First of all,
DON'T PANIC


Now, I know what you're thinking. If Soldat went public beta, as in testing bugs, doing the balance, the works, it'd be 'the end of Soldat' as so many would put it.

I can understand this perspective, and if such a thing were to happen, it could well be taken from the realms of theory and made fact.




On the other hand, consider our current evidence.
We're doing public balance testing right now, which although a little slow (although not actually faster than when us beta testers ever did it), and under strict moderation - barring some odd and very 'experimental' or even biased opinions cropping up - the place is locked up tighter than a ducks arse. Constructive criticism is being made.


Now consider that we're having a hard time getting an army of actual beta testers in our ranks. We've thought up a few names, and are still discussing it, but it'll take a while and there isn't much to choose from that can be agreed. When we finally have some new recruits, they'll pretty much be taking over (us beta testers have had our day) so it's possible they'll make a few mistakes seeing as it's their first time, though under a little supervision from the wise 'beta-elders'.


Finally, Michal himself approves (and actually seems kinda eager) towards the concept. It'd work and run pretty much in the same fashion as the balance testing, except you'd be allowed to test a beta of soldat and a beta of the soldat dedicated server, and hopefully report or acknowledge any bugs you find as well as testing new features and, of course, discussing balance.


I am not for or against the proposal, s'just we're considering alternatives towards reconstructing a beta team (we once had about 50 testers, now we're about 15, most of which don't have the time anymore) in order to proceed getting 1.3.1 out there and done.


Whats your honest opinion, guv.

interesting.

i noticed that the beta testing for 1.31 hasn't been nearly as enthusiastic as when 1.3 came out, so i do support this idea, chakra. the only thing is, who's it gonna be? who are you willing to trust?

psst, i think anna should become a second-generation beta tester.

It'll be public, guv. Michal himself would count on the public (at least those posts approved by strict moderators in a forum dedicated to it's discussion) for opinions, suggestions and bug reports. Nothing like "add vehicles", more like "when I go prone and try to fire saw in mid air, I explode" and "I think the minigun should fire at a rate of 5 instead of 4 for the following in depth reasons"

Best of luck to your choosing. It's quite an idea, searching for new recruits to the Beta testing team. Although, it does sound quite chaotic, considering the time and effort required. Or then again, I'm probably wrong (as usual), meaning that it could and might only take something like 1-2 hours a week.

Chakra, just out of curiousity, why aren't the Beta Testers as enthusiastic this time round?

Well quite simply, we've been doing it for between 2-3 years. Takes a bit of effort. And then Michal pretty much jumped us with 1.3.1 soon after 1.3 was done, and getting 1.3 done took alot out of us. On top of that, our numbers have simply dwindled. Some just ain't around anymore, others are busy with other things. So basically, with our short numbers, it takes longer to get anything done, and being so tired of it all, nothing gets done.

The answer is simple. With 1.3, we thought we were finally untouchable, unflamable, since the version seemed the best so far, and we were, in general, satisfied. The rest is history, the forums sank in the sea of flames, and we got discouraged and disappointed.

I am not sure I understand this correctly, do you mean you want the beta to be public? or you want more people to be added to the beta testing team?

If you want the beta to be public, I don't really see why, currently most of the bugs are reported and if we increase the number of active beta testers, this problem will be solve?

I don't particularly want or disapprove of either. I'm game for anything really.

As for bugs reported, s'true there isn't many left to find seeing as not much was changed, however it can't be certain we've got everything really. And more beta testers would always help now as well as later. I don't think we've even had a game with the beta with more than 3-4 people have we?

And to quote Michal on why public testing might be a good idea....

"I guess this is a good version for doing this, because there isn't anything controversial in it, just bug fixes. I say we can do it, but make it just a forum thing, I won't announce anything on the official news. I'll prepare a new version and we can do it."

Giving the testing to the public would set us up for the future, as well as make sure everythings tip top right now. Would also add more emphasis on people testing the balance. It's simply just an alternative to private testing with beta testers, nothing else.


At the moment, we just considering both until either the public and the current beta testing team approve of one thing or the other.

