Leagues: Rebranding Beta Testing

[Replacement]

We may soon have have the tools to turn just about anyone who cares into a content creator.  How do you weigh the desire to cut loose and try wildly new things with the philosophy of keeping the game recognizable?  How do you weigh letting your community help you with content vs not being saddled with ideas that "seemed cool at the time?"  

 

Start by taking submissions for content.  This is everything.  New power sets, new costume parts, new task forces, new IOs.  Anything and everything.

 

So then, with the help of polls and the sensibility of the Homecoming staff, we turn the Beta server into 2-3 month long "league" servers where everyone starts fresh with new rules in play.  This may seem familiar to folks who have played games such as Path of Exile.   Create some meta-incentives such as forum badges or special titles to draw in even folks who aren't necessarily testing the new/changed contents.  Ideally, at the end of the league, people would be able to export out their characters and (pie in the sky) get a publicly available download for that version of Homecoming in case folks want to continue that "ruleset" on a private server.

 

And then Homecoming integrates the parts they like back to the standard game.

 

What this achieves:

• Tons of testing that people are encouraged to participate in. 
• Friendly competitive badge hunting and leveling frenzies.
• Opportunities for SCORE to deploy even shaky changes and see real-world data on how it works with zero player expectation that those changes will make their way to the live servers.
• The flip-side of the above: well-received and effective changes can be merged into the main branch.
• An outlet for folks who would like to get their hands dirty making their own mark on the code, but don't really have the means to run a private server or even convince folks to come experience it.

 

I want to emphasize, I think this would best be achieved with a guiding and non-democratic hand (that is to say, the Homecoming staff).  Collecting changes that would go well together, or otherwise incentivize players towards certain things they want to test.

 

Example: "Aeon League"

* All short Dev Choice AE missions are available as newspaper missions.

* Hacker Power Pool is available (selected player submission)

* Energy Melee buffs (Captain Powerhouse wip)

 

The idea is there would be some things that are just straight up "let's test this" and some things that would play into the "theme" of the league.  Something like "new archetype: the necromancer" wouldn't really belong in this league.

 

Um.  That's my thought.  Done.

 

Edited September 7, 2019 by Replacement