With Shattered Fates, our forthcoming third set, now revealed and Beta testing in progress over at
http://test.shadowera.com, it's a very exciting time to be a Shadow Era player!
For those of you who backed the Kickstarter, we really hope you are enjoying playing with the new cards so far. There's still a ways to go before the set goes live, but, with your help, we will get there sooner and with better quality. This article is aimed at helping you to help us get the best from the Beta phase.
What actually is Beta Testing?
The aim of all our testing is to arrive at an excellent set of cards, implemented with as few bugs as possible, to be released as soon as possible. Getting to that destination is an iterative process, where we continuously improve what we have to gain more and more confidence in it and progressively share it with more and more people, leading to a virtuous feedback cycle.
We start out with a relatively unproven set of cards and an initial implementation and test with a relatively small group, clearing the most obvious issues out of the way so that what we have is at least usable. This is known as Alpha Testing and really needs to involve experienced testers as opposed to customers.
Once we are reasonably happy with what we have, we can add in more testers for wider coverage to try to find any further issues. It's at this point that we let some players loose on it, within the Players' Focus Group, and their playing inevitably unearths a lot of bugs to fix and they give direct and indirect balance feedback along the way. Bugs tend to get fixed very quickly, since they will otherwise interfere with balance testing.
When we *think* we're in a great spot, in terms of balance and apparent lack of bugs, it's time for wider Beta Testing to happen and that's where you, our esteemed Kickstarter backers, come in! The next section covers how you can help us.
What should I do during Beta Testing?
First and foremost, you can play lots of games. As you encounter anything that you think is a bug, you can report it on the forum, giving as much detail as possible. The developers will need to investigate your report and try to reproduce it before they can fix it.
Second, you can try lots of different decks. If you just play the same deck for a month then it is somewhat useful, but nowhere near as useful as you trying out a variety of cards. That's why you are given a complete playset of every card in the game to use!
Third, if you are unsure about how a card works, please use the Card Rulings section to ask a question about it. We will do our best to give you a quick answer, so you can then more easily identify bugs, and, of course, have a better playing experience.
Besides bug finding, you should let us know if you think any cards or combinations of cards are overpowered, since, as a Design Team, we aim to avoid power creep and we want to at least retain (and hopefully increase) the high level of balance that we already have.
You can also provide other balance feedback about cards that you think are weak, or any other kind of feedback (e.g. poor card wordings). Obviously, we need to prioritize tackling bugs and overpowered cards since they can ruin the game, but we do still read your other feedback as we get it and address what we can as we go.
One final thing you can do is remember that this is a Beta version, where bugs are expected, and you have been invited to play with it because we believe you have the creativity and passion to find them! Whilst some of that passion might be killed by seeing bug reports stacking up, please do not let it dishearten you; it's actually just what we need from this phase and should be not taken as indicative of the final product. It's kind of the opposite really, since the more we find now, the fewer surprises we get later on when we are gearing up for Live Release.
When does Beta Testing end?
As I mentioned earlier, this is all about increasing our own confidence in the upcoming live release, so this will depend on us having tackled all the known bugs and having achieved some great coverage. When we get to that point, we can then open up to the public Test Server, seeking confirmation on that confidence, with the expectation there are very few bugs still hiding, but being ready to tackle them if they do.
I hope this has helped you to see how you can make the best of being a Beta Testing for Shattered Fates. Quality has always been paramount in Shadow Era, so everything you can do to help us increase it is very much appreciated.
vBulletin Message