This does not make me happy nor does it instill confidence. I’m one of the biggest Halo fans you’ll find and have barely posted here but I saw this today and immediately facepalmed. Betas are CRITICAL for today’s multiplayer games. The Halo 3 and Reach betas were VERY beneficial for the day 1 release of the games. You will also find that most of the major shooters (the good ones) have public betas prior to release.
There is simply no way for a development company to uncover the issues/exploits/balance problems with their limited staff compared to millions of players.
Anyone else worried after this announcement?
Link:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/122/1220366p1.html
In an FAQ on the game’s official site, 343 revealed that the development team would need to be split in order to plan a public beta test, and one isn’t in the works as a result.
“While we are testing Halo 4 code, gameplay, and systems at significant scale to get excellent data, input, and feedback, we are focused on polishing and shipping our experience for the duration of the year, and splitting resources to manage and build a beta is not on our schedule,” the post reads.
With enough internal testing, Betas aren’t necessary. It’s a false expectation that multiplayer Betas are the industry standard for multiplayer titles, when in reality they aren’t nor ever was. Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
At this point in development, a multiplayer Beta for Halo 4 would be more of hassle than beneficial. Not to mention this community provides enough feedback to give 343i an idea of what we want and expect in Halo 4’s multiplayer.
I am not worried. You don’t need a public Beta in order for your game to be good. It is nice to have a Beta, but not necessary.
> With enough internal testing, Betas aren’t necessary. It’s a false expectation that multiplayer Betas are the industry standard for multiplayer titles, when in reality they aren’t nor ever was. Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
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> At this point in development, a multiplayer Beta for Halo 4 would be more of hassle than beneficial. Not to mention this community provides enough feedback to give 343i an idea of what we want and expect in Halo 4’s multiplayer.
I disagree. But we’ll see come the fall.
Public beta is only a free ads for the game. Most company don’t need beta but still do one for this reason. Else internal beta should be more than enough to find problem. So no i’m not worried at all.
I wouldn’t mind a beta, but I don’t really care that they aren’t having one. As was said in an above post, betas aren’t a standard, and internal testing may be enough to sort any bugs and such out.
Besides, betas are often used to find glitches and bugs which could be game breaking, thus need to be fixed before the release of that game. With the new systems 343 is using, fixing and updating what once needed a full fledged Title Update can now be corrected with a basic update.
In my opinion, the real purpose of a beta is to sort out glitches and bugs which may occur. Not to get a public opinion about certain features, which is why most people want one.
> I am not worried. You don’t need a public Beta in order for your game to be good. It is nice to have a Beta, but not necessary.
Agreed, we don’t need a beta, if any thing, I much rather see 343i put out a Demo of the game before the game is released. Some people only play the beta just to get a chance to play the game before it’s release for free. If you are the kind of person that wants to give a game a little test “drive” before buying it, betas aren’t the best thing to do because most of the time, they’re full of bugs, they don’t all ways reflect what’s going to be in the final game. Demos on the other hand, they show a bit more of what’s going to be in the game.
> With enough internal testing, Betas aren’t necessary. It’s a false expectation that multiplayer Betas are the industry standard for multiplayer titles, when in reality they aren’t nor ever was. Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
>
> At this point in development, a multiplayer Beta for Halo 4 would be more of hassle than beneficial. Not to mention this community provides enough feedback to give 343i an idea of what we want and expect in Halo 4’s multiplayer.
Exactly this. In some ways betas are used as advertisement. Sometimes the developer PURPOSELY puts unbalanced characteristic in the beta so afterwards it looks like they “tweaked” things when in reality they had the right formula all along lol.
343 has had since ODST to work on this game I am pretty sure they have the balance down 
im excited to see a more polished game with the extra time that they have not wasting resources on a beta.
reach had a beta and everyone still hated it …for some reason…i think the cea playlist is hellafun
> I disagree. But we’ll see come the fall.
Alright then, in your opinion, what would a public Beta for Halo 4 truly offer that 343i doesn’t already know or have?
> Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
Yeah, and look at all the multiplayer bugs and glitches CE and especially 2 had compared to 3 and Reach. I guess everyone just wants glitched-out multiplayer in their coveted ranked playlists that everyone’s fighting for.
> > Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
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> Yeah, and look at all the multiplayer bugs and glitches CE and especially 2 had compared to 3 and Reach. I guess everyone just wants glitched-out multiplayer in their coveted ranked playlists that everyone’s fighting for.
