What is the point of the PTS?

Hashtag_

Can anyone give me an honest answer please?

MartiniDaniels

You can test builds without wasting gold/time to farm/buy/upgrade it on live.

Ogou

To test stuff before it goes live?

xxthir13enxx

Easy access to sets n builds for testing

Previewing upcoming releases

Finding and Fixing bugs prior to product release....Just Kidding....lol

Imperial_Voice

To get you pumped for future additions to the crownstore and so you can test drive classes. [snip]

[Minor edit for bait.]

Gythral

Anything but beta testing the new 'whatever' & giving ZOS a heads up on bugs...
but good for getting a handle on the needed workarounds, as well as all the things stated by others above...

Tandor

From the developers' point of view, for as many as want to do so to provide some useful feedback to the developers, in the knowledge that not all of everyone's feedback will be adopted all of the time.

From the players' point of view, to provide some useful feedback to help optimise the new content/experience the new content early/plan builds for a new class/implement updates to addons/steal a march on other non-PTS players in competitive PvE and PvP/learn where the exploits are and keep quiet about them (delete as appropriate).

dennissomb16_ESO

On the PTS ZOS is basically looking for bugs, Even then not all bugs can be tested completely nor fixed before live and some simply do not get discovered until live.

As far as feedback for class changes etc. I do not think ZOS truly is looking for that kind of feedback. I stopped giving feedback on PTS back a couple years ago when they did the big templar nerf/changes. 84 pages in the templar thread for feedback and not one response from ZOS. That was enough for me to stop giving feedback.

acw37162

To test changes, honestly!

Damn

grannas211

To test stuff before it goes live.

Ignore all feedback and then do whatever they want.

Profit.