Good idea or bad idea? Limiting Tespia to have it?

I'm sure this has been suggested before but w/e....

Well there's been on and off argument regarding tespia and it's "usefulness", some people find it as a necessity to test new content and others just see it as a way for people to play a legal PS (more or less)... So I thought it might be a good idea to make a tespia that only has the content that needs to test and nothing more.

For example if we had to test some new update with Masteria we would only be able to play in Masteria, Victoria Island, and any other place that the content would apply to.

All other areas could be blocked off (I mean did really need Z-helms to test Showa or w/e the thing was we last tested)... It wouldn't be too hard to keep people from certain areas (disable portals or something) so it's not like it's asking too much. It would still allow people to test content and we could keep all the "benefits" of tespia...

The only problem I see with this is that you're unable to see if other parts of the game are glitched since you can't get there. If Nexon America could just make Tespia like Nexon Korea did it things should be fine.

Blocking off areas the way you write sounds like a good idea, but the reason I'm not for it is pretty simple:

Say that you're able to get an item within a certain place, and another item within another place that's just been released. If you combine these items, maple goes boom and returns invalid pointers whenever equipped/combined. This does unfortunately not happen in Tespia because of the block-system you just came up with.

Yeah, blocking or modifying parts of Tespia would remove or add bugs that would or would not appear if you did not block that certain part of Tespia.

Tespia should be a group of devoted players which really find and reports bugs, not the ones who play the game for fun there, notice something weird, and let that thing be without reporting it to the programmers of Maple. One should also have to fill in a report at the end of each Tespia-round in order to find out who was actually active during it, and also to find out who were really serious around it, and looked for bugs and whatnot.

I think they should limit it in some ways but not by areas . What they should do is to give you a character that's at a set lvl more or less fitting the content Tespia currently is testing, no lvling. Maybe even make you wear set gear too, matching the current average, or if there are new weapons or such, force you to try them out. Firmer direction from Nexon for their testers, but not so firm that they loose the ability to search out bugs that's not directly linked to the new content.

All you need to do is have it a little closed off and have 3 month seasons or something like that, at the end of each season only extend invitations to the next to people who actually helped and then take on a few new applicants. Eventually you'll end up with a size-able portion of users who actually test things, and will be able to test all the new stuff with everything else.

Also given that you need to test how new content fits in with the old, I don't think it'd be worth the effort having that kind of limited area tespia when you're missing out on a huge number of potential glitches and exploits.

That wouldn't solve anything. The point of tespia is to see bugs that occur within the game beacuse of it's addition. Solving all bugs in your implementation would only fix bugs with the content itself. Whereas fixing all bugs in the way it's supposed to be would fix all bugs period. Adding masteria for example could cause the hak glitch to come back or something. This doesn't have anything to do with the addition, and wouldn't be tested and fixed in your example because no one would be able to go out to orbis.

It's interesting to note that bugs, especially major ones, in new content, are generally posted on the forums within hours of a patch going live.

Meaning: the players playing their regular servers encounter them pretty quickly.
You don't need faster exp, you don't need higher drop rates, you don't need to give players the ability to select any level and job or wish for any item.
Just let them play normally.

So, the best way to implement Tespia would be simply to copy an entire server to it, and let the people play their own characters.
The temptation to use Tespia as a PS will be gone.
People will have their own characters that they know well (and would immediately recognize if a skill was changed or glitched, for example), and have nothing more exciting to do than play the new content. Those whose levels don't match the new content will do whatever they usually do, thus testing that old content hasn't been damaged by the new.

One thing they definitely ought to do, should they ever bring tespia back, is to ad a FAQ for all the stupid questions they were asked through the report system, and force you to read it when you first attempt to sign up for tespia, and again before you can go to the bug report page.

Also, once you finish a bug report it should have a popup that says, "If you've asked any of the questions listed in the FAQ you will be permanently banned from tespia; are you still sure you want to send this bug report?"

It's interesting to note that bugs, especially major ones, in new content, are generally posted on the forums within hours of a patch going live.

Meaning: the players playing their regular servers encounter them pretty quickly.
You don't need faster exp, you don't need higher drop rates, you don't need to give players the ability to select any level and job or wish for any item.
Just let them play normally.

