Erlestoke Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 I am one of the very few people that play on the PTS regularly and I am a little confused. I had thought that the PTS gets all the patches that the live servers have. But after looking at some of the patch notes for live and seeing they are not working on the PTS I don't believe this to be true. If it is true then I need to start filling out bug reports for these things. Please let me know how this works so I can help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qAsandra Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 As far as I can tell, none of the patches that have gone live since 1.2 was released have been released on the PTS. As for submitting bug reports, good luck with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erlestoke Posted May 10, 2012 Author Share Posted May 10, 2012 As far as I can tell, none of the patches that have gone live since 1.2 was released have been released on the PTS. As for submitting bug reports, good luck with that. Yeah, I noticed it seems like it hasn't been patched since 1.2 but I didn't really realize it until two weeks ago. I think its a shame that its like this right now since this is the server that I play a lot on now. As far as bug reports go, I have had one open for almost two weeks with no reply, It's a bit disheartening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banecolton Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 Yeah, I noticed it seems like it hasn't been patched since 1.2 but I didn't really realize it until two weeks ago. I think its a shame that its like this right now since this is the server that I play a lot on now. As far as bug reports go, I have had one open for almost two weeks with no reply, It's a bit disheartening. It’s kinda’ scary that patches are being released with bugs in them, and yet the public TEST server is not used to vet these patches before they go live. I really want this game to succeed, but I am starting to wonder if BW does…because they don’t seem to be acting like it. There is a community of people ready and willing to help test your patches for free, why aren’t you leveraging those resources? No really, why not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erlestoke Posted May 10, 2012 Author Share Posted May 10, 2012 It’s kinda’ scary that patches are being released with bugs in them, and yet the public TEST server is not used to vet these patches before they go live. I really want this game to succeed, but I am starting to wonder if BW does…because they don’t seem to be acting like it. There is a community of people ready and willing to help test your patches for free, why aren’t you leveraging those resources? No really, why not? This is why I want to know. If its working as intended then at least I will know that. Just need them to tell me one way or another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qAsandra Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 Looks like both threads concerning the PTS got moved. Mine was moved to the Bounty Hunter forums....ROFL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fafryd Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 Not your point, but I am waiting for PTS to get the Ranked WZ and "Allies" patch. Where is it? Presumably then PTS wil have all content on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romiz Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 (edited) They are not updating them since PTS is no being used at this time. That is reason the PTS area of forum is closed. Edited May 10, 2012 by Romiz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icysunx Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 I am one of the very few people that play on the PTS regularly and I am a little confused. I had thought that the PTS gets all the patches that the live servers have. But after looking at some of the patch notes for live and seeing they are not working on the PTS I don't believe this to be true. If it is true then I need to start filling out bug reports for these things. Please let me know how this works so I can help. Your Seriously making a thread about how dissapointed you are that the PTS is not the same are live servers. ITS A TEST SERVER AND YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PLAY ON IT EXCEPT TO TEST PATCHES. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maxil Posted May 10, 2012 Share Posted May 10, 2012 (edited) Your Seriously making a thread about how dissapointed you are that the PTS is not the same are live servers. ITS A TEST SERVER AND YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PLAY ON IT EXCEPT TO TEST PATCHES. And what people are trying to say is they are willing to be guinea pigs and main on a server that is a step ahead with potential buggy performance. Other titles have and still do this. The support needed to maintain it would be offset by the benefit it would bring to the live servers. BW/EA should have PTS a week ahead of the live servers and up at all times. The way it is set up now only using PTS for large releases, just causes an influx of players who desire to see what is new, and not extensive testing of the gameplay mechanics that are used day-to-day like on the live servers. A PTS playerbase is willing to deal with more frequent downtimes because they are on the latest edge of patches, and if they had been so we would not have had double weekly maintenance for over a month now Edited May 10, 2012 by Maxil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erlestoke Posted May 10, 2012 Author Share Posted May 10, 2012 I don't understand. My thread was moved but not answered? Did a mod just press the move button instead of reply? I thought it would be a very simple question for customer service to answer. I just want it to have the most current patch or a patch that will go to live in the future. Right now it is a few patches behind which doesn't help anyone. The PTS says it tests weekly patches, Which doesn't seem to be the case. They have said they they close the PTS forums since they are not testing a patch currently, which is fine. But if they don't want people to play on the PTS then why have it open all the time? Having players being able to play the most up to date patch on the PTS