RIP Test Server? No longer for initial testing of new content

SmokeJumper wrote:

These two issues and one "solution" are exemplified by one glaring and massive problem. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get a client to even log in to Test or Test Copy.
A couple weeks ago, I was able to use my Station Launcher (L2?) to get on to Test without any problems. I will admit I don't go on Test as often as I would like, but I do try to fit in time there. On Sunday, I found some time, and attempted to log in as I had before. And the client crashed before even logging in. So began my attempts to find a client that would log in.
My first attempt was with the TestEQ2.exe in the directory where the SL2 has the Test files, that was a no go. It wouldn't start, just like when the SL2 tried to hand off to it.
The most current EQ2 launcher (L3), which I downloaded from Everquest2.com, does not have a Test folder or a TestEQ2.exe anywhere which is contrary to the FAQ about how to get on to Test (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=441186). That FAQ is at the 2nd page of the FAQ forum. It would be better to have an UPDATED one stickied in the In Testing forum. There is also no button or other indication of how to get to Test on the L3.
It was through posting my frustration in a more private forum that I got directed to where I could get ahold of the -original- Test launcher (L1) that I have finally had success but now no time. Someone posting on the In Testing forum here has had less luck in getting someone to link him that launcher. Should it take a Google search to find a launcher to even go on to Test or Test Copy?
If you want players on either or both, then don't make it difficult to get there.

SmokeJumper wrote:

a) So you want to move primary testing to the beta server setup? The setup that requires people to have a third set of installation files, sign up to an additional forum for a game they'll never play, and use a nasty, nagging, laggy launcher that just plain doesn't work for a lot of players much of the time?

b) If you want more testers your first incentive should probably be to reduce the number of hoops they have to jump through to get there, not add to them as per a). Even now, the forums contain plenty of posts from people who are already trying to access the test servers and failing.
c) I've been involved in the scheduled tests on copy a bunch of times. We almost never get the numbers required regardless of the amount of organising, advertising and inducements offered. Of the people that do show up the majority are usually from the test server, often 2/3/4 boxing in order to raise the numbers needed for the testing being done. Most of the rest are impatient juveniles bouncing up and down while the devs & QAs are trying to set/reset the tests and hassling them with requests like 'can I have a myth?', 'can we go to dungeon X?'.

SmokeJumper wrote:

1) Big features like raids? No, there aren't. But there aren't on Test_Copy usually either without advance warning or setting things up with specific guilds. On Test_Copy live server people can already copy over there anytime they want and test the same builds as test has (unless PVP has been flipped on).
2) Maybe no X stuff on Test, but what difference does it make on test_copy. That's not the same server as Test.
3) The times I've been on and a Dev called saying they needed help testing something on the actual Test server, people tend to come running, dropping whatever they were doing. I've never seen a call for raid testing on TEST. I've heard about calls for people to come over to Test_Copy and people from test tend to switch over for that too.

Just to point out somethings that lead me to my statement:
We already have a server that is basically like your proposed "beta server". Its called Test_Copy and is dead the vast majority of the time other than a few seers checking out how a test patch affected their aa/gear. That server can already be wiped and has been in the past, and IMO should be wiped more often. As I stated before, I don't see any reason why that server couldn't be opened up for copies from the X server. Up until pretty recently copying from the regular live servers has been painless and reasonably fast, at least compared to how long a copy used to take. It's not designed to be a permanent server anyway, it never was.
If you are so concerned about the marketplace, the market on Test_Copy used to have an unlimited amount of SC. Apparently people found some exploit and that was taken away, but I'm sure the holes could have been patched and the market could be functional for testing (without real money of course).
As for the population available for testing certain things, let it be more widely known there is going to be a test at X time for X thing, make it easier for people to either copy or make a buffed char & get it set up I'm sure you'd see better participation at least from test people. Adding in some incentives like you've been talking about would help draw in more people from live (& X if you included them in the abilty to copy over). Fix the patchers so people can actually get to test & test copy without jumping through hoops.

And really the biggest thorn is that testers have been hearing for YEARS how test doesn't do anything, doesn't test anything blah blah blah from live players who ran into something that went to live bugged. Now for raids, that's often because we couldn't test it on TEST and TEST_COPY didn't get many more than the test people who copied over. For other stuff it's not usually because it wasn't caught & bugged. Its simply because it didn't get fixed after it was reported. Yet the testers catch the blame for it from the live/X server players. It might not be the intent of the devs, but this particular change, and the way it was divulged really just feels like the same old thing from a different source.

