Please Zenimax, open your PTS for the next updates

JD2013

Opening the PT Servers is a REALLY good idea. Low population of the test server means less people to report the bugs.

driosketch

DewiMorgan wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

And the fact that you went out of your way to misunderstand SirAndy's post and equate it with racism...

I understood it perfectly: you are both being elitist, clinging to your privileges.

I could say:
"The fact that sirAndy went out of his way to misunderstand my post, and claim I accused him of racism - yeah, I don't think letting SirAndy out of the PO forums would be productive." - but that would be as arrogant as you are being.

Why should I not call you POers out on your persistent hypocrisy and elitism?

Why can I not draw parallels to other forms of hypocrisy, in an effort to show you how wrongheaded you are being about this? How else should I illustrate it so that you can see? Help me here: how would *you* have phrased it?

Or do you feel that your own form of elitism and cliqueyness is somehow OK, even though all other types are not? How so? What makes it OK to you? Is it just because you are on the inside?

And you accuse others of stawman arguments. The point is those things aren't even in the ball park of being the same thing. Do you consider a teacher's lounge elitist against students? A women's restroom elitist against men? A smoker's area elitist against non-smokers?

What privilege? What hypocrisy? Do you think we host regular dinner parties with the Devs in there?

The PTS is going full public. None of us are against that. The PO is comprised of players who received no reward, and volunteered our time freely just for the honor of helping test the game. Many of the testers fought for changes that would benefit of the player base at large, shared information freely when the NDA lifted. I still give people in /zone tips when they ask for help, sell stuff I don't need to players for below market price.

And for that I get to be called a stuck up jerk?

Whatever.

dolmen

What the PTS members posting on this thread are not mentioning, and why I think opening PTS to the "public" won't accomplish much is this.

The obligation to test won't be the primary thought on anyone's mind. I really doubt anyone who wants this "public" test server is going to do the below. I expect most will treat it as a playpen/sandbox there for them to mess with and little more.

This is the PTS experience:

Log on. Start doing some activity, 5 minutes in, fill out a survey. 5 minutes later, fill out a survey.

Do some crafting. Fill out a survey, one or more times as you do.

Do some exploring. Fill out a survey. Report a bug. Fight mob. Fill out a survey. Fight another mob, see a bug. Report a bug, mob respawns and kills you while you are doing the report. Fill out a survey after you res. Start back to where you were, fill out a survey.

Take a break for RL. When you get back, fill out a survey.

Enter a dungeon, fill out a survey. Proceed to clear the dungeon, fill out a survey every few mobs. Find a bug, report the bug, mob respawns, you die. Res and start again, fill out a survey.

Your pack is full, return to town and hit the bank. Fill out a survey.

Give some feedback on something you think will be nice to have, fill out survey.

Find a chest, open it or not, fill out a survey.

Start a quest, fill out a survey. Read and listen to every single word through every single option in the quest dialogs. Put in a bug report for grammar or spelling. Put in another bug report on the dialog, and another and yet another. Fill out a survey every 5-10 minutes while doing the quest. Complete the quest, fill out a survey. Level up, fill out a survey.

Start another quest, get jammed up because it's bugged. Do a bug report. Fill out a survey.

Make an achievement, fill out a survey.

Do bug reports on skills etc. that were not working as expected. Fill out a survey.

Join in PVP. Fill out a survey. Find a bug. Start the bug report. Player comes by and kills you. Finish the report. Res and fill out a survey, run back.

Logout. Fill out the post game session survey, takes about 20 minutes.

Apom

All saw on streams were guilds just running dungeons and perfecting their mage/AOE farms. Watched ER for like 3 hours and they never filled out any surveys. LoL one of them wants people to pay him so he can play the game??? wtf is wrong with people...

JKorr

DewiMorgan wrote: »

Strawman, much? Do not put words in my mouth. I'm calling you an elitist, not a racist.

My point was not that you are a racist but that I presume you are not racist: that you will feel that elitism based on race is unacceptable. And I expect you feel the same about elitism based on gender, disability, sexuality, and all other attributes which none of us can help.

What, then, makes your own PO-membership elitism acceptable?

You call yourself "special", argue that the "commoners" not be allowed into your private areas, argue that you deserve your private areas when nobody else has them, ... then are claiming not to be elitist.

Please: reread your post. Understand the hypocrisy and elitism.

You know that the commoners [people who haven't bought the game or who no longer have an active sub to the game] aren't allowed to post here, right? There is already an elite type of thing going on. I've joined a couple of guilds; people who don't belong aren't allowed to post on the guild forum.

