Blacklisted Betas instead of Whitelisted Betas!

Ya, I got green reped as well.

Not sure what you mean by a blacklisted vs whitelisted beta.

That article is too cynical.

How can a larger pool not give more focused feedback?

More people, more voices, less focus.

In Catwhoorg's sentence above "more" modifies focused, not feedback. More focused, not more feedback.

In the early stages, it's not about the quantity of responses and people looking at things, or about loading the servers and systems. It's about noticing important bugs and pinning down how to reproduce them so they can be seen by the devs and fixed.

When there's a lot of people in a beta, and a lot of people posting, it quickly becomes impossible to pin down the responses and reports you need from the people working on the bugs you're interested in.

Essentially, we used to have blacklist betas. There was no such thing as closed betas for most of the early issues. They went to a closed beta system, and since then by and large Issues have come out with far fewer bugs in most cases. Truth of the matter is, they flat out work better (or they wouldn't keep doing them).

More people to notice the important bugs. Heck, maybe there are even more people like me that are perhaps more motivated then some of the current testers now, but can't test because of this restriction.

It's why we raise our hand to talk in school. You can't hear 30 people at once.

And you can't read ten thousand bug reports a day.

And you can't change how Closed Beta works no matter how many times you post about it, whether whining, complaining, or 'innocent questioning' about it.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Come on now storm. You're trying too hard. My rep suggests i'm better than you at this. :P

Even if you gave a thousand typewriters to a thousand monkeys, I'm sure they won't be able to reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare faster than he himself produced them.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Oh wow. a PERSONAL insult? For shame.

If anything, it was the devs' fault. I don't know when that was.

It wasn't intended as an insult. If you took it as such, that's just your own issue.

It's a valid comparison from what I remember of reading your posts, and compared to the people I know and remember from past Closed Betas. I didn't say you'd do worse, I said you wouldn't do better. There's a difference.

Besides, if you're going to dish it out by implying you somehow know you'd be better than the people who made it, then you should be able to hack being told you probably wouldn't.

o.o then I'd refer you to my plethora of ORIGINAL bug reports in i16 open beta. Not once did I repost an already reported bug (Was on early so mine were all unreported... then people kept flooding the bug report thread with the same thing I found and it was a mess u.u). I also helped verify something for someone. Also, find ways to break things... A year ago or so I figured out how to kill RWZ dummies and citizens and have notified Castle of the methods. Castle then stealth nerfed the way to kill RWZ dummies with the MM pet attack speed recharge change. I am, to my knowledge, the first to realize that Maneuvers is bugged on teammates/pets in PvP zones as it misses several of the defense values on targets not yourself. Two years ago, I found a little bug that made PBAoEs hit less targets than they should. Found that when I noticed a Cone of the same radius hit more targets when the mobs were perfectly aligned and immoble. The missed mobs were at the very edge of the PBAoE.

O.o

Having the very limited, slowly growing pool of closed beta testers works out MUCH better than the "Everyone in the pool!" open betas. People mention a bug, then the (say) 100 other people in there take a look and test it, quickly. There's usually MUCH more focused discussion. That small core then becomes a resource when the next (say) 250 people come in (I am, of course, making up the numbers, I have no idea how many people in each 'wave') they can answer questions and help direct testing. (The direction not being intentional, but someone coming in, say, wave 3 and seeing "Oh, looks like they fixed this, anyone else still having Mastermind henchmen prefer walking on the ceiling?" is probably going to test that early.) It's also easier, with that smaller pool, for Devs to ask for specific feedback - it's like turning a rudder on a small motorboat instead of on an oil tanker, they'll get a faster reaction.

Plus, as far as focus, if the devs have a specific requirement they're looking for - say, more direct PVP changes - they can tailor their "invitation list" as needed to get more PVPers in early. If they want to test, say, a wide variety of people with ATI cards, they can browse the forums and see who asks about ATI issues and who posts about them, and invite them specifically. They can't do that with an open beta since it, by definition, is open to everyone - and then they have to weed out specific responses from the "This is cool!" "This sux!" "Oh, I just got a puppy this week!" posts.

When there's just a small issue without many major changes, the "All in" is probably (by comparison) fine. With something like what we know is coming with I17 (and with whatever we don't know about it,) the closed -> growing pool -> open model works better, IMHO.

Edit:
And

Just have to point out that you can't know that. Can't go by forum posts - the times I've been in beta, open or closed, as well as on live most of my bug reporting is in-game via /bug, not forum posts, and you as a player won't see those.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Thanks for telling me how awesome you are. Doesn't change my point in the least, but I'm sure your mom must be proud.

My point stands. It doesn't matter how good you are there are people who are just as good or better or worse in there right now, finding stuff just like you would. The system works. When I get in to be part of it, I help. When I don't get in, I trust the people who did to do just as well without me.

The process has been demonstrated time and again to work this way. It's also been demonstrated not to work well when done in the way you suggest above. Can't argue with facts.

i15 turned out the way it did because there was some Green developer given too much free reign without oversight from his superiors. Not the fault of the testers.

1. How can the greater number of people not test things the way you said in the first post?

2. Polls on forums can be a quick way to ask for feedback

3. i16 Open Beta specifically said to /bug in game AND post it on the forums. I followed both instructions

So, I suppose you want me to be in you Closed Beta, eh?