Lots of Alpha with Rapid Change or Fewer More Thought Out?

Icarus is right though. You test a version, make notes of what's wrong, and you make the fixes. And then you play a new version. And repeat. And sometimes you end up with outrageous amounts of iterations, but that's how it works, and that's how it has to be. You can't fix things without trying them out.

TF2M is a great place for this. But people here are genuinely game players and like to be entertained while they test. I know I like to have fun while testing. If I'm not having fun, I don't play. And when you reach cp_map_a67, and you don't enjoy testing the map anymore, the author is going to take it somewhere else to be tested. It's nothing personal.

I think this is more dependent on your testing situation. If you have a server with lots of friends to test your map. then you should quickly throw out changes.

however if you dont you may want to extend the time between releases so your map has time to propagate through the servers before a new version comes out and the process repeats itself.

Icarus said:

I don't hate or dislike TF2M. I just don't believe it is best to depend entirely on it.

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I think you could say the same about any community though, at least one that perhaps has less than 100 regulars to rotate between. The thing with TF2M is that hardly anyone actually does feedback. You might get 24 players to test your map but only 2 or 3 will actually say anything; and there's no garauntee said feedback will even be useful.

At least the feedback plugin is changing this somewhat...

It's easier for the author to make lots of small changes to control the direction a map takes. If you make too many changes or too significant of a change to a map you tend to lose control of what it is you want your map to do. I made this mistake with axle_b3b, i changed the spawn location, CP2's location, spawn times and respawn wave per owned CP in a single revision and it completely through players and even myself off what i originally intended to hone the map into. Instead of back and forth gameplay i ended up with a map that constantly stalemates at CP1. Trading one problem with a completely different one.

me personally: I usually get more than 1 test on a version unless if the issue is blatantly obvious

-2f2f
-tf2f
-#tf2.pug.na
-tf2lobby
-(now defunct) [-Q-] Clan
-(now defunct) <Woof> Clan
-Any other party/server op friends interested in testing the map

2f2f is obviously the one which has influenced what actually becomes a community map in the past couple updates. Because of the people at the top as well as the number of people within the community who will support a particular map/author. IE Heyo (author of some of the least played community maps to date).

It's just a shame for some of the europians. I'd love to get some 2f2f support but so far i can't get on the server because of my ping and i can't access the forums because i'm "not a regular" on the server (because of said ping). I'm still waiting on some help from TPG and F_M to activate my forum account manually before i can get any attention from there.

So far most of my support for axle has been from the finnish ETF2L teams (tarmo) and Playstuff (Boylee and MacNetron).

Besides 2f2f i put it less down to specific communities and more onto certain individuals. Axle wouldn't have gotten half as much attention were it not for Tarmo, and Coldfront wouldn't have were it not for Flame. You need to know certain people willing to ram your map down a communities throat otherwise it just sits on their community forums with little to no notice.

It's depressing, but it really is who you know, not what you know. Gone are the days where you can idly wait for Valve to take notice of community activities and in are the days where you need a chorus of a thousand bleeting lambs with email accounts and Robin's address.