I think the game is far enough along that a public stress test would be good- not only to provide valuable data for Devs on server function etc. but also be great for advertising , would pump up word of mouth, streamers and social networking to keep the hype up about Pantheon. It would certainly also help confirm even more proof of concept that would certainly help with investor interest.
Just open up a week end free to all stress test limited to certain areas and certain classes and races if needed. Development has to be far along enough for a mass stress test? isnt it?
I suspect that it is still well too early for a stress test to be useful. Once we hit alpha or maybe beta might be a better time - when they are closer to nailing down just how the servers will work, how many there will be and what populations they will shoot for.
The advertising impact might well be negative. As in "what a pirce of crap this game is" as people equate the highly limited pre-alpha test to a real game even in early release status.
I think the kind of stress test you're talking about is more commonly done near the end of beta. Almost every stress test I've ever participated in happened just before a game released (I'm not saying I've participated in a ton of them). Monster's and Memories did a stress test recently and I felt like that was very out of the ordinary, but it's what they wanted to focus on at this point in their devolopment. I'm sure VR will do a server stress test when it's best for their internal development road map.
Its an observation of mine over the last 3-4 years. The hype and buzz for Pantheon was everywhere, in games & social networks. The buzz and excitement was non stop. The last year, the word of mouth that is now common when I see Pantheon's name brought up, is a meme associated with really negative thoughts and its across the board. Its gotten to a point where the memes are "gifting Pantheon pledges as inheritances to children".
This is eroding the trust in the game to come out and also impacts people pledging because thats all you hear outside of this Forum or Discord and its shaping peoples minds to maybe not even come and give Pantheon a try, let alone pledge with financial support. Outsdie of the vacuum that is Pantheon its bad.
Someone brought up a competitor's recent stress test as an outlyer. I took part in that, about 800-1,000 people participated and after the stress test, their forums were bursting with praise, high faith in a vision of a game but even more importantly, people said they would create streams, go on twitter and pass the word and network to spread the word. I bet at least 40% would have paid immediate money to keep playing. It was a constant theme running.
Their Devs made a bold move and it paid off and I would highly suggest that some serious PR inquiries should be done to get real feedback on what the outside talk is as its influencing people who are thinking about Pantheon but dont bother to take a look because their friends and the the word on the "street" is consistently not good and thats not good for a brand.
Something as simple as a stress test open to public in a controlled environment should go a long way to reversing some of the bad talk trends and if really the thought is that it should not be done because it "may go bad" then that in it of itself speaks volumes for the confidence in the game trajectory because monthly news letters and streams in the same streamers channels is not cutting it if its just the same population seeing it.
As stated before "stress tests" are usually done in beta stage of development - if there is to be made an open for all test session it'll be at the VERY earliest when pre-alpha access wont be just for sessions, but a constant thing for pledgers and even then i think open access for all could bring more bad than good if done too early.
Hegenox said:As stated before "stress tests" are usually done in beta stage of development - if there is to be made an open for all test session it'll be at the VERY earliest when pre-alpha access wont be just for sessions, but a constant thing for pledgers and even then i think open access for all could bring more bad than good if done too early.
That may have been the way in the past, its obviously not now as demonstrated by a brand new team with a very successful "stress test" that accomplished far more than technical data and its no where near its Pre Alpha stage.
They've already done a similar stress test with PA testers so I don't really see gaining much data wise.
Atm it could test the login server qeueing en mass maybe.
It would be beneficial for them to stress the sharding tech(assuming it's implemented) for newbie starting areas at launch.
It would be beneficial to stress test sharding + crossing "zones" in the seamless world with large # of concurrent players simultaneously.
Weather systems, dyanmic events, pets etc... there's still quite a bit of things needing to be added that all attribute to server load.
I think they should finish implementing the backend/gameplay systems/classes before opening up to a open stress test. Which I think would be near the end of pre alpha. A successful test at that point would likely give the best return on pledges knowing Alpha was imminent.
Deathwish said:I think the game is far enough along that a public stress test would be good
Do you have some inside information that the rest of us are not aware of? The latest "Roadmap to Alpha" in the April Newsletter tells us that the full Network Overhaul is not completed yet.
They have also explained to us that they have been delaying work on the Pet classes until that Network overhaul is done as the Pet classes will add double the units in an area for all those classes as they summon their pets too.
So until the Network Overhaul is completed, and until we have those Pet classes all ready and active in the game, there is little point in 'stress testing' the server.
Deathwish said:but also be great for advertising , would pump up word of mouth, streamers and social networking to keep the hype up about Pantheon. It would certainly also help confirm even more proof of concept that would certainly help with investor interest.
