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SOku said:

I think this is relevant here, here is the quote :

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I guess we're back here now:

I think your comment highlights quite a common issue; most people (including developers) don't actually know what alpha and beta mean.

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This is the exact problem I'm referring to rehashed again. You can argue that the standard for beta testing should be universally returned to the standard set by IBM, that according to you it should mean something different, but it makes no sense whatsoever to tell the majority that they don't know the meaning of a term when the majority decides the meaning, and it works in conveying that meaning. For most of humanity it doesn't mean what it means to you. The poster could have written:"most people (including developers) don't actually know what alpha or beta were supposed to mean"

You have two choices to influence things in a way that you think is beneficial: either concentrate on getting the standards within the industry up to par, or you can try to forbid game developers and players from using the popular term, since they're apparently "wrong".

I suspect the latter is hard or nigh on impossible, wouldn't further your goals (since I doubt anyone cares what term they can call their unfinished, untested version), and ultimately futile and unproductive.

To be more specific, legislating that companies may not advertise their products as beta tests makes no sense whatsoever, while legislating that every product of a company with more than 100 employees has to fulfill the formal requirements for beta testing established by X might have an effect. This effect will in turn alter the way beta testing is used to be more in line with whatever the formal requirements are.

It doesn't even really matter how it got to that point of "bastardised" meaning, be it ignorance, a popular song lyric or a concerted effort to undermine engineering terminology, only that it did. This focus on "other definitions of beta testing are wrong" does not work in anyone's favor, while "products aren't tested enough" is a statement with substance.

SOku said:

I think you guys might give him a point here instead of trying to save one's face on arguing.

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For all I know he's completely right about it, I'm not an engineer and have no skin in this game. I just think it's all beside the point. When gaming companies use the term "beta testing" I know what to expect. In some cases I'm slightly disappointed, and in some I'm pleasantly surprised. In all cases I weigh it against the money spent and former experiences with games, and my own experiences in making them (not computer). I don't see widespread fraud, but I do see some level of incompetence or delusions of grandeur.

mehmeteking said:

I mean we are discussing games like Bannerlord which are kind of half-OK, but there are games out there which literally do not even work but people somehow sold them and got away with the money. In which other legal sector would you be able to get away such a thing?

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I mean, I won't argue that it doesn't exist, and maybe I'm biased due to my selection of games to begin with, but I don't know of many games that I personally considered purchasing that were scams in one way or another.

mehmeteking said:

And finally, I agree that most of these companies do not do this out of "evil intensions," but if we as the customers open our eyes a bit and introduce accountability in legal terms into our relationship with game developers, we will all benefit from it. It begins with "douches" like myself (as someone called it) "ranting" about stuff; as change often does...

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And I am completely on board when it comes to bigger productions, especially firms that sell games as a service. Mainly since I suspect it will only slightly affect the bottom line and improve quality immensely. But any regulation needs to address the fact that a huge bulk of the industry are still just barely above the level of amateurs trying to create something enjoyable. If the Rise to Ruins guy were forced to employ professional tier testing or face legal ramifications the game would be a pipe-dream.

mehmeteking said:

If you really read the posts to understand them and not to just object to them because they are outside your comfort zone, you would have realised by now that my point since the beginning is exposing a fraud scheme where we are sold products that are not tested. I told you what kind of tests I am talking about, even in some detail so that you can see the difference. Yet you still deem this a "disambiguation" issue. Like, gaming companies get away with cutting off at least half of development time in every project by avoiding testing altogether and marketing acceptance testing as the products official test stage, and criticising this is just discussion on disambiguation. Alright. So my hope is that you really did not read my posts, the only other option is you lack the capacity to understand.

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Oh no, I understood. I just think your rhetoric doesn't match your intention at all, since you emphasized the definition of beta testing way too much, and I don't really agree with the premise that it's fraud, by and large. Most of the untested products we're sold aren't big productions, by volume. You can make an argument with a bigger firm like Taleworlds, which I would also disagree with, since fraud is fairly narrow in scope legally, but a single developer publishing an early access title? Those have been sprouting from the ground in massive numbers for the past few years. Intent to deceive, as opposed to necessary evil to continue production?

mehmeteking said:

I never stopped talking because some sheep asked me to comply with the norm, and I am not gonna start now. I was a teenager when I already got used to the good old "you cannot change the world" bull****. To me, what is right or wrong is independent from what power I have to change anything. I will continue to speak for what I believe is right and your opposition to it means nothing.

