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Is it possible to make the changes available earlier on test servers/rooms for PVP?


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I understand the devs got a lot on their plate.

Would it be possible to put conceptual/upcoming balance changes into a dedicated room/server or queue?

I know you will get alot of feedback and most of it will be less than quality. But there alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

The area doesn't have to be live, maybe even make a separate login, i don't know.

But even if alot of the feedback was bad, players could quickly find OP skills, bugs, and conflicts before the changes became live.

I am not saying that we demand you make the changes we think are best, but I feel like this would show the community even more that you care for their feedback.

A few potential benefits of this:

  • Players, perhaps even some bitter about changes, might log in with a sense of purpose to find "flaws"
  • I think it would drag in a few more bodies to discover PVP, people love to criticize.
  • Some of the testing workload will be shifted off of your team and given to the skritt.
  • Reducing the ability of players to say changes were not tested.

Is this a bad idea?

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@"Crab Fear.1624" said:I understand the devs got a lot on their plate.

Would it be possible to put conceptual/upcoming balance changes into a dedicated room/server or queue?

I know you will get alot of feedback and most of it will be less than quality. But there alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

The area doesn't have to be live, maybe even make a separate login, i don't know.

But even if alot of the feedback was bad, players could quickly find OP skills, bugs, and conflicts before the changes became live.

I am not saying that we demand you make the changes we think are best, but I feel like this would show the community even more that you care for their feedback.

A few potential benefits of this:

  • Players, perhaps even some bitter about changes, might log in with a sense of purpose to find "flaws"
  • I think it would drag in a few more bodies to discover PVP, people love to criticize.
  • Some of the testing workload will be shifted off of your team and given to the skritt.
  • Reducing the ability of players to say changes were not tested.

Is this a bad idea?

It's a great idea.Unfortunately-

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Been asking about this for ages. For some reason Anet is to proud to have changes tested. But most importantly I don't really think they care at all what the player base thinks and they are going to change things for whatever reason they want. Unless something gets complained about enough where it could lose them money, they could care less if it's a good or a bad change.

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@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

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Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.
Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

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@ReaverKane.7598 said:Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

And why would they need to have test servers to do that?

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

And those knowledgeable players can do just that without the test servers.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

And why would they need to have test servers to do that?

To ascertain the effectiveness of their changes before it hits live, and the community is stuck with another crappy meta for 3 months? Maybe? Like out the top of my head?

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@"Crab Fear.1624" said:I understand the devs got a lot on their plate.

Would it be possible to put conceptual/upcoming balance changes into a dedicated room/server or queue?

I know you will get alot of feedback and most of it will be less than quality. But there alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

The area doesn't have to be live, maybe even make a separate login, i don't know.

But even if alot of the feedback was bad, players could quickly find OP skills, bugs, and conflicts before the changes became live.

I am not saying that we demand you make the changes we think are best, but I feel like this would show the community even more that you care for their feedback.

A few potential benefits of this:

  • Players, perhaps even some bitter about changes, might log in with a sense of purpose to find "flaws"
  • I think it would drag in a few more bodies to discover PVP, people love to criticize.
  • Some of the testing workload will be shifted off of your team and given to the skritt.
  • Reducing the ability of players to say changes were not tested.

Is this a bad idea?

ITs a good idea honestly they should just do a full PBT weekend where you make beta character to test big changes like the mesmer change, and dead eye change.THEY SHOULD BE DOING THIS AND TAKING FEED BACK BEFORE PUSHING LIVE.

But they dont and you get people who cant under stand what their goals are. They were absolutely wrong for pushing the dead eye change with only a post the day before the patch with no warning regardless if some people like it as it is now or not. Thats not something you do if you care for your community who plays your game you let them give feedback after testing it first then you go live with some proposed changes.

I know they want us to be excited for updates but big changes like this should be given a standard 1 weekend public test time before going live for people who play it and or play against it to give feedback.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

And those knowledgeable players can do just that without the test servers.

How can they do it before the changes go live?

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I would like this, but honestly all of the feedback would have to be taken with a grain of salt. Just like most feedback in pvp forums (or balance threads in general).

There is nothing that can get rid of player bias. Nothing. People will always have a bias that taints their opinion on one thing or another. You see this all over the forums especially in pvp, even from people who are high level players.

It’s natural and you can’t really blame them for it. People like a certain class/spec and generally want it to be treated well. People hate a certain class/spec and generally want it to be treated poorly. Although there may be outliers that most of the community may agree on, even those are hard to give good feedback because the way of fixing (or the degree of fixing) is heavily debated and also tainted by bias. You can usually pick out people’s bias pretty easily (even when they are describing legitimate concerns) especially if they post a lot.

