What is a beta?

Cool! Then the release date for us backers is 2016, not 2017! (hopefully...)

I think the purpose of the beta is to find bugs and get feedback from gameplay to see players reaction and what should be changed/implemented, and beta usually keep getting updates very often as things changes. There is no secret, it is just a test version of the game in progress.

About how much content will be playable it's impossible to predict, depend on developers, in my opinion it is not good to show too much before final release, is supposed to test mechanics and stuff, not to spoil plot and the whole game map and enemies.

Beta's are quite simply builds of a game that are designed to be stable builds before a game's official release. This is a pretty loose definition, so you end up with varied examples. Back in the 90s or so, betas were not really advertised or anticipated by consumers. OCCASIONALLY a game would have a beta test, but because the internet wasn't quite as every day among every person, they weren't exactly common occurances in games. Sometimes a beta is released because developers want to make sure a game is stable before they go out and try to sell it. Sometimes it's released KNOWING it still has issues, but released so people can find more while they are still fixing them....And nowdays, they are frequently released mostly as an advertisement for the actual game, and the actual quality control is kind of an excuse. You can normally tell this is the case when they have a specified release date before or as soon as beta testing starts. They don't know how long it will take to find and fix all the bugs, but they want to release it anyway in 2 weeks after the beta... yeah, it's actually just advertising.

Because the beta is often used for different purposes (Despite its original purpose being solid), the amount of content found in beta's also varies. Diablo 3's beta for example was really stingy in the amount of content it offered... You didn't even get chapter 1, not even half of chapter 1, you just got to kill the first miniboss and that's it. Honestly I don't know what the POINT of dialo 3's beta was. I'll just chalk it down to mindless dumbness caused by that lead director dude who got ousted before loot 2.0 which fixed tons of the game. I mean the dude even said that they had a 'real' beta that wasn't shared that they were testing and balancing the game by, and that they mostly ignored the consumer beta, he actually said that, not once, but regularly.


Then there were betas for starcraft 1, which as far as I recall, had pretty much the whole game. MMO games that use beta's as advertisements typically use betas as a full game as well prior to a significant update.. so for example during the beta they might have a level cap of 30, and release it might go to 40, and over time it'll goto 50 and 60.. so the beta is in fact pretty much a full release behind 1 major update kinda deal.

In the case of Blooodstained, I anticipate it's beta will be the type that releases mostly the entire game as far as its development is concerned, and will be done mostly to fix bugs. It will probably lack certain game modes at first, but they may be implemented later. The reason why is because bloodstained's beta as far as I know, is not being used to advertise the game, because the only people who so far have been promised access to it, are people who have already committed to owning the game on release, so why bother advertising it to them only?

I wonder if there will be any intentional glitches. It would be too weird to have a game that can't be exploited for speed runs. I am specifically thinking of enemy placement, taking damage, and screen warping. Or game breakers where you get infinite # of something (item/xp/map%).

I can't wait to see what hidden gems people find. I hope to see lots of speed runs of this game.

What is a Beta? A miserable little pile of play-tests!

Find as many glitches & bugs as you can, but leave most of the exploits in for the speed-runners!

So, is the Beta really planned to be available at E3 2016? Or close to that date?

Well, I guess we can't expect anything concrete at this point.

Oh wait... you said Donkey...