How I learned to use LiveOps events for play testing new features

It all started with a big gameplay misbalance.

Back then at Nexters, we were developing the new game mode, called Brawls. The feature team was responsible for that, and in LiveOps team we were keeping an eye on them.

The idea was to create modifiers for the regular arena mode, so player would build their hero teams according to some custom rules. Like 5 clones of one hero. Or one particular hero to use mandatory. Or use only female characters.

When they were ready, we discussed the risks and decided to launch it first as a time-limited event, not the full scale feature release.

And boy we were right!

We’ve made 3-days event out of it, and when players saw it, they got so excited that they completed the whole event in 15 minutes.

We were shocked.

The event stayed there for two more days, but there was nothing to do.

Community was furious, they asked for more. But there was no way, because it would take more time to make a new balance.

So we were just happy it was an event with limited time. We took a pause, analysed all the metrics and players feedback. Then we decided that starting from next iteration it will remain time-limited event, which we will use for promotion of new heroes.

This game mode was passed over to LiveOps team, because it was now the part of LiveOps strategy and schedule. We created new progression balance, so it would be possible to play for 3 days. Then we used this event in the next big update, when we released new hero and we introduced this hero’s Brawl for all players to test it on max level.

This time it went extremely well. Players were happy, they loved new event, they loved new character, they loved the idea of play testing it on max level.

After that, we used these Brawls many times to promote new heroes. Every time with good results.

And this proved to me one more time that if you have some risky idea, with unknown outcome, it is much better to introduce it as a time-limited event first.

If it’s good – players will ask for more and will be waiting for the next time.
If it’s bad – well, you will be happy that it will not last forever.