Guild Wars 2

What’s wrong with having players test content before it comes out? That could save so much embaressment simply from preventing “bad updates”.

Having players test future content is way to dangerous and exploitable in this type of game.. they can foresee stuff in which they can invest in/ mess with the TP etc.

HardRider.2980:

Having players test future content is way to dangerous and exploitable in this type of game.. they can foresee stuff in which they can invest in/ mess with the TP etc.

Which they could fix by making a lot more stuff “personal loot / account bound” like Acended mats and pre cursors etc………..

That way its about personal development and not just buy and grind gold to get it.

You run the risk that a significant portion of the playerbase will already be burned out when it goes live.

On a two week release schedule, how long would it be tested? How soon is the content ready before it is released and is playable enough to be tested, and how much time would there be to iterate?

Who gets to test said content? How much of the player-base would want to wait, if it were to be open to all?

Once feedback was gathered, is the content tested again? How many times is it tested before final release? How much time must the player-base wait if there are multiple iterations after testing? Who decides if it is now release-worthy?

Oxstar.7643:

What’s wrong with having players test content before it comes out? That could save so much embaressment simply from preventing “bad updates”.

Contrary to public belief, a public testing realm does not mean the content will be bug free. World of Warcraft used a PTR, and almost every raid boss ended up coming out buggy or exploited one way or another.

“What?? That’s not how I remember it!” someone might remark. The thing with raiding in WoW was that only a very small percentage of players actually experienced the content right away due to skill and gear gates. Blizzard had many embarrassing moments but they were only really known to the hardcore community; the public at large was unaware because the bugs had been tested on live.

The thing with WoW though was that players were afraid of abusing bugs and exploits on bosses because Blizzard had a no-tolerance policy for that sort of behavior. If your guild killed a boss using an exploit, it was par for the course to have the entire guild suspended and their achievements and loot stripped from them.

Actually there is at least one test server that is open to more than Anet’s staff. I wouldn’t call it “public” because it seems to be extremely limited about gets to use it. I too feel like they should broaden the scope to get more feedback but I grow weary of saying such. In my opinion, Anet doesn’t listen until the majority of the community is screaming in their ear. Only then do they contemplate making a change.

Most people seem to want and use test servers (and beta tests) for their own personal selfish benefit, and not to help with the testing process.

PTS aren’t guarantees that stuff will be bug-free.
In fact I see just as much (if not more) bugs in games that have PTS (Lord of the Rings Online comes to mind).

There IS a testing server however, with players. But those are all under NDA and as such it is not discussed openly.
Having it publicly available would most likely end up hurting the game in the long run, since
1: there would be no surprises because the story would already be spoiled by the PTS.
2: the economy would become completely unstable due to people outright knowing that a certain item would increase in demand before the patch is released.

lordkrall.7241:

Having it publicly available would most likely end up hurting the game in the long run, since
1: there would be no surprises because the story would already be spoiled by the PTS.
2: the economy would become completely unstable due to people outright knowing that a certain item would increase in demand before the patch is released.

1. People want working content more than surprises. You can avoid spoilers if you really want to anyway.
If we get any more fiascos like the broken final, people will not care about any surprises anyway because they will rage quit.
2. The economy in this game is as broken as it can be. How could it become worse? The ones manipulating the TP would get any richer? Those who do not play the TP won’t see much gold anyway. And it is easy for ANet to implement changes on the PTS and not actually taking those changes over, this way, speculating with futures might be a risky task and could possibly ruin you.

For me at least:

Working content is better than bugged surprises.
The economy of GW2 is broken to the point that I do not care about some people possibly making more profit.

Personally, I think the reason for not having a PTS is, that people would know in advance how little content we would get with the updates and burn through the very limited stuff in like a few minutes.
It is an artificial way to keep the very limited content alive a little bit longer.

In many games PTS is open more for marketing reasons and will be the training ground for the players to optimise speed runs. Severe Bugs will be reported. In many cases they stay until the official launch. I have mainly bad experience with PTS. There were still bugs in all cases – even very annoying ones – where I took part in PTS. Schedules are very often more important than fixing bugs. PTS also destroy most of the immersions.

