How to playtest for games

I think someone said this once regarding playtesting games:

"Think of the most stupid, backwards, broken, and inconvenient way to do everything and roll with it."

I once did play testing for a week, and was more efficient than the person who was hired to do it.


My method: Play through the game. You need to know the game so you can formulate ways to break it.


Make notes: You need to be able to reproduce bugs.


Abuse the system. If the console has issues, the game is bound to suffer similarly.


Do the obvious. It's often overlooked.

Reynard wrote a tutorial over here :)


http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/2737-bug-report-tutorial/

The truth is, every player is different, which is why having several playtesters is useful, because each person will play the game differently and will be able to uncover bugs or even minor issues that hinder the gameplay that you might've never thought of.

Generally it's good to have:

- People who are unfamiliar to the game genre you're making (or even gaming as a whole). They'll be able to tell you if the instructions in-game are clear and whether they get stuck

- People who go out of their way to break the game and find bugs.

- People who are very into gameplay, combat, and challenge. They'll often tell you if there are issues with your balancing or if it's not clear what a certain skill or piece of equipment does.

- People who are into stories and world building. They'll be able to point flaws in your plot and setting and also will point out if any lines of your dialogue are worded badly and how those can be made better.

^These 4 are pretty much the essentials and sometimes one person will fall into more than one group.

Mostly I would need someone who fixes my super terrible english. :D

But basically you should go through all the options you can get. Means, if you've got multiple choices, then you need to check every single one, may you forgot to end a parallel process or auto event.
Happened to me more then once. :D
The balancing is the tough section, because you maybe like it super easy, the next super hard.
So for it, I can only say, it should bring fun to you!
You can't make everyone happy unless you make a difficulty choice, which makes the testplay super long. :/

The trickiest thing in editing is Common Events, they often don't run, so check them. They need to be set up, like the editor wants them, not you. :D
I had once a common event that disabled my Saving, happens if you have a Parallel Common Event, that has no "if not" choice in the preferences, but only under complex eventing. ;)

That's all I got so far for it. ;) (\s/)