Guild Wars 2

So I watched the new sneak peak of the quarterly update, which was a bit underwhelming imo (whole other irrelevant story), but then I began to question myself….How do the devs test the patches? Is there a secret team of ninjas out there doing all the work? is it only the pro players? Or are the simply none? I usually don’t pay attention to these kind of things but after quitting gw2 for a while and playing LoL for a bit, I noticed they always have a PTR. WoW also has a PTR and most game actually. So if there aren’t any, why? It seems like games like WoW, LoL and even Elder Scrolls Online (AAA games like GW2) have their own PTR and are quite successful. It seems like it would really help the GW2 team if they created a PTR to let the community spot possible bugs, test out the balance changes and even let them speak their mind on the actual new content. I understand part of it is probably due to their terms and conditions (or whatever it’s called), but it would probably greatly outweigh negatives and bring a lot of positives to the development of the game. so yeah…. whats up Anet??? Hopefuly others feel the same and the devs could look into it! So what do you guys think?
- a confused fan

P.S I stopped playing because, quite frankly, HoTs sucks (no offence, just opinion)

There wont be a PTS. There doesnt NEED to be one. I can tell you right now, from having played several games with PTS available, no one actually uses them for their intended purpose. They use them to figure out the best way to profit off the changes, not find bugs.

There are a lot of bugs in this game which could be easily avoided if there was more testing.

VoidNard.7206:

There are a lot of bugs in this game which could be easily avoided if there was more testing.

And I’m fairly certain Santa’s my uncle. Point is, there arent. More testing doesnt mean you’re going to be able to fix those bugs in any sort of quick fashion. If you’re an older player of the game, you’ll know how it was possible to bug teq by “overburning” it’s health, causing it to fly away and never come back. Now, however, it goes invulnerable to PREVENT that bug from happening. It took them, I believe…. 4 iterations of “fixes” for them to actually quash that bug. You know why that bug wasnt discovered earlier in the game’s life? Because there are some bugs that dont show up unless you have extremely specific circumstances- such as a group of 120-150 people organized on Teamspeak pounding on teq so hard it farts kittens. Such a group would be capable of inflicting faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more damage than a typical “pug map” can due to being so organized.

The PTS for WoW is awful. And it’s only available when they are putting out a new patch.

Oh, and bugs still make it through. Because a test server and live server are still different and what works on test, will have issues on live. It happens. That is how computers/servers/programming/etc works.

What about all the other games, WoW was just an example and I know a lot of people dislike that game (terrible example -_-). What about letting others try the new balance updates and giving feedback on the forums. Having a dedicated PTR forum page would also help.

Mainly because there’s 3 areas such “testing” needs to take place. Additionally, limited number of players, means that there’s hardly sufficient testing. THAT means anet’s making the right choice of incremental updates to the live game where they have the entire playerbase able to much around with the changes and provide feedback.

PTR? PTS? What are you guys talking about?

Utterly confused by everything in this thread.

They’ve said that they’ll be doing future beta tests like they did for HoT, with people playing on the live servers on beta characters that can’t access the live banks and such. They get a lot better data on how things work in the game that way.

drunkenpilot.9837:

PTR? PTS? What are you guys talking about?

Utterly confused by everything in this thread.

PTR stands for Public Test Realm if I remember correctly. It’s where players go to be live guinea pigs. In this game that wouldn’t work because most people can’t even dodge correctly so asking these individuals to judge the game would end terribly. Turns out the same is true of high end content; asking elite guilds tends to build content that is above the playerbase.

But benchmarking and fixing bugs is supposed to take place on these servers.

Well the speed at which they do anything is pretty terrible. Spring quarterly update: some balance change (warriors still bad in pvp and elite specs still op), announcement of new WvW changes which would launch in November 2016, new raid tier, and a bunch of new gem store stuff! Maybe they do need some player base help.

Here is, more or less, what the Devs stated about PTRs in the latest AMA:

‘We’ve experimented with public test servers and there are two problems for us: 1) much of our stuff is story driven, and not suitable for a public test server; and 2) the results from play patterns don’t match what we see later on live. Instead, we developed a system we used for HoT where we can beta test characters and maps on the Live servers with a cute little personal sandbox that surrounds beta characters.We will be exploring using that tech more so we can do public-test-server-like things but in the live game, so we get real useful results back.’