In a proper case the devs would shut down the PTS after collecting the bugs and work for several weeks or months on fixes for all of them. Then the next session on PTS starts. After collecting all the new bugs the cycle of fixes starts again. The problem is that the players will become impatient. Many players would have finished the update even before release and get bored.

Kohlteth.3715:

HardRider.2980:

Having players test future content is way to dangerous and exploitable in this type of game.. they can foresee stuff in which they can invest in/ mess with the TP etc.

Which they could fix by making a lot more stuff “personal loot / account bound” like Acended mats and pre cursors etc………..

That way its about personal development and not just buy and grind gold to get it.

I didn’t mean about the stuff they get.. they will see upcoming content and will be able to save up, buy up and corner the market on materials when it comes to live servers.

Plus having a PTS .. doesn’t mean everything will be buy free.. some bugs don’t happen TILL they hit live servers when thousands and millions of players interact with stuff.. PTS while good.. is also very limiting

There is a PRIVATE test server, which is better than a public test server, and is tested by a select few gamers who can be trusted by Arenanet net to panic about content then may or may not be released.

Public test servers end up getting used by people who just want to have first access to content, rather than people who will constructively help that content be perfected.

I’m not convinced that having a PTS would really help that much.

I haven’t played many MMOs but I remember Ultima Online regularly put up test servers and the vast majority of people on there didn’t know or care what they were testing, they just wanted to muck around with the special stuff you got (like the ability to instantly max any skill instead of having to grind it, and getting a huge pile of gold added to your bank).

It was much the same during the GW2 betas. Some things did get changed. For example NPCs used to use the same downed/dead icons as players and everyone could rez ranger pets, both of which were really annoying because people would rush to help another player only to find it’s actually a pet who could be swapped or an NPC who will just go and get themselves killed again straight away. So that got changed.

But a lot of bugs stayed in. Whether it’s because they were never reported or because Anet never got around to them I don’t know. Although from personal experience I’d say it’s likely a lot never got reported. Whenever I see people complaining about a bug I ask if they’ve sent in a bug report, I can’t remember anyone ever saying they had. Unless it’s genuinely game-breaking most players care enough to complain but not enough to actually report it.

Combined with issues like spoilers (and I don’t see how anyone could properly test new releases without spoilers) and players deliberately finding and hiding exploits so they can use them on Live it just doesn’t seem worth it.

They’re better off sticking with their own QA staff who can be trained on what to look for and have a financial/career incentive to do it properly.

all I am gonna say is EOTM were full with PTS.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You can avoid spoilers if you really want to anyway.

Now I’m interessted, how would you avoid spoilers if you want to test big boss fights (maybe smth like the marionette)? You know the stuff that actually needs testing with lots of people.

People who have said they do have a test server that players use – Do you mean when EotM was being tested? Because I thought that was a one-time thing, not something that’s still going on.

Kohlteth.3715:

HardRider.2980:

Having players test future content is way to dangerous and exploitable in this type of game.. they can foresee stuff in which they can invest in/ mess with the TP etc.

Which they could fix by making a lot more stuff “personal loot / account bound” like Acended mats and pre cursors etc………..

That way its about personal development and not just buy and grind gold to get it.

~yay~ more account bound, love having all my stuff account bound..
>.>

@Danikat

No, they have a ‘Test Krewe’ (though they don’t call it that, anymore) of ~1000 players that test content before release. One of the Devs mentioned it (again) recently in one of the Twitch Livestreams, I believe.

kokiman.2364:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You can avoid spoilers if you really want to anyway.

Now I’m interessted, how would you avoid spoilers if you want to test big boss fights (maybe smth like the marionette)? You know the stuff that actually needs testing with lots of people.

You simply do not play on the PTS. Maybe avoid the PTS forum too.

So no spoilers if you want to avoid them. Someone else will test the content, someone who is not caring about spoilers.

On the other hand, if you really want to test an encounter, why would you worry about spoilers. You cannot have the cake and eat it.

I never play on any PTS, as my time is very limited. Nontheless, I think that a PTS is a great idea and a must for any AAA multiplayer titel.

