#Dont launch it in Open Beta if its not ready. Launch it in early access.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

earnest dock
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Hey all,

I am concerned with the term open beta we keep throwing around, a beta implies the game is feature finished but in a stage where it needs testing and tweaking and is available within limited scope. Games in beta dont allow people to retain items/progress when the game launches, they normally wipe progress. Early access titles work both ways however many allow data saves and progress to remain, this is ideally what I think would work for us.

The current meta for games is to launch in early access, this allows you to launch the game in it's available state and proceed to evolve it over its early access life cycle. For a good recent example of this look at Balders Gate 3, it has been in early access since 2020 and is only now set to release fully feature finished in August 2023.

The worry here is if we call it a beta, people will have certain expectiations of the state of the game and if it is not yet feature finished we risk damaging the brand or IP, if they have the games all connected and working within a limited scope by years end I say release it in that format and open the flood gates to people whom are willing to play the game in it's early access state.

I have no clue here what the state of development is regarding overworld and pvp, I can only assume via the leaks the monster hunter type gameplay and ideas for overworld and some story narrative experience will be some time away and as such will not make it into the planned open beta, the same for some of the other planned features for the other branches of the Illuvium IP titles within the IBG.

This will help the team finish needed features and add them over the course of the games early access lifespan. Only to fully release the full game when it is ready.

I think we would need some definition as to the scope of the release so people understand what they are playing/waiting for, I think this would also help allivate some of the wen questions and constant speculation we have day to day and may help the team deliver a product to players sooner rather than later.

This is all my opinion obviously. I am eager as always to hear the community and teams feedback on the above, both postive and negative.
If this makes sense then hopefully this can be fleshed out and adopted.

All the best,

Josh Illuvium_Logo Atlas_Love To_The_Moon

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Its worth mentioning Steam have an entire section dedicated to early access games, this seemingly fits what I can see will be the scope of the game ready to launch this year and allow the team to deploy updates to the early access title throughout development.

fierce crescent
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Great Post @earnest dock , couldn't agree more. Clarification on expectations, and altered launch titles are two small changes that we can make now with no effort that may save/avoid issues in the future.

earnest dock
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People buy early access titles on steam knowing they are buying access to a game in development. Betas however do not. In my opinion if we are looking to capture the web 2 audience, we should follow the framework used. Our Open beta is likely to be fully blockchain connected etc and payment for travel etc be required. As such the early access title fits Illuvium much better and avoids falling into a beta mindset which in my experience are usually limited in both time and scope purposely for testing purposes. We are doing more than that.

thick jasper
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Renaming an "open beta" to "early access" could be a wise move and alleviate pressure on the development team to deliver a polished product.

In situations where a release may be delayed or a functional but incomplete version of the game can be released, "early access" would be preferable to a delayed "open beta"

Also how to best sell "early access" should be explored. For example fuel packages (with kickbacks to land owners) that are inline with web2 early access prices.

amber mango
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I'm not much of a gamer so I would have never noticed the difference between Beta and Early Access but your explanation of why we should call it early access makes sense. I do get pretty confused what's the difference between Beta and Alpha.

Early access sounds cool. That way we can call Zero,Arena, and Overworld Early Access instead of one is Beta and the other is Alpha

simple bear
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This is a great point and it makes sense to call it early access instead of open beta.

silk vortex
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Steam will never let us on the platform, but the naming being Early Access makes sense. I can only imagine the 8million questions of "does progress get wiped after beta?"

simple bear
wary lake
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To me this seems like just an issue of semantics. I dont really see a meaningful difference between 'open beta' or 'early access'

'Early access' has been a popular term recently but plenty of games have had long and iterative betas. Minecraft comes to mind where they launched in alpha, moved to beta, and then finally to full release without ever calling themselves early access.

I think what gets released will be essentially the same regardless of how its branded so I would say its best to just leave it up to marketing to decide what language is the most accurate/enticing for potential players.

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Theres always a risk of creating confusion when changing names of things so unless we are dedicating a lot of resources to advertising its probably easiest to leave it the same and avoid confusion.

timid arch
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I like Open beta why change it when sounds consistent with whats already been releasing. Doesnt make a big diff either way though

hot apex
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I don’t think it’ll really matter personally

earnest dock
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This is the current framework used for early access titles. At least in my opinion fits into what we will be doing more so than a classic Beta

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untold plover
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Overall I agree.