In my oppinion a public beta would be very effective. Now there would be more people to find problems within the game.
The only thing that I would be worried about is that I would rather have the beta in the hands of the people who know what's best for soldat.
Through a public beta the bugs would be found more efficiently and the administration could verify each problem and make the decisions that is best for soldat.
So I think the pub. beta is a good idea.

i bet a bunch of forum-whor3s will get into the new beta testing team with no real clue about the soldat community ^^

thats somthing you need to think about, choose people who are KNOWN, and ACITVE, people who other people TRUST.. not some random retards on the internet 24/7 and flame everyone who joins their channel, aka #soldat.forums 'crew'..

edit: why dont you ask people who are known who they think should be in the beta team, dont ask on this forum though, most people haven't got a clue.. mabye in tnl forum, or somewhere on irc..

quote:Originally posted by .alex.oner.i bet a bunch of forum-whor3s will get into the new beta testing team with no real clue about the soldat community ^^
That's what we always tried preventing and it seems to have worked, however it's been some time since the last fresh supply of nice guys.

thats somthing you need to think about, choose people who are KNOWN, and ACITVE, people who other people TRUST.. not some random retards on the internet 24/7 and flame everyone who joins their channel, aka #soldat.forums 'crew'..

Hahaha, that honestly made me laugh out. Most of the #soldat.forums crew were the most active beta testers and I thank them for that. You should too.


I used to be against public testing, but considering that it'd be moderated like the current public weapon balance, it might work out.

the most active beta testers are thos ein #soldat.forums?? woha, wonder what the inactive ones are like then.. and a fine example of the beta testers at the moment not knowing about the community is when ouchek joined the soldat.forums channel, and most of them haven't even heard of him..

quote:Originally posted by .alex.oner.the most active beta testers are thos ein #soldat.forums?? woha, wonder what the inactive ones are like then.. and a fine example of the beta testers at the moment not knowing about the community is when ouchek joined the soldat.forums channel, and most of them haven't even heard of him..

Who are you again?

*cough*

that's nice....

lol.. im not sure if you are being sarcastic or joking with my comments or what.. you may not have heard of me, only because you aren't active in the soldat community, and thats my point exactly.. b00stA i'm not sure if you are a beta tester or not, you probably are because you have 4000+ posts, and you may have been active 'back in the day', but now, are you? so you posts on the forums every now and then, that doesn't meen you join irc, play gathers regulary, chat with all the 'real' players, etc.. and thats what i think most of the beta testers are like at the moment, with a few exceptions.. and that all needs to change.. so i think a fresh set of new beta testers will be great, aslong as they are active, known, and trustworthy..

I didn't want to reply, but..

..there are 2 sides of the coin you know. The current and old beta testing crew contains good old fashioned, elder-Soldat players who were great and known back in the day (eg. Snowden) but now are giving life-signals of a vegetable. Then you've got other people beta testing, who are active in the mentioned IRC community.. MisterX, knot, Urhos.. if we'd have to count them one by one, these guys are the majority. And to be honest, if I had to choose between "Your Common IRC Using Retard Pro Player" and "Soldat Vegetable 1#" I'd choose the latter.

Why? Because sticking to a game, to a community, to a clan even for a longer period of time shows that you are trustworthy, and you won't give the beta out to your clanmates/e-mates/whatever. And that, sadly, can't be said about todays Soldat generation, which consists of clanhopping, clanhopping and some more clanhopping. THE END.

I think this will definitely help soldat.

Soldat is my favorite game on the computer..
I really don't want it to die.

Alex Oner, Demonic, although you bring up some good points, this discussion is about your opinions on public beta testing, not what you think of the current beta testers.

Just to reiterate what's been said on IRC, I think that the beta testing should be divided. 100% public would be chaos, but 100% private doesn't get the opinions of different or new players (and yes, Alex and Demonic, new players' opinions are just as important as the more experienced ones).

The way this could work would be simple: Michal releases the Beta for everyone, but the current beta testers try it out and discuss it separately from the public. Then, they join the public discussion to figure out what everyone else thinks and use that to make the final judgment of whatever changes need to be made. Naturally, this process isn't necessary for bug reports but it would definitely save a lot of trouble if any new features are added in the future.

I support using some extent of public beta testing, mainly because a closed team simply cannot emulate how the actual community of players would play the game. A public beta would not only yield more timely bug reports and more suggestions, but it would allow for a more accurate (albeit far from perfect) glimpse into how any changes would affect gameplay in the public servers and in the hands of the truly average player--and that's what's important.

