This is the result of no particular instance, but an accumulation of observations over the past several months.
It seems to me the quality of gameday tests has been going downhill for awhile, though most significantly since their restart after the ctf/plr contest period. Everyone seems to have lost sight of what they were originally for, and it's just become an everyone-come-play event.
In no particular order:
Abuse of map issues.
Problems end up in maps, occasionally pretty significant ones, which normally should be found by the mapper before release, but this doesn't mean they need to be abused for the remainder of the map. If there is spawn that can be entered, an unclipped roof, a way outside the map, somewhere a teleporter shouldn't be but can, or any such things, don't be lame and abuse them for 10 minutes. Discover them, acknowledge them, leave them be and move on so other things can be determined.
Lack of feedback.
The point of a testing event is not to simply play the map, but to test and examine it. When someone submits a map it's because they want to see what others think. What is a problem? What do you like? Do you have suggestions?
Lately there seems to be this, what I would call disturbing, attitude that it's the mappers job to play or watch the demo and figure things out themselves. I ask: Why? Isn't that why we are all here? To be a community? What good is being a community if we don't go further to help each other out. We might as well all huddle to ourselves and test our maps with bots and then release the final version to the world.
This also covers to the forum, which has suffered just as much from lack of feedback. Just because authors can watch the demo over and over doesn't mean nobody should post. There is a reason I include links to every thread in the schedule. It can help just to have things written down by someone, it can help sift out what is important and what is negligible. People will say over voice chat everything that comes to mind, but when you write it down you'll likely only highly the important things.
And sometimes, it just plain helps psychologically to have posts. Quantifiable evidence that someone cares that you are making a map and weren't just playing it because it was there. Nothing is worse than being the creator of 80% of the posts in your thread. It will make you feel like there is no point in continuing.
Frivolous voice chat and mic spam.
This partially relates to the previous point. We have had an increasing amount of needless talking. It's annoying, it hurts gameplay, it snowballs. I'm not saying there should never be a word said that isn't tactical information, but if there are already two (let alone four or five) voice tags on the right of your screen, don't hit your comm button, ok? It will just turn into a garbled mess and nobody will hear anyone.
When this goes on for not a couple minutes, or five minutes, but across several maps (its happened more than once), it really becomes aggravating and hard on the ears. Some might say to mute people or turn off voice, and I imagine some people do do that. But again, that only serves to inhibit gameplay if anything tactical is said. Myself, I never block/mute people because I'm a mod. It's my duty to monitor everything. I could server-mute them, but when it's half the server what then?
Perhaps I should disable alltalk when it happens? or maybe for the entire gameday? It was enabled to help the mapper, but perhaps turning it off would force more people to post things and play better. The mapper can always watch to demo to hear both side of the chat if needed.
TF2 Updates.
The last two gamedays I have hosted both found a TF2 update shipped out in the middle of the test. Obviously there isn't much we can do about this, but it's what the players do that disappoints me. Both times, at the end of the map during which the update came out, the playercount abruptly dropped to half. I find this pretty selfish and rude. Do you really need to go update instantly instead of waiting an hour to play the rest of the maps? Most of the time you won't be able to get in again since the server won't be updated, and I'll never update the server mid-gameday because of the possibility of it not booting back up for a significant period.
My imposed gameday rules.
Minor issue compared to the rest in retrospect, but I want to mention it anyway. Since I instituted the no-updates rule there have been a significant amount of people every week that didn't read it, don't understand it, or just ask for updates anyway. Nobody liked it when the threads were camped and spam-posted to full within an hour or two, only to see half the maps get updated through two revisions. So I set the new rule so people would hold off longer before posting to give a fairer chance to everyone. Granted people might still be posting early because they still fill within a few days now, but the fill fast because people are doing this. Yet I see so many requesting updates and being denied and/or dropping out. Just relax on the posting?
So what?
Well, if these trends continue I believe I'll just stop organizing gameday testing altogether.
I'm wondering why I even bother anymore. They don't appear to be anywhere as useful or as high of quality as they used to.
However, on the flip side... The origin of gameday lies in the now-ancient times when our community was but a couple hundred people. We needed to plan things out ahead so people could make time and get together.
Now we have a steam group of over 1100 people to draw off for testing events, Hundreds of posts made every day, and a fully active chat room at all times of the day.
We have an ever increasing amount of chat room-organized impromptu testing going on (I know this significantly contributes to the update-requests) and that is a good thing. Plus there is the TF2 Lobby to help with testing now.
...Perhaps we have outgrown scheduled events? While I would like to see an attitude reform like what I've mentioned, maybe I should still just retire the scheduled testing if it has become and outdated and overstretched format.
Let me know. I turn this ultimatum into a request, should we move completely to the more dynamic spontaneous tests? I won't object to the end of scheduled tests.
TL;DR: Sorry, that is unacceptable. Go back up and read it. or never ask me for anything again. there will be quizzes to check. (not really but you get the point, this is important to me)
Disclaimer: this does not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the staff. I am a staff member but this is simply from my mind and heart, and purposed opinions/actions only extend as far as me and my self-responsibilities in scheduling.
