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Comic for Wednesday 11/23 (Early High Res)
🕑 Added 2022-11-23 05:50:09 +0000 UTCDisclosure #1- Darktide was at "mixed" when I started the comic, and "mostly positive" by the time I finished it.
Disclosure #2- I am having a blast with Darktide, despite the server problems.
So. Darktide launches on November 30th, but they let people who preordered start early to help do some final testing/stressing of the servers. Pretty straightforward.
And, sure enough, there have been some issues. Disconnects, trouble joining, getting kicked from games, etc. It immediately started getting slammed with negative reviews from people struggling to play, which in turn ignited a rather interesting conversation that I can see both sides of. Should the game get review bombed for struggling during a beta test? Since you're paying for access to the beta period, are you entitled to expect a flawless experience? Or by knowing it was a beta when you pre-ordered, did you enter into an unspoken agreement to be a tester for an unstable product, and your money is only for the finished launch product?
On the one hand, if a product is unfinished, it does feel unfair to pass judgement on it, especially when so often reviews are "final" (ie, people rarely go back and edit them with new information/impressions).
I, certainly, would hate to have a comic I'm working on judged while it is still in the early sketch phase. And if, for instance, I showed it to someone to get feedback in the process, and they turned around and wrote a review that said "tomorrow's comic sucks" based on an incomplete product, that would be pretty frustrating.
On the flip side, I believe consumers have a right to as much information as possible regarding a potential purchase. So in that regard, someone contemplating pre-ordering Darktide should know the pre-order beta is currently working through some server/optimization stuff.
But where is the line (is there one)? Should a game have its perception/review ratio affected due to problems in a testing period that is specifically there to catch and fix said problems? When is it too early to review a game?
Forced to choose, I would err on the side of transparency for the consumer. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what stage a game needs to be at for it to be "reviewable"? Especially when these days people often use negative reviews as a weapon to vent their frustrations.
Comments
Eric Monroe
Tim, I think you've really hit at the core of the problem here, which is that the current system mostly relies on: 1) People not being a dick and review bombing for things that can be addressed or for finding problemes in a beta that is meant to find those types of issues. 2) Future consumers looking at the individual reviews for something and basing their decision on the details and not the generalized score. Recent review vs overall reviews somewhat help problem 2, but problem 1 is the real tough one to solve. I agree with you on airing on the side of transparency, which I think is always the better route as it keeps companies honest, but it's one thing to include comments about problems that can be fixed, and a whole other problem to base a review score on pre-launch server connection issues during a beta explicitly for the purpose of stress testing.
Stephen Shook
I'm in the 2 type of general problems camp. Core problems: Things that are intrinsic to the game. Chafing Problems: Things that are of the moment or easily adjusted. For a beta I'm willing to review and comment on core problems. Things like the intrinsic core game play loop not being fun. Non-Trivial Mechanics being convoluted. For Chafing Problems with server issues being number one, I'll tend to give a pass for beta and then about a month. There understandably just the hardest part after balance to test for the same reason. People are weird yo. That doesn't make them not the most annoying problems.