An example of this is that I really enjoy thief. I have a bias to where I want it treated well. I believe that I know thieve very well (perhaps not as much as some, but still well enough to know it’s strengths and weaknesses). Same goes for ranger. I really enjoy and like both professions and want them treated well and hate when they get nerfed. Although I understand that some adjustments may be necessary at times it is hard to admit it. It’s easier to focus on your favorite class’s weaknesses that need to be addressed than their strengths that need toned down. Visa versa for those classes you dislike. Therefore, my opinion on thief and ranger would have to be taken with a grain of salt even though I know a lot about them.

Then there is also consideration of how familiar people are with any given spec/class. For example: I have played each class a lot with various specilializations. That said, I have fairly limited experience/knowledge of Mesmer. I know for a fact that there is a lot I don’t know about Mesmer that taints my opinion of it. My opinion is that it is strong, annoying, and OP. But that opinion is not really valid or reliable because I don’t have enough experience with it to form a good opinion on it.

Edit - wanted to add a bit more. Then there is the issue that in general the more knowledgeable a player is about a certain class the more likely they are to be biased toward it because it is likely their main. So their knowledge isn’t really in question, but the same might be able to be said about their agenda.

Now imagine being a dev that has to wade through all the comments that would flood the forums. You have people that honestly don’t know what they are doing screaming for buffs or nerfs even though they don’t understand what was happening. You have other people screaming for buffs and nerfs just because they hate one spec and love another. You have some that try to be neutral and objective, but that is rare and still can be tainted. It would be hard to know what would be truly good for them game based on that feedback because you know you’d like anger just as many people as you would please with any given change.

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I think it's a great idea. The community being able to test what the developers are planning to release in a future patch would make it easier for the developers. As you said, they have a lot of work to do. So why not allow the community to test around the things you're planning on changing and have the community give them feedback on the proposed changes?

Some might say that noob players will test stuff and think it'll be funny to troll the developers and say something that's overpowered is fine or something that's underpowered doesn't need to be changed at all. My recommendation is to allow only ranked PvP players from Gold rank and above to test the changes before they are released. This will ensure that dedicated players to give proper feedback in great detail. I would love if ArenaNet would implement this in the game.

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

And those knowledgeable players can do just that without the test servers.

How can they do it before the changes go live?

Why do they need to?

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

And why would they need to have test servers to do that?

To ascertain the effectiveness of their changes before it hits live, and the community is stuck with another crappy meta for 3 months? Maybe? Like out the top of my head?

Assuming that the knowledgeable players agree with other players are what is an issue. Having test servers just delays balance changes. Not all needed changes can be made right away as Anet has to figure out solutions as changes are not made in a vacuum.

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

This relies on people being honest enough to suggest changes that nerf their most played classes, which is exceptionally rare in competitive PvP environments. ;)

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

And those knowledgeable players can do just that without the test servers.

How can they do it before the changes go live?

Why do they need to?

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

And why would they need to have test servers to do that?

To ascertain the effectiveness of their changes before it hits live, and the community is stuck with another crappy meta for 3 months? Maybe? Like out the top of my head?

Assuming that the knowledgeable players agree with other players are what is an issue. Having test servers just delays balance changes. Not all
needed
changes can be made right away as Anet hs to figure out solutions as changes are not made in a vacuum.

Did you read my OP? I already said why.

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@Twyn.7320 said:

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

This relies on people being honest enough to suggest changes that nerf their most played classes, which is exceptionally rare in competitive PvP environments. ;)

It would be more about pointing out things than making suggestions.

Hypothetical example:

Look now when thief uses death judgement it bounces between foes, was that intended?

Using this bogus example I imagine the forums would be flooded with all kinds of non-related posts like:

  • Why revenant so weak?
  • mesmer too strong
  • why you nerf druid

But underneath all that would be a pattern that says: wut the hell, why does death judgment bounce between foes?

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

No, I said there would probably be a lot of static, but the "good and knowledgeable" players can give their shiny two cents.

I am not good feeback giver. My feedback would be : Please don't nerf thief!

And those knowledgeable players can do just that without the test servers.

How can they do it before the changes go live?

Why do they need to?

@ReaverKane.7598 said:Well, as far as i know they do have/had something like this setup for their partners (which also led to a few speculative exploits, but i digress).A pvp only version of that server would be awesome for balance testing.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:This assumes players know all of the classes effectively enough to actually test balance changes.

Regardless of that they can gather more metrics from a test server with a couple thousand players than all their professional testers.It works for a lot of other games, no reason why it wouldn't work here.Basically they don't need you to tell them squat.They just need to go to their data and go "hey this change we made to scourge didn't have a impact on the metrics we wanted to shift, need to do something different".

And why would they need to have test servers to do that?

