Public Test Server

Years ago I used to play an MMORPG that also had a public test server. People could choose to play here if they wanted, knowing that sometimes it got intentionally wiped, skills and items could also change without warning. Still I think it was a great place to be able to try out new skills and ideas that *might* make it into live servers.

Test Krewe was a good initiative, but I think you could appreciate and benefit from a larger playerbase testing out new changes. Here's how it could work:

* Skills here can change regulary, they can be buffed or nerfed daily, weekly or as often as the staff here see fit. Statistics will be your greatest tool in seeing which skills become the most popular. If a skill is overpowered, it makes it into a lot of builds. Tone it down, change it's function and see what effects it have without worrying it would cause any major breaks or impacts on live servers.

* Changes on Public Test Servers doesn't mean it would ever make it to live servers. There could be 100's of changes without any of them making it to live. But with a large playerbase trying them out would allow you to see if the skills seem overpowered, underpowered, balanced, and what skill combos people will make out of it.

* This could be split into a Test PvE and Test PvP. The PVE Test characters should start at level 20 with access to PvP weapon/armor creation to be able to try different variations more.

* No economy! This wouldn't be a place to develop characters at, so anything you need in order to become a better test person should be available to you.

* Changes here that seem potentially good could then be tested by Test Krewe in a traditional manner until it would eventually make it to live.

* This should be setup to use minimal staff requirement. Maybe even let a few trusted players (Test Krewe) do skill adjustments or other changes. Since it's a test server, I see no harm in it. However, staff and staff alone would decide who would be granted these powers. Any players begging to be given such powers would just fall upon deaf ears.

sounds like fun, but i don't know if anet could support test servers that could hold the whole gw community. that's why they did the test krewe. to try an pick out the most helpful people from a wide range of the population that could easily be supported on one singular server.

would love it ^^ don't the devs have sandbox servers/instances? would probably work if all chars start at lvl20 and act as PvP chars (in the way you can use the equipment panel).
and like wiped every few days or something. i dunooooo

This idea is much better than the test krewe we have now but like every other thing posted on this site, it's a fantasy that sadly won't make it into the game world.

I also have a strong feeling I played this same MMO you speak of. If last time you played was years ago the test server has changed. The game company refuses to wipe the main test server, and instead wipes a backup test server where characters copied from live go to test out high level content, as for the main test server? It sits around with about 50 people who don't give an ounce of a damn feedback to the company and have basically took the server hostage and made it into their own little community of tight knit players (around 50-60 of them) and the company is afraid to wipe the server.

EQ1?
And if the company doesn't wipe the server because some players taken it hostage, it sounds terrible. In fact if we had a test server here I would even like to see regular wipes just to avoid this kind of scenarios.

Even if we got a public test server here who could only hold 1000 random players, it would still be a large test ground than Test Krewe. Instead the Test Krewe we have now would have slightly more powers than the rest of the players. Based on how helpful theese players are with feedback, it could increase their chances of someday join the real Test Krewe if it would expand. Maybe based on feedback score. Sending false feedback or jibberish could get same players banned from test.

No actually, EverQuest II. And it was an awesome trolling point too. All you had to mention was the words "SOE, Wipe, Test" in the same sentence and a shitstorm would start and last for 30-60 minutes depending on who was offended by it.

Amazing people would be offended by a companies decision on wiping a server that is supposed to be wiped. LOL

LOL that's just sad! SOE needs to grow a backbone.

I'd rather they just got their 'balances' more spot on (seriously it's been a while now) and any consequent nerf's that they know are needed to happen quickly (cough SF).

Oh and I'd rather have access to that there GW2 server they have parties on,without us...

Not gonna happen.

Turn the Krewe test server over to the public, limit the accounts that can access the server to about a thousand, and enable Krewe players to tweak skill numbers is pretty much what I got out of this. With that all in place, it would be an improvement to what we have now. I don't really think though that the Devs are going to want to pull away time from skill and mechanic balances to make adjustments on the testing process.

Great idea, a public test server would be very useful. You'd probably get more useful data when it comes to skill changes from the public than just a select few people.

Exactly. The current Test Krewe would basically be the test server staff with ability to tweak skills while rest of the player, a random 1000 players or so can test it out. With realtime statistics so TK can see popularity of individual skills. Regular test players should see some form of broadcast whenever a skill is changed, or possible a "10 most recently modified skills" list.

Was it Ultima Online? Their test server was great for testing out templates and having some great sandbox-style fun. I'm not sure how well such a server would translate to GW, but at the very least, this would let us get our feet wet in preparation for new skill updates.

EDIT: Guess I should have read replies before opening my mouth. Oh well.

/signed

but it would mean less bitching from the community and hopefully less time spent fixing shit they messed up?

Short-term loss long term gain type o thing...

and if shit still gets RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed on the live server they can just be like "O sorry it didn't get noticed on the test server we will fix this asap" So to say HA it's your fault shits messed up....

Still Love TR's test server


AS for the limiting of accounts that can access it...I would love it if it was random account choosing based on activity and was changed often to give everyone a chance to do shit xD

So, like randomly allocate 1000 invites to a test server before every update? I think that would be a good idea.

If they did this, anything acquired (skills, items, gold, mini's, etc.) would have to be deleted before the person could return to the regular server. I wouldn't want people destroying the regular game by abusing something that may pop up on a test server. I didn't apply for the Test Krewe because I want to play, not test. If it is a test server, nothing done on it should be used for the regular server. If this was added with people having access to TEST things, I'd be ok with it. But if people could abuse it in any way, it would just make people shift where they play.

Since we have a Test Krewe set up to specifically test out changes, having a test server seems pointless. If you want to test things, you should have applied for the Test Krewe. If they didn't accept you for that, consider why.

I'm willing to bet that ANet only chose a handful of people to be on the Krewe because they don't need to be sifting through the ideas of thousands of players, and not because they thought that many of the applicant would be poor Krewe material. The flaw in that is that it takes more than a handful of players to actually test the suggestions and implementations that are made for those tests to really be meaningful.

In other words, the Krewe should have been built with a small group of players that are pulling the strings, making the suggestions, commenting on ideas, and implementing changes, a large group of players for testing those ideas thoroughly and providing a simulated public response to those changes, and the Devs to police everything and make the decisions on what goes into the Live build based on the feedback from the large crowd and suggestions from the reserved group.

Aion currently has a PTS, but they're finding that people are choosing to make it their permanent home, as they get updates etc before the live servers do.

It's a good idea, but i'm not really sure how it would apply to GW, as the servers have a different set up to most games where server switching is not possible.