theharribokid,
As one of the founders/owners of Critfest.com, I wanted to thank you for the mention of our community! Although the holidays have put us a bit behind, we generally averaged a "Map Playtest" event for our community on a monthly basis.
We know we aren't a community for everyone as we're not a pure vanilla type of community. We focus on the "fun factor" of TF2 and have quite a few different server types (vanilla, 35% crits, 100% crit low-grav, 100% crit arena, and a sniper server -- we do have a freak fortress and dodgeball server, but they are currently down for rebuilding) which could appeal to many different map types.
We will generally password protect our server and have our regulars jump in and have a formal map playtest. Our ultimate goal is to determine whether or not a map is fun (very important) as well as whether or not they are ready for the server map cycle on a permanent basis. We will also alpha test and beta test maps as well to ensure what maps we want to keep our eyes on for their RC or Final release status. One of my admins generally takes notes, we check for glitches/bugs, we look for class and map balance, and we get all the players' feedback and will provide it upon request.
We take our playtesting seriously, so for any mappers who want to have your maps tested by our community, please feel free to contact me (email below) or on steam and we'll be more than happy to assist! Depending on the interest level, we've considered putting up a server specifically for alpha, beta and RC map playtesting and have a feedback section in our forums for our community to provide feedback on it; and then in turn I would post our comments/suggestions over here at tf2maps.net for the mappers information to assist them in making the changes they (and the general public) would like to see.
Again, thanks theharribokid!
Regards,
SmackDaddy (at) critfest (dot) com
