could it be that you're saying that because you already are a playtester? if you werent a playtester you might see it the other way. although i can see the good in a closed public beta and the chaos that would ensue following the release an unfinished open public beta, or worse yet a non-beta... *cough* cs1.4 and hl1109 *cough*
lol yes, that could be terrible to the game. There are still a few things yet to be done and tested, so I'd prefer they do that before I go to download a game I think I will love then find out there are problems with it and end up barely bothering with it, though i'm not like that really and owuld probably download it again and again. And sephiroth, I think you have that backwards. If he were a playtested, wouldn't matter to him, if he weren't one, he may feel left out and unable to play a game he dearly wants to, though there may be a side because he can't play with lots of people.
You can't really say that about CS 1.4 and HL1109, they were being bombarded with requests for updates and patches. The suits want to please people and they released the patches. And besides, just because something doesn't work for *you* doesn't mean it didnt' work during their playtesting. Its is impractical to even consider testing software on every type of platform, with every configuration. As for public betas, if everyone and their mother was sending in bug reports because something doesn't work on their crappy computer, but works on someone elses computer, they'd never get the software released. They are only human and can only do so much.
As for the NS closed beta, I don't mind. I'm not a playtester, but being a software developer, I am inclined to go with the closed beta because people don't see the unfinished game. It can have a negative reaction on the public image of the game.
realityisdeadEmployed by Raven Software after making ns_nothingJoin Date: 2002-01-26Member: 94Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
<!--QuoteBegin--Sephiroth2k+May 30 2002,22:49--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> (Sephiroth2k @ May 30 2002,22:49)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->could it be that you're saying that because you already are a playtester?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> No, I'm saying it because it's simply the truth. That's not to say I wouldn't be dying if I wasn't chosen as one though... heh.
/me wants "Playtester" taken out from under my name
I believe the NS team is going about testing the right way. If the alpha was made public, true, there would be a greater range of systems/configs tested. But what I like to call the "CS factor" comes into play and the results of the playtest are rendered useless by hoards of lamers (CSers) sending in utter crap along the lines of: "My 1337 rig can't run your ###ed pile of ####, Give up you newbs!!!!11!".
Well, maybe I'm generalising a bit, I play CS after all. :-D
Just so this doesn't sound like a complete suck-up, I beleive the NS team should recruit a few more playtesters from IRC and the board. I know this sounds like a bit of a ploy to add my name to the playtester list, not saying I don't of course, but this is just my opinon. If a person that behave well on the boards but turn out to be less than co-operative ingame, that person can simple be excluded from the remainder of the playtests. Hmm, then you end up with a possibly spitefull ex-playtester that has a build of NS. Oh well, the more people testing, the more sure the dev team can be of a completly working first public release.
It is in no state to be released publically, one alien class has not even appeared yet. A few models and animations are not done, you cant release an unfinished product. If you want to see the consequences, just look at GTA3
i think if the first alpha was released (i did not play it... i became PT later on) everybody here on the forums would have downloaded it, played it for a few seconds, and then never returned here again. Still now, there are SOME placeholders that have to be taken care of. I THINK in the first beta it wasnt NS, it was HL with a (major) bit of different coding.
Now, everybody thinks being PT is da bomb. I was thinking that when i was not one... I mean, dont get me wrong im glad to be one, but the game changes every week... You'll get it 'when its done' and then all your fantasies and wishes will come true, but i think if u got it earlier it would be a dissapointment.
<!--QuoteBegin--Scythe+May 31 2002,02:28--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> (Scythe @ May 31 2002,02:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->Just so this doesn't sound like a complete suck-up, I beleive the NS team should recruit a few more playtesters from IRC and the board. I know this sounds like a bit of a ploy to add my name to the playtester list, not saying I don't of course, but this is just my opinon.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Flayra and the team said they'd add playtesters when they needed them. Im pretty sure they only have one server and they have something like 40 playtesters. Thats alot of feedback including many variables. Considering they have only 1 server they probably dont need any more playtesters as of yet. But, I bet they might get another server before official release and start playtesting hardcore.
Believe me, I want an open beta as badly as you. We're just not ready yet, but I know about most things that need to be done before then. It's not going to take too much longer, but give us time to fix the stuff we know needs fixing. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Gents, we really don't want the NS team to turn out a half baked product. How much would it suck to be in the middle of a NS game, having a great time and suddenly WHAM!, Halflife crashes? Or to have a great lvl 4. model but the shotgun doesn't have a skin? It's not worth it. Let them complete the mod. to their (very high) quality level and then we can all enjoy a fully functioning game.
