Looks like the Test server has gone live! "The @Planetside2 Public Test Server is now active. There is a separate patcher for it and you can learn more here: http://bit.ly/14ZPcGx" https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/321326535950868480 Thanks SOE.
Sooo, the existence of the PTS indicates that from here on out there will be SOME KIND of testing performed on patches prior to rolling them out and breaking everything? I'm just curious why it took FIVE MONTHS after the game was released for some genius at SOE to think, hey you know, a public test server MIGHT be a good idea. YA THINK?!?!
Test servers are not for debugging. They are for testing game concepts that the developers are thinking of changing, and allowing for customer feedback. Some debugging does occur, but that is not the main purpose of a Public Test Server.
See, normally I would agree with you entirely, but that would be the normal purpose of the public test server. But seeing as the amount and quality of testing of all the patches up to this point has been either drastically inadequate or entirely absent prior to the rollout of these patches, that fact alone means that any/all testing done on the PTS should be huge improvement over what we've seen thus far. My underlying point being, whatever testing that's been performed thus far in this game has been piss poor and the truth of the matter is that this game should still be in beta test. Oh and as one small example, if I turn on GPU physics the game STILL crashes every 10 minutes or less, and I'm running a GTX680 with the latest drivers. Maybe a public test server isn't such a good idea after all. MAYBE SOE should just quadruple the amount of QA done on the patches before rolling them out, that MIGHT help a little. Although now that I think of it, 4 x 0 is still 0.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying don't expect the QA Department to suddenly get better because we have a Test Server in place.
AHH, ok. No problem, I didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing with you either. You're exactly right. Unfortunately, you're probably right with your last statement too.