...
Its an observation of mine over the last 3-4 years. The hype and buzz for Pantheon was everywhere, in games & social networks. The buzz and excitement was non stop. The last year, the word of mouth that is now common when I see Pantheon's name brought up, is a meme associated with really negative thoughts and its across the board. Its gotten to a point where the memes are "gifting Pantheon pledges as inheritances to children".
This is eroding the trust in the game to come out and also impacts people pledging because thats all you hear outside of this Forum or Discord and its shaping peoples minds to maybe not even come and give Pantheon a try, let alone pledge with financial support. Outsdie of the vacuum that is Pantheon its bad.
First off it sounds like you only seem to want a stress test because you think it will help bolster Pledges.
Second of all you also seem to be falling victim to the 'Availability Heuristic'. This is when our recent memories or experiences on a subject can create a bias that makes us think that this is the most Relevant or Accurate information on a subject. Just because you personally have recently seen Memes or other people making Jokes about Pantheon never coming out, does not mean that this is an accurate representation of the Majority of people's views or experiences regarding Pantheon.
Since Pantheon's progress is highly dependent on the monies coming in from Pledges, we can make a good guess that VR closely keeps tabs on the rate at which people are Pledging. If those Pledges were falling off in frequency you can be sure that VR would start pushing for more visability and 'Good Press' as you are hinting that they really need.
Now I'm not saying that there are not people out there who are negative towards Pantheon, but I do not make the assumption that just because I may hear a few people complaining that this means everyone is complaining and losing hope.
We are all very impatient for the game to be ready for Alpha and then Beta so more of us can get a chance to play, but I have faith that VR will know the right time for those things to happen.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:Deathwish said:I think the game is far enough along that a public stress test would be good
Do you have some inside information that the rest of us are not aware of? The latest "Roadmap to Alpha" in the April Newsletter tells us that the full Network Overhaul is not completed yet.
They have also explained to us that they have been delaying work on the Pet classes until that Network overhaul is done as the Pet classes will add double the units in an area for all those classes as they summon their pets too.
So until the Network Overhaul is completed, and until we have those Pet classes all ready and active in the game, there is little point in 'stress testing' the server.
Deathwish said:but also be great for advertising , would pump up word of mouth, streamers and social networking to keep the hype up about Pantheon. It would certainly also help confirm even more proof of concept that would certainly help with investor interest.
...
Its an observation of mine over the last 3-4 years. The hype and buzz for Pantheon was everywhere, in games & social networks. The buzz and excitement was non stop. The last year, the word of mouth that is now common when I see Pantheon's name brought up, is a meme associated with really negative thoughts and its across the board. Its gotten to a point where the memes are "gifting Pantheon pledges as inheritances to children".
This is eroding the trust in the game to come out and also impacts people pledging because thats all you hear outside of this Forum or Discord and its shaping peoples minds to maybe not even come and give Pantheon a try, let alone pledge with financial support. Outsdie of the vacuum that is Pantheon its bad.
First off it sounds like you only seem to want a stress test because you think it will help bolster Pledges.
Second of all you also seem to be falling victim to the 'Availability Heuristic'. This is when our recent memories or experiences on a subject can create a bias that makes us think that this is the most Relevant or Accurate information on a subject. Just because you personally have recently seen Memes or other people making Jokes about Pantheon never coming out, does not mean that this is an accurate representation of the Majority of people's views or experiences regarding Pantheon.
Since Pantheon's progress is highly dependent on the monies coming in from Pledges, we can make a good guess that VR closely keeps tabs on the rate at which people are Pledging. If those Pledges were falling off in frequency you can be sure that VR would start pushing for more visability and 'Good Press' as you are hinting that they really need.
Now I'm not saying that there are not people out there who are negative towards Pantheon, but I do not make the assumption that just because I may hear a few people complaining that this means everyone is complaining and losing hope.
We are all very impatient for the game to be ready for Alpha and then Beta so more of us can get a chance to play, but I have faith that VR will know the right time for those things to happen.
Well said. IMO, I don't think the majority of people that will play Pantheon have it on their radar yet. Even if they try it and don't stay there will be a LOT of folks hearing about Pantheon for the first time and wanting to play once the marketing ramps up after the Alpha announcement and even more when the release date is announced. The majority of gamers aren't into following the development of any game, they just want to play. Things will change dramatically once Alpha and release dates are announced.