I (think I) recall hearing in an interview that it was pretty difficult to get an NS playtest game set up and working correctly. If it's that troublesome to play (at this time), I don't think many people would enjoy having privileges to it. I know that I wouldn't. (Not to say, of course, that I wouldn't like PT status, nudge nudge <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo--> . But I trust in the playtesters and I'd rather see more effort go into them and the testing than into recruiting more testers.
what about those people who have been here for months in order to contibute somthing and dont really care about how the game looks now? A shared vision is how I would discribe it. The people who saw how great the mod will be and not is.
I know I signed up months ago in order to help. There where no fancy screen shots of graphics to lure me here, just an incredibly awe inspireing concept. but I guess all I have done is get in the way. Oh well, good luck NS team I look forward to what you will acomplish, from what I have seen and read it will be a great thing.
I guess this is where I say good bye till the mod comes out, not really anything left for me to do, Other then answer repetedly what a "bob" is, lol. Maybe I'll drop by in off topic every once in a while.
As much as you would like to play Natural Selection, an open beta is simply not the answer. The current playtest has placeholder models, placeholder sounds, etc. It is not Natural Selection at its best. If the team were to release an open beta the public might get confused and think that this is thier game, then when they release the final version not as many people would d/l it becuase they thought the first 'version' was too buggy.
As Ken and Comp said *and no, not becuase they are playtesters* closed test = productive open = worthless.
Agreed steve, although I salivate whenever the prospect of being a playtester rears its pretty head in my mind, I still believe that Flayra knows what he's doing, and this playtest method is definately currently the best.
But then again, when things are skipping along merrily towards release, I am of the opinion that perhaps a semi-IRC-wide playtest could be held (similar in proportion, people-wise, to the flaytona, except with more servers). I don't know how this would be all set up, because there is the potential for hurt feelings. Bah who knows what'll happen. Who can tell what flayra has in that head of his? <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
The problem is that people seem to assume that, Playtesting = Fun
In reality though, Playtesting = Work
Think of it this way, not all the features are in yet, the gameplay is buggy and can be changed regularly, you regularly have to download updates which tend to break important things that were working in the last patch, if someone needs you to investigate a possible bug you will have to go investigate it (If you don't, why are you a playtester?) and you can also find out about the soap opera amongst the developers behind the mod (Although thats not true for every mod).
Honestly, from the mods that I work on, my enjoyment of them in a normal gaming way is decreased because I have been playing a semi-working version of the game for so long I can no longer properly appreciate the fully working version. (Look how nervous profesional developers are in interviews about a game even when it is obviously fantastic. They are always suprised that it was a success because they know what it used to be like).
As much as I want to play, I've decided it's better that I be made ignorant of all the stupid phases the game has gone through.
I tried a game called Navy Seals yesterday for Quake 3, and while I see the potential...the game just plain sucks. I don't want to be disappointed. I want to play the amazing finished product. Keep at it playtesters, make me happy.
Open betas don't work when they are betas, and most the "beta" stuff that is open isn't really beta anyway.
Most people love to "beta test" somethign because they think they are going to get it early, be really 1337 and get it before everyone else.
Open betas really don't work because they attract the wrong sort of person to the test. They scare off people who are scared of "beta" products hearing they can "damage" your computer.
Even betas where applicants are pooled don't work as well because:
They attract people who are in it simply to play something before anyone else.
They attract people with the best connections and PCs because they think they'll have more chance with the latest shiznit than anyone with a crappy 4yr old PC.
When testing something it is more important to assatane(sp) the minimum requirements and test on a wide range of computers than to test on the latest stuff.
You know it will run well on the latest stuff, you wanna know if it will run well on a GF2.
People think open betas work, beacuse if you go to winzip you can DL the latest winzip "beta", but have you ever found a bug? There is probably a minute amount of bugs in winzip, and it's probably in the handling of some file type you've never heard of and is only cmopatible on an amiga.
and the counterstrike "betas", which by the end were less buggy than most retail products, and were only beta because they were always changing, but I doubt they had too many beta reports.
These mass-distributed sofwares under "beta" as an excuse for bugs and bad features which are more common since the explosion of the web and internet, should really now be called something else, (hmmm, gamma testing anyone?), they are way more distributed than any betas in the past.
