Not pointless. Stage 1. and maybe the Devs stopped relying on PTS as much because they never got enough feedback from it Oh, and Deathcam is hugely overblown issue. If they're more than 20m from you it becomes a cone of direction, that gets larger the farther they were. Hardly gamebreaking.
I used to use PTS a lot and have started to use it less and less, reason being is that too many times after trying things out and posting feedback here or on Reddit a dev comes along and just goes "oh its different on internal and won't work like this", then it feels like... well great that I took the time to test stuff and give feedback only to be told I wasted my time.
People only use the PTS for testing new gear and balances in the VR trainer(useless for actual gameplay testing), or for skirmishes. And then they complain that SOE doesn't test stuff enough before adding it to the live server. I've gone to the PTS a few times with the intent of testing out new gear and balance changes in actual combat, but found no one. My suggestions is, to make the test server a downloadable option from the regular PS2 launcher. That way everyone who plays PS2 will know that the test server is there, and it would be easy to install. Also include a very good description of it's purpose, with some encouraging words that might actually inspire people to help out and test the game. Another suggestion is to lock out continents. Meaning, people who join the test server will only have the option of joining the VR trainer or 1 continent. Maybe that continent could automatically rotate every day or something. My last idea is to put an emphasis on it's use during competitions. Right now all of the banners displayed on the launcher are advertisements. Why not advertise upcoming competitive events and the twitch streams they are on? Seems like that could not only spread awareness of the test server, but also of the competitive scene. And adding to that, there should be a "Planetside News" section in-game in the social menu(no pop-ups please) that contains news about upcoming events and updates.
My reason is a little more selfish than most in here. I'm a free player and what time I do have to play PS2 is my only way to gain certs and continue to open up new ways to play the game by unlocking things. Spending that time on the test server instead is time I'm not investing into cert progression. Were there some sort of small bonus to my live character for participating on the test server, I would feel more obliged to use it. Could be something as minor as a 1-hour XP boost for every X hours spent playing on the test server, or whatever would be easiest to implement. Without an incentive to my live character, my only reason to participate is personal curiosity, and my curiosity about things on the test server is not high enough to get me to go to the trouble of downloading the client and spending time there on its own.
I have the client, but not the inclination to hang out on a mostly empty server in hopes that something will happen. (These days I only get to login for an hour or two of playtime, so I just head to live servers where I can jump in/out of the pool willy-nilly.) Maybe if there was a Steam group that I could join, where SOE would post updates of "PTS planned testing tonight at 5pm PST" I would show up. The other issue is that even when we give feedback on stuff on PTS, SOE doesn't listen or acknowledge the feedback. So in general, by the time it hits PTS, it's a waste of time to give feedback. And from the viewpoint of a long-term supporter that is a management / culture issue on SOE's side that they still need to fix.
Let's face it, the game is still pretty much in open beta, it's going to be a very different game in 1-2 years I suspect. That said, most of us want to see it succeed, and have invested a lot of time and money into it. I get on PTS every now and then to help out, report any bugs, and generally act like an outsourced QA employee. Unfortunately, not many people do this, so PTS isn't that useful, which is why so many bugs fall through the cracks and hit live. SOE should offer some tangible benefit to playing on PTS, getting a certain # of kills on PTS, etc. to incent people to go on there, rather than rely on players' altruism.
For example, you (and I mean whole team) made a huge mistake with 64-bit client by not calling people for large playtest events like before. I mean, we are talking about basics of proper QA here which this game is severely lacking. Some of the bugs which are been reported on test server long time ago are present on live server. Why does nobody see a problem with that here? And I mean simple bugs, not some huge stuff. Higby congratulated some guy on finding hundreds (!!!) of bugs on test server. The major question here is: why it's necessary that someone else must do (for free) QA team's job?
This is incorrect. IF the enemy which killed you was *spotted* for you (whether you spotted it, or someone near you spotted it, and you got the Doritos on their head).. THEN the deathcam is a direct line in the direction in which you were killed. IF the enemy which killed you was NOT spotted for you (unsure if infil motion sensor effects this class of spotting), THEN the deathcam is a cone pointing in the *general* direction of that which killed you. Unsure if, when you are killed by a AI mine, if the cone direction points to the mine, or to the owner of the mine.
