I suppose the bottom line is how in depth you want to go with testing your map. The testing guild is a resource and not the first and last place to go. For the best feed back on how to make your map better and more fun for the greatest amount of people I'd rank their opinion high, but I wouldn't have them be the final word. A combination of the techniques mentioned this thread, build a network of "dependable" friends, be a member of multiple forging communities, promise to test others maps if they test yours are all recommended ways to gain players for testing a map. Of course the testing guild can't spend all week testing your map as they have other maps on their schedule but the time they do spend on your map will give you good feedback. Remember negative feedback and constructive criticism are important and a feature you are less likely to get from a network of your own friends or random people you pick up from matchmaking. (By negative feedback I don't mean "your map sux" either as I'm sure you'd get plenty of that). As far as booting players not following the rules or being immature or not helpful, sure you could do that but that requires constant overhead. If I'm the host of the party I don't want to make sure everybody playing is actually playing and not being a douche, I just want to relax and play the map with people are trying to play my map to make it better.
Yea; but, most of the friends I have made will flat out tell me if the map sucks, and as for booting I have only had to do it once and it was for spamming, derogatory statements made toward another person on a personal level and constant excessive babbiling that was not useful to the gameplay or directed toward the map.
You get what you pay for...in a manner of speaking. Random people you found on matchmaking won't have the expertise of the Testers Guild. You'll prolly have a lot of twelve year olds, and very few people who know how to accurately analyze the various aspects of a map.
That's why you keep trying until you get a good group of people who friend you and set a couple of good dates for the next testing for example invited people to another map and watched them and most of the time talked to them and the ones who seemed to know what they were doing got friend invites for later testing =)
But the point is, they won't be experienced testers. They'll only be able to tell you how they think it is from there own perspective. Do you ask the kid that takes shop class to check your house blue prints before you start building? Do you have the Kid thats in Principles of Engineering wire your house? No. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely beneficial to get a lot of people to test your map. In the end, however, you're going to want it to be done by the testers guild.
You obviously have not read this thread in its entirety. This issue has already been addressed. The testers guild is NOT the only option, nor are they the most EFFICIENT option. The network of experienced forge buddies is the most practical solution that brings the most benefits to the table. It's the premises of forge communities such as this one. Furthermore, a large portion of the testers guild are not as experienced as your chocking them up to be. How many are Engineers or Architects? How many have studied design theory? Hell, how many have written security operation manuals for American Embassiess? (the last one has parallel relativity to the subject of map design surprisingly).
In the end of the day, this all comes down to opinion and whether or not you can handle the opinions people give you about your map. To test your map requires weeks and weeks of testing. My first map I made in Reach STILL hasn't been released, it's been tested countless times and it STILL isn't ready to be released. That's over 2 months of testing that's gone on sice the maps completion. I've also used my own friends list, and the tester's guild for each type of testing. IF you're using random's or people on your friends list, you need to accept that their opinion is both biased, as well as most likely unqualified. In face to face feedback, it is much harder to provide 100% honest feedback and is usually hard to find the words to say exactly what you mean as you often come across as harsh. Hence why written feedback is often more acceptable as you can word the comments more effectively and the map creator has something to refer back to when making changes. The tester's guild obviously can't test your map over and over again which is why you essentially should hold your own testing sessions to get the map to it's peak. Where you personally cannot see any more faults in the map and the people who play with you don't complain about spawning issues etc... that is the best time to submit your map to the tester's guild because more often than not; WE find the things YOU miss. As far as to say some of the Tester's Guild aren't qualified; that's a bit harsh Schnitzel. A lot of the tester's are new, which I admit, but it doesn't mean they aren't qualified. It's essentially providing an opinion on how to improve your map. By no means does it say once our feedback is submitted, you HAVE to implement the changes we suggest. We just tell you what we like/dislike and what issues we found during the testing and potential ways to improve this. I've also given feedback before which has backfired in terms of gameplay on a map called Facility. I advised to swap a weapon out as a previous weapon was inadequate and not really used, but the swap out became incredibly dominant (mainly because it was on a 30s respawn) but nevertheless, it made the gameplay worse. Obviously, after re-testing I found ways around this to make the map's version 3 play better than v1 and v2, but still... we can be wrong. However, the chance of you getting "damaging" feedback from us, is significantly less when compared to receiving it from randoms. Also, if you notice; nearly 100% of the Senior members understand how maps are forged, how spawn systems work and generally how you a map can be improved with slight tweaks without comprimising your original scope and design for a map. More often than not, we come across maps that we don't particularly like from our experiences, but see it as a map the creator likes and overall try and provide feedback on how to improve the map and get the most out of it rather than simply saying "This map sucks, scrap it and start again!"
Well, the first thing I do is head over to 'Reaching Perfection' blog site and go down the checklist myself then I give the map to players in matchmaking and test it and see if anyone finds ANY mistake and I do that for about twenty times until I am satisfied with the map, AFTER that I then ask other players who I know are unbiased and don't know me that well to tell me what they think of the map and usually of the several people who come into the custom games they do not know that the maps were made by me, therefore they remain unbiased until I tell them and during the match they (if they have mics which has been appx. 75%) give comments that either this maps sucks where the heck was that rocket launcher, and WTF!? I just got spawn killed. These comments tell me what I need to fix and make better I tell them at the end of the map I made it and what they thought about it. They either tell me the match was fun or the the map sucks if the match was fun for all then go back into matchmaking and test again, but even if one person saw a problem adress immediately and try again, yes I understand that the testing group is a little more experienced, but I meet some people who are more experienced than them in matchmaking sometimes and they are honest. So it's kind of an opinion, but it's mostly the QUICKEST OPTION AVAILABLE. Happy Forging, Dart3rocks