With HL mods especially I think it is extremely important to get a good first build out in public.
Just compare these mods' popularity: front-line-force action-halflife
to these: opera desert-crisis
Now there is no reason the bottom 2 should have way less players than the others now that they all have decent builds (according to the respective communities anyway ), but the difference was with the quality of the initial release. Action HL I was never around before beta5, so I can't really comment, but certainly with FLF, the initial release was amazing for a mod's first release, and that I think has always helped get people back and attract people since 1.2; DC and opera on the other hand, may be about the same quality as the others now, but their first releases were very buggy, and/or had poor gameplay.
Now to get back on topic I actually beta tested 2 out those 4 mods, FLF and DC, and the difference in the testing came out in the first release.
DC's testing was, limited. There were plenty of testers, the server nearly always had people in it, fragging away.
However just because there was many many hours game time going on before the release dind't make the beta testing successful in anyway. It was unnsuccessful because some bugs were written off as stupidity or a problem with the HL engine, and there weren't many test versions (at least not after I joined testing which was when the testing applications were opened up to public applicants.) and the feedback that was given by some people was disregarded. Also what annoyed me I think the most, was the uncooperative nature of the other testers. I would ask if someone could just help test something and they would just tell me to STFU, and would just carry on playing DC. It seemed they were quite happy playing, even if it was something that needed testing with more than one person.
Anyway, the first release wasn't as good as it should/could have been, and the mod finds it hard to keep servers. (another thing was the first build had to linux build which dramatically reduced popularity by game server providers at least). DC is a good game, many people tell me so, but after playing the beta I did, I just can't see that.
Now FLF is still chugging away after 20 months or so of having publically released, not just because the game is superior (I am biased tho since it is what I play most the time), but because it's first release was impressive.
The testing for this I cannot remember so much, I think I was definately a weaker tester back then and don't think I contributed much, however I recognise it now as one of the more successful beta tests I've participated in.
Firstly there was a beta coordinator who regulary scheduled games on the server (I think it was domain of games XII server if I remember) and turned up. I then had access to the beta forums (which with DC I only got until the morning before I was kicked out and banned) where I could go and read posts about what other bugs people had found, and submit more (but I didn't submit many since it was one of my first tests and I really wasn't good at finding bugs back then, my knowledge of the HL engine was thin, and I couldn't predict possible bugs in the way I can now.
However, the test was organised, and the mod was clearly progressing as the release drew closer and closer.
Right up until near the end there were placeholders, namely the default hl hand grenade, gordon's arms and all.
Had I originally played the first beta of FLF I played, I would have probably gone "wayyy, cooool, lllooooove the mod! gonna play this forever!!!11" then got bored 2-3 weeks later and gone back to playing whatever (it was TFC for me, can't even see why now) and forgotten about the mod.
However the game improved and improved during the beta time, and come the time of release there were quite a few maps, including one authored in part by valve, and several other quality maps.
The thing about the top two is that there is always a feeling of quality, because it had that the first time you played it, because the teams made damn sure what was released was good quality.
With DC, it doesn't matter if it suddenly morphs into TF2, engine and all, people wouldn't be as happy, and people woudln't try it because the first release lacked the quality other mods did, and it may be getting back on track now, but a "#####" shotgun (or two <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo--> ) can do a hell of a lot of damage to a mod, and can have huge repurcussions still a year later.
Opera also is "getting back on track", they have a new temporary build out, and are working on a "version 2" which I am glad to say they have decided to have extra testing on, to try and up the quality. I think if you brand a new version of a game as though it's been a total hehaul of the game, it is like starting a clean sheet.
After dod 1.0 I wouldn't touch the game, it was fairly buggy (though not too bad, that is actually called "beta 1.0" isn't it?) and I dind't like the gameplay, however I still am tempted to DL the magical "Dod 1.5!" because 1.5 was shoved out the door with a "here's DoD, it's not the DoD you knew before".
As a result DoD kept it's pre-1.5 playerbase, and gained huge amounts of people trying it.
I admire the way NS is gathering a testing team. It looks like it is nearing capacity (If I remeber FLF had about 60, and that translated to about 15 active, and about 4 whose names I can remember). I think choosing active members is a good way, because it ensures they won't just disappear once you have picked them, and you can bug them for beta reports more. Also, you'll know they have something to say, I doubt getting someone who after testing either has a glazed look and responds to "how was it?" with "sweeeeeeeet, thanks, good work Flayra!" or "yeah, nice".
