ender516 wrote:Keeping inexperienced mapmakers out of a test bed would mean those who might most need some early gameplay checking won't get it.
degaston wrote:I don't see a problem with allowing anyone to test/play the maps if they are unrated games.
letting anybody in is not a good idea. first of all more people = more traffic = bigger costs.
i don't think lack can afford allowing thousands of people on the test site.
as for making unrated games on this site and doing the testing here, then that's out of the question too. testing should happen remotely. new players already have a bunch of confusing info to assimilate. throw in a bunch of ugly maps and unrated games that are filled with bugs and you have a recipe for disaster.
ender516 wrote:I think adding an alpha test phase prior to the graphics stamp phase to check basic gameplay and keeping the beta test phase that we have now, which proves out gameplay/graphics integration, would be the right way to go.
the alpha phase would not be feasible on this site and in this environment. when testing you need to make changes on the fly, and this is impossible here as lack won't give access to the uploading tools to anybody. not just because of trust issues but rather because if a bug occurs it might affect other maps that are in live play and it could do major harm.