This is one of the benefits of dynamic realm systems. I think it would be interesting for VR to come up with concepts of realms, where people sign on to the concept of it, knowing it may not work and will be absorbed back into another realm.
Take for instance this approach.
VR establishes a default ruleset "realm". This is the core basis of where they think most people center around. For instance, PvP vs PvE would be a core ruleset and other cores could be established via basic polling and the like to see the most common accepted means.
Then... they experiment by allowing players to sign up for a more detailed specalized ruleset server to experiment with concepts of play. This would be a "test server" to an extent. Its purpose would be to test the viability of given ruleset focuses, and then poll the player base on them after they have been implmented for a while (polling actually being a detailed questionnaire that people fill out at the end of a testing cycle).
The point of this is to one, to experiment on various changes and directions in play, but also within the realm of expected test focus. That is, a PvP player is much different than a PvE player, so trying to mix the two would be a bad test bed.
That said, this would allow a smaller population server, a tighter community, and would allow for people to experience more extreme components of play that they test to see if they are viable, not specifcally for general play, but if there is enough interest to have a ruleset server with such.
Personally, I would like to be on a test server, similar to my experiences with EQ mainly due to its smaller size and the changing concepts of play that are exciting to test and experience.
BamBam said: I do hope for special rulesets servers, specially good vs evil races. Increased death penalty, increased xp to level and more. A test server could be helpful in these regards, but I hope it's somthing that has been solved before release, maybe in alpha state of the game.
I would like special rulesets as well, but they may need to test the viability of such rulesets before the implement them to avoid population issues.
Something I would love to see is: "difficulty servers". In most games, players can choose their difficulties. MMO are played by millions of people of different skills, and some players have lots of time, others less. Why do we put so much stress on a dev team, video games studio and producers to desgin a game to satisfy millions of people? It did not work for the last decade!
I believe 'difficult server' will be the future of the MMOs someday. Hard core gamers will fight in a hard core server, it will be more fun for everybody, better competition and more challenges! Perhaps the NPC will have 10% more HP, 10% more resistances and 10% damage. I'd love to know if this is something that is possible. Brad seemed to be interested to have many different kind of servers. I am wondering if technically this is possible.
This is a great idea.
I have always hoped for them to try something like a PVP server where PVP was not promoted, but discouraged. So like PVE but you still had the ability to kill some twit that just needed it.
I don't care for the slaughter fest that go on with most PVP servers, but once in a while on PVE some people just need it.
Then IF it didn't take off after some tweaking they could just roll it into a PVE server.
Good idea!
The biggest issue that would arise from this that I could see is depending on the ruleset... if the server doesnt work and thebplayers are absorbed back onto a larger established server, depending on the differences, you could see a huge impact on economy.
I don't see how this could work unless you were only ever testing mechanics that make the game more difficult, or people understand that this server has a potential limited life and when it's over it is over
There was a thread on temporary servers for special events and testing possible "permanent" rulesets a while back. As I recall the thought there was that the characters would *not* be allowed to transder back to the "real" servers but special rewards such as titles and cosmetics might be given to characters on the same account in the real servers.
I see issues, as Porygon does, in allowing transfers to other servers.
If the temporary server is to test a ruleset, and the test is successful, the server could simply become a permanent server with all characters continuing. But this would discourage anyone not already there from creating characters for the new ruleset since they would be starting months behind everyone else.
Porygon said:The biggest issue that would arise from this that I could see is depending on the ruleset... if the server doesnt work and thebplayers are absorbed back onto a larger established server, depending on the differences, you could see a huge impact on economy.
I don't see how this could work unless you were only ever testing mechanics that make the game more difficult, or people understand that this server has a potential limited life and when it's over it is over
Well, it wouldn't be a production server at the start. That is, it would be more akin to how EQ test was. It would be classified as a "test server" and there would be a sign off by the player when they choose to play on test that the rulesets would be adjusted from time to time.
There are many ways you can do it. It could simply be a straight test server, with rulesets being added, removed, etc... or it could be more of a server where rulesets are tested and the test server then votes after the test if they wished to keep that change or not.
Now I would think that there should be a PvP and a PVE server segregated for this purpose due to the fact that they are night and day different play focuses, but past that, numerous elements of play could be added/removed based on player voting after the tests.
What this could do is give VR an idea as to what works and what does not in various designs.
As for people being upset, it is an issue of "you understood what this server was when you chose to play on it" and honestly, there should be no apologies.
On EQ, I played on Test and they always had the claim that at any time the server could be wiped. Everyone accepted this, though this was tested when they wiped the servers. People had a fit and the compromise was that people could choose to leave the server (transfer naked to a production server) or stay and accept that this could happen again in the future. Point is, anyone who signs the agreement and complains isn't being honest about the situation. If you have a problem with this issue, don't play on this server. So that issue is really easily solved.
dorotea said:There was a thread on temporary servers for special events and testing possible "permanent" rulesets a while back. As I recall the thought there was that the characters would *not* be allowed to transder back to the "real" servers but special rewards such as titles and cosmetics might be given to characters on the same account in the real servers.
I see issues, as Porygon does, in allowing transfers to other servers.
If the temporary server is to test a ruleset, and the test is successful, the server could simply become a permanent server with all characters continuing. But this would discourage anyone not already there from creating characters for the new ruleset since they would be starting months behind everyone else.
Yeah, I saw that, but my point was more along the lines of a core base test server (the generic Pantheon ruleset), and then they adjust it for various testing purposes. After each test, they could revert back to the generic, or... they could choose to keep the changes.
Obviously what types of changes would have to be considered as a revert could have a drastic change on play, but those details could be considered and ironed out on a case per case. Point is, it is a test server, not a production. If people want a consistent and "insured" form of play, they play production, not test.
Okay - clearly a test server is a good idea and having it do the things Tanix suggests and not just be rolled out to test new expansions and other additions to content is *also* a good idea.
If I read the idea correctly now - and perhaps I do not - this would be more of a continuous server than most games have for testing. Not just a server where every three months or every 6 months the developers want to test something and people go back there to try it out. I like that also - and would surely keep a character or set of characters there if it actually had an ongoing community.
Perhaps without constant wipes of characters although wipes may be possible if needed in VR's opinion. Also without transfers - people do not expect to transfer characters from test servers to live servers.
To explore the possibilities a bit more - maybe sufficiently distinct from the live servers to have a separate set of names.
I personally rather see in house testing or focused testing on a PTR ... like small fractions of a encounter ... not even the dungeon or full boss fight , just specific mechanics that need to be tested or tuned available.
That way we can avoid the PTR "training" for release date so we can clear content as fast , as humanly doable.
This allows the dev's to gather the needed information but does not allow practice on encounters.
Xxar said:I personally rather see in house testing or focused testing on a PTR ... like small fractions of a encounter ... not even the dungeon or full boss fight.
That way we can avoid the PTR "training" for release date so we can clear content as fast , as humanly doable.
This allows the dev's to gather the needed information but does not allow practice on encounters.
I agree with this. There is no reason not to have a PTR once the game goes live for testing specific encounters but more alternative rule servers are just going to fracture the playerbase more.