Remember there was a PTR for EOTM WvW map and there were still issues with that as well. Other games that have PTR’s there are always bugs this is just the nature of game development and complexity of MMO’s especially.

A lot of people seem to think it’s all a single line of code but something as big and complex as Guild Wars 2 makes it very difficult to catch everything or to be able to fix them all in a timely fashion as you’d be required to stick to a release schedule as closely as possible.

Also, sure Guild Wars 2 has a long history of bugged releases BUT they have almost always worked hard to fix issues ASAP. As for the base content there are still some bugs with that but they have also been consistently improving and fixing these things since release. The game is far more polished now and has more features and I’m confident it will continue to improve. People are just bad for not being patient. I know it’s frustrating but you have to be realistic about how game development works.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

@Danikat

No, they have a ‘Test Krewe’ (though they don’t call it that, anymore) of ~1000 players that test content before release. One of the Devs mentioned it (again) recently in one of the Twitch Livestreams, I believe.

Really? Interesting.. To be honest I think that makes more sense and would be more efficient than PTR if you have a smaller group of dedicated players with different play styles they would give a more in-depth overview of differing viewpoints than if you get thousands of people where the majority opinion rules which isn’t always the best thing for the game and doesn’t take into consideration the diversity of the playerbase.

When you have that many people it would be impossible to give each viewpoint due attention and consideration and as others have mentioned, more often than not people just want early access rather than actually care about the game. I know I’m guilty of that when it comes to public beta tests for games. I mean if I find a glaring obvious bug I report them but I mostly just play them to try out the game.

But I think it doesn’t matter how many or how little people are testing there will always be bugs. Having more people does not avoid them and does not mean they can get magically fixed with a single line of code change.

Id love a PTS, but it would be terrible for market speculation. It would put much more emphasis on it that we already have.

PTS’s work best in games where you have a long wait between patches. In games with frequent patches, a PTS will take away the entire community discovering this new stuff at the same time.

People say there would be no spoilers. Take the marionette. The first day there, whether you went to a PTS or not, commanders would be there who did, telling everyone exactly what they’re already worked out.

I don’t know about anyone else, but that would competely kill the game for me. I play games to beat them. To figure them out. Not to go to some website and learn it.

This game is mostly about the open world and you can’t have a PTS about the open world that won’t ruin the game for people who actually want to experience the content before others do.

So you’d either have to do the PTS, or you’d have to suffer the consequences.

A PTS would be terrible for this game.

a PTS has both good and bad sides to it.

Ppl don’t really want PTS servers….ppl only start thinking of them only when things go wrong many times consecutively. I am sure if each release didn’t have so many irritating bugs that should never have made it out in the first place, to the point u actually anticipate the worst and becomes reality in one way or another, people wouldn’t ask for PTS

The idea of PTS comes purely out of frustration, in most cases for really obvious reasons.

Plenty of ignored bugs in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs already.
Bugs are being reported faster than they can fix it as it is. Increasing that number seems like a waste of time.

That aside poorly written bug reports end up wasting time and do more harm than. As someone who frequents the bugs section I don’t have much confidence that there will be a lot of high quality bug reports.

Rebound.3409:

a PTS has both good and bad sides to it.

Ppl don’t really want PTS servers….ppl only start thinking of them only when things go wrong many times consecutively. I am sure if each release didn’t have so many irritating bugs that should never have made it out in the first place, to the point u actually anticipate the worst and becomes reality in one way or another, people wouldn’t ask for PTS

The idea of PTS comes purely out of frustration, in most cases for really obvious reasons.

This. Heck it’s not even bugs most of the time. A lot of it is just glaringly bad design flaws that could easily be pointed out if people could see the details well before it goes live. Even when ArenaNet announces something before hand they are vague and it sounds like a good idea, but the implementation is often bad/flawed. A PTS would certainly help with this, but so would dialog with the community…

they just dont need you (op) to test things

Oxstar.7643:

What’s wrong with having players test content before it comes out? That could save so much embaressment simply from preventing “bad updates”.

For all intents and purposes. Anets patches have been pretty kitten smooth.