To ascertain the effectiveness of their changes before it hits live, and the community is stuck with another crappy meta for 3 months? Maybe? Like out the top of my head?

Assuming that the knowledgeable players agree with other players are what is an issue. Having test servers just delays balance changes. Not all
needed
changes can be made right away as Anet hs to figure out solutions as changes are not made in a vacuum.

Did you read my OP? I already said why.

You listed what you perceive to be some benefits but not why.

The player base as a whole barely knows the class that they main let alone the other eight classes. To be honest, they likely don't even know their own class in its entirety. Any builds that they use, they got from someone else rather than figuring it out themselves. There is nothing wrong with any of this. It just means that they're not the best candidate to test for class balance. Players are also not the greatest at giving feedback or an adequate amount of details. Just look at many of the bug reports and how they essentially state such and such is broken and to fix it.

I just feel that a test server would be ineffective and wouldn't offer any real benefits compared to what we're doing right now.

To address some of your benefits that you listed:

Players, perhaps even some bitter about changes, might log in with a sense of purpose to find "flaws"

And if what they feel are flaws don't get resolved, they lose that sense of purpose. There's really no different to reporting what you perceive to be a flaw while playing on a live server compared to having played on a test server. Any issues will get resolved by Anet and that occurs independently to the test and live servers.

I think it would drag in a few more bodies to discover PVP, people love to criticize.

I don't see it bringing more players to PvP. If players were not interested in a game mode, they're not going to suddenly be interested in testing balance changes for it.

Some of the testing workload will be shifted off of your team and given to the skritt.

Given that very few players know all of the classes well enough to adequately test for balance, I don't see Anet's workload being reduced. In fact, it may actually increase with having to have a test server and adding that to their existing process. Anet also has their own idea about how they want these classes to function and this may go against what some players want.

Reducing the ability of players to say changes were not tested.

It'll just change the complaints from "these changes weren't tested" to "you didn't implement our suggestions". Overall, it won't change anything.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

You listed what you perceive to be some benefits but not why.

@Crab Fear.1624 said:alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

that list you answered were perceived benefits, not the reason why. more people can find issues faster that's a reason why

before the changes go live. that's a reason why.

You keep focusing on the whole playerbase. I already acknowledged that alot of feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. But, the knowledgeable would be able to comment about issues, bugs, flaws, and conflicts.Let's assume that only the top 50 know everything in and out enough to comment; that is 50 more people with external insights that Anet might miss.

There are other games with test servers, such as Overwatch.

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I think it's a great idea. The community being able to test what the developers are planning to release in a future patch would make it easier for the developers. As you said, they have a lot of work to do. So why not allow the community to test around the things you're planning on changing and have the community give them feedback on the proposed changes?

Some might say that noob players will test stuff and think it'll be funny to troll the developers and say something that's overpowered is fine or something that's underpowered doesn't need to be changed at all. My recommendation is to allow only ranked PvP players from Gold rank and above to test the changes before they are released. This will ensure that dedicated players to give proper feedback in great detail. I would love if ArenaNet would implement this in the game.

Test servers don't usually rely as much in player feedback but on analytics from the server. Like they do x changes to reduce the win rate of Druid, but then on the test server the win rate stays the same, they know that those changes were infective, and can switch tactics. Do you really think that devs will read Beta Forums? Unless it's something with massive consensus, generating a lot of concurrent opinions they won't give a damn.And that's where all your worries will go away. Seriously everyone here is thinking like individual opinions are worth anything to a dev... Worried that some noobs would troll...They aren't. No developer would go to the test forum and take someone's feedback seriously unless it's backed by a big chunk of other players (or unless it's like the #1 pro player in the world, but GW2 doesn't have those any more) , and even then, if they're good at their job, that comes second to actual data generated by the server.Arguably the worse decision Arena Net took about GW2's PvP was based on majority feedback, against logic, better judgement, and whether they researched it or not, against what LoL was actually rolling back at the time, the removal of team (flex) queues from ranked.Arena Net pretty much announced that vote at the same time LoL was creating the new Flex queue, which works like GW2's queue used to.

@Crab Fear.1624 said:

You listed what you perceive to be some benefits but not why.

alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

that list you answered were perceived benefits, not the reason why.
more people can find issues faster
that's a reason why

before the changes go live. that's a reason why.

You keep focusing on the whole playerbase. I already acknowledged that alot of feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. But, the knowledgeable would be able to comment about issues, bugs, flaws, and conflicts.Let's assume that only the top 50 know everything in and out enough to comment; that is 50 more people with external insights that Anet might miss.

There are other games with test servers, such as Overwatch.

Overwatch, League of Legends, DotA2, Smite, pretty much every big competitive game has it, because they take balance seriously.