We don't really have a solid definition or layout of plans of what is expected to be released in "open beta" with blockchain enabled and the economy running. It would definitely be a good thing to get a list of the scope planned for open beta vs full release so that expectations of players meet reality. I think in this Discord if you were to ask everyone you'd get a range of expectations on how many regions will be released, how many illuvials, etc. at open beta start.

I'm not THAT hung up on the open beta vs early access differentiation because I've played all sorts of betas of games. The feature completeness and polish has been all over in my experience. Some have been fairly feature complete and just about ready for prime time, just needing that little dose of polish and bughunting/stress testing only an open beta can provide. Others were a pared down version without full features, though that has often been intentional to "hide" story elements while getting that stress test done. So that's not to say that internal betas don't already have those features/sections that were removed from the open beta release. I think Early Access is its own new paradigm that allows for-pay titles to sell the product before it's ready so they can help fund the development.

All that being said, the early access model does line up with how Illuvium will likely be released in "open beta" because we'd be selling fuel to effectively help fund the finishing of development. It follows the recent trend of releasing in development games, and provides clarity on the expectation of feature completeness. 👍

hot apex
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I mean it makes sense to call it that sure. Do I think it’s going to have some sweeping effect, no. So I just don’t think it’s necessarily worth it to change it but I guess I don’t really pay attention to something being early access or open beta or not. Maybe more hardcore gamers care about specific clarification

earnest dock
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I mean, betas normally dont allow progress and things earnt to carry over to the released full game
so imagine how many after beta does my progress get wiped questions
and people may not play as they assume they will lose the progress made.

thick jasper
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Even though "Early Access" might be more like the state we are currently in with our alpha and betas.

I think the main thing with a name change it has the potential to set and change expectations with players and the team. Open beta was always discussed as the full release, if we change the term new expectations could be set and perhaps a game can be released earlier.

timid arch
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meet in the middle and call it open access 😏

wary lake
little hull
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I have to agree, call it anything else but Open beta, most people don't want to be "test subjects" which the term implies. Illuvium Genesis? Illuvium First chapter? Etc

earnest dock
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Betas are very different to what we are planning to do, which is launch in early access but calling it open beta lol
IMO if we own our assets and progress is kept the game has launched all be it in an early access format

betas are not that

restive canopy
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I agree with early access but i dont think they plan on starting the economy for open beta so we will still dont own our assets and only test

earnest dock
open grove
restive canopy
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I thought that at first too but i think i heard that they wont start the reward portion for arena at the start and even if things are on blockchain it cant fonction yet and have demand if the competitive aspect isnt started.

Im not 100% certain either, id love clarification on this from the team. I think i heard that from kieran.

hidden edge
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I support this. I posted a similar about this a while back: #1028912685808635954 I'm glad this is getting traction.

median zinc
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I think this would be okay. Only consideration is if open beta makes sense because that's when we are talking about a 'live' blockchain connected product? But at the end of the day think we need to have expectations set properly and having low expectations isn't a bad thing at this stage - for the reasons mentioned in the post.

vocal agate
# earnest dock Hey all, I am concerned with the term open beta we keep throwing around, a bet...

I disagree with the premises put forward about what comprises a game in beta vs. what comprises an early access title on Steam. Functionally, most games in Early Access on Steam ARE in a beta state (i.e. not completed). Feature completeness is not a factor in whether a game is in beta.

Early Access (as it pertains to Steam titles in particular) is an alternate method of funding a game through development, moreso than it is an identifier or the state of a game's development. Assertions made about things being always wiped during beta tests are not true, and are determined case by case by individual game development companies. There is no universally accepted convention about what makes a game beta vs. non-beta vs. early access. The bar for a game leaving beta depends on the discretion of an individual game development company, with many games having notoriously long beta tests (many of which did not undergo a wipe or anything like that during the transition to a 1.0 game launch).

With all that said, people are familiar with the concept of Early Access (again, because of Steam), and there may be value in using another naming convention.

Significantly more importantly than the semantics of what name we use to describe the launch of Illuvium (be it Open Beta, Early Access, or something else), the most important aspect here is to identify that the game is still in development. I believe that this would be most effectively accomplished through a splash when opening the client (and saying something to the tune of "Illuvium is under development. Please enjoy the game and submit any feedback or bugs you may have!")

TL;DR: Yes to clear messaging around the game being under development, but pretty neutral on the efficacy of changing the name of the launch.

vocal agate
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I'll just provide this for reference of the kind of splash I'm talking about. On game launch, there's an equivalent splash that displays updates and changes with links to patch notes.

