DICE: Primary Battlefield 3 build doesn’t contain beta bugs

@51 no one will dare give BF3 mediocre reviews. Their advertising spend has guaranteed at least a 9/10 and probably when the game is released next week, all this talk of beta/not beta will be forgotten.

Clearly DICE/EA ARE worried because they are still discussing it a couple of weeks on – damage limitation? you betcha!

@51, You would expect them to say nothing about the beta then?

@50

I didn’t mention the preorders being a “disaster” (though it’s a bad sign), or that DICE didn’t do enough to clarify (I know the bugs’ll be fixed, I didn’t need to be told that, but somebody in DICE obviously thought they had to say something).

Betas (on the non-technical public side, especially on consoles, and so close to release) are about building positive buzz (so people talk to their friends about the game, increasing sales) and building preorders. The majority of buzz I’ve seen about the beta has been lamenting the bugs, the choice of map, the gameplay, etc. That’s not positive.

For that to be the main topic of conversation about BF3 two weeks from release is in no way a good indication, and to me, WAIT FOR IT, means the beta failed to build positive enthusiasm.

A lot of interesting points on here, some by people either in the games industry or knowledgeable enough to know what they’re talking about (G1GAHURTZ,OlderGamer) and then there’s the mindless fanboys who’ll argue a point no matter how wrong they are- oh hello there “Ireland Michael” Look up beta in a dcitionary? Did you? “the second letter of the greek alphabet” ah, right then.
Actually as someone who knows full well what a beta in games industry terms is (something the dictionary fails to specify), I can’t see any way that this was a good move on Dice’s part. As Old Gamer has already made clear you don’t release something this broken so close to release. When you go for an interview you don’t show them your old, unfinished work in the hope they’ll see the potential- you present your stuff in the best possible light. It’s all very well explaining that it’s an old build and the people who read these gaming forums may well understand that but ultimately this has likely done them harm.

Personally I didn’t cancel my pre-order since I’ve played enough BF to know that it’ll be alright eventually, and the Caspian Border map made up for the disappointment of Metro (but console gamers didn’t get to try it and it constantly crashed my brand new PC!) but only a fool would try to defend this strategy.

@54 Then your dictionary must be about 50 years out of date.

Your smartass remarks doesn’t do anything to change the fact that the word beta, when used in the context of a game, have a specific definition.

And what is that definition? It is USER TESTED software, following on from the (imaginatively named) alpha stage. Nothing more, nothing less.

There is nothing to dictate how many bugs may or may not exist in any stage, especially if those bugs are caused by live stress testing. There is no way to catch those bugs without doing so. All that matters is that they are resolved for the final release.

Cancelling a pre-order because of bugs in a beta is stupid. Now, if you simply didn’t enjoy it, that’s completely understandable, but if someone cancelled it because a beta had bugs (if they didn’t, we wouldn’t need them in the first place) they’re still an ignoramus.

@55

Here, if we’re going to be pedantic, we should at least get it right.

Beta is not user tested software. Beta is feature complete software.

No, beta *is* user tested software. And rarely is it “feature complete”. It just has to be able to work on a technical level. Which Battlefield 3 did.

The type of game goes a long way in dictating how many “users” you need to test something. A single player game? Get some game testers. An MMO? You need as many as you can get!

So if a “beta” is a feature complete bug free version of the software, what the hell is a release candidate? And what the hell is a final release? Because this feature complete bug free version of “beta” seems to be all-encompassing now.

@57
No that’s not what it means.
Alpha is user tested. Beta is user tested. RC is user tested. Gold is user tested.

Beta is meant to mean feature complete.

@58
Beta is in no way bug free.

RC is a build you send to QA thinking its ok, but QA often find stuff you couldn’t have predicted. Final release is one that passes QA.

@59 No it *isn’t*. Features are added during betas *all the damn time*.

