Why not do test clusters for a complicated system like helminth before releasing it?

[Goosmo]

For a system with so many abillites and combinations, i doubt DE has enough manpower to test everything. And it they care this much about balance that they even nerfed some of the abilities, before release, wouldn't it have been a good idea, to get some help from the players. Kinda like with what they did when they revisited railjack.

Edit: i meant test clusters, not test servers. I'm not 100% sure what the difference is.

[Toppien]

they dont even want to give dedicated servers instead of p2p connections and you want a test server?

[WhiteMarker]

And what would be the difference to the current situation with all players being testers?

With the new system DE can simply take the numbers of which abilities players use the most and which abilities don't get used at all, and base changes around that. That's way better than taking feedback from a few testers...

[Kaotyke]

Because it's not being released as just that?

It needs rank 3 with the Entrati to get the Segment to access it, and it requires playing the Deimos questline.

Also, being put out in all platforms at the same time.

[TARINunit9]

They have a test cluster that uses seperate servers from the rest of us

[Kaotyke]

1 minute ago, Toppien said:

they dont even want to give dedicated servers instead of p2p connections and you want a test server?

P2P is integrated into the code, more expensive to maintain and we HAD test servers before.

[Toppien]

1 minute ago, Kaotyke said:

P2P is integrated into the code, more expensive to maintain and we HAD test servers before.

ere you kidding me right? pls tell me you are kidding me cuz what you just said doesnt make sense at all (except the thing about the test servers)

[Goosmo]

13 minutes ago, Toppien said:

they dont even want to give dedicated servers instead of p2p connections and you want a test server?

Correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't they let players test stuff with railjack at some point?

Edit: sorry i meant test clusters, not test servers

[Kaotyke]

3 minutes ago, Toppien said:

ere you kidding me right? pls tell me you are kidding me cuz what you just said doesnt make sense at all (except the thing about the test servers)

About servers being more expensive? Common sense, servers have to be bought, maintained and be in locations across the globe for less hops to it and back to the client. This has been talked to death here. I think @Letter13 has a quote for just that since he is an engineer iirc.

The P2P connection being integrated into the code? It's not a matter of "turn on servers" and here they are.

[Krankbert]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Kaotyke:

The P2P connection being integrated into the code? It's not a matter of "turn on servers" and here they are.

The game already uses dedicated servers in a number of places, the support is there. The game is P2P because servers are more expensive than no servers, and that's all there is to it.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Test servers are also just incredibly biased. 

They should be for testing bugs, yea....but do you trust people to actually test properly? 

Or is it gonna be another person that wasn't that great at the game doing some half-butted 5 minute test and saying "Hey DE I feel like x should be buffed because it wasn't that strong."

This stuff happens all the time. Look at most of the feedback section: its weak logic with people just upset that something they never even used was "nerfed".

And if the devs don't agree with their "tests", then it becomes "urrrgh DE didn't listen to us!"

[Methanoid]

there was a supposed lottery not long ago in april to gain access to their test server, that was closed the same day it was announced, and yes i think it was limited to railjack at the time, no idea if its even still a thing.

The best "test and feedback" system i had seen was when guild wars 2 first started, it was easy to play as well as give bug reports and feedback while still playing.

[Methanoid]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

Test servers are also just incredibly biased. 

They should be for testing bugs, yea....but do you trust people to actually test properly? 

Or is it gonna be another person that wasn't that great at the game doing some half-butted 5 minute test and saying "Hey DE I feel like x should be buffed because it wasn't that strong."

This stuff happens all the time. Look at most of the feedback section: its weak logic with people just upset that something they never even used was "nerfed".

And if the devs don't agree with their "tests", then it becomes "urrrgh DE didn't listen to us!"

plenty of people usually want to join test servers just so they can see what changes are coming so they can prepare themselves on the main server when it hits live.  the bulk of people you tended to see on the old wow test servers had zero interest in finding bugs or anything and were just using it to prepare their upcoming talent setups and builds.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

5 minutes ago, Methanoid said:

plenty of people usually want to join test servers just so they can see what changes are coming so they can prepare themselves on the main server when it hits live.  the bulk of people you tended to see on the old wow test servers had zero interest in finding bugs or anything and were just using it to prepare their upcoming talent setups and builds.

Yea exactly, this too.

[Draconicdisciple]

6 hours ago, Goosmo said:

For a system with so many abillites and combinations, i doubt DE has enough manpower to test everything. And it they care this much about balance that they even nerfed some of the abilities, before release, wouldn't it have been a good idea, to get some help from the players. Kinda like with what they did when they revisited railjack.

Edit: i meant test clusters, not test servers. I'm not 100% sure what the difference is.

Looking at what updates they've tested and which they didn't, it seems like they don't want to public test story spoilers. Railjack and Steel Path have no lore relevance, while Deadlock and Helminth will have lore behind it (maybe not helminth himself but unlocking helminth is tied to the syndicate so it'd spoil people).

[Darkest_Fire]

this could work, kind of like an experiment. They give some select players or employees a time period or a session to play around with 2 versions of the helminth. Then they could use that feedack to either tweek or keep the helminth.

[DogsConkers]

There isn't much to test they're just juggling already working abilities. They also released the details on 12th for the community to work out any meta synergies they hadn't considered and then made tweaks on 19th before actual release. A good strategy IMO.