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median zinc
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I see what you are saying - also going from being in closed beta to early access might be confusing.

devout cloud
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I agree for a far simpler reason than you've outlined here although I agree with everything you've said @earnest dock

All of our current 'testing' products are referred to as closed betas and we are adopting a mantra of not releasing a half baked title. That means that whatever we release to the public shouldn't really be considered in a majorly unfinished state.

More importantly being able to distinguish between what is out right now and what the actual product launch looks like feels like a smart move. Saying it is early access helps signify a major new phase in development and if u are looking from the outside in then its wayyyyy less confusing. Currently everything in our ecosystem is called beta this or beta that. This would be a big moment and confusing the less involved community seems like a potential misstep.

That being said im not a fan of the whole 'not feature complete' thing. It's a toxic behaviour with gaming studios nowadays and I rather just say 'illuvium launch'. Changes and features in the future are upgrades to the existing game which we should consider finished. If you aren't in the state of mind to call it the Illuvium launch then u shouldn't be launching

livid cobalt
# vocal agate I disagree with the premises put forward about what comprises a game in beta vs....

To add to this point, the number one rule with any form of communication is know your audience.

Take Illuvitars as an example, how many questions did we get about Alpha status? Only a small part of our audience knew what that meant, had we called the run "First Editions" for example, that would have been a more powerful communication tool.

Open Beta or Early Access I'm completely indifferent, I would suggest we analyse our target audience and choose the term / positioning that would be the most effective in communicating what we are trying to achieve.

grand vault
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Overworld is a glorified gacha system rn and the only aspect of the illuvium products that would be worth putting an early access title to if you even wanted to since how we differentiate the ‘games’ is confusing as it is. Pvp, survival, ilz zero are going to be effectively feature complete on launch while the overworld is the only thing that is likely to have major expansions or changes too in how it plays for the products being released atm.

umbral sierra
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TBH, Never really crossed my mind.. to me beta is beta and all possible changes aka updates during this phase are personally welcomed to help with the improvements in the development stages of the game.

I agree that using the right terminology openly would possibly help alleviate the stress of answering the WEN questions and peoples expectations to have the game out sooner rather than later.
Doing some digging.. using the term "open beta" would be better used when all 7 regions (which correlate to the main game) are released with possibly only minor adjustments being made before its full release.

Piggy backing off this idea.. Maybe marketing should use certain phrases during certain time periods?

"free early access" - Early stages of development with no expectations of full release
"Open beta" - Once all the 7 regions are completed and readily available to play with full release not too far away

Also it should be noted that we have no idea on how the devs will be implementing the testing & integration of the blockchain component with overworld - leaving that up to the pros.. but I think its fair to say that if you are a land owner you gain access to the "alpha" stage to help implement the blockchain component for full release considering they are already involved with the blockchain & will be gaining fuel & illuvials as appose to others who would be part of the onboarding process from web2 who are still learning of its capabilities.

All in all I think this idea definitely helps define clear communication for those who have confusion of what each term means.

Ps - pretty sure all progress made in overworld will be wiped for full release (even in each stage of testing) so there will be no benefit as it creates a fair and even starting ground for all.

umbral sierra
grand vault
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Kinda overused but waiting for all seven regions doesn’t really seem necessary since other games launch with one or two regions of their world and slowly release them over time while being called a full release. I guess it affects illuvium more though since we have restrictions on which illuvials can be captured where.

onyx fern
onyx fern
grand vault
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Wasn’t sure so that’s cool and honestly all the more reason to not be bothered by new regions launching later on down the road

devout cloud
dry socket
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I’m good with either Early Access or Open Beta as the classification. @devout cloud comment is a good point. Having a clearly distinguished title when everything is live and interconnected is helpful. I’m not completely sold on ‘Early Access’ as I associate progress wipes still happening with an early access title after it gets fully launched (which is the opposite of what is happening here). That said, this is a good discussion and I’m eager to hear more of what the community thinks here. Thanks for bringing it up @earnest dock.

I think everyone agrees the games should launch when ready with appropriate balance and polish. The team and council in place at those times have to be the ones to make those decisions.

earnest dock
spiral shoal
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It entirely depends what you are used to.

I’m hoping that Illuvium will launch as an ‘Open Beta’ because I’m expecting all major features to be functioning at the time.
Having some regions be unlocked after launch is fine. The key point is that the game is ready to play and fun. Expansions, balance changes, updates after open beta launch are normal.