Er…no Ireland Michael. Beta IS supposed to be feature complete. Alpha should be playable from start to end but may still include white/greybox elements, but even that SHOULD be feature complete. Beta should be pretty damn near finished but might still contain bugs or require polish. My smart arse comments are based on 7 years games industry experience, what are yours based on?

Also I was never arguing that the BF3 beta wasn’t just that. My point was releasing that build, regardless of what they called it, damaged their product appeal in the eyes of many consumers.

“Beta should be pretty damn near finished but might still contain bugs or require polish”

Which the Battlefield 3 beta was.

Even if it wasn’t, your definition of beta is only true in *your* fantasy world of deluded self entitlement anyway.

In 8 years in the games industry (until 2009), working on 10 or more titles, I’ve NEVER ever heard of any single game getting “features” after the beta stage.

Features are developed and scheduled during the design phase of the project, and NOT added at the end.

In fact, if anything, they’d be removed, because there’s not enough man hours left in the project to get them working properly.

Maybe you need to work on your terminology, Michael.

Fin is correct. The game needs to be “user tested” from the start. NOT one or two years down the line once you’ve hit beta.

O’Conner is right, in a way, the definition of beta has been stretched somewhat over time.

Google referred to many of their products as beta for years adding new features progressively, Minecraft is still said to be in beta and adds new features regularly. It’s not a brand new concept he pulled out his arse.

Told you G1GAHURTZ was pro You can tell who actually knows what they’re talking about by the things they write. On the other hand I myself am living in a fantasy world of deluded self entitlement so what do I know? Not sure why I fantasised about weeks of crunch instead of the Swedish women’s volleyball team though, I must be truly insane….

@64

The definition has been stretched in some industries, but not in the full-price games industry.

`Cancelling a pre-order because of bugs in a beta is stupid.`

I canceled it after the beta, but not only because of the bugs. The game isn’t even nearly ready to be sold, no matter which build it is. No proper chat, no player lists, bad netcode, sub 30 fps etc. (I could go on, withount mentioning bugs )

Sure, the 360 hardware is far away from being good, but the performance was just sad..

One of my arguements is that the very word Beta is missused and overused. In this case, I believe it was being used as a PR stunt. I believe the sense that gamers were connected to the actual dev aspect of the game was used to make the gamers feel empowered.

I have tested a lot of games. I did prealpha work on Meridian59 back in the early/mid 1990s(it was a MMORPG running on a Doom Engine, published by 3DO). And I have been involved in a lot of testing(whenever I could get in tbh – I enjoy doing it). One of the largest reasons I say this Beta felt more like a sloppy demo was the time frame.

Follow me for a sec.

Old build, already discarded, containing several known issues. given the time it takes for a game to go gold, get pressed, get shipped and be ready to be on store shelfs, there was very little chance anything from the Beta Build was going to get altered for the retail build. For the most part, imo, DICE already had their retail build when the beta build went live. Thats why I poised the question what in the beta build were they testing?

Server side issues, absolutly.

But they could have also done that with a more recent build…as a full fledged demo. However I have read several devs say that they hate doing demos. Many of the reasons range from time and man hour costs, to distractions, to the fact that many gamers will pass on buying the game in order to just play one or two levels of the demo.

I believe Dice quickly slaped together a stable older build of the game, called it a beta, and stuck it out there.

Call it whatever you want.

We know that Beta is often used as a PR stunt, and even a sales tactic. I’d like to play Starhawk, and the beta invite is packaged into uncharted3. Recently, Halo held their Reach Beta. But in the case of reach, the game was relitivly bug free and played pretty smooth. I know a lot of gamers that were sold on Reach after they played the beta.

The word Beta is indeed often over and missused. But by more then just gamers. The industry does it themself too. It is no wonder gamers confuse the word beta and demo, and no wonder they expect similer performance out of each one.

Personaly, I know very well what a beta is, or at least what it has always been upto recent memory. BF3s beta just felt all kinds of wrong to me, it is semantics for sure, but imo, it is hard to call what we played a beta test. Esp when the games launch was a mere two weeks from the games beta.

