Seeing as there wasn't much real testing going on for 2.23, we need some improvements. First of all, all tests have been scheduled for a bad time, that time being after the PUG. Ikalx already suggested scheduling tests for sundays. I am however for friday night. We should get a poll for this question though. Second, the devs should point out what REALLY needs to be tested. I mean, they should say on what we should keep an eye out. Third, communication between testers and devs: we have had always some guys hanging out on the tester's Steamgroup-chat, but not everyone who was attending and often only 1-3 devs. I think we should always join that chat since it is actually quite useful. We might also set an IRC-channel up. Last thing I can think of is organization BEFORE the test itself. As far as I know, it almost always took like 30 minutes after joining the test-server and waiting for other testers until the actual testing started. Because of this, many have already left at this stage.
Can't we go back to open forum testing? It worked well for the endless 1.08 RCs. IT was a way of making sure there were always enough players on. I think 2.23 would have been better as an open RC tbh - people would have been more open to new features, and less worried about balancing changes.
The problem with the rcs was that it split the whole community, well none was playing 1.073 anymore after there where the rcs.
Dizzy said that they're going for Release Early, Release Often again (kinda like 1.0 times), so in a way, the entire community is testing. That's a good idea, but it should have been introduced to the community properly.
As long as their is an up-to-date testing server, I can schedule more playtests via the Empire's Tester steamgroup. I am planning to include a quick summary of the previous week's changes (as best as I can tell), so that testers have an idea of what is different. However, the time is the most difficult (since we have testers all around the globe). What if we had two playtests on the weekend like this Playtest 1: Saturday 22:00 GMT (after the PUG) Playtest 2: Sunday 17:00 GMT The first playtest time is amenable to NA testers while the second for European testers? This also doesn't conflict with the PUG very much.