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You wanted to stop talking a post ago. You're right, you can change the world. I doubt it'll be this conversation on a game forum, but hey, crazier things have happened. Though I have serious doubts that avoiding a disambiguation entry on wikipedia for "Beta Testing (computer games)" as opposed to "Beta Testing (software engineering)" is the best you can do with your time.

mehmeteking said:

Apart from that, I tried to say this kindly but what I talk about is none of your f*ing business.

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You're posting on a public forum and wondering why people don't put up with ramblings of someone raging against market systems and terms that have dynamically evolved over more than a decade. I've read your post, and it's the same as everything else you wrote. "But to us it means X "
I don't care what you think beta testing is, neither does the industry of the forum you're raging on. Make a change.org petition for the industry to redefine what a beta test is for gaming to be more in line with your precious software engineering buddies.

mehmeteking said:

And I suggest anyone looking for joy in my comments to look elsewhere, call your lover or something... I am literally shouting "fraud" since the beginning, there is nothing to enjoy here.

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Pretty unproductive to spend your time here then.

mehmeteking said:

If you look at my posts, you will find that everytime I said or implied "if terminology changes it happens through the discipline." You gave us another fine example of
exactly what I am talking about.

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The terms in these examples have changed in colloquial use a long time before the discipline acknowledged the change and reacted to it. If there had been no popular change in usage, there would have been no reason whatsoever to change the terminology within the discipline. It is not: Public change -> field change -> meaning change, but rather public change -> meaning change -> field change.

mehmeteking said:

I am not confusing it, you are! And that has been my whole point Gaming companies sell "beta testing" as a form of testing and everyone here is buying it. It is only a form of "acceptance testing" which is not formal, structured, etc; i.e. not development testing!

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mehmeteking said:

Hahahahhahaa.... (literally lolled though)

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It works in adjusting consumer expectations. It works semantically.

Consumers will be calling out a product below their expectations completely regardless of how the early access, open alpha, open beta, however the frontend is named. It is based on the product and their expectations in whatever state it is. To gauge this, the user only roughly needs to consider the binary: finished or unfinished, not on whether the frontend is called early access, open alpha, open beta, or banana. There might be slight differences in acceptance within the terms, but beta is already under higher scrutiny of the public than pre-alpha or alpha.

This is the most efficient way for the end user to consider a product as well, because considering all the details that may have lead to the product being in whichever state it is are largely irrelevant for the user experience. Some users may take more into account, but in large industries the opportunity costs for doing so are immense, as opposed to just getting another product for the time being.

I also highly doubt you'd be seeing a whole lot of deviation from current cost-benefit analysis of a product if, for example, Taleworlds had slapped a massive "We're in acceptance testing, just checking how little we can deliver for it to not bite us in the ass legally" on their product. That's just a subjective feeling I have, based on the fact that it'd probably lower expectations even more. You only seem to have a problem nowadays when you say "it's finished" and something doesn't work.

mehmeteking said:

No, it is the same as saying "there will always be snake oil salesmen" which is historically false Customers get smarter and fraud schemes get old.

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Whether customers are smart or not is in no way shape or form connected to their acceptance of the exact specifications of what engineers consider alpha or beta testing. A customer can be wholly unhappy with a product without it being apparently falsely advertised as a beta. A customer can be extremely happy with a product despite it being falsely advertised as a beta. The two things barely have any correlation, because the customer has a rudimentary semantic idea of what beta means, even if the product sold as a beta leads to mass heart attacks among engineers everywhere.

The term is widely accepted enough to mean whatever the industry puts forth, which is why using the term works for gaming companies and the public at large.

When all the people in the future have learned the exact ins and outs of engineering terminology their number one complaint with unsatisfying "beta testing" releases will, and I'm fairly certain of this, not be that it's advertised as an open beta, but whatever grievances they have with the content of the product. And the final layer of consumer judgement is then applied when, and if, it is supposedly finished, whether it's called "ultimate" edition or "definitive" edition or 1.0.

mehmeteking said:

Swimming against the current but I already told you that is what I do by nature. Cant help that.

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And I have said from the get-go that it's futile. You may continue to do so, but I doubt it'll spark much joy. For now beta testing is what it is, in gaming and the world at large. In the end, linguistically, words mean whatever the majority think they mean. Even terminology. Disambiguation is a thing.

The whole earlier discussion aside, you should really argue that there is no level of consumer interaction that should happen during production - period. And games should be considered complete experiences the second a user spends money on it. That's the only surefire way to avoid "fraud" in some fashion. This notion was far more widespread twelve years ago, when all of these online shenanigans started.