But a couple of these posts are spot on, regaurdless of what it was called, I don’t think Dice is very happy with the way things went. I hope they don’t do the whole “beta” thing again. Or if they do, at least release your Beta a few months before the game comes out. I have a very hard time believing that anything feedback wise from the beta would make it into the retail version.

Now a day one patch? Maybe. All I can say there, is I hope they test that patch before they release it.

Good lord. Still going at it.

At the end of the day who really gives a toss. Beta or not a beta. Buy it or don’t buy it. It’s only a little while longer until everything becomes clear and people either have a copy or they don’t.

It was a great beta for me. Everything worked and the game seems to be shaping up nicely. For all the people that had problems, well, your computers are obviously crap and you didn’t pay enough respect to the Battlefield Gods. Blame yourself.

OlderGamer, just read this, http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/battlefield_bad_company/archive/2011/10/03/battlefield-3-open-beta-update-2.aspx##

not just the headline, but the whole thing.

VG247 reported on it btw, the article is linked in the related posts box http://www.vg247.com/2011/10/05/dice-defends-battlefield-3-beta-from-critics/

Still confused as to what the beta was for and why the code is as old as it is? I’ll happily read it aloud and send it to you in the audio format of your choice. How does that sound? I’ve been told I’m very intelligible for someone from central Scotland.

Kotick must be pissing himself with glee over this…

Kotick- Please lord let me Twitter some pisstake of their beta!!

Satan- No my faithful minion, take the moral highground… BWAH HAHAHA!!

All those assurances would actually mean something if they hadn’t messed it up once before though. To their credit they did manage to clean up BC2 within a month, but that was also after a lengthy beta that left people worried.

Granted, the beta is a lot better this time, but I also didn’t run into any of the unpleasant bugs of BC2 when I played that beta.

Freedom, I saw that website .

And everything I have said is inline with what DICE stated. You guys understand that when I “asked” what they were testing is was semi rehtorical right? There was nothing in the beta build to test, it was all back end – so called stress testing. And a more polished demo, of say a more traditional fan apreaciated map would have given the same feedback.

You will also notice that the replys under their statement have more then a few people complaining. Which is what Fin is saying, same here. Call it what ya want alot of folks have voiced their disaprovel with it and the experience they had with it. At the end of the day, that can’t be putting smiles on too many faces at DICE.

At this point about all that is happening is that whenever someone states that they were unhappy with the Beta, some people jump in there swinging. And that if I or someone else didn’t like the Beta, the reasons must be that we either don’t understand what beta means or that the bugs chased us away, and that again proves that we don’t have a clue about what beta means.

The list of things I didn’t like is long. Bugs didn’t chase me away, I expect those to be fixed. I do think the bugs prolly chased some people away. I have alwys enjoyed BF games, and left the argueing to people that mostly centered around CoD vs BF. I didn’t enjoy this go around, it doesn’t mean I jumped ship to CoD or am flame baiting or trolling or otherwise coming here to be an ass.

To me, there are a lot of things done wrong. The Beta promotion was just one of them.

@Freedom, Seriously, stop spouting all your lies here. There is no one, on this earth, that would knowingly and honestly say that someone from central Scotland is intelligible.

Seriously, if anyone can name a change other than slightly higher damage model that is significantly different from BC2 that doesn’t make the game fairer I’d fucking love to hear it.

seriously, OG, hit me with it. Because I fucking tell you this right now, there were numerous Infantry-only Rush maps in BC2 and you’re a professed fan of that game.

“there were numerous Infantry-only Rush maps in BC2″

I might be overlooking them, but what ones? I didn’t buy the Vietnam expansion, if they were in there I wouldn’t know. Or do you mean BF2? I didn’t play that one either. I played BF Modern Combat, BFBC1, BFBC2, and BF1943. I don’t remember rush style infantry only maps.