So, the best way to implement Tespia would be simply to copy an entire server to it, and let the people play their own characters.
The temptation to use Tespia as a PS will be gone.
People will have their own characters that they know well (and would immediately recognize if a skill was changed or glitched, for example), and have nothing more exciting to do than play the new content. Those whose levels don't match the new content will do whatever they usually do, thus testing that old content hasn't been damaged by the new.

Oh god i'm all for that. Just make it obvious that nothing you do in "tespia" will apply in the "official" server so that the newbs don't complain.

Problem is that with this logic tespia doesn't even need to exist though. Just implement the new content and pay more attention to what forums say like they should have done in the first place.

So, the best way to implement Tespia would be simply to copy an entire server to it, and let the people play their own characters.
The temptation to use Tespia as a PS will be gone.
People will have their own characters that they know well (and would immediately recognize if a skill was changed or glitched, for example), and have nothing more exciting to do than play the new content. Those whose levels don't match the new content will do whatever they usually do, thus testing that old content hasn't been damaged by the new.

You think that wouldn't increase the amount of glitches in Tespia?

I think they should leave it as it is. It's not a PS at all because:

1. Certain people can play only, not any and every-one.

2. Nexon is choosing to let people play a version of GMS that isn't the major version. They can do whatever they want with their game.

3. Eventually Tespia will be closed.



So it's ok, in my opinion.

Something bothered me the other day about Closed Beta for Dungeon Fighter. I gladly signed up and found six bugs in the first day, then never bothered to play again for the rest of the week.

Come time for Open Beta, and Nexon followed through in giving closed beta testers the Trailblazer medal and 20 special tokens if they were in the top fifty reporters. I was in the top fifty after reporting only six bugs. You mean everyone else below me only reported far less, or, even worse, none at all? It took me all of two hours of play to find these bugs too.

Let's face facts. People don't want Tespia to actually fix bugs (which is the point of Tespia anyway), they want to play some new content. People do not actively look for bugs in the game, and that defeats the whole point of beta testing. I think Nexon should learn this and not open Tespia, as it will be used and abused.

(Remember in Tespia when people summoned Jr. Balrogs into Henesys, the ONLY level-up map in the game? Talk about hilariously rude - who can beta test in an environment like that?)

It stuns me how someone actually managed to grab a Jr. Balrog sack...and the fact we could dupe them for some reason...

Not to mention that Tespia brings out worlds of other issues:

1. Nexon releases their content early, so there's really no "bang" when it gets let out.

2. People want to get into tespia, so people give out sensitive account information to "friends" so others can get in. This can lead to account hacking.

3. It's an alternate private server, really. It has massive drops, higher experience, but the same basic gameplay. Nexon is competing with itself.

Something bothered me the other day about Closed Beta for Dungeon Fighter. I gladly signed up and found six bugs in the first day, then never bothered to play again for the rest of the week.

Come time for Open Beta, and Nexon followed through in giving closed beta testers the Trailblazer medal and 20 special tokens if they were in the top fifty reporters. I was in the top fifty after reporting only six bugs. You mean everyone else below me only reported far less, or, even worse, none at all? It took me all of two hours of play to find these bugs too.

Let's face facts. People don't want Tespia to actually fix bugs (which is the point of Tespia anyway), they want to play some new content. People do not actively look for bugs in the game, and that defeats the whole point of beta testing. I think Nexon should learn this and not open Tespia, as it will be used and abused.

(Remember in Tespia when people summoned Jr. Balrogs into Henesys, the ONLY level-up map in the game? Talk about hilariously rude - who can beta test in an environment like that?)

Oh the sad, sad truth.

Though you wonder if Nexon will actually uphold a closed off Tespia server sometimes. I do agree with the "No Bang" to content. But it would drastically help bug fixes if the Tespia server is done right.

What I think they should do is have Closed Tespia. Have a small amount of people that actually did bug report in Tespia 1 - 3 back then, and have them heavily moderated or something to where they will report bugs. I remember quite a few of us actual Tespians who did their job, and did report bugs, and enjoyed doing it.

Oh the sad, sad truth.