Zenimax could always move the PO to a different server/private guild server. You wouldn't have to be bothered by it then. The only difference is the PO was a guild created by Zenimax for a group of beta testers, instead of a guild created by a player. It will be up to the devs whether there will be a separate forum for the PO guild. They should start a PTO/beta forum for everyone in any case. If it is new content that will be tested, knowing what was said 2 years ago isn't going to make much difference, imo.

JKorr

I even gave them feedback on the surveys. Akatosh knows some of those questions were not exactly clear.

dolmen

Apom wrote: »

All saw on streams were guilds just running dungeons and perfecting their mage/AOE farms. Watched ER for like 3 hours and they never filled out any surveys. LoL one of them wants people to pay him so he can play the game??? wtf is wrong with people...

Not seeing the survey on a stream I can believe because it was an add on from ZOS and you could disable it. It would ruin the impact of a stream for that to pop up all of the time, regardless of the content.

I won't make the claim that all PTS members were testing "saints". PTS is a small human population, but human all the same.

But you bring up a point, opening PTS to the "public" will be just more of what you have noted, and as useless.

Edit: Fixed bad engrish.

vicNBitis

JKorr wrote: »

If it is new content that will be tested, knowing what was said 2 years ago isn't going to make much difference, imo

W.T. Grant went bankrupt nearly 40 years ago but it's still an interesting case study. You never know. Maybe the Zenimax ESO PTS timeline will be in an appendix of a college textbook or two. What went wrong and when? Yeah, probably not.

DewiMorgan

vicNBitis wrote: »

I don't think Aristotle ever wrote about it but it's a common enough tactic on the interwebs.

Aristotle actually explicitly warned against hyperbole... he was probably right It just gives people a tool to dodge the argument, and attack the format of the argument instead. Bad call by me.

NordJitsu

@DewiMorgan‌

We didn't get a monkey. That was for September stress testers (which most of us were, but it wasn't an exclusive thing to the PO.)

There's nothing wrong with recognizing a group that spent months and months of their lives working for you for free. An in game title was commonly asked for, as were things like special costumes, a special PO pet, ect. They didn't put any of that in. Doesn't really bother me but it is surprising. In an older MMO the devs wouldn't have thought twice about it and it would be seen as something cool by most players (like whats so wrong with some people being special/different?)

We're already losing our characters that we put all that time into. They're opening up the PTS to everyone. The least they can do is leave our special community place alone.

vicNBitis

True. I blame the Sophists. What have they ever done for us?! Ruined hyperbole is all.

DewiMorgan

NordJitsu wrote: »

We're already losing our characters that we put all that time into. They're opening up the PTS to everyone. The least they can do is leave our special community place alone.

I do find your argument considerably more persuasive than the "I'm not being elitist, but..." hypocrisy.

You're admitting you are getting a perk, but you're asking for that special treatment because you feel you've earned it, and not just by turning up for one day like the monkey, but through months of careful and methodical and tedious work.

But what type of work? Another perk that most of us would have given our eye teeth for: PST access for a wonderfully long time! The ability to see and be involved in the whole length of the development of the game! You call it work which deserves a reward; I call it a perk that was its own reward at the time, and which you all - as all we testers did - accepted would be so.

PO can and will still hang out together - they still have their guild, the po.com website, and more. But hopefully they won't be treated as "special" by Zenimax any more: the dismissive attitudes of other PO posters here show how toxic that is.

That said, and this might sound silly and minor, but... it's bloody unfair if not all of you got the monkey! That makes me feel even more wrong and uncomfortable to have one. It always has, to the point I've felt embarrassed using it, and just have it stashed away on an unused alt: I've never felt that unique in-game recognition was a good thing to give to testers.

But it feels particularly wrong if there are "have" and "have-not" testers, and doubly so if the "have"s just happened to be able to play a certain day, while many of the have-nots may have been putting in way more useful reports for far longer.

I'm unsure if I'm being hypocritical myself, there, and worry that I may be.

Attorneyatlawl

Bangstin wrote: »

I don't know. How would the current pts people be able abuse the oversights and bugs in live anymore if those gets fixed/reported already on pts?

No one was hiding things and not reporting them... please ensure you spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours testing though too, like we did... because you demanded it you should live up to your side of the bargain now! A handful of cheaters doesn't represent the general pts base, any more than your poor attitude reflects most people's.

