Player Test Server

Today while I was playing World of Tanks, I was thinking about the concept of a players' test server.

What would it be like if players' had their own test server to test out ideas? Often times, players will share ideas they would like to see tested or implemented, but since devs control content testing and implementation, it never is tried out. But what if players had their own server to try out ideas provided by the developer?

Say if an idea got enough support, you could test it out on the player server for a week just to see what would happen, what people would think, how they would respond. It wouldn't affect the main game and you could actually see what it would be like to change something independent of developer control.

Obviously, there would have to be rules about who could submit ideas, how many ideas you could submit at one time, how often you could change the server, etc. I think the biggest upside is that players not only could have their voice heard, but actually see the idea put into practice. Developers could observe and consider the merits of any changes and still have the final say.

Let me know what you guys think about it.

The issue about creating a queue of player ideas and trying each one in a test environment every week is that it's a lot of extra work for developers. They would have to design and code new content that will most often just last for one week.

Typically, game devs have access to a lot of metrics that players don't . For example in WoT, WG has a log of how often gold shells are fired, how popular a certain tank is, how much credits a tank earns, and how often people win or lose in a tank (in fact, tank winrate in relation to personal rating is what WG uses to balance vehicles). Players typically don't have access to this data, so many times their suggestions are already not great ideas.

However, player feedback is still considered. If you remember the great penetration nerf, there was a huge backlash by the community about how much everything got nerfed, and WG decided to cancel the change. Many changes in the first iteration of PTS typically gets changed when you get to the second phase.