What was the point of PTS again?

[iopseal]

What's the point if the developers just ignore player feedback? Are they just going through the motions?

[Saacius]

Not necessarily that they want to ignore feedback, dev team is likely being severely mismanaged. They themselves don't really get to decide what to focus on and what not to. People should be mad at whoever manages the dev team and who that person reports to.

[mentalmackem]

Not necessarily that they want to ignore feedback, dev team is likely being severely mismanaged. They themselves don't really get to decide what to focus on and what not to. People should be mad at whoever manages the dev team and who that person reports to.

 

That still doesnt say what the point of the PTS was. If they know there bosses wont take the feedback then why have the PTS up? you are just wasting your players time and money.

[Calidge]

Not necessarily that they want to ignore feedback, dev team is likely being severely mismanaged.

 

I know you're trying to be kind.... but really, how do you know this is true?

 

The empirical data suggests that PTS is a waste of time. The "point," as the OP asked, is clearly .... meaningless.

[Estelindis]

That still doesnt say what the point of the PTS was. If they know there bosses wont take the feedback then why have the PTS up? you are just wasting your players time and money.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the PTS is much more about bug testing than feedback. It's not that it's 0% about feedback. They do make some changes in response to feedback, sometimes. But it seems like, if feedback was the main point, there'd be a lot more changes. So I can only conclude it's mainly about identifying and fixing bugs.

[iopseal]

I know you're trying to be kind.... but really, how do you know this is true?

 

The empirical data suggests that PTS is a waste of time. The "point," as the OP asked, is clearly .... meaningless.

 

It's an old canard that gets thrown about by players who want to give their favourite devs the benefit of the doubt. However, not that I know the situation at BW Austin, when ever you read expose's on games with troubled developments the developers themselves are often to blame with unreasonable project goals, lack of communication between different departments etc. Management can often make bad situations worse but the idea that devs are always blameless is naïve to say the least.

[SoonerJBD]

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the PTS is much more about bug testing than feedback. It's not that it's 0% about feedback. They do make some changes in response to feedback, sometimes. But it seems like, if feedback was the main point, there'd be a lot more changes. So I can only conclude it's mainly about identifying and fixing bugs.

 

Yeah, but they didn’t identify or fix bugs, either. The final boss fight in this sexually transmitted disease disguised as an expansion is bugged to the point it is unplayable for many people, and that is just the most conspicuous one. The list of known bugs is longer than the roster of cockroaches at your local hoarder’s house. There is no excuse for releasing anything with this many bugs when you have a PTS.

[Estelindis]

Yeah, but they didn’t identify or fix bugs, either.

As the owner of a computer that has not been able to play the game for the past ten out of eleven days due to various bugs, I'm not exactly standing up to say that this game is bug-free. But saying that they didn't identify or fix bugs is a reach. Just because there are plenty left doesn't mean that none were fixed. Of course, we can argue that the expansion should've been further delayed to fix more. But I can't think of any game or major update that releases with zero bugs. There will always be some.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Estelindis

[iopseal]

As the owner of a computer that has not been able to play the game for the past ten out of eleven days due to various bugs, I'm not exactly standing up to say that this game is bug-free. But saying that they didn't identify or fix bugs is a reach. Just because there are plenty left doesn't mean that none were fixed. Of course, we can argue that the expansion should've been further delayed to fix more. But I can't think of any game or major update that releases with zero bugs. There will always be some.

 

idk some of these bugs are pretty serious https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1002289

[SoonerJBD]

As the owner of a computer that has not been able to play the game for the past ten out of eleven days due to various bugs, I'm not exactly standing up to say that this game is bug-free. But saying that they didn't identify or fix bugs is a reach. Just because there are plenty left doesn't mean that none were fixed. Of course, we can argue that the expansion should've been further delayed to fix more. But I can't think of any game or major update that releases with zero bugs. There will always be some.

 

There has to be a middle ground between “zero bugs” and content that is virtually unplayable. The new FP is the flagship of their highway overpass collapse disguised as an expansion. They made a six minute cinematic trailer for it, and the final boss fight is unplayable for many people. There is simply no excuse for that. Imagine if you bought the Lich King expansion for WoW back in the day and every time you tried to fight the Lich King you got auto killed by a bug. That’s just unforgivable. That FP should have been tested and retested, and there is no way it should have been pushed live when people are clipping through the floor and dying of fall damage repeatedly on the final boss fight.