IF it was public beta testing for example testing out bugs and whatnot, I wouldnt have a problem(because more people will find more bugs). But when it comes to weapon balance testing and testing new features I dont think public beta testing is the best idea.

I can remember that day Ouchek was in the #soldat.forums channel, and the argument we had with some of the ops in that channel about who should be in the beta testing team. Who is a better beta tester, someone who talks about the game but doesnt play the game much anymore(for example the current beta testing team and soldat forums vets), or someone who plays the game much more actively and probably know more major problems considering weapon balance(for example people from communites such and SCTFL and TNL, who are trustworthy enough, but dont ever visit these forums), most of the ops thought the soldat forums vets are better beta testers, but people like me, Ouchek, Alex-Oner and Messiah thought that the team needs more people from the second group, because to be honest a mix of both would work the best. Demonic, im quite sure if you tried you can find atleast 15 well-known players who have never clanhopped, who have been playing for 3+ years, who are trustworthy, but just dont post on these forums. See the problem I see with the beta crew is that is consists of the oldest members of this forum, I find it interesting that this crew consists of most members with 1000+ posts on these forums, which probably leads to more spamming, more trolls and more [CENSORED] in general.

I do not envy the beta team. It would be an extremely challanging job. In general I believe the balance in 1.21 was nearly perfect, and 1.3 is pretty good too. I can't really put my finger on it, but 1.21 seemed better....it seemed like in any given server there was more of a variance of different weapons. There were a TON of barret/law in 1.21, and now it seems to have shifted to barret/ m79 / knife. If I was on the beta team I would have tried to talk Michal out of Self-bink for the spray guns. We already had realistic mode, we didnt need to fuse it into the regular mode. Personally I am in favor of boosting weapons rather than nerfing to achieve balance. I would take away self-bink and try to boost up some of the non-one-shot weapons so we would see more variation in the weapons. I also would look at the secondary weapons because it seems like the knife gets used SO MUCH now.

I wish the beta testers luck! The bad part is that you can't make everyone happy, and the more balanced the game is the more unhappy some of the barretards and whiners get.

As far as public beta goes...it would be a difficult challange for the team to filter through the whining. So many people would be crying to "nerf X weapon" and "boost X weapon" it would be ridiculous.

You have a tough task on your hands, good luck.

like i told the soldat.forum crew before, i think there should be a private betatesting forum section, where the super cool ideas and the really crappy ideas are kept, so we get surprised by the new version :P, while theres a public version were its mainly bug reports and the public gets to have thier opionion. that way, the beta testers get to keep there allmighty, incharge of the game, feel and the public gets a public beta

a thread i created in the weapon mod beta thingy, but hasent been accept still.. so here it is..

once i said in another thread on these forums to post in a forum where 'real' soldat players go, to get their opinions, most of them dont think its even necsasary to change the weapon balance, again.. just because a new version of soldat will be out soon, does it mean the weapons have to change again?? can't other things be changed other then the weps? all 4 replys after the thread was made in tnl forums said to leave it, and this is coming from the 'real' players, the active ones who play soldat many hours daily.. quotes such as: 'Yay for the new version, you are doing a very good job (IF YOU WANT TO RUIN THE GAME)', 'Leave the weapon ballance as it is now! It has never ever been better!', 'you can't make the game better anymore if you don't start allover again. everything is so ed up...' etc.. cant you see, the people who play soldat, they dont want another [CENSORED]ing weapon balance.. so why cant you just leave it?

just curious.. but im sure other things in soldat could be changed, and not everything focused around the weapon balance..

I agree totally.

We revolve around weapon balance so much, we forget everything else

Something else exists besides weapon balance?!

(03:46:51) (Apoc|AlexOner) im just producing ideas
(03:47:11) (Apoc|AlexOner) and what do you do? come back with some sacrcastic comment allways starting with 'OMGZ'
(03:47:16) (@Pienne) Yuh-huh.
(03:47:44) (Apoc|AlexOner) ^^

this is a perfect example of the beta testers at the moment.. sure i may be stepping out of line with saying that they must act mature, but when i'm trying to help, i get no reasonable response except from Chakra.. why have beta testers that act like complete twats and try to look cool infront of others by cursing at those who try to help them..