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

You listed what you perceive to be some benefits but not why.

alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

that list you answered were perceived benefits, not the reason why.
more people can find issues faster
that's a reason why

before the changes go live. that's a reason why.

You keep focusing on the whole playerbase. I already acknowledged that alot of feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. But, the knowledgeable would be able to comment about issues, bugs, flaws, and conflicts.Let's assume that only the top 50 know everything in and out enough to comment; that is 50 more people with external insights that Anet might miss.

There are other games with test servers, such as Overwatch.

Players will find issues at the same speed on a test server as they would on a live server. Running a test server does take additional work making them more trouble than they're worth.

Things could be found before they go live but there's no telling that Anet would make any suggested changes. This could be that there's no easy solution, there really isn't an issue in the first place, there's not enough time, or any other reason. All of those would make finding any perceived issue on a test server to be no different than finding them on the live server. There's also the possibility of what tests will on a test server can bug out on the live servers.

I focus on the entire population because you're asking for a test server that everyone gets to participate in and not just those that know what they're doing. Their feedback can get drowned out by everyone else's.

Just because another game has a test server, doesn't mean that it's effective. You listed Overwatch as an example. I remember reading an article last year where players were testing some changes and then were getting upset that their suggestions were not going to be made. Do you think it'll be any different with GW2? The article also mentioned that only a small subset of the player used the test server and basing any major changes on their feedback alone probably wouldn't be the greatest idea.

I just don't feel that having a public test server will offer anything to make it worth it. Nor do I think it'll change anything.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

You listed what you perceive to be some benefits but not why.

alot of people willing to help you achieve balance quicker and for free.

that list you answered were perceived benefits, not the reason why.
more people can find issues faster
that's a reason why

before the changes go live. that's a reason why.

You keep focusing on the whole playerbase. I already acknowledged that alot of feedback should be taken with a grain of salt. But, the knowledgeable would be able to comment about issues, bugs, flaws, and conflicts.Let's assume that only the top 50 know everything in and out enough to comment; that is 50 more people with external insights that Anet might miss.

There are other games with test servers, such as Overwatch.

Players will find issues at the same speed on a test server as they would on a live server. Running a test server does take additional work making them more trouble than they're worth.

Things could be found before they go live but there's no telling that Anet would make any suggested changes. This could be that there's no easy solution, there really isn't an issue in the first place, there's not enough time, or any other reason. All of those would make finding any perceived issue on a test server to be no different than finding them on the live server. There's also the possibility of what tests will on a test server can bug out on the live servers.

I focus on the entire population because you're asking for a test server that everyone gets to participate in and not just those that know what they're doing. Their feedback can get drowned out by everyone else's.

Just because another game has a test server, doesn't mean that it's effective. You listed Overwatch as an example. I remember reading an article last year where players were testing some changes and then were getting upset that their suggestions were not going to be made. Do you think it'll be any different with GW2? The article also mentioned that only a small subset of the player used the test server and basing any major changes on their feedback alone probably wouldn't be the greatest idea.

I just don't feel that having a public test server will offer anything to make it worth it. Nor do I think it'll change anything.

Dude, do you even read? Or do you just like antagonizing people so much you skip ahead!?The whole point is that BAD CHANGES SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO HIT LIVE!! Especially on a game where the next balance is a quarter of a year away!!

Seriously, other (much more successful) competitive games do this, despite having update schedules that are 6 time faster than GW2's and still they do it to avoid a bad patch, and yes, you're right, Live servers will be better even than test servers, that's why even with test servers those games still get some bad patches, but nothing like the catastrophic failures that are consistent with GW2's balance.

Of course only a subset of players will test it, in GW2 if 5% of the whole playerbase actually joins a test server i'd be surprised (because according to some statistics only like 10% have invested enough into pvp to reach rank 80). But the thing is, these things work well for most competitive games, and frankly GW2 needs all the help it can get, especially with the long delay between patches.

What you feel, is kinda irrelevant, there's million dollar companies doing it, and if it didn't work, you can bet your feels they wouldn't be doing it.

PS: I forgot to mention this previously, also about the concerns of bad feedback. Usually who gets access to PBE servers are vetoed by the companies. And as far as i know Arena Net kinda already has the structure for that (as in they have/had a separate client for Content Makers that were associated with Arena Net), they'd just need to expand upon it.

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Actually I 've been in an MMO having a PTS model and did work good. There were many people testing new things most of them experienced players providing great and useful feedback. As it stands for all games no matter the effort of "in-house testing" you can't beat the community in finding bugs and balance issues. A PTS would save the developers (and us) a lot of time and frustration. It's a great idea and I hope it could be implemented at some point.

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