For those that were here before ... how did beta testing work?  Was a new world opened for it?  How long was beta testing?  Did people get teams in all divisions to test?

Would there be any reason to not have an always running beta world to test things?  

Does beta run enough seasons to see any long term problems with the changes?  I think especially given the scope, we'd almost need to see a full class run through (which is 5 years for this, not 4 as it is now) too see how things pan out.  

Many seasons were run rather rapidly, including fast forwarding for large parts.

Who gets to do it?

Well, last time they made a thread for people to volunteer, if I remember right.
I know I participated in the last one.

what division did you play?  how many seasons?

Let's see. I think I did VMI in division one, I don't remember exactly how many, but a decent amount.

a big part was the scope... the whole engine was rewritten, so literally, EVERYTHING was on the table. i spent a session or two pouring over box scores to find problems, but it mostly seemed in line. my fault, i didn't really analyze recruit gen closely, although many of us pre-launch (myself included) cautioned that it needed adjustment before it was ready for prime time. i didn't capture just how severe that was, and i feel bad about that, because generally logic and reason do pretty well in discussions here, and i feel like i could have made a difference if i really was into it. sadly, it was during my low period of HD interest. i just feel like i wasted the opportunity. most people who applied to beta test got in, i believe.

One of the major reasons mid majors don't have d1 success is the fact that most of these conferences are full of sims and sims statistically do worse. Thus accounting for  a significant part the statistical skew from real life NT #s compared to WIS NT #'s (the other reason is baseline prestige doesn't change like in real life where Gonzaga is better than most lower B6 schools) 

Can this part be simulated? 

The issue with beat testing (which will certainly come up here), is unless you test a full world you will not accurately capture the true life mechanics of how the features cause ripple effect across the three divisions.

So most likely it will get thrown life, we will then find 5-6 big uh ohs that were missed in beta and it will cause several coaches , somewhere, to drop prestige and be ******.

Posted by mullycj on 9/18/2015 3:35:00 PM (view original):
The issue with beat testing (which will certainly come up here), is unless you test a full world you will not accurately capture the true life mechanics of how the features cause ripple effect across the three divisions.

So most likely it will get thrown life, we will then find 5-6 big uh ohs that were missed in beta and it will cause several coaches , somewhere, to drop prestige and be ******.

The beta world probably needs to be 80-100 coaches and a bunch of sims.  Right?

Posted by ryan75 on 9/18/2015 3:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 9/18/2015 3:35:00 PM (view original):
The issue with beat testing (which will certainly come up here), is unless you test a full world you will not accurately capture the true life mechanics of how the features cause ripple effect across the three divisions.

So most likely it will get thrown life, we will then find 5-6 big uh ohs that were missed in beta and it will cause several coaches , somewhere, to drop prestige and be ******.

The beta world probably needs to be 80-100 coaches and a bunch of sims.  Right?

agreed

needs a bunch of participants, really doing it, over a period of a few seasons.  history and logic suggests that mega change will have a host of unforeseen effects - loopholes, quirks, imbalances between effects.  

I'm thinking about which of my teams to keep to experience the new game

There also should be full conferences, as well as some that only have 1 or 2 human coaches. And, as mentioned above,  D2 and D3 conferences as well.