Test servers to rapidly test balance | Forums

[GlitchHunter33]

Simple idea. Have a separate test server where you can push any balance change at any time, and let community test it out. Nothing is guaranteed to stay, anything goes.

Pros:

• Even if a small part of player base tests a change it will find issues way faster then internal tests.
• You get community feedback faster.
• Community can see the direction a character is taking, as well as see progress being made. (No more stupid stuff like "Lazy devs did nothing for 6 months")
• Quick tests and changes would not affect the live game, so there is no problem in experimenting with various ideas.
• It would give community a constant stream of new stuff to explore with every new change. For now, between seasons, only orders, events and occasional return of a game mode are the only variations in game. (Not counting cosmetics)
• You can get feedback from top players (workshops) and lower skill players at the same time. That way, you could possibly find a compromise that could make the character more suited for lower skill levels without compromising higher skill levels. (So far, the character would first be adjusted for high level players, then if possible, readjusted for lower levels. Similar thing was made for revenge, if i'm not mistaken. They made it give more armor cause it helped the low and mid tier players, while not affecting top tier.)
• All the "buff x", "nerf y" and "rework z" posts would be moved to a specific forum/reddit made specifically for this test server (just like it was for the breach test). That makes it easier to find other feedback on main subreddit and forums.
• Other then character changes, you could test mechanic changes, just like raiders heavy in the breach test, or test new perk and feat ideas, as well as potentially changes in game modes.

Of course, there would be cons:

• Technically you would split the playerbase, as some would play the live game, and others the test. However, the recent influx of players would make that issue less problematic.
• You would probably need to test one character with one change at the time, so that multiple changes do not effect each other. It may also be necessary to limit the games to duels, brawls, or any other game mode, if you only need to collect that specific data.
• Overall data may be unreliable if there are too many conflicting feedback. For those situations you may need to limit the access to invitation only, in order to collect feedback from a specific playerbase.
• Time to properly test a change may be longer then time needed to make another change on another character and test that one. However, initial feedback and any bugs that were found during the test may still help. (Wu lin were available for a short duration for a test as well, and the feedback was helpful, apparently.)
• If testing "reworks", you would lose the big reveal, as the changes were mostly already seen. However, balance should be more important then the big rework/new character reveal. This is not an issue for small updates to existing characters, and not all players would play the tests anyway.
• People would complain if you add/remove something they said should go/stay. People always complain.

Now I know this isn't a original idea, I'm sure there were a lot of people who though of this before me, probably including some people on the dev team itself. I just laid out the pros and cons to see if it would be worth it to try, and I think it would be, and if anyone can think of more pros/cons, just let me know.

Of course, it may not be that simple, and maybe there's a technical reason why this isn't done yet, or maybe it's in the works as we speak (fingers crossed). I'm curious to hear form Ubisoft what is their opinion on it.

[TheReaIDirtyDan]

I definitely agree with you on adding a separate test server and I hope ubi does too.

I know at least R6 siege has this system and it seems like there are far fewer complaints about balancing in that game (i have 700+ hours in both) and also it helps those devs make changes super quickly
For example, one of the new ops that was added was reviewed and rebalanced before he even hit base game (that's only a few weeks time for changes to be made). I get that it's different teams making r6 and for honor but maybe they should take a few notes?
I feel like this would help a lot because poor ol' PK has been super underpowered since her rework and ubi says they need to wait longer to see what changes need to be made even though it's been months.

The marching fire open test was a good start but in order to get more feedback I feel like they need to leave the servers open. More time on open servers means more data (you all know how much ubi loves their data) which would lead to more positive changes to the game.

[Ubiflowessence]

Thank you both for the feedback! We appreciate your suggestions for improving the game and will pass this information along to the dev team to see if it is possible to implement in the future. We're keeping players up-to-date on balancing by posting news & updated patches/patch notes.

[CandleInTheDark]

I very much agree with the idea in general, though there is another con. There is already a group of players claiming the devs only balance for pc, now sure they could have a console one too but the whole reason the tech test was pc only was they could make a change on the fly, they have to wait a week or two to pass certification for console which means slowing down making changes or having console a build or two behind if pc gets frequent changes.

I do think that overall it would be a net gain if they can make changes they wouldn't usually make in one patch then test adding or taking away a little whether in terms of speed or damage from those changes to get a general baseline and an idea of the difference in two different sets of changes.

[Soldier_of_Dawn]

I like the idea of ongoing test servers. If this was implemented, hopefully, it would lead to a quicker turnaround on balancing, which is what we're really after.

Balancing 2 characters every 3 months is too long especially when you consider that we will have 22 heroes to balance when Marching Fire is released. The current pace would mean 8 out of 22 balance changes a year, and that is if each rework, buff, or nerf is perfect. 2 characters a month would be more ideal.