A Solution (long read)

[SSPWOLF]

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about Harmonix' policy on beta testers.

I know some companies swear by "open beta" others only do "closed beta" and still others don't use beta testers at all, instead either having employed "game testers" or the developers themselves filling this role.

As a professional musician I learned long ago (the hard way) that you have to let other people in when it comes to creating something for others to enjoy. Unless I'm doing a concept or experimental track, I have a group of "steady listeners with opinions" that I send all my stuff to and say "tell me what you think" before I do the final mix.

I'm curious if Harmonix has an external group of beta testers....

Because I'm positive that whether you love it, hate it, or don't care.... there are a few key issues being discussed that most of us realized minutes into our RB consumer experience.

The Band Leader thing - doesn't bother me at all, but it does smack of being odd. Can't see any viable reason for it other than someone in some department said "Dude, I made it that way because that's the way I think it should be, artistically, and I want it kept in." and for some odd reason he presented the argument well enought that that is the way it stayed.

I can't imagine anyone viewing this game from a purely consumer/gamer point of view saying "No seriously, it's better this way" when it comes to the Band Leader Unable To Change Instruments Can't Play Without Me problem.


Suffice to say, if the option to make one character to rule them all was in the game I'd be using it.. but it's no frustration at all for me to make 20 characters in 20 bands because I'm cool like that.


No bass on solo tour - Again.. very odd. As a pure consumer/gamer I would have had to say... "But, seriously... Les Claypool. Flea. I mean.. there's a Red Hot Chili Peppers song in the game... Flea."

The cowbell gets like three loading screens.. but the bass guitar can't get a solo tour?

Odd. Doesn't bother me.. because Solo Tour isn't much of the meat for me personally, but I can see some people in arms, and can't think of any reason to exclude it other than some developer had an artistic vision and won an argument.


So.. it just seems to me that there wasn't any "Laymen" beta testers on this game.


LET ME CAVEAT my entire post here though -

The sheer scope and magnitude of this game is absolutely stunning. Every person involved in it's creation deserves a place in the history of gaming for completely reinventing a genre (which arguably they invented in the first place) and creating a game so groundbreaking in it's idea AND execution that it's the equivalent of the invention of the MP3.

I am by no means bashing anyone in the company, in fact I laud them.

I just read these boards a lot and personally seldom care about any of the so-called "flaws" enough to have my personal enjoyment of the game even slightly detracted... but everyone who plays games has a secret developer inside them (just like we all have secret rockstars inside them) and we all think "I Would have done this, that, and the other differently" so, again.. I'm simply wondering about the state of HMX's beta testers.

[Maggot_Brain]

I hereby volunteer to be a beta tester. I think I've come up with enough ideas that I've earned it! HMX, please send me examples of all the next hardware revisions and newest playable RB build.

kthxbye! :D

[Alphadown99]

I hereby volunteer to be a beta tester. I think I've come up with enough ideas that I've earned it! HMX, please send me examples of all the next hardware revisions and newest playable RB build.

kthxbye! :D

I second that, I would be more than willing to test your games without question as long as I get to keep them if they work! :D

[davidshek]

I'm curious if Harmonix has an external group of beta testers....


Yep, they sure do. I like to call them "Everyone who bought the game at launch" :D

You can also call them "Everybody on this forum" if you prefer.

[tbradshaw]

The Band Leader thing [...] Can't see any viable reason for it [...]

The band leader is the unique identifier for the band. It provides the dedicated save state storage along with providing the anchor to uniquely identify bands for the leaderboards/soon-to-be-coming community site. It's very important for the technical side of things, and since the Band World Tour isn't supposed to be played by musicians that randomly swap in and out with various instruments, it's not a large inconvenience.



No bass on solo tour - Again.. very odd.

If you check the various interviews and other threads on this forum, they attempted to create a bass solo tour and it didn't work. It just wasn't fun enough. Selecting music that was good for a bass solo tour was a negative balance on the song list.

[SSPWOLF]

I'll buy the first one, makes sense.

the second one... I don't buy. When I moved from medium to hard difficulty in my BWT I played the endless set list on Bass and I never recall saying "This is too boring, it detracts from my ability to enjoy this game."


the guitar part may indeed be more "fun" to play, but it's also more fun to play on expert than it is on medium.

That doesn't mean that everyone plays on expert.

Arguing that bass solo tour was excluded due to being "not fun" or for "gameplay balance issues" seems like a thin argument.


Then again, you've drawn me completely off track... my inent wasn't to gripe about those issues, as neither effects me personally more than briefly.

My intent was to express curiosity at the state of beta testing in HMX, specifically for this game.

[StiffEdub]

Yep, they sure do. I like to call them "Everyone who bought the game at launch" :D

You can also call them "Everybody on this forum" if you prefer.

BUMP....Agree...

It was that or, EA took over beta and shipped the kit's to all the top scorers in Madden and Battlefield series games on a PC....:D

[visualdeity]

I don't buy that reason for BWT. Here's the thing there: having one band leader isn't bad by itself. Having characters unable to play other instruments isn't bad by itself. Having both of them together provides us with a huge usability issue.

The primary driving goal when making software has to be usability. A usability issue this big surely would've been discovered while making the game, and should have been fixed. The technical issues honestly take a back seat to the usability ones, in my not-so-humble-software-developer opinion. I understand what a pain in the ass it is to have to rewrite something once it's already done and integrated, I've BEEN there. It's necessary, however, when you have a usability issue this big.

[drno830]

There was an application for "play testers" on Harmonix's website a long time ago. There were some blogs from the devs about the play testers, but all of blogs have been deleted

[Maggot_Brain]

The band leader is the unique identifier for the band. It provides the dedicated save state storage along with providing the anchor to uniquely identify bands for the leaderboards/soon-to-be-coming community site.