Attorneyatlawl

Angelyne wrote: »

Please, pretty please, dont give keys to
just a few handfull number of streamers who only want to rise up their viewers
just a few ppl who sell that on forums/facebook
just a few ppl who dont care of that game and are just waiting the next MMO

Open it to everyone who have a subscription, everyone who are ready to test it and report bugs, everyone who write addons and play that game daily.

Please ?

We did test and report bugs for hundreds and hundreds of hours, make sure you do the same. You're welcome for writing the addons you depend on and helping, for free, for months, to do tedious testing to improve the game for you. Oh and you're welcome for the game being anywhere near as good as it came out as. Don't forget, it's your turn now! Don't let us down kiddo.

driosketch

vicNBitis wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

If it is new content that will be tested, knowing what was said 2 years ago isn't going to make much difference, imo

W.T. Grant went bankrupt nearly 40 years ago but it's still an interesting case study. You never know. Maybe the Zenimax ESO PTS timeline will be in an appendix of a college textbook or two. What went wrong and when? Yeah, probably not.

Way back when, ZOS had sign ups to be an ESO beta tester. You had to fill out an online form and give them a diagnostic read out of your PC specs.

Around a year ago, the first Beta invites went out. In July of 2013 they held a weekend stress test, and established the first tester groups named after the Aedra and Deadra, likely based around some group demographic. More would be added later, likely to indicate the test wave of new invites.

Originally the beta only allowed you to test EP, and only three races. You started in Bleakrock and there was no Wailing Prison break yet. The prison tutorial would go through a number of changes before launch.

In August or September, Cyrodiil was beta tested for the first time. Testers were given level 50 templates and assigned a faction, but due to unlocked factions and most players not following instructions, AD was hugely over populated. In around four hours the first Emperor was crowned. That weekend also saw the Great Battle of the Chalamo. You can find it detailed in a book behind the upper flag of Chalman Keep, or I believe near the banker back at your gate.

In October, 0.016% of those who had signed up for the beta at the time were hand selected for their efforts in testing to join the Psijic Order. We were sworn to a double secret NDA, beyond the regular beta NDA, ala fight club rules.

We were able to test all three factions at this point, but no Vet content as of yet nor Cyrodiil. This testing continued until before Thanksgiving. I believe the first Add-on development may have started around this time as well.

In mid-December the PTS reopened with the full game now accessible. Full test groups like Dibella and Mara were brought in boosting our numbers to what seemed like almost ten times. Testing continued until just before launch.

There were many discussions, some heated. A few testers were banned. I would say Add-ons and PvP got people the most fired up. Communication with the devs wasn't always what we wanted. To this day we still learn stuff from a gaming website before even a forum announcement.

They started doing weekend beta stress test, usually one patch behind the PTS, and only up to the level 17 zone, and until the last couple months, those tests would have characters wiped afterwards. We had automatic invites to all those tests, though they preferred we stayed on the PTS. The weekend testers would also break several quests that were fine on the PTS going back as far as Oct/Nov. If I remember correctly, their NDA lifted before ours did, which was right after they started giving away beta codes to anyone.

And now you have the brief overview of the history of the PTS.

Attorneyatlawl

NordJitsu wrote: »

After seeing this thread I hope they open it everyone but you @Angelyne‌ .

Its really offensive for you to assume that PTS testers were all uncaring, exploiters, incompetent, ect.

There's a lot of really dedicated and hard working people who spent months and months testing a much buggier and less complete version of this game for FREE and got very little recognition from anyone for doing so. We put up with countless more frustrations than the people who've complained about launch issues can imagine and the added frustration of seeing reported bugs go through to the live game or feedback get ignored (only to become a huge issue on the live game.)

You owe them a thank you because without them (well us) the game wouldn't be nearly as good/polished as it is today.

Can't fix stupid as they say, nor self entitled ignorance. I bet these people go preview content on the new test server then come to whine, 99 times out of 100. Doubt any of them understand what game testing entails at all.

Attorneyatlawl

This thread is a testament to human bull spreading. I created the psijic guild.... not a dev. One group of a random guild streaming their raid runs doesn't represent the months of testing and work we put in to help make the game better for you ungrateful rude ... well, I won't finish that sentence. And we didn't get anything for doing so, not even a title in game or other cosmetic let alone reward.

Attorneyatlawl

NordJitsu wrote: »

@DewiMorgan‌

We didn't get a monkey. That was for September stress testers (which most of us were, but it wasn't an exclusive thing to the PO.)

There's nothing wrong with recognizing a group that spent months and months of their lives working for you for free. An in game title was commonly asked for, as were things like special costumes, a special PO pet, ect. They didn't put any of that in. Doesn't really bother me but it is surprising. In an older MMO the devs wouldn't have thought twice about it and it would be seen as something cool by most players (like whats so wrong with some people being special/different?)

We're already losing our characters that we put all that time into. They're opening up the PTS to everyone. The least they can do is leave our special community place alone.

Yup, time was you got recognized and rewarded for your work, now you get ridiculed and insulted by self entitled schmucks. How nicely the mmo community evolved over the last 15 years. Sarcasm obviously .

vicNBitis

driosketch wrote: »

And now you have the brief overview of the history of the PTS.

Umm, thanks. I think.

Attorneyatlawl

vicNBitis wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

And now you have the brief overview of the history of the PTS.

Umm, thanks. I think.

You're welcome, he was fixing your lies for you. He had no obligation to do so. But I guess when you're trying to fabricate things to support a ludicrous argument that isn't a help is it...?

driosketch

vicNBitis wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

And now you have the brief overview of the history of the PTS.

Umm, thanks. I think.

Hey, you asked.

NordJitsu wrote: »

We didn't get a monkey. That was for September stress testers (which most of us were, but it wasn't an exclusive thing to the PO.)

They also gave out the monkey on a later stress test following the beta code give away where all the beta testers received a second beta friend code. There are potentially a million possible monkey pets out there. The monkey is not "that" special if that's your hang up @DewiMorgan‌.

vicNBitis

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

You're welcome, he was fixing your lies for you. He had no obligation to do so. But I guess when you're trying to fabricate things to support a ludicrous argument that isn't a help is it...?

What lies, Mr DK? Use the quote function. It won't bite.

vicNBitis

driosketch wrote: »

Hey, you asked.

I did? Wow, if this impressive display of connecting the dots and quoting is what went on in the private forum I understand a few things better now.

vicNBitis

Oh, wait, I see what happened. You missed the part I quoted about knowing what was said 2 years ago. Here it is again:

JKorr wrote: »

If it is new content that will be tested, knowing what was said 2 years ago isn't going to make much difference, imo

My response was a joke about "what was said 2 years ago" maybe some day being important. You mistook that for a history lesson request.

Noobie

All im going to say without going over things mentioned in the forums already. I rather be playing in PTS servers right now then dealing with my main and other character.

b92303008rwb17_ESO

To be honest, I have little faith in what they promised now, especially when they did not even specify any certain time. What I am saying is that when they say "we will be", you can never be sure if it is going to be the 1.2 PTS event or 1.x. According to the records, they are simply untrustworthy now.

SirAndy

DewiMorgan wrote: »

the dismissive attitudes of other PO posters here show how toxic that is.

So far, the only thing toxic i can find in this thread is not coming from any PO members ...

NordJitsu

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

To be honest, I have little faith in what they promised now, especially when they did not even specify any certain time. What I am saying is that when they say "we will be", you can never be sure if it is going to be the 1.2 PTS event or 1.x. According to the records, they are simply untrustworthy now.

@b92303008rwb17_ESO‌

Its actually been well known that it would be opened to everyone since before the game launched. They put out a public post saying that was their intention prior to the start of early release.

People just don't pay attention.

Attorneyatlawl

NordJitsu wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

To be honest, I have little faith in what they promised now, especially when they did not even specify any certain time. What I am saying is that when they say "we will be", you can never be sure if it is going to be the 1.2 PTS event or 1.x. According to the records, they are simply untrustworthy now.

@b92303008rwb17_ESO‌

Its actually been well known that it would be opened to everyone since before the game launched. They put out a public post saying that was their intention prior to the start of early release.

People just don't pay attention.

Yep, been common knowledge since launch that pts was becoming available to all subscribers soon.

vicNBitis

b-whatever did this on Reddit. Pretty good explanation by Mystborngaming but apparently b-whatever missed it when they copied/pasted over here.

[–]b92303008 2 points 11 hours ago
To be honest, I have little faith in what they promised now, especially when they did not even specify any certain time.

[–]MystbornGaming 0 points 10 hours ago
They don't know the time because it's based on when their next content update is ready to test but it's not like anyone else is on the PTS until then anyway, the server is down (and being wiped) until that time.

[–]b92303008 [score hidden] 28 minutes ago
That is not what I mean. What I am saying is that when they say "we will be", you can never be sure if it is going to be the 1.2 PTS event or 1.x. They are simply untrustworthy now.