Though you wonder if Nexon will actually uphold a closed off Tespia server sometimes. I do agree with the "No Bang" to content. But it would drastically help bug fixes if the Tespia server is done right.

What I think they should do is have Closed Tespia. Have a small amount of people that actually did bug report in Tespia 1 - 3 back then, and have them heavily moderated or something to where they will report bugs. I remember quite a few of us actual Tespians who did their job, and did report bugs, and enjoyed doing it.

My bet is that most people who reported many bugs in Tespia 1-3 quitted or don't play as often as before, so that'd be just.. pointless.

Well, I once won the bug report event and just reported about 10-15 bugs. There were 5,000 testers chosen. 50 bug report winners. 50/5000. I was one of the people who reported most bugs. Like, what?

Yeah, the problem is this one: people don't do the stuff they're supposed to do on Tespia: report. bugs.

I agree with some stuff people said above, but I don't agree with blocking areas of the game. It'd just be impossible: there's some stuff in other areas which is NEEDED to test content correctly. And, if you remember, back then, when they opened Tespia, they told us to test the new content as well as the other content. That means already-released stuff. Yeah, patches often bring many bugs which aren't even related to the released area itself, so it'd be pointless and too long for NEXON to remove the access to all the other areas of the game.

Having a Tespia like KMS would be great. Not only should the level be the one to test the new content specifically, but there should be more restrictions when it comes to choosing people for the testing rounds, and they shouldn't just select random people without any restriction like they did for 2 rounds. That will just lead to an abuse of Tespia and it'll just become as pointless as it was before.

My suggestions are:

1) More restrictions. More like a questionnaire, or something which proves you to be competent enough to test content on Tespia.

2) Less people chosen to test. This way, less narutards will get in.

3) Longer testing rounds, to allow a more thorough testing of all the content. I'd say around 2 weeks would be good. Remember that KMST has 3-months rounds.

4) I agree with the fact that we should just keep our official servers' characters in Tespia. Maybe the highest level character of the account would be the only one copied to Tespia. And there wouldn't be any need of having a level-up NPC. Sure, you wouldn't be able to test, for example, level 200 mounts if you had to test them.. but.. Ok, nevermind this. Disregard that. If we had to test Aran, we would NEED Cody to take us to level 200 to test EVERYTHING correctly. The last time, they released level 200 mounts on Tespia and Cody still took you to level 162. What's the point of that? In the end, nobody was able to test them.

5) Best suggestion of all: just make Cody take you to the level required to test the new content ENTIRELY without problems. Like, when we had Ariant, we should've had only max. 40 levels from Cody. Not 162. People weren't even able to do the Ariant Coliseum easily because everyone was one-shotting the monsters.. funny, if you think about it.

tl;dr: tl;dr.

I don't really know how the KMS tespia works so I'll base it off what I saw from ISY/SYEP. Make it similar to the original where X amount applies and Y amount are chosen. After its finished, look at what contributions were made in Tespia. Those who actually made an effort to find and report bugs will be put on a "reserve" list for future Tespias. When the next Tespia is about to be opened, send them a email asking if they'll like to participate again. And they keep sifting through each batch until its about 50:50 "trusted" testers and people just messing around. Or they could just do what Blizzard does and have some COMPETENT internal testing.

I don't really know how the KMS tespia works so I'll base it off what I saw from ISY/SYEP. Make it similar to the original where X amount applies and Y amount are chosen. After its finished, look at what contributions were made in Tespia. Those who actually made an effort to find and report bugs will be put on a "reserve" list for future Tespias. When the next Tespia is about to be opened, send them a email asking if they'll like to participate again. And they keep sifting through each batch until its about 50:50 "trusted" testers and people just messing around. Or they could just do what Blizzard does and have some COMPETENT internal testing.

Agree'd.

All I've seen on their Facebook page were screenshots of GMs playing around with stuff like HornTail and such. I think their so called "testers" are even worse than the testers we had on the three Tespia rounds of GMS.

Why did Nexon have Tespia then? They probably know that 90% of those who signed up can't be bothered to find and report bugs.

Getting players to report bugs is only half the battle, remember. The other half is actually getting them fixed. Just ask Isaac how many bugs were fixed versus how many he reported. I'm sure you'll get a sly answer.