is helpful with getting people to actually play on the PTS for better testing of future patches before they go live. One reason we have had so many bugs is because there are not enough people testing the patches. I had started leveling a character on the PTS since before 1.2 and reach 50 during the 1.2 testing and am working on other characters now. Before 1.2 came to the server we would have about 10 people on the republic side playing, during 1.2 testing it was well over 100 and now its back to 10 people. There were hardly any ranked warzones going at the time of testing due to lack of players. I would think if you wanted more people to play and test on the PTS then you would support it more with the patches, even if its just rolling out the live patches the same time they go live. I can be completely wrong on why or how they want to use the PTS since I am not part of BWA, but that is why i posted this in customer service, to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathisk Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Your Seriously making a thread about how dissapointed you are that the PTS is not the same are live servers. ITS A TEST SERVER AND YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PLAY ON IT EXCEPT TO TEST PATCHES. Well, one really good reason to play on the PTS is to get a character to 50 so you can test the endgame content when it comes out. As of right now, there is no ability to copy high level characters from the live servers to the PTS (baring special conditions...) and you cannot create pre-made characters to test things. So the only option, if you want to help test the high level stuff, is to get a high level character. And the only way to do that is to play on the PTS. Besides, most of the regulars on the PTS are fun to play and chat with, so even though it's a very low-pop server, it's still kinda fun. Except for all the bugs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurzis Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 BW staff, especially the bald one think they are dev and gaming gods this is far from the case each patch screws up more than it fixes, i think this is because of the bald chap please fire him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obiwansghost Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Just wanted to add that while you can submit bug reports on the PTS, GM's do not respond to them. Nor is there any form of customer service provided. As far as I can tell and my past experiences, this is normal for test servers. As for patches, I was under the impression that only major patches (1.1 etc) were pushed to the PTS first before they went live. My only real experience with test servers is from SWG and I do know that they kept the test servers current to the live servers. I also saw QA folks on the test servers quite often. I hope the dev team will use the PTS in a similar fashion that the SWG devs did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qAsandra Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Just wanted to add that while you can submit bug reports on the PTS, GM's do not respond to them. Nor is there any form of customer service provided. As far as I can tell and my past experiences, this is normal for test servers. As for patches, I was under the impression that only major patches (1.1 etc) were pushed to the PTS first before they went live. My only real experience with test servers is from SWG and I do know that they kept the test servers current to the live servers. I also saw QA folks on the test servers quite often. I hope the dev team will use the PTS in a similar fashion that the SWG devs did. I played SWG also, on TCPrime and yes, the GMs would answer tickets. It was a test server and the players there had customer support and GM support. I know that the PTS in this game has no customer support and that is not what we were asking for. As it states in this thread; http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=451559, there is a bug that is affecting the entire server and it needs to be fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obiwansghost Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 I played SWG also, on TCPrime and yes, the GMs would answer tickets. It was a test server and the players there had customer support and GM support. I know that the PTS in this game has no customer support and that is not what we were asking for. As it states in this thread; http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=451559, there is a bug that is affecting the entire server and it needs to be fixed. That wasn't the entire point of my post. I read yours as well as the others and CS support was mentioned. All the times that I submitted a ticket in SWG on the test centers was always answered with "Because the issue you reported is on TC/TCP, this ticket will be closed as we do not support it." I gave my response to the OP in my second paragraph. And my point was, since it is the PTS, the GM's do not respond to bug reports as it states in a sticky in that section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terminova Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 (edited) I played SWG also, on TCPrime and yes, the GMs would answer tickets. It was a test server and the players there had customer support and GM support. I know that the PTS in this game has no customer support and that is not what we were asking for. As it states in this thread; http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=451559, there is a bug that is affecting the entire server and it needs to be fixed. Submit a bug report which is a ticket that does not generate a ticket you see, but does get submitted to a place someone will read. That's what they want you to do. I am one of the very few people that play on the PTS regularly and I am a little confused. I had thought that the PTS gets all the patches that the live servers have. But after looking at some of the patch notes for live and seeing they are not working on the PTS I don't believe this to be true. If it is true then I need to start filling out bug reports for these things. Please let me know how this works so I can help. The major patches like 1.2 that need more testing are all that are likely to hit the PTS. Edited May 11, 2012 