Although, since the whole of the gaming industry, you can even include boardgames in that, are making a consumer pay for whatever they're doing in the making of a game, and continueing development of titles under the public eye, this modus operandi is probably quite efficient. This seems to be the case both in terms of monetary value, and in terms of product quality. So maybe accepting a low percentage of what you'd consider fraud is good? At least it seems to work analogous to the banking industry, where loans are simply a very efficient tool for the market. But that assessment is quite subjective as well.

mehmeteking said:

Maybe you shouldnt judge whole discussions from some "last line." Every information I provided is patently correct, I know because there are countless technical reasons for it. If anyone is interested, I can continue to discuss them but all of you guys will be bored The bottomline is we are constantly being sold products that are not tested. Imagine producing and selling something without knowing if it works. That is the kind of fraud these companies are pulling everytime. And I know (thanks to you guys) I am a lone voice in an ocean, but it is in my nature to speak what I believe is right regardless of the consequences.

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I have responded in-depth to your posts before, but you're a senior engineer talking about linguistic phenomena and consistently confusing opinion for fact (i.e.: Terminology within specific fields have universally accepted definitions that are inherently unchangeable unless some authority within said field says otherwise, especially relating to usage outside of said field).

I could even agree with the gist of your point: Maybe they should call it banana testing to respect the feelings of engineers far and wide, but the industry and consumerbase as a whole has settled on selling us non-beta open beta's, and it works, and nobody cares about anything besides the end product. So unless there's a populistic upheaval of humanity focused on renaming early access game releases, calling games a beta will be colloquially understood to mean whatever a game company puts out before they think it is finished.

And I certainly am not judging a whole discussion from a "last line", but being unpleasant won't help you getting your point across.

Regarding your cute edit:

mehmeteking said:

By the way, let's do an experiment. When you see a doctor (literally any of your choosing) start arguing medical terminology with them; and then continue to ask for sources for everything they say. Then the doctor (remember, of your choosing) will show you the humility that I failed to display here; bring all those lessons from that dialog to me and I promise I will adjust my attitude accordingly in the future. My guess is the doctor will "put you in your place" much quicker than me, but who knows... Are you game?

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There are thousands of examples where exactly this has happened. Ethics boards have decided that terminology isn't appropriate due to a change of public perception and/or use, so a different term has been adopted within the field. This is especially obvious when it comes to terminology of disabilities.

mehmeteking said:

Why? Because I said Alpha/Beta testing was developed by IBM? But that is correct information. They defined what they developed and I gave you a definition from the most trusted source I could find. What is wrong or missing here?

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I was fairly amused by your aggressive and patronizing last line. I'm not sure if you understand how incredibly demeaning "to put someone in their place" comes across, but I can assure you that it's not the least bit pleasant. And I'm guessing it also wasn't intended as such. That is hilarious to me.

mehmeteking said:

I failed to find anything by IBM on this matter, but above definition should be enough to put you in your place.

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My sides, hah. You're a hoot.

Oh ****, what's that noise? I think it's the sound of millions angrily demanding their money back because the whole gaming industry has falsely sold a public beta as something that god himself has determined it inherently is not and can never be.

But I guess you were right, a small percentage of the world population somewhere got together and defined something as something. Strangely enough I haven't found anyone particularly arguing against that.

Poddicus said:

They all suck

#BringBackSwadia

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Suggestion implemented.

It's just obvious that we need more definitive posts on the forums. It's absolute pandemonium out there.

That being said, the preliminary representative results of this study make anything on the topic of "Faction?" crystal clear as a whistle. Now all Taleworlds has to do is analyze the results and come back to us. Soon.

mehmeteking said:

You do not get the point

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No, you have a naive understanding of how the world and language works.

(Edit to make this less harsh: I understand where you're coming from, and I sympathize with your stance. It would make many things a lot easier if things were as well structured as you suggest, but that's simply not the reality. Everything is immensely complicated and chaotic, including most of science.)

Terminology is no less subject to change from outside a field going in, as it is from inside a field itself. And there is NEVER complete uniformity in acceptance or usage of a term even within a field. There are no absolute rules as to what can or can not be done in arbitrary systems. There simply is no central authority that can dictate anything in science. You can make your argument why something should be called X, and if enough of your peers accept the usage it can be a new standard. But even a new standard is subject to change.

Also, you're a senior engineer. Why should I listen to you in regards to game development terminology? We are talking about terminology here, the meaning of these words do not change unless through the respective discipline. Unless the all knowing council of game developers redefines what beta means in their field, it can never be redefined.

Not responding to any of the analogies presented and cherry-picking one example that you think works (electron) doesn't really address anything. I instantly thought of a software framework, developed and maintained by github, but then I realized you were talking about the bird.

mehmeteking said:

By the way, you are debating a senior engineer about engineering terminology. Do you this with doctors as well? Or just us? Like, do you go to a doctor and say "nah, this is what we call metacarpal bones today; catch up doc, language evolves!"