This is what I feel was a design mistake. The BAND should be the unique identifier. The game is called Rock BAND, not Rock LEADER.

[Kingfish]

...they attempted to create a bass solo tour and it didn't work. It just wasn't fun enough...

Whhhat? Playing a solo bass on the same songs as we play in BWT...using the same note boards...this is boring? So, what would make the bass fun(enough)? Being in a BWT to 'save' the other members of the band IF they start to drop out? I guess i don't get it.

If the bass is such a damn liability to the game...why'd they even add it? I mean, no one obviously wants to play bass online and its sooooo boring...it didn't even merit a solo tour!

Personally, I find the singing tour to be boring as piss but more power to those that like it. You know, for me, the solo tour is just a series of songs you play to make money and get 'free' items in preparation to start your BWT...it would be nice to be able to do that same thing with the bass tour.

Not fun enough...pufft! :mad:

[shoombabi]

I agree.

I just picked up the bass guitar IRL a few months ago, and I'm having myself a blast with it. When I go out and hear songs in restaurants and stuff, I now instinctively go to the chord progression in my head (which is inevitably some variation on GCD - Learn some damn chords, bands of today), and I find the bass part to be incredibly interesting.

Of course, it could be the satisfaction of knowing that in a real band, the bass guitar sets the stage for a lot of things.

And also, I tend to have an affinity towards under-appreciated instruments.

[capasdilemma]

Yep, they sure do. I like to call them "Everyone who bought the game at launch" :D

You can also call them "Everybody on this forum" if you prefer.

Welcome to your newfound status as a user of Apple products.

No, seriously, regardless of how HMX looks at it, having worked as a QA project managemer for a very, very large software company, scary large -- no, not Microsoft -- software and a scary large -- no, not EA -- games publisher (although in PR/marketing not in QA still familiar with how things went down), no matter Harmonix stance on open betas, the specialized controllers required to properly play the game would have made an open beta impractical.

[Kingfish]

I agree.

I just picked up the bass guitar IRL a few months ago, and I'm having myself a blast with it. When I go out and hear songs in restaurants and stuff, I now instinctively go to the chord progression in my head (which is inevitably some variation on GCD - Learn some damn chords, bands of today), and I find the bass part to be incredibly interesting.

Of course, it could be the satisfaction of knowing that in a real band, the bass guitar sets the stage for a lot of things.

And also, I tend to have an affinity towards under-appreciated instruments.

Congrats...i've been playing bass since 1982 when I was 17...and i know exactly what you are saying. When you start 'feeling' the bass even when listening to the radio, you know you are in the groove and the learning of songs gets SOOOOO much easier.

I also find that playing bass in RB(or GH2) on hard+ sorta/kinda feels like really playing the bass...can't say that about the guitar...but i might be just wishing i was out on that stage again! :)

[threeos]

I think a bunch of people from Score Hero were invited to play the game long before release. They signed NDAs so they were unable to tell of their entire experience. I'm not sure if they can say more now since the game is out but you can get banished from SH pretty easily so I haven't bothered to ask there.

Since the Score Hero people are the hard core players, I don't think Harmonix got much of a "casual perspective" from those players but maybe they had other testers as well.

What I would find most astonishing is if no one noticed the loudness of the drums. I think not putting some type of foam over the drums was a major omission. I (and many others) had to scramble to find a solution to that.

[capasdilemma]

Congrats...i've been playing bass since 1982 when I was 17...and i know exactly what you are saying. When you start 'feeling' the bass even when listening to the radio, you know you are in the groove and the learning of songs gets SOOOOO much easier.

I also find that playing bass in RB(or GH2) on hard+ sorta/kinda feels like really playing the bass...can't say that about the guitar...but i might be just wishing i was out on that stage again! :)


Hmm. I'll have to try some bass. I play piano and some acoustic and electric guitars -- and, ah, dulcimer: shhh!!! Keep that quiet -- but I've never played electric bass. With years of piano lessons, and playing both that and the guitar, I *still* sometimes have trouble picking out the bass line in songs. Well, not Rush songs, but hey.

You're right about RB guitar. It's lots of fun, there are some moments when you feel like you are indeed playing music, but never really like you're actually playing guitar.

And, 17 in 1982, uh? Wow. Thanks for being three years older than me. Makes me feel like might belong here a little bit! ;)

[capasdilemma]

I think a bunch of people from Score Hero were invited to play the game long before release. They signed NDAs so they were unable to tell of their entire experience. I'm not sure if they can say more now since the game is out but you can get banished from SH pretty easily so I haven't bothered to ask there.

Since the Score Hero people are the hard core players, I don't think Harmonix got much of a "casual perspective" from those players but maybe they had other testers as well.

What I would find most astonishing is if no one noticed the loudness of the drums. I think not putting some type of foam over the drums was a major omission. I (and many others) had to scramble to find a solution to that.

Guys from Score Hero as early invitational testers? Guys from Score Hero? They didn't notice the loudness of the drum strikes because first thing they threw all the drum kits out the windows.

[Kingfish]

Hmm. I'll have to try some bass. I play piano and some acoustic and electric guitars -- and, ah, dulcimer: shhh!!! Keep that quiet --

Hey, I played banjo in a bluegrass band in my early teens...so dulcimer doesn't seem so bad anymore huh :)


And, 17 in 1982, uh? Wow. Thanks for being three years older than me. Makes me feel like might belong here a little bit! ;)

Great, glad my age made someone else feel better...my wife is 8 years younger than me and she LOVES to make open ended statements like, (her favorite) in response to me saying something about '...when I was a Senior in High School' she responds 'wow, I was in like 4th grade then!' Thats always nice... :eek: