The obvious question is "why not push back release a week instead?" ESO hasn't exactly had the most upstanding reputation with feedback from the PTS being listened to. While the announcement at the start of this year has definitely made me give you the benefit of the doubt, this change is counterproductive to that as it feels like it's one step forward and two steps back again. The last thing this game needs is less testing.

Why not either:

A ) Push back a week instead

B ) Start PTS a week earlier

Less testing seems like a terrible decision given the main issue in the last 6 months has been lack of polish.

To be honest with you. I see responses above posting either A or B scenario, but why can't they do both. Start PTS a week earlier AND push releases a week back. Zos is in full control of release dates on their products. This is a very complex game with so many moving parts and it requires as much feedback and testing as possible to continue moving it in a positive direction.

But maybe I'm in the minority on this one.

As the PTS schedule is being looked at, could some serious thought please be given to the order of the Character Copies? Specifically, the order in which characters are copied first (historically NA) and the duration each copy. As it stands now, the second copy (EU) remains on the PTS for extended periods of time and is unfair to NA players for the following reasons:

1. The first copy is typically 2 weeks long, and only rarely 3 weeks. With the shortened 4-week PTS schedule, NA characters would never have more than 2 weeks each cycle (8 weeks per year). This compares to the 44 weeks per year that EU characters are accessible on the PTS.
2. The first two weeks of each PTS cycle often have the most bugs. So players spend considerably more time submitting bug reports early in each PTS cycle.
3. Testing with one's own characters, houses and other assets is far more productive than creating template characters, and setting up template characters takes time and effort. When there are combat changes that affect existing builds, whichever characters are copied last are more likely to experience the changes that will go live, giving those players more time to test, develop and refine builds before a patch goes live.
4. Whenever an official PTS Cycle ends, there is a long period where the last character copy remains on the test server. This allows players to return to the PTS to perform other personal tests with their characters and builds will all the skills, materials, and assets acquired over years on the live servers. Additionally, these players have access to nearly unlimited access to crowns, transmutes, and other template assets. This has allowed some players to unduly benefit personally from a longer copy.
5. Also, players with characters in the last copy can easily jump back on the PTS after the official cycle ends with little effort and minimal expenditure of time, to quickly test an idea without concern for wasting their materials and resources on live if the idea doesn't pan out.

There is a relatively simple solution to this inequity: Alternate which charater copy starts the first two weeks of each new PTS Test Cycle. By rotating which live server is copied first, over the course of a year the amount of time each copy spends on the PTS will be nearly equal.

I understand why people are anxious given we are in uncharted territory, but I am hoping the pts to live testing gap leads to our findings on pts being adjusted before things make it to live. I also appreciate them reassuring us late feedback will also be taken into account, even if it might mean it makes it into a later patch.

I do very much agree with others, though, on it would be preferred to leave five weeks to test and maybe move around dates and schedules if possible. I don't think that is too much to ask. If it is though, please let us know here as to why. I think that might help people accept the changes more.

Finally, I do worry about this exacerbating an already big pain point of for a while now pts in the off-testing season is left with the EU copy, meaning those of us on NA who want to test things on PC do not have access to our characters or resources. There are still things players test in the offseason and as was mentioned above this means NA gets 8 weeks of testing a year, all of which are during the active testing period but never in the offseason. For me personally, this can be frustrating because I only play on the NA server, and even making a template, I don't have access to my done every quest character's worldstate or my characters' appearance sliders or my crown purchased cosmetics I have access to on NA live. There are solutions to some of this like unlocking all crown only/crown crate/etc styles with the template cosmetics crates, but for worldstate based on quest progress or character's sliders/presets there really isn't an acceptable pts answer currently. Flipping server copies on the offseason might help give off season testers more windows to test things but it still means there are gaps in NA or EU access.

Since the gap between PTS and Live will be much longer now, would we be able to have the .4 patch go up on PTS while the certification is ongoing?

At this rate, we’ll get the last PTS patch (.3) going live on Feb 2, and then the Live patch (.4) will release on Mar 9. That’s over a month between them.
If the .4 patch went on PTS in the meantime though, then we could still test things so the team could post a “Known Issues” with the Live release and also already have those issues targeted for the first incremental.

Also, I’ll echo the desire to equalize the regions on PTS. NA always gets the most unpolished versions of each patch (we didn’t even get Tomes with our characters at all) and we have it for two weeks a cycle, and EU get it for the next few months. That means if an NA player wants to also test builds or cosmetic things, they need to compete with testing the patch to get it done before the PTS is cleared. On the other side, EU always has to wait for two weeks to get to test anything for themselves.

It would be better if sometimes EU would start the cycle and NA got the long haul afterwards, and sometimes NA starts and EU finishes.

There is obviously a ton of work still to go on the DK refresh (more now than there was in week 1 funny enough). Wouldn't it make more sense to have a longer pts so feedback can actually be implemented rather than just forcing through poor or unwanted changes to live?

lillybit wrote: »

I feel like a shorter PTS where they're listening to us and giving regular feedback and explanations is still better than a longer one where we're ignored

That would be better... Too bad we're getting a shorter one where we're still ignored lol.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I think if you are considering changes to how the PTS is run it might be a good time to bring back the 'test events' idea. Lets take the example this time around of the 3 sided BG's. I'm sure you guys can see how many BGs were actually completed on the PTS to test this feature - my guess is a very small number.

Similarly was the Night market tested in a fully maxed out instance / can more instances spin up?

We used to have occasional events where players could earn live game rewards - I appreciate that console players may feel left out of this but equally the rewards as long as they are not unique new items would only impact the PC server.

Even without the rewards players enjoy playing the content if they know they will be playing with Devs.

Let the first week or 2 remain as it is for players to jump on test new builds / initial content and report bugs but then consider in weeks 3 and 4 running some scheduled tests with a few devs participating to get a feel of how the community interacts with the content and get real feedback. I think this would help avoid situations like we found ourselves in with the event last year where content didn't work at scale.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, we have a quick update on the length of PTS Cycles. After hearing some of the feedback from reducing PTS from 5 weeks down to 4 weeks, we went back and worked out some of the obstacles to get back to 5 weeks. We have worked out the current issue on our end, so we are bringing back the 5-Week PTS cycle with the current PTS cycle. Next week will be the last week of PTS for U50.

We do want to be transparent about this process, so we also want to note that we could transition down to 4 weeks again in the future, due to our work on Crossplay. As we are working toward Crossplay, new hurdles may come up that require additional time and resources, thus impacting PTS. However if that does happen, we will issue an update to make sure everyone is aware of the change. Thanks again for your feedback on this issue and your patience as we work to improve this.

@ZOS_Kevin When we have crossplay, are you going to allow more people to join a guild? We are always between 490 and 500 members and could easily be a lot higher.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, we have a quick update on the length of PTS Cycles. After hearing some of the feedback from reducing PTS from 5 weeks down to 4 weeks, we went back and worked out some of the obstacles to get back to 5 weeks. We have worked out the current issue on our end, so we are bringing back the 5-Week PTS cycle with the current PTS cycle. Next week will be the last week of PTS for U50.

We do want to be transparent about this process, so we also want to note that we could transition down to 4 weeks again in the future, due to our work on Crossplay. As we are working toward Crossplay, new hurdles may come up that require additional time and resources, thus impacting PTS. However if that does happen, we will issue an update to make sure everyone is aware of the change. Thanks again for your feedback on this issue and your patience as we work to improve this.

Thanks Kevin. 5 weeks of PTS did feel a lot more useful.

However, I would like to then ask about some other PTS QoL things - namely the fact that 5 weeks of PTS means that one server is getting three weeks of patches (and the break between patches) and the other only gets two.
Is there talk about trying to even out which server copy gets time on the PTS? Maybe by starting EU for week 1 and leaving NA from week 3 on, or swapping back to NA for week 5, or leaving NA through week 3?

I'm worried that 5 weeks means what was nerfed continues to be nerfed for another week.

I just wanted to say that it's great to see the PTS cycle last five weeks again! It's appreciated.