A little tip for a testserver.

[RaidSoft]

A little tip for FLS. Look at eve-online and their singularity server. Basically it's a server they have up most of the time which is made specifically to test new patches etc. It's patched very regularly (often every day, basically as often as they add something that needs testing) and here's the interesting part, basically they have made most stuff available to buy for 100 isk (basically free) which helps testing by alot. Also they have moved the focus to one area so that if people need help testing something, there's generally people around.

They even added some "arenas" (actually only beacons you could warp to though) where people could pvp freely (but they generally had ship size limits and stuff like that). This helps developers with PvP balance because "fotm" trends generally show up there quite early. Basically this serves two purposes, first of all it's a fanservice, a place where people can go and try if something they are planning on doing will actually work (without having to, for example spend loads of cash on a ship that they then noticed didn't fit his requirements all) and the second purpose is that this will (if the system is established well enough) always make sure there is some degree of "public" testing of new patches before they go live, this is obviously a big advantage (instead of having a test server that comes up for a short time which almost noone logs in to because there really isn't much reason to)

If everyone has to start from scratch on the testserver every time then there won't be any testing of any new high-end content, because who's going to level a char to high level on a testserver that will just get wiped anyway? Either being able to copy your char from your server or having free levels on the testserver is a must, or it will be underused.

Now obviously eve-online is WIDELY diffrent from Pirates of the Burning Sea, but I think there's room for something along these lines. Now it's up to you guys at FLS to come up with a good system that works for PotBS.

edit: added something

[Misha]

Originally Posted by RaidSoft ...They even added some "arenas" (actually only beacons you could warp to though) where people could pvp freely (but they generally had ship size limits and stuff like that)...

We had those in Beta. Sadly, turning them on and off isn't something we can do server-side so it's not easy to have it on Testbed without the risk of it also becoming available by accident on the live clusters.

If everyone has to start from scratch on the testserver every time...

You'll almost never start from scratch. If we have to wipe, it's because something went horribly, horribly wrong.

[RaidSoft]

Originally Posted by Misha We had those in Beta. Sadly, turning them on and off isn't something we can do server-side so it's not easy to have it on Testbed without the risk of it also becoming available by accident on the live clusters. You'll almost never start from scratch. If we have to wipe, it's because something went horribly, horribly wrong.

But you have to agree, investing time leveling your character on a server which you can't be sure it will be saved on is not something people do lightly, this decreases the ammount of testers by a HUGE ammount.

About the arenas, that was just an example of how they did it =) How about having a certain town (or towns) always contested for example as an "arena"

Now since I don't know how the game is programmed I obviously can't say what's possible and what isn't, that's the developers job But having this kind of testserver have helped eve-online massively (even wow have a very similar system, you can either copy your character or get a pre-made max level character on the testserver)

These systems are quite appreciated by the gamers and helps the developers too

[Misha]

Certainly there's merit in your proposals; I don't mean to discount them.

I'll ask about turning on port contention in Testbed and setting some ports to PvP. It's turned off in the live clusters because we don't want folks who only buy the retail box to show up on 1/22 to find the world already owned by another nation. But we could turn it on in Testbed and let y'all see what it's going to be like. If we do that and then publicize when the big battles will be, that might help drive the population a bit.

I'm not particularly creative about this sort of thing but I'll send this around to folks who are. They may come up with other ideas. On the one hand, we do want folks to come check it out. On the other, we don't want the experience to be too different from what you see on live because
1. That causes confusion in people who don't read too good and
2. The differences might confuse or mask bugs.

But we'll think on it...

[novafluxx]

Just wanted to note something after reading this:

This is excellent communication...I wish all MMO developers were this open to discussion and this responsive! This is how it should be

Misha thank!

[Bluiet]

i was wondering, since the test server makes the game download a patch , couldn't you set a way to not have to download the patch once more when it goes live on the server? just an idea to speed up the patching progress

[Misha]

No but you can play using your Testbed install and then patch the Live version while you sleep.

[Tygrcat]

I thought I'd tack this on here, since it seems to be a general Testbed discussion thread.

Right now, unless I'm mistaken, Testbed only becomes available to play when a new patch is about to be pushed to live. However, it would seem that you want Testbed to be a self-contained environment. Wouldn't it be best, therefore, to leave Testbed unlocked for most of the time, in order to let such an environment develop?

[Misha]

We think that's a good idea and so plan to bring it back online today or tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Misha]

Or, how about right now?