There are so many things said in the responses above that I want to /agree with. Everyone with a pale blue name is on the same wavelength here. It makes me sad that we have to try to spell out for you, what should be known to you already.
Smokejumper, you really don't understand testers, do you? The real testers, not the masses you want to bribe onto TestCopy (though they have some limited value too), but the hardcore Test community who as Calthine says "live, breath, eat, dream, and poo testing". What motivates us, why we continue to struggle on Test, what keeps us going. Look at the biography on my forum profile, that I set when I started EQ2. It says "Test first, play later!" - that really is at the core of what EQ2 is for me.
You manage this game as a business and the expectations of the playerbase in general as it's customers (and I don't mind admitting you do a good job of that). But you just don't "get" us testers. Please, try to read what people are saying here with fresh eyes. Stop treating us like regular players, because we aren't! And we won't react like them, so stop trying to handle us the same way.
You want to know what motivates me to keep going more than anything else? Something pretty simple actually. It's when an individual developer (of any variety: designer, coder, artist, etc.) tells me they appreciate the help I'm giving them. That they value the feedback and bugs I find, that they recognise the time and effort I put in. When they just say thank you. Be it on a forum post, or in a PM, or a tell on Test, or several of them made a point of telling me at Fan Faire too. That makes it worthwhile, because even when business timelines mean the bugs don't get fixed or Test gets skipped over, the developers making the game still appreciate our hard work.
I'm not going to name names, but you have some awesome developers who understand us testers just fine. Who communicate with us through whatever channels they're comfortable using. Who try to give us updates and feedback, who'll take the time to write a sentence to explain what they've changed (or not) and why, in response to what I've found. Big *hugs* to all you guys, you know who you are.

Rijacki wrote:

Oh my yes what she said!!

SmokeJumper wrote:

2) Yeah cause the people in the In Testing Feedback Forum where this thread http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=487640 was posted - 90% of those posting - are not from Test.
If something is a necessity, there shouldn't even be a question of "Can we do this?" You post on that thread as if we had the choice. Why leave it up to us when it's clearly a goal for you that will happen in one way or another?
I'm not asking for incentives - why now when I've been here for years? When I see a bug I submitted is fixed then I know it didn't go unnoticed and I didn't waste my time.
Devs come on test and tell us something's been put in place that we know otherwise is not there - like loot in the new Silent City zones, for example. Delving Dead trash has trash loot but not the nameds, not even the final named. Hope this gets changed by Thursday. But guess what? We usually won't know until someone on live posts about it on the In Testing Feedback Forum or what would be the GU61 Feedback thread or until Test gets patched again (soon).
Like a lot of people on test, I also still have characters on live servers that have slowly been behind while I play on Test more and more. Having yet another server to copy to and test content... /shudder to think. Maybe if the existing Test population (all my alts, my guild/guildhall, everything) is automatically copied, noone missing a step because they have to wait for the next copy, might make it tolerable. Maybe.

The incentives that you are not talking about here in this thread but elsewhere, are nothing but bribes. They are "vet rewards", correct? Well, fluff and cute stuff is not going to bring the testers that you should really try to encourage - that is the ones that do the high end content, and who currently are not testing. Because most of the things ARE tested. Dungeons and raids however, are not properly tested.
So, you have to add game enhancing things to your rewards. And once you do that, they will be required for min/maxers. So they will grind tokens on Test Copy, and it will become a requirement added to the current list of must-haves on Live.
Is that seriously the kind of game you want, where "testing" becomes the new PQ to get through?
And are you sure that this will encourage people to actually submit any or useful feedbacks and/or bugreports?
Or will that be a requirement for the rewards, in which case your system will be clogged with feedbacks and the same bugs submitted over and over.
What exactly will be the requirement? That you complete dungeons that might be uncompletable if you are actually testing for real? Or that you just show up and hang out, killing a thing or two in the designated area of the week?

Sometimes the most simple is the most efficient.
Do you EVER look in the In Testing forum? Did it occur to you to just do what people are asking for there?
1. Make the test client actually available, test copies easy make and reliably transfer?
2. Read the threads and feedback and actually answer people??
3. edit to remove some stuff here...