In my mind ‘Early Access’ is closer to what I’d call closed beta. Incomplete features and increased likelihood of bugs and progress wipes.

If our launch is more accurately described as ‘Early Access’ then it would be better to wait until it is ‘Open Beta’ quality. IMO.

Given the team’s approach so far, I’d assume they wouldn’t be satisfied launching something that isn’t functionally complete.

chrome bobcat
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Great post and excellent support citing baldur's gate 3

wary lake
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This raises so many excellent points @earnest dock . I'm sure this will gain the attention of the team and council. I've stopped following the town halls and the leaks and showcases, Wen culture is so boring. The team will burn out if we aren't mindful. Let them pace themselves.

tepid cairn
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Hi

formal ice
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I'm not bothered either way, these points make sense and I would be happy for it to be called early access instead of open beta. 👍🏼

eternal mortar
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Thanks for the feedback @earnest dock. The reason we went with "Open Beta" is because that was the most widely used term in crypto gaming. I don't think it matters what we call it as long as people realise it is still under development and things in the roadmap are set to change. I like the splash page example that Blickter provided. We would implement something similar to that.

manic badge
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Most people would just assume that both terms are interchangeable. It's basically nomenclature. Much like how alpha and beta basically mean the same that it's not a full game yet. These terms are more of a marketing issue than a communication or a technical term.

That being said, I would float this to legal for advice on what we can call the stage of a game to avoid liabilities such as false marketing with recommendations on appropriate disclaimers.

I'd be more concerned with that issue.

earnest dock
earnest dock
manic badge
eternal mortar
earnest dock
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A tad more context the roadmap @vocal agate shared was from a game in early access. Full image here.

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grand vault
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I think I agree that most people are indifferent to to the two terms or if anything I personally feel a stigma with early access as in it sounds like the game isn’t worth my time since they are usually just releasing to get early testers and feedback, which isn’t exactly the situation i feel with what we should have for an offering at launch.

bronze bronze
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Great idea! It's clear to me and many in the community there's been confusing about the wording. How many times has it been asking in discord? And this is from people already in the community/playing the beta. Why not make it clearer for the masses that will eventually flock? Great idea, thanks for submitting @earnest dock

green wing
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"Early Open Beta Access" there...fixed it

plush sundial
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I wouldn't call it early access either. To me that screams "we're launching early because we don't have enough money to finish development".
But maybe that's just me.

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You might consider, as the Illuvium team is making something new, never tried before, to make up a new term to reflect this, and avoid confusion with old Web2 terms.

We're in Private Beta now, (Alpha for Zero), so by logical progression early release would be the Gamma version (Public or Open if you feel that's necessary).

next ibex
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let's stop trying to reinvent the powder. Let's do things in a way that keeps things familiar to web 2 gamers

empty sedge
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I'm seeing this in more and more games right now

This is a watermark in the top right hand corner while playing the game

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earnest dock
narrow spade
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I am all for supporting early access games. My concern arises from the use of NFTs. If pay to win aspects for the the game are kept in check the early access idea is great. The problem arises when folks hear about the game after the fact and are late to the party. The question arises. Will they be able to compete in PVP? Depends on game balance imho. Also will this devalue the NFTs themselves as the gamers who don't get in on early access that play the "full game" will they have access to the same NFTs and drop rates? On the surface this seems a good sugestion but ultimately will create more design trade offs and work for the team than they already have on their plate.

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When a game is in early access, it is typically considered to be in an unfinished state. While it may be playable, it often lacks certain features, contains bugs, or has incomplete content. The purpose of releasing a game in early access is to involve the player community in the development process and utilize their feedback to enhance the game before its full release.

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I believe the private betas are already accomplishing this. Possibly for marketing puposes PB3 could be called Early Access as it may resonate better with the Web2 gamers and what they are used to

green wing
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We should just start asking ChatGPT what we should do...

lime arch
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@empty sedge could you check pm pls

earnest dock
median zinc
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btw this and the safety fund - you should get an auto bid for IMC

grand vault
# earnest dock 🤝 exciting times

I hope we got a tight schedule now for blockchain launch. Don't want to see everyone interested overplay the test and be burned out by official launch. Not to mention potential added server costs of a million people(very unlikely ofc) gaming without spending for several months. Wonder if it will be capped to a few weeks tops. Let people get a taste and then pull back the bone for a month or two.

earnest dock
devout cloud
tiny pond
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it would be nice to have the issue of "too many people wanna play our game"

wary lake
wary lake