Edited February 18, 2022 by SoonerJBD

[Estelindis]

idk some of these bugs are pretty serious https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1002289

Yes, I agree, they are... I mean, I would consider not being able to play the game at all (as I just referenced myself) as more serious than not being able to play some of one's characters... but yes, there are plenty of serious bugs.

 

It does appear that some of these bugs did not show up in PTS, maybe at all. Certainly I was able to play PTS without the particular issue showing up that's currently preventing me, and people with the same laptop as me, from playing the game.

 

There has to be a middle ground between “zero bugs” and content that is virtually unplayable. The new FP is the flagship of their highway overpass collapse disguised as an expansion. They made a six minute cinematic trailer for it, and the final boss fight is unplayable for many people. There is simply no excuse for that.

Yeah, I'm sure there does have to be a middle ground. As I said, I can't even play the game on my laptop currently, so tbh I'd love to be even able to experience those bugs, but I can't.

 

I would like to think that content that did not make the PTS - due to trying to prevent story spoilers, or maybe just not being ready yet - would be more likely to have bugs show up when it goes live, vs. PTS'd stuff. Maybe that's why something like the bug you mentioned slipped through. But broadly, yeah, it's confusing.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Estelindis

[Calidge]

It's an old canard that gets thrown about by players who want to give their favourite devs the benefit of the doubt.

 

Or it's a take from a software engineer that isn't willing to give the "devs" a pass.

 

Garbage work is garbage.

[Spikanor]

i think the answer about what the point of the PTS is the same with the last time when the feedback from the PTS on the Amplifier Pane from last year.

when the Feedback on the PTS was that it needs a collapsible option when there have not done it and do the same on the live server when the feedback was more worse then it was on the PTS.

[robwettengel]

I am not certain. Clearly, PTS serves a purpose for previewing content to the players. However, now we know why they only wanted us testing out combat styles and why we couldn't do any of that with the new content. It would have been exposed that the new content was meager.

 

However, the thing I can't wrap my head around is why the philosophical 180 from 6.0? We go from "play your way" and getting massive gear drops back to the having a million different currencies and vendors for each particular type. I may well create an Excel spreadsheet to aid in keeping track of where my 15 toons have acquired their gear to keep upgrading paths straight in my head. I haven't even begun to figure out how much grinding will need to be completed for each tier level yet. I distinctly recall that part of their design philosophy was wanting to get rid of all the various gear tokens. And they bring them back the following expansion? I must confess that I cannot begin to imagine how this is logical. This is tantamount to a person changing to the polar opposite political ideology over a mere two-year span for "reasons" (Ex. - libertarianism and communism).

 

I understand why they chose to limit the number of FPs that are available to run for CQ each week. They want players to run all the FPs and not just spam the easiest ones to farm comms, mats, gear--whatever. Couldn't they have done this without so obviously robbing players of choice? Say limiting being able to run a single FP once, and any subsequent runs would not count for CQ? Was this something that was suggested internally and rejected by the Team upon further exploration and discussion? Their metrics obviously already track the frequency at which individual FPs are being run and can probably go back throughout the amount of time we have been playing the game to see how many times we've run a particular FP or Op. If they weren't tracking these numbers, why make this change in the first place?

 

The stated reason for removing abilities across the board was to aid in balancing PvP because time-to-kill was too high. But I am really puzzled as to why they needlessly gave themselves so much more work to do. Removing abilities from the whole game, thereby necessitating a need to rebalance the whole game, just to increase time-to-kill in PvP strikes me as being some truth, but not the whole truth. This is like using a nuclear weapon to swat a fly. The response is totally disproportional to the goal. Why can't we just formally separate PvE and PvP? Force Lightning does X damage in PvE, yet why can't a new database or whatever be created and tied to clicking on the PvP toggle for Force Lightning to do Y damage only in PVP? I think this is entirely possible, given that KotFEET content has three levels of difficulty. Couldn't a new difficulty level for PvP be created to aid with ensuring that PvP and PvE can be balanced separately? Having each of them use different stats and disallowing the use of the removed abilities only in the PvP environment seems like a quicker way to rebalance PvP than having to rebalance the whole game.

[DarkMatterSlifus]

Same crap as Blizzard and WoW, PTS doesn't matter because Bioware doesn't realistically make right decisions based on the massive feedback they get. They have threads for you to state your feedback in but NONE of it is considered. They simply do what they want whether it ruins the game or not.

