"Premium" to Join the CTE - Very Bad Idea!

Battlefield 1 General Discussion
1

…at least for the CTE on Xbox One. You needed to be in the Xbox One Preview Program and own BF4+Premium.

So as a participant in the CTE on the Xbox One from day one and as an active tester - meaning: providing DICE regularly with feedback on reddit by words and videos, which was the only reason for me to create a YouTube channel - I surely know the goods and the bads we players experienced on the Xbox One Console. In the video down below you can look the CTE Player Ranks in the Scoreboard and compare mine with others (nothing to brag about, just providing evidence).

The goods are well known like testing the High Tickrate Servers (45hz & 55hz), Creating the Community Map (Breakout Op.), just to name a few.

But the VERY BAD thing was, not being able to fill a single one server with players to test out certain things like for instance the 55hz server. We barely could get 14 players on Firestorm & 8 players on Metro to test this out, look at the Scoreboard in the video at min. 0:05.

Video: BF4 CTE XBox One - Network Performance Graph - (55 hz US Server/EU Player Gameplay/Firestorm)

Look at the Scoreboard in the video at min. 0:25

Video: BF4 CTE XBOX ONE - Network Performance Graph (55hz EU Server/Metro Gameplay) - Part 1

The peak of the player count on one server was about 40-45 at the launch of the CTE on the Xbox One and this lasted a SINGLE DAY ONLY! After that the number of players decreased drastically and could never reach that number, not to mention getting 64 players!
People was hyped “Wow, oh yeah CTE” bla bla, but actually didn’t understand the purpose of it. I even met a 12y. or 13y. old teeny in the CTE, at least he was so kind to help me out to record a video for some testing on certain situations on the Night Maps.

There were mainly few players who gave feedback regularly regarding CTE on Xbox One, like OnlyNeedJuan, Pro4TLZZ, Kingtolapsium (who even was a PS4 player [Sony didn’t allow the CTE on the PS4] but he kept giving feedback, props to him)…just to name a few, thx to all of them and those I didn’t mention.

The point is DICE, we probably will face the same problem now on BF1’s CTE like we had on BF4’s CTE on the Xbox One if you make “Premium” as a Requirement to join the CTE. So please take this advice and don’t make “Premium” as a requirement to join CTE so we can get as many as we can to give constructive feedback to you.

Golmud Night Map Gameplay (CTE on XBOX ONE):

Video: Battlefield 4 CTE Gameplay XBOX ONE NIGHT MAPS - Zavod & Golmud - Commentary

Shanghai & Zavod Night Maps Gameplay (CTE on XBOX ONE):

Video: Battlefield 4 CTE XBOX ONE - Gameplay Review & Suggestions to DICE - NIGHT MAPS
2

alpha beta early access CTE… u name it, its just renamed “demo”. The only difference is that today you pay for it.

3

Well seeing as how the game isn’t even fun, I’m not paying $50 to play an even more broken version of the game. I don’t have any interest in bf1 and it’s sub-par gameplay, as much as I’d like to play CTE, this game is not worth the money.

4

You know where you are, right?

5

Yes it came into my mind already that they would do it because of selling more “Premium” and maybe there is a reason they made a requirement for the CTE, but at launch of the BF4’s CTE there already has been a lot of players with Premium. They said that they wanna have Premium Players for the CTE because they wanna have players who actually are deeper into the game so that they give feedback. Whatever the case it helped NOTHING regarding Xbox One, they failed miserably when it comes to the player count.

6

$$$$$$$$?

7

Maybe they want premium players because they know those players are more serious about the game. A casual isn’t going to shell out the extra dough for premium and therefore wouldn’t take the CTE seriously and wouldn’t provide the feedback that Dice is looking for.

8

The only thing that separates someone who has Premium and someone who doesn’t from one another is that one person paid for Premium and the other did not (even if the latter decides to buy each expansion pack separately later on): it has absolutely nothing to do with serious vs. casual.

