At least every few weeks we hold a playtest with gamers, some of whom are seasoned AAA developers, to find out what areas of Field of Heroes are buggy, can be improved, or are otherwise pulling players out of the immersion of fun gameplay.

Setup

Twitch Stream

Playtests are performed live on Twitch for tester coordination, for playing back clips to help resolve hard-to-duplicate bugs, and to promote the game.

Discord

All testers join a single Discord voice channel for real-time coordination and feedback. Player log files are uploaded to a Discord playtest channel.

Notepad++

This app is used for note taking purposes. Notes are saved in a folder correspondent to the playtest.

Testing Focus

Before a test begins, the host will tell all testers what to look out for during the playtest. Typically this includes a focus on changes made in response to feedback from a previous playtest. Testers are encouraged to pay close attention to those changes to see if the game as a whole feel better than before.

Testing Format

1. Wait for testers to arrive on Discord voice chat.
2. Play for 30-40 minutes.
3. Share feedback for 30 minutes.
   • First, each playtester is asked for their “hates;” that is, what experience they disliked the most during the playtest. For example: Lag or imbalanced combat.
   • Next, each playtester is asked for their “greats;” that is, what experienced they liked the most during the playtest. For example: Exciting combat or field variety.
   • Next, everyone rates the game on a scale of 1-10 where 1 means “Totally not a fun soccer brawler game, definitely not worth my time.” and 10 means “This is my favorite soccer brawler game ever!”
   • Next, general feedback and Q&A.
   • Lastly, everyone zips up the game’s log files and posts them on Discord.
   • The host downloads the log files, enters new tasks in their bug tracker, and prioritizes them.

November Playtest Results

“Hates”

The issues found during the playtest covered a broad spectrum: Lots of small bugs (dashes not working correctly, cooldowns not displaying correctly, network jitter) all added up to an unacceptable gameplay experience. Certain abilities that require aiming before activating were difficult to aim. Players often passed the ball to a nearby player when they actually meant to kick it past them. There were also performance issues; mainly in areas with heavy particle system usage (such as the Desert sandworm)

“Greats”

The most fun from this playtest came from battles between melee heroes, abilities being cast more quickly (per request from the previous playtest), overall good combat, less clustering of heroes around the ball, and the ability to swap heroes mid-game.

Ratings

The average rating across all testers was 6.5 out of a possible 10. This means the bugs experienced were considerable and must be addressed before the next playtest as much as possible.

General Feedback

Most general feedback included Quality of Life requests including: Having cooldown pips around the crosshair so players don’t have to look at the corner of their screen to see if their abilities are ready, having tooltips in the lobby to show more information about the hero you’re choosing, showing accolades in the leaderboard, and supporting streaks such as takedown streaks.

What Happens Next?

New tasks for all the “Hates” and general feedback were entered into the bug tracker and prioritized. Since then, work started on those tasks. Many are expected to be finished before the next playtest scheduled for sometime in January 2026.

These features include:

• New Power Kick ability for all heroes that kick the ball at 2x speed and takes down any opponents near the kicker
• New targeting crosshair design that shows your ability cooldowns
• New leaderboard UI
• Performance improvements

You’re Invited to Join the Fun!

If you’re interested in joining our ongoing playtest, you may join it from our Steam store page at https://store.steampowered.com/app/1267290/Field_of_Heroes/ . Although the game supports AI backfill, testing is done best with other players; so bring all your friends with you!