What's the motive behind keeping playtesting new builds a secret?

[Weeabro]

It just seems a little slanted to give a select few people months of metagame and matchup experience for new characters and changes, for a game that is free and will never make the PMBR profit. Besides building hype (and avoiding people ******** about changes/new characters), I don't really see the logic behind keeping everything a secret.

 

[GP&B]

and avoiding people *****ing about changes/new characters

It's specifically this reason. Project M 3.02 is for all intents and purposes supposed to be treated as the official build to play right now. If people get info on who or what is getting changed, it skews and stagnates the metagame because people effectively stop playing or avoid certain characters to relearn them later.

 

[TheKmanOfSmash]

The hype is the only reason you need. Quite honestly, if the PMBR told the public every single thing that was going on with the game, its glamour would significantly wear off and I would be immensely disinterested in a next release because I would already know everything that would be in it before I even tried it. There's a reason why there is a cultural distaste for spoilers in the world of media. Same with games. Just because you seem to be impatient (not saying you are, just that you seem to be), doesn't mean you should push an ideology that spoils the mystery and suspense of the game for everyone else.

When they came out with the Roy trailer and I saw it for the first time, I literally freaked out and could not believe it as did all my friends I showed it to. If I had known about Roy months in advance and they released that same trailer, this is what my reaction would've been:

It's a marketing strategy. It's what makes people come back wanting for more. Yes, the mod is free, but the experiences and memories that it creates with other people who share the same passion of the game as you are priceless.

And don't worry about the meta, dude. If that was relevant, then all the top players should be PMBR lol.

 

[Celestis]

This is silly.

 

[shapular]

Letting everybody playtest would destroy the point of a stable release. Everybody would want to be playing the new version instead of the stable release. It's hard to balance a game if the metagame doesn't develop, and it's hard to develop a metagame when the game changes every day. This is what happened during the later days of Brawl+. They had a stable release and nightly builds, and everybody played the nightlies. I think the PM devs saw this and wanted to make sure it didn't happen with PM. They didn't even release the first demo (which had only 14 characters) until half a year after PM was revealed.

 

[McSlur]

I believe the expression is "it's easier to beg forgiveness later then ask for permission now"?
Some transparency would be nice, but in the end the secrecy makes it all much more exciting!
Probably.

 

[Player -0]

Also the build changes a lot frequently (or so I've heard). There'll be something in one build but in the next it was completely scrapped.

 

[cmart]

Also the build changes a lot frequently (or so I've heard). There'll be something in one build but in the next it was completely scrapped.

This is true. We want the freedom to experiment and try things that might not work out, and we can't do that if we have to constantly keep public perception and scrutiny in mind. In addition to the possible impact on the metagame others have already cited. Note that playtesting the in-development builds isn't even an advantage much of the time since it can screw with your execution on the public release.

 

[Stryker]

League does a patch forecast which could be interesting with this. Its usually just a thread where riot says "Hey, all this stuff is op/broken/overnerfed/whatever, and we are aware of it, and this is the direction we are thinking of taking it" And just leave out all the super awesome secret stuff.
So, if slippy was coming out next release, they wouldn't put that in there. But if they think fox's jab is a bit too strong (Random example) the could say "Hey, this move is a touch stronger than we think it should be, so we are probably going to do something about that." and from this point, they have the option of saying "We will probably make it come out 1 frame later" or just "What we will change about it will be a surprise."

 

[Strong Badam]

This is true. We want the freedom to experiment and try things that might not work out, and we can't do that if we have to constantly keep public perception and scrutiny in mind. In addition to the possible impact on the metagame others have already cited. Note that playtesting the in-development builds isn't even an advantage much of the time since it can screw with your execution on the public release.

Yup. The only thing more obnoxious than people complaining about changes, is people complaining about changes that may or may not ever see a public release.

 

[Paradoxium]

People would take something that "may" be in the next patch and mistake it for actually "being" in the next patch. Then they slingshot it through twitter, facebook, instagram, and you end up with a huge mess. Then the pmbr has to backtrack and resolve the issue.

I saw this same thing happen during the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Beta. Everyone was going ape **** when Blizzard gave tempests like 22 range. They were too dumb to realize that this was just a "test" and that these things would eventually be changed.

 

[Stryker]

People would take something that "may" be in the next patch and mistake it for actually "being" in the next patch. Then they slingshot it through twitter, facebook, instagram, and you end up with a huge mess. Then the pmbr has to backtrack and resolve the issue.

I saw this same thing happen during the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Beta. Everyone was going ape **** when Blizzard gave tempests like 22 range. They were too dumb to realize that this was just a "test" and that these things would eventually be changed.

To take a quote from a riot post
"Keep in mind that the forecast is more about identifying problems that we're looking at, and not promises of changes to come in each patch. Some changes might take longer than others!"
Alot of the reasons people can be upset is if developers don't acknowledge things. Even without promising change, taking responsibility for the current state of the game and communicating with your players is important. Players want to know that they've been heard, even if they're being taken with a grain of salt.
Alot of people care about this game. Because of that, people care what direction it's taking.
When developing for a large audience of ongoing players, it's important that you communicate with them, because you ask them to care so much into a game that's going to change. Of course they're going to care about the changes that are being made to a game they have so much investment in.
No, it's not necessary to communicate, but perspective is important.

 

[Mansta]

It's because it would end up like Brawl+'s random updates where they constantly changed things, but on a way larger scale.