IF YOU LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE, THEY DONT WANT ANOTHER WEAPON CHANGE..
sheesh, is it that hard to understand? :/

quote:Originally posted by Taallike i told the soldat.forum crew before, i think there should be a private betatesting forum section, where the super cool ideas and the really crappy ideas are kept, so we get surprised by the new version :P, while theres a public version were its mainly bug reports and the public gets to have thier opionion. that way, the beta testers get to keep there allmighty, incharge of the game, feel and the public gets a public beta


I thought there was a scret forum for that...

Let's listen to them, Alex.

quote:Originally posted by .alex.oner.(03:46:51) (Apoc|AlexOner) im just producing ideas
(03:47:11) (Apoc|AlexOner) and what do you do? come back with some sacrcastic comment allways starting with 'OMGZ'
(03:47:16) (@Pienne) Yuh-huh.
(03:47:44) (Apoc|AlexOner) ^^

this is a perfect example of the beta testers at the moment.. sure i may be stepping out of line with saying that they must act mature, but when i'm trying to help, i get no reasonable response except from Chakra.. why have beta testers that act like complete twats and try to look cool infront of others by cursing at those who try to help them..

IF YOU LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE, THEY DONT WANT ANOTHER WEAPON CHANGE..
sheesh, is it that hard to understand? :/



My sentiments exactly.

Although personally I think 1.2.1 is better than this..

lol #soldat.forums is relatively stupid now anyways. I got banned for agreeing with somebody who said the beta testers suck. I admit I dont really act mature in that channel, but neither do most of the ops in it. (except people like Kazuki, Flieslikebrick, demonics) etc.

I'd be against public beta, I'd rather have a larger beta team. Not only do i think it would result in chaos of a pretty large magnitude, but I think that managing servers, keeping track of beta versions/releases... it would be a huge mess.

If it isn't broken, don't fix it?

my thoughts exactly ^^^^, maybe a section that is kinda like a public beta where some of the agrred on plans for the next version is given to the public for there thoughts

As long as MM takes his time programing and whoever the beta testers are really do their job to make sure its bug free id rather wait a year for the next version to have it bug free with a more better weapon balance then just get another version or should I say headcache?

I agree with flab, a larger Beta team will come closer to emulating the actual community, minus the chaos. And, if the public wb comes into play, the final product will become as perfect as possible (i believe).

I am unsure whether I'd agree with public beta testing. It's been tried and tested with other software, but since Michal is a one-person game programming team, he might have trouble keeping up with all the requests.

Having a Soldat bugzilla sounds oddly satisfying.

Well, I already said this but I don't think a public beta is a good idea. I don't think that most of so called "public" players know enough about Soldat to make it better. They could make it way worse. You NEED a bunch of people who you can trust, and you know that they have the experience and the maturity to be beta testers. You know that listening to them is worth the time. Just imagine if it's public. Some good player goes on a public, owns the average level players with any weapon he uses, and zing, soon someone creates a topic on forums how the weapon should be nerfed. Greaaaaaaat. But really, you'll need experienced and active players to do the beta testing. That's the only way to do it. Every other way is too chaotic, slow and does not produce results good enough. That's how I see it, and I really hope the beta won't go public.

And weapon balance IS an important issue. I think that the weapon balance is pretty damn good right now, and only needs some minor balancing. Fixing bugs should be more important than that. After these things, you can start thinking about some new cool features and other improvements.

Just a side note (and I have no idea why I'm still bothering with this..), but at first we just wanted minor tweaks in the balance for 1.3.1. The problem was that we couldn't agree on the smallest things even, so yeah, the public testing idea came up.

Public beta testing - what a nightmare! It must never come to this. People are allready quarreling about the weaponmods, so imaging how it would ba if they were actually testing soldat!?!

it sounds like 95% of people think this would be a bad idea... should we consider the idea dead?

yes dead, it would like throwing a solitary bovine carcus into a bottomless pit of rabid wolves.

at least thats what i think. but if thats the point, so that the actual beta testers can get a general idea of opinion, and also not have the finger pointed at them when some supposed bravissimo thinks something is slightly wrong. then go for it.

it can only hurt at first....