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If anyone had any interest in using "metacarpal bones" in a different context, and that context spread like a wildfire, a doctor would have no other choice than to accept that the new context is just as valid. I also wasn't aware than engineering came with an in-depth knowledge of linguistics. I don't know what they do in your country, but at least in mine it's not even remotely related.

mehmeteking said:

You would not, but we give gaming companies a pass in this and they almost never fail to disappoint in the end.

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Look, you can be disappointed with the product all you want. You can also be slightly annoyed that they're apparently misusing a term that's dear to your heart. But the real issue is that the game isn't up to your standards as a whole, regardless of whether anyone calls what they're doing right now a beta or a banana. If it were up to your standards in every other way imaginable and they called it a beta, despite critical functionality failures on other machines, or one of the multitudes of versions during the banana testing phase, you most likely wouldn't demand that people "should shame the developers".

mehmeteking said:

you cannot say "such and such gaming company defines 'electron' as an ambulance;"

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People can. And they do. Screaming against the current that is the evolution of language is futile at best. Last I checked Linguists nowadays have completely abandoned the idea of prescriptive grammar and vocabulary. Funnily enough, evolution "should" never be applied to anything outside the clear boundaries of biology, yet here we are. And memes aren't funny pictures with a caption, yet here we are. And what you should or shouldn't do is really something that's in the realm of philosophy, so we can't really decide about any of this without an authoritative philosopher present. People do not operate under any artificial constraints of an orderly system. If something even remotely works semantically, it'll be adapted in any way the majority see fit.

We're also mostly massive consequentialists, so usually the process by which something has been created is fairly irrelevant.

Keldar said:

First of all there are so many that try to deceive others. Second, I doubt they feel bad or they would post responses to people's concerns saying how sorry they were for disappointing people and at the very they are ignoring the concerns of their players by not posting. I think it is mostly laziness, incompetence, indifference. I do though think they also at the very least have knowingly mislead people but you can't PROVE they have not lied.

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Everything is relative, and your mileage may vary depending on your environment. In western societies of plenty, especially in well-off industries like entertainment, I highly doubt that many would need to actively deceive others. What I don't doubt, is that many in the industry have issues evaluating their own skillset or are capable of gaging the complexity of long term projects.

You can't prove that they lied either. You would usually make an intention a necessary prerequisite to classify something as a lie.

Keldar said:

Well said, completely agree and its still on them for their pathetic lack of communication. I dare anyone on the forums to excuse that.

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I won't excuse it, I'll challenge the notion in the first place.

Now I won't act as if I have any idea about their devblogs or anything else going on before release. I watched maybe one video where I saw a ton of issues that I found in Warband, which already tempered my expectations. But post release?

I was annoyed about the lack of communication. Shortly thereafter they reorganized the forums, opened the suggestion list (at first it was just by activity, now there's a curated one), a bit later they made their "Plans for the game"-threads, all the while responding to players on various issues. Since then I've seen quite a few things popping up in the update logs that I specifically wanted in the game.

Now, you can say it's just 3-5 people, but even with 100 full-time employees that's between 3-5% of a company, essentially doing an optional job, interacting with the playerbase. The standard for manufacturing industries themselves isn't a massive amount of customer interaction, especially not on a consistent basis. That's more or less what this is.

So yeah, other than giving me a roadmap of what they would consider feature-complete, which they themselves probably don't even know at this point, I don't actually care about what many here perceive to be such a "lack of communication" at all. I don't even think that exists. I'd have the same exact problems if they made a massive list and wrote "No idea if we'll add that, at this point". And there have been plenty of times where they have said as much. They're careful as to NOT mislead people.

emrozdemir said:

2. I, as a developer, wouldn't personally like a fast "Buy food" button because it would introduce other things to balance.
-"Fast buy food button is too expensive!"
-"Fast buy food button is too varied all I want is to buy grain!"
-"Fast buy food button is not varied enough it should use all available foods in settlement!"
etc etc
But it can certainly be a mod.

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The "fast buy food" option should be customizable. A submenu list opens when you right click the button where you can set the minimum of each food type you wish to have in your inventory/buy. Close and save. Go to town. Press "buy food" and everything up to the limits you set will be bought, as long as it's available.

Can't really complain that it's too expensive when you set it yourself.

Another way to solve the food maintenance tedium in mid to late game would be to automate it based on completely different mechanics, minimums that get filled by caravans or companion parties, but I suppose that's not really your area to comment on.

