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Nival posts the full version of the developers' letter on the official Heroes V website:
The decision to involve Heroes of Might and Magic fans in the development of the fifth game seemed obvious to us. We don't believe anyone can be a perfect expert on the series, but several dozen or hundreds of people sending us their ideas and feedback can significantly help in the development process.
However, there remains a risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages, or conversely, of implementing every single suggestion. After all, most of them contradict one another, and some could fundamentally alter the development direction of Heroes of Might and Magic V that we have committed to. Therefore, correctly combine and integrate all incoming feedback into the game is a massive undertaking. Simply tracking the feedback was a constant headache — though many communities helped us significantly in this regard.
The main challenge in organizing the beta test is the volume of work required to prepare the builds and regularly update them. Furthermore, during development, we constantly faced a difficult choice: either we delayed the beta update, or we fell behind on our game development schedule, or we fell behind on both counts!
On the other hand, conducting such a beta test is a truly unique experience! You communicate with hundreds of fans from all over the world, participate in long discussions, summarize results and polls — you are completely immersed in it. It is equally important to maintain the exchange of opinions among testers and continue development while taking all requests into account.
The process of recruiting beta testers was also very interesting. Using the registration form we proposed, we managed to create a fairly accurate profile of a typical Heroes of Might and Magic V fan. Thank you to the 15,000 registered testers! The average age of fans turned out to be quite high — around 24 years old. A large community was established in Israel. Russian fans once again proved their hardcore dedication. We were able to identify a substantial audience of casual players in the US. We also managed to determine which communities are the most authoritative. :
We were faced with the task of organizing work with all communities and testers. We needed to sort out the communication system on the forums, process bug reports, and the like, and the multilingual nature of testers also posed a complex challenge. We also had to handle the timely distribution of new keys — adding an extra month to the closed beta required additional keys. While running the open beta, we encountered a similar problem: the number of people who downloaded the beta exceeded our plans. :
The goal of any beta test is to gather feedback, and the bulk of the work was indeed related to processing it. Even after filtering out duplicate and clearly unfeasible suggestions, we were left with over 1,000 items that needed to be reviewed in the remaining three months. To date, a significant number of suggestions have been integrated into the game to some extent, even though their authors may not yet have seen it.
In addition to gathering specific suggestions, it was important for us to draw conclusions regarding how fans themselves evaluate Heroes of Might and Magic V. After two years of work on the project, we began receiving a very vague impression from fans about their priorities when evaluating the game. At the E3 and Leipzig shows, we received the most positive responses for Heroes of Might and Magic V, and journalists were extremely favorably disposed toward the game, but it was crucial for us to get feedback directly from the players. This became possible thanks to forum discussions with fans and communities. The opportunity to gain such insights into the game before its release is priceless.
Holding the open beta also allowed a greater number of people to get acquainted with the game. It should be noted that the game, presented in its current state (which, not being a demo version, is not polished to perfection) was received by the audience extremely patiently and supportively!
The decision to involve Heroes of Might and Magic fans in the development of the fifth game seemed obvious to us. We don't believe anyone can be a perfect expert on the series, but several dozen or hundreds of people sending us their ideas and feedback can significantly help in the development process.
However, there remains a risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages, or conversely, of implementing every single suggestion. After all, most of them contradict one another, and some could fundamentally alter the development direction of Heroes of Might and Magic V that we have committed to. Therefore, correctly combine and integrate all incoming feedback into the game is a massive undertaking. Simply tracking the feedback was a constant headache — though many communities helped us significantly in this regard.
The main challenge in organizing the beta test is the volume of work required to prepare the builds and regularly update them. Furthermore, during development, we constantly faced a difficult choice: either we delayed the beta update, or we fell behind on our game development schedule, or we fell behind on both counts!
On the other hand, conducting such a beta test is a truly unique experience! You communicate with hundreds of fans from all over the world, participate in long discussions, summarize results and polls — you are completely immersed in it. It is equally important to maintain the exchange of opinions among testers and continue development while taking all requests into account.
The process of recruiting beta testers was also very interesting. Using the registration form we proposed, we managed to create a fairly accurate profile of a typical Heroes of Might and Magic V fan. Thank you to the 15,000 registered testers! The average age of fans turned out to be quite high — around 24 years old. A large community was established in Israel. Russian fans once again proved their hardcore dedication. We were able to identify a substantial audience of casual players in the US. We also managed to determine which communities are the most authoritative. :
We were faced with the task of organizing work with all communities and testers. We needed to sort out the communication system on the forums, process bug reports, and the like, and the multilingual nature of testers also posed a complex challenge. We also had to handle the timely distribution of new keys — adding an extra month to the closed beta required additional keys. While running the open beta, we encountered a similar problem: the number of people who downloaded the beta exceeded our plans. :
The goal of any beta test is to gather feedback, and the bulk of the work was indeed related to processing it. Even after filtering out duplicate and clearly unfeasible suggestions, we were left with over 1,000 items that needed to be reviewed in the remaining three months. To date, a significant number of suggestions have been integrated into the game to some extent, even though their authors may not yet have seen it.
In addition to gathering specific suggestions, it was important for us to draw conclusions regarding how fans themselves evaluate Heroes of Might and Magic V. After two years of work on the project, we began receiving a very vague impression from fans about their priorities when evaluating the game. At the E3 and Leipzig shows, we received the most positive responses for Heroes of Might and Magic V, and journalists were extremely favorably disposed toward the game, but it was crucial for us to get feedback directly from the players. This became possible thanks to forum discussions with fans and communities. The opportunity to gain such insights into the game before its release is priceless.
Holding the open beta also allowed a greater number of people to get acquainted with the game. It should be noted that the game, presented in its current state (which, not being a demo version, is not polished to perfection) was received by the audience extremely patiently and supportively!
