion the "it's a beta" excuse loses all its credibility once a game sets in stone a permanent release date. At that point they're admitting that the game is pretty much done and just needs to be tweaked, it also means it will be released no matter the state the game is in. That's when the game moves into the true beta test, the one you have to buy the software and subscribe to. ; )

The thing that bugs me with STO at the moment is the maintenance. Everyone complains every time the servers go down for maintenance, but that really IS something that the "beta defense" works for. Right now they're more concerned with making sure the servers work right and pushing out patches as soon as they're ready than waiting for no one to be on before they bring the servers down, but people don't get that.

I think lately Fallen Earth is about the only MMO that actually did have many important changes in their initial patches, but the patches in beta were also significant and the game now just keeps getting smoother and better, last time I played a game like that it was called LotrO...

I do have patience for the first 3 months after an MMOs launch because there will always be a few things that need adjusting in that period, however things like game play and end game, content needs to be there, and both devs and publishers need to come to terms with this and not push things out the door. As for STO, what's the rush again? It could benefit from a push back.