Those folks won't care one bit about the length of time or the development streams(with non optimal graphics and gameplay that some are obsessing over at the moment) we are paying attention to. I have never heard of anyone saying they won't play a game they just found out about because they heard it took 10+ plus years to develop or someone showed them old vidoes of the game when it looked unfinished. If their first look at the game is the Alpha roadmap complete or the Official released game, none of what we are stressing over will matter.
There is more to this Pantheon thing than what we are expereincing at the moment. Perspective is everything.
Deathwish said:Its an observation of mine over the last 3-4 years. The hype and buzz for Pantheon was everywhere, in games & social networks. The buzz and excitement was non stop. The last year, the word of mouth that is now common when I see Pantheon's name brought up, is a meme associated with really negative thoughts and its across the board. Its gotten to a point where the memes are "gifting Pantheon pledges as inheritances to children".
This is eroding the trust in the game to come out and also impacts people pledging because thats all you hear outside of this Forum or Discord and its shaping peoples minds to maybe not even come and give Pantheon a try, let alone pledge with financial support. Outsdie of the vacuum that is Pantheon its bad.
Someone brought up a competitor's recent stress test as an outlyer. I took part in that, about 800-1,000 people participated and after the stress test, their forums were bursting with praise, high faith in a vision of a game but even more importantly, people said they would create streams, go on twitter and pass the word and network to spread the word. I bet at least 40% would have paid immediate money to keep playing. It was a constant theme running.
Their Devs made a bold move and it paid off and I would highly suggest that some serious PR inquiries should be done to get real feedback on what the outside talk is as its influencing people who are thinking about Pantheon but dont bother to take a look because their friends and the the word on the "street" is consistently not good and thats not good for a brand.
Something as simple as a stress test open to public in a controlled environment should go a long way to reversing some of the bad talk trends and if really the thought is that it should not be done because it "may go bad" then that in it of itself speaks volumes for the confidence in the game trajectory because monthly news letters and streams in the same streamers channels is not cutting it if its just the same population seeing it.
I too participated in the unnamed competitor's stress test and even though they mentioned time and time again that the sole purpose was to stress test their code, the amount of idiotic stuff people complained about as if those things should be in a state of completion was ridiculous. It just shows that people don't listen, don't read and, more importantly, fail to comprehend the actual purpose of such tests. A 'stress test' of Pantheon server/network code wouldn't be seen as such by many people. They would just whine, moan and complain that their thing about which they are most concerned isn't in the perfect state. VR and Pantheon doesn't need that. A stress test, at this point in time, would be irresponsible and unnecessary.
100% with Van for once, I'm sure one day they'll do their own open stress test but its amazing how many people can get these things downlaoded and log in ready while having their head burried 2 feet in the ground.
It doesnt help that theres a stigma around Pantheon now with how long its been since the kickstarter.
This kind of Stress test you are talking about would be best used at late Alpha, so you can get a feel what to expect what the experience would be before you set it in Beta and again in late Beta so you have a feel what to expect when you open it up to the public, doing any kind of stress test in a high magitude in PA is simply unwarranted, and unnessecary as PA is used for all the major coding and bugs, where Late Alpha to Beta is used to catch the rest of the bugs(simply due to more people testing) and adding more people into the each testing phase naturally puts it's own stress test into play with each time they would open it up in those stages.
Eventhough this is something I would love to participate in, it comes down to the simple fact that if VR are not ready for an open stress test, then there is little point from a development point of view in doing so. VR have to be ready for that above all else.
Also, (as others have pointed out) if the game is not ready and people get a bad impression of it from a stability/playability point of view, then the resulting bad press will be very difficult to put right. This post shows that we are all willing this game to be released and are chomping at the bit to get our hands on it, but there are too many people that would expect a stress test to be far more than that and it would cause the game a huge disservice.
VR are the only people that know when it "is far enough along that a public stress test would be good" and they will tell us when it is.
Vandraad said: ...I too participated in the unnamed competitor's stress test and even though they mentioned time and time again that the sole purpose was to stress test their code, ...
IMO:
Yep, it was a good test, with great results, and extremely/uniquely valuable to the development team. Their communication style and level of detail shared should be a model to emulate.
A stress test may not be a bad idea to see what their new networking solution has to offer once they are done with it, however I'd argue they should do it with the existing pledges before an open to the public type thing. Supposedly the amount of alpha pledges alone outnumber how many were in the stress test of the other game. I could see a public one further in the future, but there are quite a few who bought a pledge and feel like they are ignored/overlooked with the new alpha test giveaways. A tip of the hat to them while gaining valuable network data is a win/win situation to me.
If/when pantheon does the stress test (public or just the pledges) I hope they show the numbers like the other game devs did. It was very interesting!