The glitches found in multiplayer wasn’t solely a result of not having a Beta. Granted, there’s a higher chance they would have been discovered had they had a Beta, however it’s unlikely they would have corrected.
Halo 3 and Reach had far few glitches as CE and 2, not because they had Betas, but the tools and technology used to create multiplayer environments became better and better, thus they were allowed to enforce hard boundaries, soft/instant kill zones, etc. They simple didn’t have the tools at the time.
As much as I’d like a beta and see if I could break the game, I don’t think it is entirely necessary. Most people I’m sure don’t even play to test the game, they just want to play a game early, and you don’t need a beta for that. I just hope they can finish the game a bit ahead of schedule and get a demo out so people can still see what they’ve done without sacrificing the time to do a public beta.
> > Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
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> Yeah, and look at all the multiplayer bugs and glitches CE and especially 2 had compared to 3 and Reach. I guess everyone just wants glitched-out multiplayer in their coveted ranked playlists that everyone’s fighting for.
not te mention the glitches in halo ce and halo 2 were part of what made the game so great, it brought the community togetheer closer than ever
I don’t know, virtually nothing changed gameplay wise after the Reach beta. Players found glitches and bugs that were fixed, but as far as anyone giving feedback on the bloom, grenades, armor abilities…etc Bungie pretty much left all that untouched.
It’d be great to play the game early…But I doubt very much that this community would be able to provide legitimate helpful feedback, if recent events are any indication.
The only thing a public beta could really help out with would be stress-testing the servers, which really can’t be simulated with in-house testing. So we can expect some matchmaking problems on launch…But that’s practically expected these days with a major online title.
> With enough internal testing, Betas aren’t necessary. It’s a false expectation that multiplayer Betas are the industry standard for multiplayer titles, when in reality they aren’t nor ever was. Halo CE and Halo 2 had internal Betas, and those titles were just as successful as Halo 3 and Reach (which wasn’t as critical acclaimed as past titles), despite the latter having multiplayer Betas.
Define successful. From the bunch, I’d say that Halo 3 was the only true successor to Combat Evolved.
Halo 2 had BXR, which during an internal beta would have been expected to have been fixed, but the game, through another glitch had exclusivity to weapon lowering over Xbox Live.
I am aware they were short for time with Halo 2.
Halo Reach tried to be good, but Sage Merrill’s cop-out plan to merge Shadowrun and Halo proved to be, on the most part, a colossal failure.
Halo 3’s merit belongs in its ability to have surprised many people by bringing something new, whilst clearing up the rest of the problems that were faced during the creation of the previous title.
When I use the words ‘failure’ and ‘success’, I define them not by profit made by the company, but the overall gaming experience from a gamer’s perspective.
> > I disagree. But we’ll see come the fall.
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> Alright then, in your opinion, what would a public Beta for Halo 4 truly offer that 343i doesn’t already know or have?
There are a substantial number of things:
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Gameplay balance. It’s a simple fact the studio, no matter how big or talented, can’t match the gap of talent and skill base the game’s players possess. Only using a very broad group of play styles can certain things be discovered. These can NOT be accomplished or simulated using techniques, hardware, or programs.
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Weapon strength/balance. Same exact reason above on a lesser scale. Weapon balance can be pretty strong out of the gate but often public betas will result in changes/updates. They did for Halo 3 and Reach which both made the game better (anyone remember the grenades in Reach beta - also known as “mini nukes” lol)
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Map design/balance/exploits. Again, same reason and this is a big one. Nothing worse than 2 weeks into a game seeing people using some exploit that was found on a map. A lot of those issues will be exposed by a public beta.
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Stress testing. We don’t know if Halo 4 will have dedicated servers or not. Regardless, stress testing the servers internally is impossible. We know this, the companies know it, and many have learned the hard way. The only game in recent memory I can think of that had few to no issues on day 1 for matchmaking was Reach. Go figure (largest public beta in console history). And I play nearly every console FPS.
Let me be clear, I don’t care about playing the game early blah blah blah. I’ll be there at midnight picking up my legendary copy no matter what. But as I said, I’m not going to argue because frankly none of us know. I’m just willing to bet that if this game doesn’t have a public beta, there WILL be issues discovered in the first few weeks that could have been avoided.