P.S. for I-D : don't tell me you know what because that is irrelevant
It seems to me the quality of gameday tests has been going downhill for awhile, though most significantly since their restart after the ctf/plr contest period. Everyone seems to have lost sight of what they were originally for, and it's just become an everyone-come-play event.
In no particular order:
Abuse of map issues.
Problems end up in maps, occasionally pretty significant ones, which normally should be found by the mapper before release, but this doesn't mean they need to be abused for the remainder of the map. If there is spawn that can be entered, an unclipped roof, a way outside the map, somewhere a teleporter shouldn't be but can, or any such things, don't be lame and abuse them for 10 minutes. Discover them, acknowledge them, leave them be and move on so other things can be determined.
Lack of feedback.
The point of a testing event is not to simply play the map, but to test and examine it. When someone submits a map it's because they want to see what others think. What is a problem? What do you like? Do you have suggestions?
Lately there seems to be this, what I would call disturbing, attitude that it's the mappers job to play or watch the demo and figure things out themselves. I ask: Why? Isn't that why we are all here? To be a community? What good is being a community if we don't go further to help each other out. We might as well all huddle to ourselves and test our maps with bots and then release the final version to the world.
This also covers to the forum, which has suffered just as much from lack of feedback. Just because authors can watch the demo over and over doesn't mean nobody should post. There is a reason I include links to every thread in the schedule. It can help just to have things written down by someone, it can help sift out what is important and what is negligible. People will say over voice chat everything that comes to mind, but when you write it down you'll likely only highly the important things.
And sometimes, it just plain helps psychologically to have posts. Quantifiable evidence that someone cares that you are making a map and weren't just playing it because it was there. Nothing is worse than being the creator of 80% of the posts in your thread. It will make you feel like there is no point in continuing.
Frivolous voice chat and mic spam.
This partially relates to the previous point. We have had an increasing amount of needless talking. It's annoying, it hurts gameplay, it snowballs. I'm not saying there should never be a word said that isn't tactical information, but if there are already two (let alone four or five) voice tags on the right of your screen, don't hit your comm button, ok? It will just turn into a garbled mess and nobody will hear anyone.
When this goes on for not a couple minutes, or five minutes, but across several maps (its happened more than once), it really becomes aggravating and hard on the ears. Some might say to mute people or turn off voice, and I imagine some people do do that. But again, that only serves to inhibit gameplay if anything tactical is said. Myself, I never block/mute people because I'm a mod. It's my duty to monitor everything. I could server-mute them, but when it's half the server what then?
Perhaps I should disable alltalk when it happens? or maybe for the entire gameday? It was enabled to help the mapper, but perhaps turning it off would force more people to post things and play better. The mapper can always watch to demo to hear both side of the chat if needed.
TF2 Updates.
The last two gamedays I have hosted both found a TF2 update shipped out in the middle of the test. Obviously there isn't much we can do about this, but it's what the players do that disappoints me. Both times, at the end of the map during which the update came out, the playercount abruptly dropped to half. I find this pretty selfish and rude. Do you really need to go update instantly instead of waiting an hour to play the rest of the maps? Most of the time you won't be able to get in again since the server won't be updated, and I'll never update the server mid-gameday because of the possibility of it not booting back up for a significant period.
My imposed gameday rules.
Minor issue compared to the rest in retrospect, but I want to mention it anyway. Since I instituted the no-updates rule there have been a significant amount of people every week that didn't read it, don't understand it, or just ask for updates anyway. Nobody liked it when the threads were camped and spam-posted to full within an hour or two, only to see half the maps get updated through two revisions. So I set the new rule so people would hold off longer before posting to give a fairer chance to everyone. Granted people might still be posting early because they still fill within a few days now, but the fill fast because people are doing this. Yet I see so many requesting updates and being denied and/or dropping out. Just relax on the posting?
So what?
Well, if these trends continue I believe I'll just stop organizing gameday testing altogether.
I'm wondering why I even bother anymore. They don't appear to be anywhere as useful or as high of quality as they used to.
However, on the flip side... The origin of gameday lies in the now-ancient times when our community was but a couple hundred people. We needed to plan things out ahead so people could make time and get together.
Now we have a steam group of over 1100 people to draw off for testing events, Hundreds of posts made every day, and a fully active chat room at all times of the day.
We have an ever increasing amount of chat room-organized impromptu testing going on (I know this significantly contributes to the update-requests) and that is a good thing. Plus there is the TF2 Lobby to help with testing now.
...Perhaps we have outgrown scheduled events? While I would like to see an attitude reform like what I've mentioned, maybe I should still just retire the scheduled testing if it has become and outdated and overstretched format.
Let me know. I turn this ultimatum into a request, should we move completely to the more dynamic spontaneous tests? I won't object to the end of scheduled tests.
TL;DR: Sorry, that is unacceptable. Go back up and read it. or never ask me for anything again. there will be quizzes to check. (not really but you get the point, this is important to me)
Disclaimer: this does not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the staff. I am a staff member but this is simply from my mind and heart, and purposed opinions/actions only extend as far as me and my self-responsibilities in scheduling.
P.S. for I-D : don't tell me you know what because that is irrelevant