I completely agree with you, OP, and it’s a shame for people like me who have been actively in conversation with devs here and elsewhere about issues and who would provide regular feedback on a regular basis but cannot participate in the CTE simply because we want to wait and see each pack before shelling out the money (even if I have to pay about $10 more to get expansions separately). The only coherent reason to require Premium is if they’re allowing CTE members to test DLC’s early, but, to be honest, if you have someone who is willing to provide feedback that will hopefully improve your game, why not allow them to play the DLC packs early—if they like it they might end up spending the money on either Premium or each of the packs they want (win-win for DICE), and if not, they don’t get to play those expansions when released (while DICE still gets improved releases on said packs). I really don’t understand why this wouldn’t be ideal for DICE. But this kind of move, requiring premium, is the kind of thing that pushes dedicated players away from your game.

9

Because it’s a gimmick to sell premium all the while extracting free labor from you. Wait not free, you’re paying them for the privilege of working for free.

They should give the dlc free to X number players for participating in the cte. Or at the very least a promo code or something.

Instead, they’re Huckleberry Finn’ing the out of their player base.

10

Yes, that’s exactly right. It’s a shame. I expect they presume most people won’t notice this is what they’re doing. I also expect they’re wrong about that.

11

@AFROSRB Time to get back at it again. :slight_smile:

12

It has more to do with serious vs casual than you think it does. I know plenty of players that play games casually and aren’t going to pay $50 for a premium service, they’re content with the base game. I also know plenty of serious players that have already purchased premium.

And we’ve seen what casual feedback has done to the game already. They whine and then things get changed that shouldn’t have been changed. I don’t think that feedback pre-patch is a good idea.

Dice is treating CTE as a premium service which they probably should.

13

I disagree. I think that evidence is mostly anecdotal. You are perhaps right that more dedicated players (that is, veterans) will be more likely to buy Premium, though not all veterans are “serious” rather than “casual” players! But I also think you’re not giving economics enough credit here for why some get Premium and others don’t.

14

Oh man, welcome back haha. Yeah I’d like it to get back…but I’m definitely not going to spend 40-50 € for premium only to participate in the CTE. Last time I bought it for 50% off way before the CTE on the Xbox One launched.

Exactly!

15

obviously someone who pays for premium has more invested in it, the end. not only that but some items arent available to non premium, so why waste the coding to make it available just for CTE when said patches and updates will be released to premium first, which still gives time for tweaks prior to global release of DLC/updates. so CTE is essentially alpha, then premium early access is beta, and by the time its global it’ll be tweaked for any major stuff.

16

Besides the fact that there is no difference between the dlc build for early premium access and non-premium launch.

That’s a very non-realistic way to view the situation. The CTE functions as an alpha/beta. Right now it’s a beta for the February patch, when it rolls into a prototyping build it will serve as an alpha.

Things released to the public build are not in “beta”, unless it’s made clear that said feature is in beta (early bf1 server rental).

17

Because if you let everyone use it, it turns into a total crapfest. (Just look at the forums)

Premium means they are dedicated were as a vanilla player might be out for their own personal gain.

I honesty don’t get how the premium is a problem. If you want to participate in CTE that bad I’m sure you can get premium. Not to mention consoles don’t have it yet (and on PC not much is happening anyway).

If people had put away $10 a month since beta they would have enough for Premium come March. If you are that tight for money than maybe you shouldn’t be playing video games.

And if you are buying premium just for the CTE; I think you’re doing it wrong.

People outside of CTE can still do stuff, Reddit, discord, YouTube etc. it’s not like CTE is suddenly alpha and onl certain people are allowed. Anyone is allowed but they require premium.

Regardless of anything; have you seen how people are reacting to vanilla? Can you imagine them playing CTE? If they think vanilla is broken then they shouldn’t go anywhere near CTE; they’d break something.

18

Nothing is lost. Anything open to the masses is just a demo / preview right now, with nothing relevant to actual balancing anymore. And all you need is to look no further than the half latest patch, where incomplete files “slipped” into the release candidate.

And lets be honest here - 99% of the players will just play and not report or test anything. Because I hardly believe you or anyone else will devise a system to actually test that 14.x% horizontal recoil and make sure its not 13% or 15%, or the like.

19

It should also be noted that EA and DICE should really do most of their testing with an in house QA team… asking consumers to pay to test the game is a bit bizarre. I noticed recently in another title a dev took to the forums to berate his core audience about not playing on the test servers enough… suffice it to say the community did not respond kindly.

20

It’s like saying only white men with land ownership can vote. Screwed up. They should just let the community try it out. Like a Minecraft snapshot.