But the only thing you really need to do is actually read and respond to the feedback you actually get. If you can't do that now, how will you manage when all the hoards of token-grinders comes and leaves feedback like "This is hard. It bites. Make it better". You already have those, saying things like "tried to kill the named at the spires, I died, it's too hard give me a better buffer" (I wish I was joking. Or that they had at least mentioned which stage the spires was in at that time.)
If the beta-testers for the expansions do not feel like they are being listened to after being invited to feedback, then how are you planning to manage to encourage and listen to an open beta server with all the noise that will give you?

I have more to say but that is it for me tonight

And SJ you are not making any sense at all actually. Why, exactly, would you have two builds on Test and Test Copy? Do what you want with Copy, or Beta, or TokenGrindServer or whatever you want to call it and encourage people there, but why have a different build for Test?

What specifically is disrupted? This last GU we have been living with recipes going missing from crafting books, gear itemization making no sense, gear being unequippable and unusable because bows are daggers, pants go in the shoulder slot, daggers using crushing damage etc etc. And yet I don't think I have heard people complain, make jokes yes, but not really saying they are disrupted. People just wait for the next patch, such is life on Test.
The only people I have heard complain and then log out are the sorry to use the word but the Tourists.
The very people you think will love your broken content on a beta world?

SmokeJumper wrote:

Well...
1/ there's even less players on Test_Copy and a lot of those are just coming to check another class and relish the stuff given by the buffers. Never seen the amounts of players just trying t find people to make duels?
2/ yep, I agree
3/ we do participate heavily even if we do side-things along the way...
a/ so those with a full account of Test chars will be stuck from testing because they need to Test_copy and we'll have to get 2 sets of chars on each server, great...
b/ why not incentives for us Test players?
c/ the feedback will already be given on Test_copy right? So why wait? I'm sure you'll bypass us in a couple of months because "well, everything seems fine". But of course, nobody on Test_Copy will have gone to Kunzar and found out that for no reasons half the zone is missing while nothing changed there. But regular players wanting to do some writs in Kunzar will find out the side effect (it happened a couple years ago)
On the last GU testing, I levelled my brigand though KoS to check the quest itemization. I won't bother copying a level 65 char to Test_copy to do quests and check itemization if it means I'll have to redo the same back on my original server (aka Test).

My main is on live. It took some time levelling back and so on, but my highest chars overall are now on Test (adventure wise). I love playing in a broken environment. It makes me feel usefull. I do test things on Test_copy, those things that I cannot test on Test. But I won't test everything on both servers and I think it's a very bad move.


Side notes:

• I can send the original launcher 1 .exe file to whoever needs it. Patch notes don't show but it's the only one that always work.
• The SC was disabled on Copy when I (and probably a couple of others) where able to buy the character slot tokens with the unlimited SC and use them. Easy fix could have been the same as with the LoN cards: disable the use of the item on Copy.

SmokeJumper wrote:

Mmh, just realised...
This means we'll have to make another full install?

Whilhelmina@Storms wrote:

Yep me too, soon as servers were brought back up I logged in got 4 toon slots, logged out went to live to see if they were there which they were and immediately reported it... and SC on copy has been nil since...
Eshaac

Regarding the lack of population at the proper level on the test server for raid content... I remember Dains in EQ1 - Loved doing those even tho the class/race of my char was not what I would have always liked, but man it was fun. And it didn't disrupt any of my regular toons traits, it was just like a costume that you got to wear that buffed you to a high enoough level to go play with the kroms... and it was just always available, instanced, so you could do it at 3 in the morning if you could find enough interest from other players to go and do one. Is there some technical reason that it couldn't be tossed onto the server as an instance that folks could just round up and participate in when it was best for them?
And I agree with making *some* sort of announcement in advance. For example, if my guild handled putting together raids this way, it would be a joke and I would probably go find a new guild. What are the best raid experiences that I have had? Ones where I felt prepared because I knew far enough in advance that I could get my gear, food, drink, spells and other stuff in order before doing battle. I have no idea how stuff gets raid tested thoroughly when the testing that is done is whacked out by a few really good players and a bunch of dusty high level toons asking if anyone has any food or drink (basically a pick-up group). The most awesome one I ever saw was a level 70 necro that didn't know how to make his pet retreat from attacking the mob. /eye roll
So I guess I am just saying that the devs might want to look at best practices from old code and past games and best known methods rather than trying to invent the wheel all over again.
/rant-off (LOL)