DGraves.3720:

drunkenpilot.9837:

PTR? PTS? What are you guys talking about?

Utterly confused by everything in this thread.

PTR stands for Public Test Realm if I remember correctly. It’s where players go to be live guinea pigs. In this game that wouldn’t work because most people can’t even dodge correctly so asking these individuals to judge the game would end terribly. Turns out the same is true of high end content; asking elite guilds tends to build content that is above the playerbase.

But benchmarking and fixing bugs is supposed to take place on these servers.

Thanks much for the clarification.

Anet doesn’t have a PTS but we know that they have a server where people test stuff from things devs have said over the years (unless it’s changed). We have no info on it, such as who or how many, but we do know people do test stuff.

We even know of some guilds who tested raids before they were released, so players do test stuff.

You make it seem that a PTR would speed Anet up. This makes sense how?[/quote]

There are a lot of skill bugs in this game, no idea if its latency or something but half me revenants skills don’t even work 50% of the time..

I agree this game needs better QA.

EVE Online’s PTR is great, but they change the whole ruleset of the game there. Your pilot can learn everything and everything is supplied through the market and everything costs like 1 copper (in gw2 money) so you can test everything your hearts desire.

That’s how I got to test capital ships back when I was playing. As a solo player I knew i’d never be able to make one for myself unless I joined a corp but I didnt feel like it.

It was cool

They only allow public testing when they can advertise it as a feature for preorder .

drunkenpilot.9837:

PTR? PTS? What are you guys talking about?

Utterly confused by everything in this thread.

PTR = Player Test Realm. PTS = Player Test Server.

Different names for the same thing. It’s a separate copy of the game on a different server which is one or more releases ahead of the ‘live’ game. It allows players to play through new content or balance changes while they’re still in development.

In theory this means players can provide feedback on what’s being developed – identifying bugs and giving opinions on changes so that the end result is a better release.

In practice, at least from what I’ve seen in Ultima Online and Elder Scrolls Online the vast majority of people on the PTS are there to fool around with the tools provided to facilitate testing (for example ESO allows you to create a max level character with several sets of end-game gear instantly and buy everything in the cash shop for free).

Then there’s people who are there to get a headstart on new content so they can claim worlds 1st kills, speedclear records and things like that very quickly once it’s released. (And in some cases this has lead to players identifying exploits and then going out of their way to make sure the developers don’t find out about them so they can use them when it’s released.)

The people who are actually sincerely there to test the content are often a small minority, and the ones who do that and can give constructive feedback (as in not “OMG this suxx u nerfed my build!”) are even rarer.

I used to (and occasionally still do) try to recruit people to help test 3rd party (and occasionally 1st party) mods for single-player games. Finding people who are interested is easy (who doesn’t love a sneak peek at new things?) finding people who actually understand and appreciate what’s involved, and will commit to it, especially when it means pushing through with horribly buggy content (as in objects and NPCs disappearing for no reason, random things turning pink, bosses suddenly going invulnerable or resetting to max health etc.) for no reward other than giving more detail on the bugs you encountered is incredibly difficult.

Having said all that Anet will bring players on board when they think it’s worth it. They did it before GW2 was released and again before HoT, and they actually had a separate server set up to test Edge of the Mists before that was released – although that was a great illustration of the other problem – people simply don’t play the same way on a test server they do on a live one. On the test server EOTM had some really great fights making full use of the map layout and mechanics. On live it very quickly became a farming map where groups go out of their way to avoid each other so they can capture objectives in peace.

I have direct experience of the downside to PTR stuff in another game. Each major patch would hit the test server a couple of weeks before release, obviously the idea is to test it before it hits the masses.

Three problems:

1. Players would use the experience to gain a trading advantage by buying, selling and collecting stuff on the live server before the official launch.

2. Some players would burn out on the new content before it was even launched so the forum was full of “bored” posts and spoiler posts almost on launch day.

3. This is the biggie. Hardly any of the reported bugs/exploits were fixed before launch because that would have delayed the launch day.

The first two points meant that instead of a feeling of excitement at launch many players felt that they had already missed the boat, especially when it came to making a quick profit on the auction house. Anyone was free to create an account on the test server but most did not simply because you don’t keep any progress you make there so you have to have the time to “waste”.

And in games of this type it’s hard to offer players a preview of Christmas Day without spoiling the real day for everyone.