Personal Rant About Ns

abtm · April 2003

Well, personally; I've been playing NS for about 3 months now maybe; I love the game, but what really kills me as a player and a mature person is all the people who talk about playtesting in the IRC channel. Obviously if you were not selected to be a PT (I was not either) you will not be by saying things like "Hey, I love NS it's the bestest MOD ever, can I be a tester PLEEEEASE?!!" NO, you will be flamed and sent to /dev/null.

So please, if you want to be taken seriously in a community of well rounded and mature people, try to act like them, or at least pretend for the time being; it's very stupid to listen to people beg for stuff like kiddies from Counter-Strike asking for Steam testership.

KEm1KaL1 · April 2003

/me was also steam tester

and yeah, as i said

[14:18] <KEm1KaL> i'd love to become a PT but constantly asking/flaming/complaining isnt going to get me anywhere

Just hang around and contribute, I'm sure you'll be picked before... me...

lol -- good post

abtm · April 2003

My intention for this post was not to raise my importance in NS nor was it to throw some imaginary weight around. I merely wanted to show people that even a newbie to the community can recognize that some things just are lame to do.

And by pointing this out I (abtm) feel people will look into their "mirror" and realize "Hey, you know; I'm a lame sack of fat, maybe I should improve my charactor and people might want to talk to me intelligently and do stuff for me when I need it".

KEm1KaL1 · April 2003

Another thing, many people do not know what Playtesting is all about. You get these impressionable guys thinking:

"OMG DOODZ THIS SI TEH ROXOR", or some crap like that, Playtesting is not all about playing a new game, and is certainly not all enjoyment, those are things you squeeze in *after* you feel that this game you are testing is ready for the public <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'> Think of playtesting as sort of a job, I have done it many many times before, for many big game makers and many other games. The point is for the playtesters to make the said game as good as it can be (and I am certainly hoping NS 1.1 lives up to its hype, and have no doubts, looking at who the PTers are). So have faith in Flayra and the rest of the NS team to pick good people for PTing. You will be chosen if they see fit.

abtm · April 2003

To me, testing should remain the way it is, we had a series of very quality patches so far with the current or former play testers. In my experience playtesting or testing or managing a testing group of people, it is the most common problem in the world to hear "This is a great addition" ... why? People can't anwser.

If people who are selected to be playtesters did this, there would be terrible releases of NS one after another until everyone shot themselves. Only people who can post meaningful commentary and suggestions are the kinds of people you look for in a testing group, not those who just want early access to a product in order to check it out and tell his/her friends -- which, by the way is what normally happens with immature testers, they give it out to their friends and leak screenshots/feature-lists and documentation from the product team to the general public.

In my opinion (and ONLY my opinion) the MOD looks good, and very high quality.

1-2-3-4 I LOVE THE...DEV "CORE"

MooMan · April 2003

My only thought is that PTing should be a bit more extensive(more people), but the problems can be sorted with time after public release anyway.

The reason for this is that some people just randomly think of somehting or do something, which could require attention(eg - stopcommandermode, r_drawviewmodel 0, etc) so the more people the easier it is to spot these before public release.

Although I can understand fully that too many make PTing stupid and may result in a breakdown of communication in effectively getting bug reports in and sorted.

Edit : Also the fact that not enuf people are reliable and sensible enough, so Flayra can't just let ne1 PT, they have to be handpicked by the devs, so it is not really feasable to get large numbers of people.

CutterJoe · April 2003

You speak the truth mooman. The only problem is the more PT's there are the more security leaks become a problem. You have to have a group of trusthworthy testers but individuals who know gaming and how its supposed to be. You cant just slap a group of people together and say have at it and tell us what you think. But Im sure flay and the guys will chose competent people.

DasElitest · April 2003

your not supposed to play the game how its meant to be played when playtesting... :-\ your supposed to try and exploit, break, and destroy it.

greyfox5 · April 2003

Das, thats not how the NS playtesting works. We only really test the balance. If we see a bug, we post it, but usually dont say anything in-game. We dont ry exploits, dont try and crash the game, we play, and be observant.

DasElitest · April 2003

I think you should work out the kinks and release it to the community to be balanced.... the biggest imbalance in 1.04 was never even looked at by the pters... (jet packs) which is why they cost only 9 space dollars <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'>

Berger · April 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (greyfox555 @ Apr 12 2003, 09:22 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Das, thats not how the NS playtesting works. We only really test the balance. If we see a bug, we post it, but usually dont say anything in-game. We dont ry exploits, dont try and crash the game, we play, and be observant.  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
Or at least, that's what the original PT group is doing/did. The new "veteran" PT group, consisting of serious clanners and some site admins, were added for the dual purpose of balancing the game for match play and finding as many exploits as possible. With these two groups testing for v1.1, I'm predicting a much more balanced game, for both pub and match play.

abtm · April 2003

I think the current testing is great. And as mentioned, the object of being a playtester is just what it says, they play the game and test balance features etc. Bugs are handled in the same fashion as normal people do. The new "veterans" are hardcore community enthusiasts, clanners and server ops.

With that being said, I look forward to a great release of 1.1 when the time comes right; and hope it only advances the playabiliy of the game. If anything, I think the testing team is perfect as is, when you increase the size of the testing groups you increase risk of information/data leaks which is NOT good or beneficial to the MOD's reputation or integretity as a MOD, so it should remain small.

Gadzuko · April 2003

Open playtests make for lots of whining and screams of "OMG U MUST FIX THIS NOW SO IMBALANCE U SUCK"... eerily reminiscent to what's happening right now. Closed playtests give off coherent, reliable feedback.

Comprox · April 2003

Like what was stated above. The testing group does mostly balancing/bug testing. We are doing *much* more focused testing this time around (greyfox hasn't been around too much, we've changed our style a lot <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'>). So yah, in testing for 1.0 it was quite lax. Now we have people assigned to specific tasks. ie. one guy checks out hitboxes, another makes sure damage numbers are correct in game, etc etc. The veterans group is there to make sure we didn't miss anything, and find out those really cheap bugs/exploits which us testers just couldn't even fathom, and to test the clan side of the game for balance. It makes a nice mix so both sides of the game can be extremely fun.

Kenichi · April 2003

And we all pray it works in the long run ^_^

abtm · April 2003

lol -- I think it will work out very nicely for everyone.

Amped1 · April 2003

You must be new to these boards. Topics with the word rant in their name end up locked 95% of the time. Just thought I'd let you know.

Archzai · April 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (abtm @ Apr 12 2003, 01:26 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> My intention for this post was not to raise my importance in NS nor was it to throw some imaginary weight around. I merely wanted to show people that even a newbie to the community can recognize that some things just are lame to do.

And by pointing this out I (abtm) feel people will look into their "mirror" and realize "Hey, you know; I'm a lame sack of fat, maybe I should improve my charactor and people might want to talk to me intelligently and do stuff for me when I need it".  </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> 
wuts ABTM?

KEm1KaL1 · April 2003

What I would like to know is: How are the people in the "veteran" group picked? I kick **** in ns, talk to almost everyone in irc and read practically every forum thread. Just wondering if that is how it really works.

abtm · April 2003

First off, DEV members/admins have already read this thread. Second; ABTM is a random set of charactors I used for a password for an old SunOS machine, so it eventually came as m y nick.

Lastly, and this is merely my speculation, I think veterans are the absolute most die-hard Server-Ops and Players or Clanners there is, I'm not one nor am I the most die-hard so I wouldn't be able to tell you one way or another on that subject. I would suggest asking Flayra or MonsE Kem.

Thanks for spell checking kem

Personal Rant About Ns

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