Should id Release a Multiplayer Beta for RAGE Before the Game is Released

[Xbust]

I was wondering just the other night "Will there be a multiplayer Beta for this game?", and decided to start searching. To my delight, I found an interview with id CEO Todd Hollenshead about this topic, but sadly he says the idea for a Beta is very "doubtful". On the bright side, he added “There could be something that’s more along the lines of a PC demo or maybe a Mac demo that come out from a test perspective." But when I found this out I was already in awe, and quite frankly disappointed. So I decided to post this topic asking the People what they think id should do. Plan for an upcoming Beta, or just forget about the idea completely.

[Abbie]

What better way to show off how good a game is? I think this would push sales higher, and keep people pumped about the game. I would love to have a beta on PS3. The only reason I can think that a game wouldn't produce a beta is to either try or help not relieve anticipation of their audience, or general fear of failure. In something so heavily multiplayer, and FPS most people take seriously, no less. A beta is only a good decision. Fingers crossed.

[Common]

A beta can really help weapon and map balance, and fix many annoying little quirks. Of course you could always fix those after launch too, but it's better to have from the start. It's too bad most Devs these days just treat the beta as a marketing tool (basically a demo), but the audience is partly to blame for that too, because so many people can't seem to understand that there will be bugs and imbalances in beta.

[desilva]

I would go for an mp beta over a demo any day, hungry any PC gamer will tell you this, the difference is great. With a beta you're essentially getting the full, unpolished game, whereas a demo is starkly edited and aborted content. It wouldn't even have to be an open beta, but as far as the MP element of a game is concerned, betas are a critical part of the dev process to, like was said above, address balance issues among other things. I have not at all seen a beta that produced bad results. Well, maybe crime craft, god I wish I wasn't involved in that one.

[Dead-Man]

A multiplayer beta would be AWESOME. However the question is what part of the multiplayer, the co-op or the racing? I for myself would like the test the racing out; it looks like a cool part of the game and something their obviously trying push on the players to enjoy. Could also turn those that are weary of the racing component into liking it and possibly ramp up more sells. Could also work the glitches/bugs out and hopefully makes the servers as best as possible.

[RyanInt]

Have a Beta Please. I have been playing Brink since release and it's an absolute mess in terms of quality on the PC. Lag troubles ported UI, Performance problems, connection issues, sound issues, peripheral troubles. It's just such a bad way for a game to launch. I am not saying make it a public beta, make it a private one if you want but please have one which is on a politely large scale so that you can get info on a large number of hardware configurations to find and squash these basic problems. I don't want Rage ending up like Brink on release day.

[AZUL]

Betas are nothing else but a marketing trick. The only purpose they serve is to hype people up before the game is out. If you think about it, in the past there have been so many brilliant multiplayer titles that never went through beta testing. Just a week ago or something, Id soft announced that the technical polishing in Rage is brought to the level of perfection. So, don't worry about it. Betas are awesome for finding bugs and glitches that Devs could not find on their own and there's no real spoiler on a multiplayer beta and it gives you a preview of what the game will look and play like.

[RockOn]

If the company feels that they want to make a beta for testing/bug finding then by all means bring it on. But if it's going to affect the end result negatively (which we not at all know if it does or not) and ends up being a horrible demo/beta, then it could cause a lot of people to be turned off by the game before it's even released. It takes a bit more work to make a demo/beta and set it up for testing, and a lot of companies feel it's a waste of time. They could be using that time and money to make the game better. But who knows. Brink came out and it seems the community is split between the game being great and the game being horrible.