Do you have enough people on test?

[IsleWit]

<div></div>First id like to appologize for placing this thread here. I dont know where else it should go, but i think this might be the best place. Devs do you have enough people on test? There are many changes that are going to live, and some of them have a majority of people worried. This especially is true of the combat changes. Now Ive read several players comment that there arent enough people on test to get to all the bugs/issues/exploits. Now why did i start a thread on this subject? Because just recently i had learned that SoE had copied members of a guild to test to test/check certain raid encounters (or something to that effect). Now that was news to me, the part about having the ability to COPY members of the live community to the test server. I was under the impression that they did not have this ability. So now im left wondering why SoE doesnt recruit/enlist/ask for more people to test upcoming changes by copying players to test. Having people start new characters or have existing ones MOVED is not a very attrective proposition. I like my ranger and would love to get on test with him, but im not willing to give up the friends ive made on najema. However i would give up several hours a week to have my ranger copied on test to check the new content out and give feedback on what i had experienced there, and im sure there are MANY people out there who would do the same. You could restrict this copy to a few hundred players if you didnt want too many new people on there. <b>To those who plan on responding to this thread.</b> PLEASE, please, please leave the larger debate about FoH out of this thread. I beg you. I just want to discuss whether there are enough people on test, and if not why COPY isnt being used to entice more players to get on test. Here is hoping we can have a good (flame free) discussion. <div></div><p>Message Edited by IsleWitch on <span class=date_text>05-12-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:54 PM</span>

[Zo]

<DIV>Like one once said, its like a double edged sword. There are people that will try to make the best of making the class more powerful than others (examples..), or there are people who dont care about ;testing' the content, they just care about 'looking' at it before anyone else and then bragging about it, and then there are those that care about there game and wants to improve it the best they can.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE has a reason why they dont do this, telling them this wont be new to them, if they had the ability to do it, dont you think someone out of the 200+ man team would figure it out? Its a good topic to get people thinking why SOE wont do it, but tahts all it will do. They know why, could be policy, could be something else. Only way to find out is if one staff member stumbles upon this topic and answeres your question.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Zona on <span class=date_text>05-12-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:10 PM</span>

[IsleWit]

<span><blockquote><hr>Zona wrote:<div></div> <div>Like one once said, its like a double edged sword. There are people that will try to make the best of making the class more powerful than others (examples..), or there are people who dont care about ;testing' the content, they just care about 'looking' at it before anyone else and then bragging about it, and then there are those that care about there game and wants to improve it the best they can. <font color="#ffff00">Yes there will be all types of people who would go into test as you described. Its my hope that the majority of the people would be those that want to make the game more enjoyable to all and not to just themselves.</font> </div> <div> </div> <div>SOE has a reason why they dont do this, telling them this wont be new to them, if they had the ability to do it, dont you think someone out of the 200+ man team would figure it out? Its a good topic to get people thinking why SOE wont do it, but tahts all it will do. They know why, could be policy, could be something else. Only way to find out is if one staff member stumbles upon this topic and answeres your question. <span><font color="#ffff00">SoE is not infallible, they have shown time and again that they can make mistakes. Their decision to limit copy to one guild, IMO is a mistake. Having an additional 200-400 players from a variety of classes of a variety of levels copied to test can only lead to more bugs/issues/exploits being caught before they go on live.</font></span> </div><p>Message Edited by Zona on <span class="date_text">05-12-2005</span> <span class="time_text">01:10 PM</span></p><hr></blockquote>Ive inserted my comments above. </span><div></div>

[EtoilePirate]

<DIV>This discussion has been going on for a long, long time.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We definitely need more people to play on Test; it's a perilously low-population server with maybe a dozen level 50 characters.  I am not joking when I say that a /who all yields between 25 and 95 names, depending on time of day.  (Sometimes on the weekends or after a big patch there are more.)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The problem with copies/moves/specific testing is something that many of us have written over and over elsewhere, which is this: bugs, and problems, are not generally linked directly to new content.  Most problems and issues are found through regular, daily playing.  For example, one patch may put in two new instanced zones and change certain spell effects... but suddenly one class has a concentration exploit, certain buffs drop on zoning, links in chat don't work, and mail cuts off.  Those are big things, and big problems, but just testing new content wouldn't pick them up.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As I understand it -- and I am NOT a representative of SOE, and do not desire to place words in their mouths -- SOE (infrequently) copies over high-end guilds to test certain content because most of Test simply hasn't gotten that far yet.  I know we have one guild on the server that's a dedicated guild aiming to be high-end raiding, but it's a slow process on a small server.  In six months or a year, that will be a very different story, as a horde of level 15-35 toons we presently have hits the endgame.  Population curves and spikes, you know?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The best way to Test content is to play it regularly and with dedication, as anyone would play on any other server.  Occasionally it's important to go try out a new piece of content (for example, when that new solo quest series showed up on Nek beach, I spent two days plowing through it as quickly as I could, seeing (1) what it was like, and (2) if there were any bugs).  But it's also equally important to have people going through old content, just as they would be on a "normal" server.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For what it's worth, I think it's also important to remember that we who play primarily on Test are still paying players who consider Test our home server.  When certain voices advocate the dismantling of the entire system... well, I'd like to see how they'd react if I advocated taking away their server, or implied that they were less important than I and should get the hell out of their guild and their game.  That's what happened in the last thread like this, and I strongly hope it doesn't happen here too.  Maybe limited copies would be worthwhile for SOE.  I don't know.  I don't work for them.  But what Test really, really needs is an increase in players who are just willing to PLAY on it like they do anywhere else.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Really, it's a nice server.  I don't see why it doesn't attract more people in the first place.  It's exciting, too, when you never know exactly how it's going to be day-to-day...</DIV>

[Zo]

<DIV>Last SOE product I played (SWG) had a few test servers. Did there game get cleaned up? Just go check it out, it would take two topics to list every problem <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  (hope that answered it lol)...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But in reality, they did make a good choice in a way. The bad choice the way i see it is that they had too many gamers reporting in the same bugs over and over again. This led too too much time, and in the end the gamers thought the SOE staff ignored them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So which would u prefer? A big test plaer-base that would feel like SOE is ignoreing them (which they arent, its just hard to get around each one of the reports) or a small player-base where SOE can take in all they can on those reports.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I am not sure which I would choose, thats why I am not a SOE employee <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (and the age...)</DIV>