Keldar said:

I had hoped that Taleworlds would not be like so many other devs and blatantly lie about their intentions,

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I am fairly certain that "they" are not lying about their intentions. People that actively want to deceive you are few and far between. Simply failing in adequately grasping the scale of the project and their work speed is much, much, much more likely. And they usually feel bad enough about their failures themselves.

Think of it in the sense of the phrase "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity."
Though "stupidity" is also a bit too harsh in this case.

Lornloth00 said:

How about companions can be a clan role that upgrades a certain number of units to a specific tier so that the player doesn't have to?
Their could be a clan role for companions like 'unit commander' or 'master trainer' with a dialogue that sets up an order of 50 Imperial legionaries and 50 Imperial crossbowman so every time a unit can be upgraded the companion would automate the upgrades until the order is filled. Their could be messages after every upgrade telling the player what has upgraded and a tone and a message when the order is completed. The companions gets paid for this and they get experience for this clan role every time they perform this task.

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All for this, except about ordering being tied to a dialogue. Please, no more loading into scenes and clicking through dialogue options for basic game functionality. Just make it a menu that can be accessed from anywhere.

Xavyn said:

As much as I am into this game and want it to succeed, I truly cannot fathom why a guy who is likely a novice coder/programmer, in his free time, can make a mod that objectively improves the QoL of the gameplay experience by simply adding the ability to Sort Troops, Upgrade All Troops (except ones that have multiple upgrade options), and Recruit All Prisoners... and TaleWorlds cannot manage to actually incorporate these functions into the base game month after month after month. And on top of that, that hero of a modder has to rebuild his mod after every patch and these patches do not include ANYTHING that is ANYWHERE NEAR as useful as what the novice, unpaid modder created.

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There was a post from, I believe, emrozdemir, explaining that sorting troops isn't quite as easy yet, because of the way units spawned into battle behave. It just goes down your list from top to bottom, and if they were sorting by Tier you might be going into battle with a bunch of peasants instead of your elite troops.

Xavyn said:

Interesting point about the term "fan" and I totally get what you are saying. To that end, let me say in my usage of it I think its more of a colloquialism and I used for the lack of a better word.

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Most would, probably. "People who like the game" might be a phrase that is be detached enough, but as implied above, all of what's going on in this forum seems to be a microcosm of the self-enforcing mechanisms all human collective endeavours have. You get a thread (in this case rather seldomly, due to pre-selection of the audience) that's rather positive, and suddenly you have an influx of people showering it in generalized praise. In another there's talk about Failworlds and you get the impression that Armagan himself has sold his audience a bridge and ran off to the caribbean afterwards.

Hell, I'm sure all of the devs are nice guys, but some seem to adore mexxico like the second coming of christ, while some seem to despise Callum like Satan.

Now all of this probably isn't quite as problematic as it seems, since hyperbole is often simply used to reinforce an opinion, while the person behind a post is usually more levelheaded in their approach. And even if not, there's nothing important at stake here, except for the mental well-being of the devs, but I suppose you can argue that that's a path they chose for themselves.

This being said, I don't know if there's really a solution for any of this. It's deeply rooted in the way human biology/psychology seems to work. The only reason I can be this detached from whatever happens with Bannerlord, is because I don't have that much of a stake in it. And usually people like that don't engage in Forums, because they don't care enough. I haven't played the game in ages and I only returned to the Forums after months. Before Bannerlord the last time I checked around here with a different account was more than a decade ago. Imagine everyone was like this, this place would be dead, and it would probably be even worse of a motivator than thousands of pages ****ting on the studio.

People just suck at middle grounds. Including me, naturally.

Keldar said:

Please enlighten those of us who think the game has gotten WORSE not better. What are the good things?

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I can't speak for the progress of the EA of Bannerlord, but that is in flux anyway. When it comes to Warband: The game was nearly unplayable. Another poster recently spoke of "death by a thousand cuts", with regards to UI issues that annoy the ever loving crap out of any sane human being, referring to Bannerlord. Now Warband had the worst user experience of any game I've come across, modded or unmodded. And in years of its existence, very few people seemed to even bat an eye, they were just a bunch of people making the game after all, and think of the limited engine, and... etc., it makes sense that it's clunky.

No, it was absolutely terrible. Taken together I probably spent 50/50 time-wise being annoyed by the UI and actually playing the game. Annoyances of game mechanics that I didn't agree with aren't even counted in here.

Bannerlord initially made a ton of mistakes UI wise as well, mainly by doing it the same way as Warband, but there are some really important QoL things, especially for the UI, that mean that IF I will ever play a Taleworlds game again, it will absolutely be Bannerlord, and not Warband.