Killzone: Shadow Fall Weapon Balancing Won’t Require a Patch, Will be Done on the Server Side

In any game with an online component – especially one without a beta – the developers can only do so much internal testing before loosing the game on the public.

Something Guerrilla Games will be doing with Killzone: Shadow Fall is not forcing you to download patches when they need to balance a weapon, choosing to do it on the fly, as Lead Designer Eric Boltjes discussed with OPM:

What we can do now, for example, is in multiplayer, we can track all the weapons. So if a specific weapon is overpowered, you know it’s killing too many people and people start complaining, we don’t have to release a patch any more. We can, on [the] server side, tweak the damage down on that weapon and instantly everyone will just have a less powerful weapon.

However, this won’t completely eliminate full-scale patches for Shadow Fall, as Boltjes continued:

For example, if we have to change how a weapon looks, that’s content. That’s content and then it becomes a patch. But if it’s variable, numbers that we can change, like weapon balance or stuff like that? That we can do that on the fly. If we want to add new sound? It’s a patch. If we want to change how often a weapon fires? That’s on the fly.

Remember, if Guerrilla Games makes a balancing change you don’t enjoy, let them know in a nice manner, rather than sending death threats.

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