Well if they were spotted then you are hardly getting any new information then are you. STILL NOT A BIG DEAL. PS: Play I mostly play as LA and Infil as a flanking type player.
evil is such a subjective term... seriously though, it seems that this a genuine point of interest among the devs, as radar has a sister thread to this going in reddit this is a copy paste from my comments there Lately the last few patches seem to have hit the PTS and then skipped on over to live before the community has really had a chance to kick the tires on them. I wonder how much of that has to do with community feedback necessitating a complete rework of a given feature. for example: the awareness implant. every example of this implant has been met with some level of "Do not want!" by the community. intact the entire implant idea has been met with varying degrees of trepidation. If it hits the PTS and the community's response to the system is a resounding 'NO!', is there any chance that it will actually get pulled and redesigned? or is it just going to go live over our objections? a similar thing with the kill map: i was under the impression that the vast majority was OK with the death screen rework, but since the original roadmap post was consistent in their dislike of any sort of killcam idea. we saw the mockup, were ok with it, and then out of nowhere, kill map on the PTS. we said no, and the feature was tweaked minority, but it still affects those of us who prefer to operate on the flanks with a silencer. (Also Higby's comment about us 'farming noobs' didn't help with that.) i guess what it comes down to is the sense that by the time something hits the PTS, enough dev work has been put in that it's appearance on live is an inevitability, and no amount of player feedback will change that. we might change some values and numbers, but i'm not going to take time away from playing live (where i could be gaining much needed certs) to play with something that i may or may not like, and that i feel that i'm not going to be able to materially change anyway.
I almost always go check out what's on the PST, but use it mostly for a Big VR room. The population usually so small its hard to get into any fights, I wish more people would go check it out and voice there concerns before it goes live.
My only concern with PST is all of the small patches that don't get clearly listed notes. It bugs me when there are so many patches that are obviously updates but they don't explain what they are updating :/
Not all that much unfortunately. It takes a while to patch, and I have only a limited time in the day to relax and play games, time I usually use to play on the normal PS2 servers or other stuff.
I.. never said it was a big deal.. I was simply correcting you so that incorrect information did not spread.
No. I'm too busy with my main character on the live server. I hate to sound greedy, but unless there is an incentive that is made available on the live server (some Certs or a boost) then I doubt I'll ever put any serious time in on the test server. If I do go onto the test server it is to have a look at new content, and I rarely do that to be honest.
PTS is a joke. I found that I could just wait a couple extra days and those changes will be forced onto the Live servers, whether or not the changes saw nothing but negative feedback. My biggest issue with the PTS is that nothing that is added/changed is thoroughly tested before being pushed to the Live servers/clients. 12 hours of prime time gameplay is not even close to enough time to see all the repercussions a change may have on the game. Especially considering how low the population is on the PTS. After seeing this repeated situation occur over a couple months I uninstalled the PTS.
You wonder why people don't bother with it anymore? Because it's higby useless. What's the reason to try things out and give your feedback if yet another bloody thing no one asked for is still gonna be pushed through regardless of your feedback? Remember pump-action shotguns? Remember how much people were against it? How many downvotes the roadmap entry had before it got archived into a section of the forums that is not programmed to show them? Or how people screamed 'NOPE' when they got onto PTS for a couple of days before release? You couldn't get anywhere near an indoor fight for a straight month until all farmer people got their auraxiums on them. They may have been nerfed but a). player loss from that BS didn't go anywhere and b). the utterly redundant half-***** weapons that oversaturate the CQC niche even further are still here. More recent example with the deathscreen, Liberator resistance values that autowaypoint thingy cluttering your hud is a nice reminder of this approach.
No. Because I don't want to download 8GB+ to make no difference. It very much seems that PTS feedback isn't acted upon, so I don't see that it's worth the time to actually spend time on it. It's pretty much a Preview Server rather than a Test Server right now. If that changed I'd consider it. Likewise with the addition of making XP collected on PTS count towards your main account.