It doesn't matter if you pick the forum ########, who is good at arguing, gettign in fights but is opinionated. Unless he is a goddam freaking moron then he probably will have something to say about the play-test.
That's the good thing about HL mods, the worst bit of the testing, the least fun bit of the testing where the game won't even run at all on your platform after a 2-day non-stop download is that the download is smaller than for games and you know the engine works. You don't have to feature-test the engine, you don't have to spend ages working with an un-playable thing, it is actually <u>play</u>-testing, and that means whilst you can't just go in and have a merry time playing and hope to not only find all the bugs but also try and help explain what caused them, or at least what you were doing at the time, but does mean when you get in you'll have somethign nice to look at, something that is close.
Anyway, personally I am totally against open betas, I would think twice before just getting any old people to apply by email then try to pick the best, I would actually try to pick the best people for the job, whether that would be the contents of #naturalselection, the forum regulars or whatever.
Testing a mod compared to commercial product may be vastly different but nowadays people want their mods the quality of commercial products (well, CS anyway).
And yeah as a final point that commando briefly touched on, if you do play a game in beta, it does kinda ruin the game afterwards. Anyone who wants to play-test because they just want the game early is dumb, because I know from experience when FLF was finally released to the public I took a several month leave from the mod only to return later.
i would like to playtest, of course, most people do, but I dont think that Open betas are any good since most of time it just get leaked and no one helps with the test, they just play it. So there <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo-->
OMG! Wow i have never seen so much writing in a forum in my life... could you summerize that for us stupid people? Cause I got lost very fast. <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo--> So could you?
I read it. Basically he said that a buggy open beta will kill a mod if it's the first release.
To give you an idea of how incomplete the mod is, we're still using some of the Starcraft sounds. New problems crop up for every one and a half Flayra solves.
For the average mod user (the people we have to actually work at attracting), releasing now would -totally- turn them off to the mod. They'll say "Great idea, but their mod is just too buggy/incomplete to play."
I'd have to agree with that as well. though you still hear of the "engaging" games that take place in ns, you also hear that often when it gets to that stage, the game crashes, or some other bug interferes. Even with that I wouldn't mind being a pt though <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->
I think that richard should be awarded the "longest and most relevant and informing post in NS history" award. Great post dude, I read it all and you nailed the proverbial nail on its proverbial head. I agree 100%, although at times I wish emphatically that I could be the newest NS playtester. <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo-->
Comments
As for the NS closed beta, I don't mind. I'm not a playtester, but being a software developer, I am inclined to go with the closed beta because people don't see the unfinished game. It can have a negative reaction on the public image of the game.
No, I'm saying it because it's simply the truth. That's not to say I wouldn't be dying if I wasn't chosen as one though... heh.
/me wants "Playtester" taken out from under my name
<!--EDIT|ken20banks|May 30 2002,23:36-->
Well, maybe I'm generalising a bit, I play CS after all. :-D
Just so this doesn't sound like a complete suck-up, I beleive the NS team should recruit a few more playtesters from IRC and the board. I know this sounds like a bit of a ploy to add my name to the playtester list, not saying I don't of course, but this is just my opinon. If a person that behave well on the boards but turn out to be less than co-operative ingame, that person can simple be excluded from the remainder of the playtests. Hmm, then you end up with a possibly spitefull ex-playtester that has a build of NS. Oh well, the more people testing, the more sure the dev team can be of a completly working first public release.
--Scythe--
<a href="mailto:the_only_scythe@subdimension.com">the_only_scythe@subdimension.com</a>
Now, everybody thinks being PT is da bomb. I was thinking that when i was not one... I mean, dont get me wrong im glad to be one, but the game changes every week... You'll get it 'when its done' and then all your fantasies and wishes will come true, but i think if u got it earlier it would be a dissapointment.
Flayra and the team said they'd add playtesters when they needed them. Im pretty sure they only have one server and they have something like 40 playtesters. Thats alot of feedback including many variables. Considering they have only 1 server they probably dont need any more playtesters as of yet. But, I bet they might get another server before official release and start playtesting hardcore.
I know I signed up months ago in order to help. There where no fancy screen shots of graphics to lure me here, just an incredibly awe inspireing concept. but I guess all I have done is get in the way. Oh well, good luck NS team I look forward to what you will acomplish, from what I have seen and read it will be a great thing.
