Master Tester

[LARAGORN]

After reading the ’Open letter’ about the testing abilities of players, I had this idea.

Create a new class of player, the ‘Master Tester’. To become a Master Tester one would have to apply for the position, or be chosen, much like a GM. With this title comes the ability to modify your stats and equipment, but only yours. The duties of a MT are to search for bugs and test the limits of the game at each lvl of advancement. I understand some people do that now as they progress, but it is a slow drawn out process.

Having MTs would greatly speed up the bug detection process, and give the Devs much more time to fix any bugs found for higher lvl game play. This may sound redundant right now, but after a wipe or once a new skill is added, it will be very helpful.

It would need to be a strict selection as it would be an easily abused position, much the same as a GM.

This was a quick post to a though, I understand there may need to be more clarification on aspects of the idea.

Opinions and feedback welcome 
Laragorn

[Zan]

I thought that this already fell within the job description of a Game Master? When they're not moderating us players they are out there testing things and helping out the Devs.

[Ralleyon]

There is a tester category, yes ,but I don't know if there are any players in that category anymore, since at this time the GM's are the ones doing some of work in that area.

[ThomPhoenix]

Trustworthy players have occasionally been given temporary access to teleporting, but Talad has to agree with it so I doubt that number of players will rise quickly. Most "boring" testing stuff is done by GMs these days, so I doubt his new function will be needed.

[LARAGORN]

Thanks for the responces.
Having dedicated MT's would free up alot of the GM's time, allowing them more time for their other duties. I am sure I am not alone in saying I love GM events, and would like to see many more of them. This would free up some of the time restrainst they have.

MTs would have one task instead of many, which would allow them to concentrate more following the single mind set. If they have 2 hours set aside for PS in their schedual, that is a full 2 hours spent on testing. Comparativly 2 hours of a GMs time would only allow a fraction of the time for testing.

@ Ralleyon; Do you know where I could get any info on that 'tester category' ?

[acraig]

I am currently working on a structure for this at the moment.  Basically doing what is suggested here.  Right now just sorting out some of the details.

[LARAGORN]

Exellent Acraig

I think this is going to help alot.

[Proteous]

This is possibly THE most interesting and valid thread i have seen on the forums for a very long time. As you may know i rarely post, but i just could not resist this time.
The GM role is PS is far too much, and it shows. If you look at other games, they have seperate teams for different aspects of the game. Devs to help, well, Develop lol, Testers for testing and maintenance and GM's to look after the community and host events. in fact some games even have a seperate team for RP's and events. I can imagine that this could complicate things in some ways, but oh how things would be easier to manage.
I think that a testing team is a great idea as long as it is arranged properly. They could work closely with the GM's and devs and make the whole PS experince an even better one..

Oh and sign me up.. 

[acraig]

At the moment the focus is on critical issues ( ie things that will cause the game to crash ).   So as you can appreciate we have to limit the access to some of these issues otherwise they have the potential to become game altering ( as we have recently seen )

As a result there will only be a few people ( mostly GMs and some people from the -build channel ) that will form the core of this.   Now I can hear people say "But we all want to be testers".  And yes you all can be testers and continue to post issues on the bug tracker and on the forums.  The idea behind this is that there is a group of people that filter this information and can duplicate it ( either as a GM or on their own local server ) and present to the development team a "Top 10" bugs that most affect game play.   Every bug is important and every bug needs attention.  However, this way the most important bugs will get more attention instead of spelling mistakes. 

Again I am not sure if this will work out but I am willing to give it a try if people are.  So if you know of any serious ( I mean serious stuff ) game issues then contact your local GM or post in the bug tracker ( if it's not an exploit! ) and we can focus resources on those issues that are most damaging. This is nothing to do with "This player is more important than this player"  or "That player has more power over that player"  or "We like this person better".  It has all to do with making PlaneShift a better game by listening to everybody and working on those issues that are most serious. 

I'd like nothing better to have a totally bug free system and I think that this might be one tool to help us do that. 

[zanzibar]

Allow me to translate, since I'm not on the dev team and therefore I'm allowed to be more rude:

Not having a title doesn't prevent you from reporting bugs and making suggestions.  There are official channels that the masses can go through if they wish to report something.  Save logs, write descriptions, use the bugtracker, and include your system specs.

And if you know someone who's a programmer, encourage them to investigate the Planeshift project.