In case you missed the announcement, Bungie finally revealed when Destiny‘s beta launches. While PS3 and PS4 players get 10 days (starting on the 17th, not including downtime) to test out the highly anticipated title, Xbox 360 and Xbox One players have a smaller window of just 4 days. In the bug-filled world of beta testing, 4 days simply isn’t enough.
The point of the Destiny beta is primarily to stress-test the servers, as with any large-scale multiplayer release. Due to the rapport Destiny has built over the last couple of years since its release, millions of players will jump online at the same time all over the world, leading to massive latency and drops in connection. Once again, this is standard across the board for multiplayer games – especially those that rely solely on online. Remember Grand Theft Auto Online or Diablo III‘s launch?
That being said, a beta is also an unfinished game, which gives Bungie the perfect opportunity to receive feedback on missions, gameplay, bugs, glitches, and so on. Understandably, there are a lot of potential issues with games in beta – Battlefield 4 had an infamously short beta so close to launch. And thus is the reason for Xbox fans crying out against Bungie following their announcement.
The Destiny beta will be astoundingly massive. It’s final build will be staggeringly enormous. As such, the potential for issues in the Destiny beta is quite high, and 4 days – even the 10 that PlayStation users receive – is simply not enough time. As I mentioned, Bungie may simply wish to stress-test the servers before launch, and maybe catch a bug or two on the way, which is absolutely fine. However, given my experience in betas, both multiplayer shooters and MMOs, there will be bugs. There will be issues, however large or small, that users will encounter and relay to Bungie. It’s because of this that the Destiny beta needs more time. More time testing means time to find more glitches in the system.
Realistically speaking, the servers may go down on the first day due to the immense number of people trying to log in at the same time, on top of the already-present PlayStation crowd. If they fix this issue quickly, then Xbox players may have 3-3.5 days to experience the Destiny beta, which – for all we know at this point – could vastly fluctuate in connection quality, or perhaps see numerous bugs plaguing the gameplay.
What I, and a lot of other fans, ask for is not more time to play the game – this isn’t early access, and I understand that. I also understand that the game is primarily marketed towards the PlayStation audience, hence the difference in play-time between PlayStation and Xbox users. What I ask for instead is more time to test. There may be innumerable issues exclusive to the Xbox platform, or platform-wide issues that arise with the larger player count. In any case, I think it all boils down to the fact that 4 days may not be enough time for Bungie to successfully test the Destiny beta. I have faith in them to nail it as developers, but there’s always something that can go wrong, no matter how long you plan for it.
Taking all this into consideration, I love Bungie and all their work. I also eagerly await the Destiny beta at the end of the month, and its full release in September.
The Destiny beta runs from July 17th (for PS3 and PS4) and 23rd (for Xbox 360 and Xbox One) to the 27th.
The full game releases on September 9th.