I guess this is where I say good bye till the mod comes out, not really anything left for me to do, Other then answer repetedly what a "bob" is, lol. Maybe I'll drop by in off topic every once in a while.
Had fun posting catch you guys later.
Maybe in a clan match? ;]
As Ken and Comp said *and no, not becuase they are playtesters* closed test = productive open = worthless.
But then again, when things are skipping along merrily towards release, I am of the opinion that perhaps a semi-IRC-wide playtest could be held (similar in proportion, people-wise, to the flaytona, except with more servers). I don't know how this would be all set up, because there is the potential for hurt feelings. Bah who knows what'll happen. Who can tell what flayra has in that head of his? <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Playtesting = Fun
In reality though,
Playtesting = Work
Think of it this way, not all the features are in yet, the gameplay is buggy and can be changed regularly, you regularly have to download updates which tend to break important things that were working in the last patch, if someone needs you to investigate a possible bug you will have to go investigate it (If you don't, why are you a playtester?) and you can also find out about the soap opera amongst the developers behind the mod (Although thats not true for every mod).
Honestly, from the mods that I work on, my enjoyment of them in a normal gaming way is decreased because I have been playing a semi-working version of the game for so long I can no longer properly appreciate the fully working version. (Look how nervous profesional developers are in interviews about a game even when it is obviously fantastic. They are always suprised that it was a success because they know what it used to be like).
I tried a game called Navy Seals yesterday for Quake 3, and while I see the potential...the game just plain sucks. I don't want to be disappointed. I want to play the amazing finished product. Keep at it playtesters, make me happy.
Most people love to "beta test" somethign because they think they are going to get it early, be really 1337 and get it before everyone else.
Open betas really don't work because they attract the wrong sort of person to the test. They scare off people who are scared of "beta" products hearing they can "damage" your computer.
Even betas where applicants are pooled don't work as well because:
They attract people who are in it simply to play something before anyone else.
They attract people with the best connections and PCs because they think they'll have more chance with the latest shiznit than anyone with a crappy 4yr old PC.
When testing something it is more important to assatane(sp) the minimum requirements and test on a wide range of computers than to test on the latest stuff.
You know it will run well on the latest stuff, you wanna know if it will run well on a GF2.
People think open betas work, beacuse if you go to winzip you can DL the latest winzip "beta", but have you ever found a bug? There is probably a minute amount of bugs in winzip, and it's probably in the handling of some file type you've never heard of and is only cmopatible on an amiga.
and the counterstrike "betas", which by the end were less buggy than most retail products, and were only beta because they were always changing, but I doubt they had too many beta reports.
These mass-distributed sofwares under "beta" as an excuse for bugs and bad features which are more common since the explosion of the web and internet, should really now be called something else, (hmmm, gamma testing anyone?), they are way more distributed than any betas in the past.
With HL mods especially I think it is extremely important to get a good first build out in public.
Just compare these mods' popularity:
front-line-force
action-halflife
to these:
opera
desert-crisis
Now there is no reason the bottom 2 should have way less players than the others now that they all have decent builds (according to the respective communities anyway ), but the difference was with the quality of the initial release. Action HL I was never around before beta5, so I can't really comment, but certainly with FLF, the initial release was amazing for a mod's first release, and that I think has always helped get people back and attract people since 1.2; DC and opera on the other hand, may be about the same quality as the others now, but their first releases were very buggy, and/or had poor gameplay.
Now to get back on topic I actually beta tested 2 out those 4 mods, FLF and DC, and the difference in the testing came out in the first release.
DC's testing was, limited. There were plenty of testers, the server nearly always had people in it, fragging away.
However just because there was many many hours game time going on before the release dind't make the beta testing successful in anyway. It was unnsuccessful because some bugs were written off as stupidity or a problem with the HL engine, and there weren't many test versions (at least not after I joined testing which was when the testing applications were opened up to public applicants.) and the feedback that was given by some people was disregarded.
Also what annoyed me I think the most, was the uncooperative nature of the other testers. I would ask if someone could just help test something and they would just tell me to STFU, and would just carry on playing DC. It seemed they were quite happy playing, even if it was something that needed testing with more than one person.
Anyway, the first release wasn't as good as it should/could have been, and the mod finds it hard to keep servers. (another thing was the first build had to linux build which dramatically reduced popularity by game server providers at least).
DC is a good game, many people tell me so, but after playing the beta I did, I just can't see that.