[LordCamTheGreat]

The stated reason for removing abilities across the board was to aid in balancing PvP because time-to-kill was too high.

 

It's funny cus this was the claimed reason alongside an inability to balance the game - but now at level 80 you have 350k hp so even without as many defensives, the time to kill is basically the same in pvp.

 

We've been calling for PvE and PvP to be separated and balanced differently for years now. Either the devs aren't listening or there is some strange engine limitation preventing them from doing it - which would be weird considering there are PvP zones which disable certain abilities, so we already know that different areas can affect abilities. We also know that the devs can transform the player into other characters with different ability sets, so it stands to reason that PvP loadouts could be created and applied whenever a player launches PvP.

 

That all being said, there is a "big" PvP update coming in 7.2 which may fix things, though considering how "big" this 10 year anniversary expansion was, I'm not holding out much hope at all.

[TheVoyant]

As the owner of a computer that has not been able to play the game for the past ten out of eleven days due to various bugs, I'm not exactly standing up to say that this game is bug-free. But saying that they didn't identify or fix bugs is a reach. Just because there are plenty left doesn't mean that none were fixed. Of course, we can argue that the expansion should've been further delayed to fix more. But I can't think of any game or major update that releases with zero bugs. There will always be some.

 

90% of the problems on the Dec PTS made it to launch. I was very vocal, as were many others, about them.

 

The only noticeable differences is the PTS wasn't as bad as launch was in regards to a punishing experience. At least PTS you got some gear items to soften the grind of death. And you didn't have as many items taken away from you.

 

I don't know how they managed to make things even worse then it was but these are also the guys who think adding hp and taking away skills equals a difficult increase.... When all in all that actually equals laziness and just makes the game feel more grindy....

 

Oh and and at best at Max Level at Max Gear (if you manage to acquire that before they change the gearing again)...

 

You'll be a fraction of how powerful you were at 75 in 6.0

The argument of doing more damage is null, sure we might do double damage but when the enemies have like 30x the hps it equates to feeling less powerful. That and again it makes things drag on. Oh and now you have no rewards or loot to show for it.

 

Quite literally 7.0 is sadistic

[MystyqeofXev]

The twin illusions of caring and responsiveness.

[robwettengel]

 

We've been calling for PvE and PvP to be separated and balanced differently for years now. Either the devs aren't listening or there is some strange engine limitation preventing them from doing it - which would be weird considering there are PvP zones which disable certain abilities, so we already know that different areas can affect abilities. We also know that the devs can transform the player into other characters with different ability sets, so it stands to reason that PvP loadouts could be created and applied whenever a player launches PvP.

 

That all being said, there is a "big" PvP update coming in 7.2 which may fix things, though considering how "big" this 10 year anniversary expansion was, I'm not holding out much hope at all.

 

Nice to see you're still around. I don't think its hyperbole to state that a separation would solve nearly all of the balancing issues. Do you agree? Reading your post just may have given me an explanation as to why they have not been separated thus far. The Devs may have serious philosophical reservations about going down this road. Why? From their POV, could this not split the game community into two distinct camps? They may simply not want to do this to the community. It would be wonderful if the Devs could communicate their philosophical postulates to us all--might help explain why we have had this 180 performed in terms of "play your way."

 

Why is it seen as a good move for players to advance from lvl 75-80 going through content that in no way is commensurate with such a reward. It really breaks the leveling experience. Is this how it will be going forward? Was it only done to ensure that a maximum number of players can play the new Op when it drops? If that is the reason why, it is a poor one. I could see the content we ran on Manaan and Elom as granting enough XP to advance one level in total--not five.

[WtarSars]

In my opinion the PTS is used to satisfy 3 conditions:

• Test new and/or revised server side processes
  
• Create advertisement to entice new people to try the game
  
• Generate hype to keep existing players
  

 

The PTS is not to make or reverse changes. By the time we see it there have been resources spent to get the game to this point. Deadlines and spent time mean you're going to get what you see. The PTS is also not intended to ensure a bug free release. The bulk of the player base will stay and deal with the changes regardless of the uproar. BW knows this. If they truly thought that 80% of the subscriber pool would leave due to 7.0 they'd have done things differently. Just stay quiet, don't fan the flames while the coals are hot, let some time pass then post.

 

This "expansion" isn't a ploy, again in my opinion, to sunset the title. There's no value in committing resources to a project with future failure as the intended goal. Shutting the game down and funneling those resources to profitable projects would be the goal.