Responsibilities of Beta Testers

[Gifted]

I've been in every Blizzard beta. They keep inviting me back...I must be doing something right. I have thrown my "beta hat" in with SCLegacy, and I intend to share all my screenshots, thoughts, videos, and commentaries with this site's community. (By the way, is there a thread for people like me to organize this stuff??) As long as bitter, angry children like DemolitionSquid are kept to a minimum, that is.

I agree. Everyone with a beta key should make at least a small contribution.

http://sclegacy.com/forums/group.php?groupid=11

Join the Beta Lounge and post some requests, I'll be picking some for the first week. If you have a Beta Key, you can also state that you want to help out and take requests weekly as well. Up to you though, it's a Good Samaritan effort.

[Lucius_Raecius]

I think we are forgetting something.

Blizzard needs feedback from non pro players as well.

Those of us, like me, who never played Starcraft competatively. There needs to be those who will just report on how they found the game as a relative newcomer, rather than someone who watches the replays and understands the strategies.

[Warsaw]

I think we are forgetting something.

Blizzard needs feedback from non pro players as well.

Those of us, like me, who never played Starcraft competatively. There needs to be those who will just report on how they found the game as a relative newcomer, rather than someone who watches the replays and understands the strategies.

True that.

[Noise]

I think we are forgetting something.

Blizzard needs feedback from non pro players as well.

Those of us, like me, who never played Starcraft competatively. There needs to be those who will just report on how they found the game as a relative newcomer, rather than someone who watches the replays and understands the strategies.

I don't mean to be offensive, but why? The beta is for balancing and finding bugs, surely the more competitive a player you are, the better you are at helping in the beta?

[Zalamander]

I don't mean to be offensive, but why? The beta is for balancing and finding bugs, surely the more competitive a player you are, the better you are at helping in the beta?

I would also need to point out that the more copetative player you are more likely the less a developer you are and dont really know much about programming and game design.

While a person with a game development education like me can look at the game both as a player and a developer and understand and report bugs and solutions to bugs much better.

Sadly im not really working as that but I am working for a magazine and get to be in beta the "press" way to make a preview of the game. So I'll take that oppertunity and do the best of it.

[Hav0x]

Blizzard will be collecting all kinds of statistics about each game played but that is not enough for them to balance the game. They will not be able to know what tactics and strategies are being used and abused with those statistics alone, you MUST report any potential imbalances to Blizzard.

[SaharaDrac]

I get really wordy with my feedback to Blizz sometimes...

[Triceron]

Reported or not, Blizzard will fully know of many of the imbalances in their games through just by keeping track of stats and replays. This isn't their first RTS, they know what they're doing.

Personally, I wouldn't take these 'responsibilities' seriously, because I'm not being paid to do a job. I will enter a beta to see the game and have fun, and if I'm not having fun then I'll let it be known what I like and dislike. Blizzard has their own internal QA teams to handle the bugs and imbalances.

We're the fans and with the beta, we should be getting what we want. The beta is the time when fans have the most influence over the direction of the game. This is when we get to play and see for ourselves what we like and dislike about what they have so far. The good thing about Blizzard is that they actually listen.

[Norfindel]

I don't mean to be offensive, but why? The beta is for balancing and finding bugs, surely the more competitive a player you are, the better you are at helping in the beta?

I'm sure that Blizzard is interested on making the game playable by low skill players, also. The win ratio of one race over another can be different for low-skill players than for high skill players. Something can be hard enough to do for a low-skill player as to lose the game.

[spychi]

During DoW2 beta I reported bugs only, no gameplay issues cause I'm not good in macro/micro theorycrafting in Warhammer universe.
When I'll play the SC2 beta I will report the bugs and the unbalanced gameplay issues, however I'm still not good in macro ideas or improvments.
I have FRAPS ready, I asked my ISP to give me more upload speed when beta comes out so that I will provide as many videos as I can and I can assure you guys that I will spend weeks on playing SC2 beta, day after day, cause hell I waited years for this game!

I agree with DS on one thing, that alot of Beta keys will be given to people who will not provide the feedback needed to balance the game.
Some will go on Ebay, some will go to kids who will only like to play it, but most of SC 1 players who will participate in Beta test will help Blizzard to make a sequel of the best RTS game.