Now FLF is still chugging away after 20 months or so of having publically released, not just because the game is superior (I am biased tho since it is what I play most the time), but because it's first release was impressive.
The testing for this I cannot remember so much, I think I was definately a weaker tester back then and don't think I contributed much, however I recognise it now as one of the more successful beta tests I've participated in.
Firstly there was a beta coordinator who regulary scheduled games on the server (I think it was domain of games XII server if I remember) and turned up. I then had access to the beta forums (which with DC I only got until the morning before I was kicked out and banned) where I could go and read posts about what other bugs people had found, and submit more (but I didn't submit many since it was one of my first tests and I really wasn't good at finding bugs back then, my knowledge of the HL engine was thin, and I couldn't predict possible bugs in the way I can now.
However, the test was organised, and the mod was clearly progressing as the release drew closer and closer.
Right up until near the end there were placeholders, namely the default hl hand grenade, gordon's arms and all.
Had I originally played the first beta of FLF I played, I would have probably gone "wayyy, cooool, lllooooove the mod! gonna play this forever!!!11" then got bored 2-3 weeks later and gone back to playing whatever (it was TFC for me, can't even see why now) and forgotten about the mod.
However the game improved and improved during the beta time, and come the time of release there were quite a few maps, including one authored in part by valve, and several other quality maps.
The thing about the top two is that there is always a feeling of quality, because it had that the first time you played it, because the teams made damn sure what was released was good quality.
With DC, it doesn't matter if it suddenly morphs into TF2, engine and all, people wouldn't be as happy, and people woudln't try it because the first release lacked the quality other mods did, and it may be getting back on track now, but a "#####" shotgun (or two <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo--> ) can do a hell of a lot of damage to a mod, and can have huge repurcussions still a year later.
Opera also is "getting back on track", they have a new temporary build out, and are working on a "version 2" which I am glad to say they have decided to have extra testing on, to try and up the quality. I think if you brand a new version of a game as though it's been a total hehaul of the game, it is like starting a clean sheet.
After dod 1.0 I wouldn't touch the game, it was fairly buggy (though not too bad, that is actually called "beta 1.0" isn't it?) and I dind't like the gameplay, however I still am tempted to DL the magical "Dod 1.5!" because 1.5 was shoved out the door with a "here's DoD, it's not the DoD you knew before".
As a result DoD kept it's pre-1.5 playerbase, and gained huge amounts of people trying it.
I admire the way NS is gathering a testing team. It looks like it is nearing capacity (If I remeber FLF had about 60, and that translated to about 15 active, and about 4 whose names I can remember). I think choosing active members is a good way, because it ensures they won't just disappear once you have picked them, and you can bug them for beta reports more.
Also, you'll know they have something to say, I doubt getting someone who after testing either has a glazed look and responds to "how was it?" with "sweeeeeeeet, thanks, good work Flayra!" or "yeah, nice".
It doesn't matter if you pick the forum ########, who is good at arguing, gettign in fights but is opinionated. Unless he is a goddam freaking moron then he probably will have something to say about the play-test.
That's the good thing about HL mods, the worst bit of the testing, the least fun bit of the testing where the game won't even run at all on your platform after a 2-day non-stop download is that the download is smaller than for games and you know the engine works. You don't have to feature-test the engine, you don't have to spend ages working with an un-playable thing, it is actually <u>play</u>-testing, and that means whilst you can't just go in and have a merry time playing and hope to not only find all the bugs but also try and help explain what caused them, or at least what you were doing at the time, but does mean when you get in you'll have somethign nice to look at, something that is close.
Anyway, personally I am totally against open betas, I would think twice before just getting any old people to apply by email then try to pick the best, I would actually try to pick the best people for the job, whether that would be the contents of #naturalselection, the forum regulars or whatever.
Testing a mod compared to commercial product may be vastly different but nowadays people want their mods the quality of commercial products (well, CS anyway).
And yeah as a final point that commando briefly touched on, if you do play a game in beta, it does kinda ruin the game afterwards. Anyone who wants to play-test because they just want the game early is dumb, because I know from experience when FLF was finally released to the public I took a several month leave from the mod only to return later.
To give you an idea of how incomplete the mod is, we're still using some of the Starcraft sounds. New problems crop up for every one and a half Flayra solves.
For the average mod user (the people we have to actually work at attracting), releasing now would -totally- turn them off to the mod. They'll say "Great idea, but their mod is just too buggy/incomplete to play."
And we simply can -not- have that.