by terminova Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelinCarnate Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 The major patches like 1.2 that need more testing are all that are likely to hit the PTS. Considering every week since 1.2 they have had to have 2 patches, it seems to me that the minor patches need more testing as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terminova Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Considering every week since 1.2 they have had to have 2 patches, it seems to me that the minor patches need more testing as well. I doubt using the PTS for them would do much except create more work for the server techs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ignicity Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 (edited) Your Seriously making a thread about how dissapointed you are that the PTS is not the same are live servers. ITS A TEST SERVER AND YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PLAY ON IT EXCEPT TO TEST PATCHES. More proof that posting in all caps shows just how much intelligence you lack. I think the point the OP (and many other recent threads on the topic) was attempting to make was that the PTS is not being utilized. Edited May 11, 2012 by Ignicity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GalacticKegger Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 (edited) I am one of the very few people that play on the PTS regularly and I am a little confused. I had thought that the PTS gets all the patches that the live servers have. But after looking at some of the patch notes for live and seeing they are not working on the PTS I don't believe this to be true. If it is true then I need to start filling out bug reports for these things. Please let me know how this works so I can help.The PTS operates with the patches before they actually become live patches. It may see portions of a weekly or emergency patch which includes high level fixes that effect both. Otherwise they are essentially two different revisions of the game, with the live game being a "subset" of the PTS game. When in doubt your bug reports are our best friend. Edited May 11, 2012 by GalacticKegger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mezla Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 No, OP, what you describe requires competence and foresight, which Bioware clearly lacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erlestoke Posted May 11, 2012 Author Share Posted May 11, 2012 I doubt using the PTS for them would do much except create more work for the server techs. So keeping one more server up to date on patches is too much work for the techs? I am not sure it is that much more work to do, but I am wrong a lot. I didn't even get my legacy tauntaun on the PTS even though I had a level 50 character there. That doesn't bother me, but what does is that the test server isn't being used to its full capability to help things go smoother for BWA. They don't need to test the emergency patches on the PTS just give them to the PTS when they go live since people do play that server as well. Otherwise there isn't a reason to have it up unless testing a patch. Specially if it creates that much more work for people in the office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cold-Fusion Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Bioware certainly seem to have a strange approach to the use of the test server. The assumption being they are only using it to test the major content patches and not the more incremental patches we see in between major patches. Taking this weeks issues as an example, I sincerely doubt with a reasonable number of people on the test server that the 'disappearing matrix cubes' issue would have made it to the live server. What seems to be happening is that Bioware work on the running list of issues they have until say the end of sunday (I'm sure many of them work weekends), test the patch internally during monday and push it onto live on tuesday. I think we all appreciate the frequency of patches as it demonstrates there are alot of dedicated people working on the game to get these fixes and changes out. Having said all this, taking this weeks issues as an example if the patch had been rolled out on the PTS on monday as well as internally a much larger player base (say 1,000 against biowares QA dept of probably 100) I'm sure the 'disappearing matrix thingamgigs' would have been spotted before going to live they could have then fixed the issue and rolled out the patch on Thursday/Friday and reduce the server downtime from two sessions to one. Bioware seem to be wasting a great QA resource with the PTS for unknown reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThrillInstructor Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 You can't blame BW for not putting each and every patch on the PTS because there are so few players actually playing there outside the bigger content patches that the actual increase in QA would be negligible. I realize that this is somewhat of a circular argument because a more active approach towards your 'tester community' would make the PTS far more attractive to players, but in the state it is in it would have yielded little help to postpone a much-needed hot-fix patch on the live servers for some additional testing on the PTS. And the patches since 1.2 were just that: A series of hot-fixes and housekeeping patches. The urgency of them sort of negated the necessity of a prolonged test phase on the PTS. I just hope that BW will be able to settle down in the future and have time to develop content and features with a much less degree of ...well....let's call it panic. I guess we can all agree that there are many players 'out there' who would be more than willing to put some time into testing on the PTS. Fact is: BW does listen! If not for the feedback from the PTS-users a very unbalanced and silly system for ranked WZs would have gone live (As stated in a recent pod-cast). Chances are that 1.3 will hit the PTS rather soon. I will certainly test it to the best of my abilities and I hope to see more and more players who will try to make it an even better game than it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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