Before I tell you a couple things I didn’t like about BF3, let me purpose the question of why does it matter? To you? To anyone? Why must I even defend that I didn’t like it at all? Aren’t we all entitled to what we do or don’t like? So what difference does it make?

Its funny, I don’t remember demanding why anyone else likes the game just because I don’t.

The Beta. Ok.

Metro was the biggest reason. Sure the full game has more maps, but I played the beta and it had Metro. Lets say the game has ten maps, and they rotate, that means Metro is going to cycle thro. I don’t have words for how much I hate that map. I really don’t want to play it.

Scope aiming weaves back and forth. Not a big fan, it was making me sick, not kidding.

I want a true and honest Medic class. I don’t like the new class retooling. Imo, med kits and ammor supply shouldn’t be on the same class. I really thought that BFBC had it about right class wise.

I do not like supressing fire, at all.

There are other reasons, that range from horizon flicker to mobile spawn spots. But I am getting tired of talking about it. I know I am not the only one not loving the beta experience. And even if I was the only one, it wouldn’t change my opinion.

@76, White Pass, Nelson Bay, Cold War.

When I played a lot of BC2 there were lots of maps we didn’t like, quit out on and found a new game. We also do the same in CoD when a map comes up we don’t like, this is a total non-issue.

Only the high power sniper scopes have sway, you can stop it by using the hold breath button, all other guns have the exact same sway as BC2 – none unless you’re under fire or near an explosion.

Ammo and med packs aren’t on the same class, Assault have med packs, Support have ammo packs.

I suppose suppressing fire preference is up to you, but the point is to use it instead of fall victim to it…

Horizon flicker: didn’t notice it, mobile spawn points: can be destroyed.

Oh my fucking god, everyone needs to STFU and calm down.

Yes, this was a beta. Yes, people needed to realize that it was a beta and that bugs would be present.

HOWEVER, EA should NOT have released a build that was so bad off to a group of what they should have know were going to be hungry, judgmental consumers.

Hell, playing the beta made me completely change my mind on buying it. I’m not. It’s not Battlefield anymore. It’s Battlefield’s attempt at beating CoD on it’s own terms.

The majority of the things that turned me off in the beta weren’t bugs at all, they were things like GUI choices. Their crappy Battlelog system. The Flashlight annoyance from hell and that every round became sniperville.

That said, releasing a super bugged beta so close to launch was a bad move on their part and if they didn’t know it, this article wouldn’t exist.

Freedom I am going to go back, if I have time, and look into those maps. I don’t remember any maps that didn’t ‘lest have jeeps, boats, skidoos, snowmobiles, or something. I have seen sections of maps that didn’t have new vehicals, but the vehicals where there on one leg of the rush map or another. They didn’t all have tanks and heli, but I can’t recall a map that didn’t offer something.

@79, fairy muff, to be entirely precise Nelson Bay has one Quad Bike and Cold War has the legendary Truck of Fail – a flatbed truck that only appears on this map with a max speed of 3 mph and nowhere to go. Forgive me for considering these maps Infantry only with so many vehicles on display… Infantry Focussed may have been a better term.

The Metro Alpha had an LAV in it, I don’t know whether it’ll return for the final product.

Indeed there are infantry focused maps. But Nelson Bay, first one I checked into, has a UAV and mounted turrets. I am not going to chase my tail(or yours) on every little detail or angle that you bring up. Metro has one bottleneck/choke point. The maps you named are still very open area maps, even without tanks/chopers there is still several strategies for attacking/defending. BF3 Betas console map of choice was extremly limiting.

Like I said before Freedom, its pretty much semantics. This could be argued day and night – whats good whats not. And most of that comes down to personal taste and prefrence.

I don’t think the problem is with the changes at all, I think it’s become a vastly better game. I do think it’s sad to see the some of the shittier bits from BC2 get carried over as well though.

And the medics are still a bit on the annoying side for me. That cooldown doesn’t exactly hurt the strategy of pulling a medic train, although the absence of the M60 is a plus no matter how you look at it.