PTS Noob here - I lost my chars with 9.3.2?

Zabagad · February 13

Hi - it's my first time I use the PTS and I have some question to you.

In the first week I got my few NA chars (I regulary play EU) and I made me 2 new CP3600 chars and did a lot of testing with these 2 chars.
Today - after 9.3.2 they coppied all my EU char (like its said in the notes) - but I lost my 2 char, which I used to do a lot of comparison with over the last 2 weeks.
I made no screenshots at which point I am/I was with my tests and at which state I exactly was with the "confiq" of my stats (health/mag/stam/reg/DMG/etc...)
So all my "work" seems to be lost, and I have to restart the whole process again.

Is there any way, I can get these 2 chars back?
Will this happen all the time on the PTS, that I lose my new created chars?
Any way to prevent that?
How do you handle that to do equal testings over the 4-5 weeks?

Ty in advance...

ApoAlaia · February 13

Typically every PTS cycle starts with copying the PC/NA characters, which (along with any created characters) remain for the first two weeks.

On the third week of the cycle PC/EU characters are copied to the PTS (thus wiping the characters from the previous two weeks) and remain until the next cycle.

The PTS is transient in nature.

Turtle_Bot · February 13

Yep, as ApoAlaia said, when the EU characters are ported to the PTS in week 3 and the NA characters on the PTS are wiped from the PTS server (alongside any new characters created during the first 2 weeks of the PTS) at this time.

The characters on the PTS don't remain forever on there, they only last as follows

Weeks 1&2:
NA characters (+ any created during this time)

Weeks 3-5:
EU characters (+ any created from week 3 onwards)

After PTS finishes and patch goes live:
I can't remember if the characters remain after the patch goes live until the next PTS cycle. But they are definitely wiped sometime after the patch goes live and before the next PTS patch is added to the PTS server.

Zabagad · February 13

ApoAlaia wrote: »

Typically every PTS cycle starts with copying the PC/NA characters, which (along with any created characters) remain for the first two weeks.

On the third week of the cycle PC/EU characters are copied to the PTS (thus wiping the characters from the previous two weeks) and remain until the next cycle.

The PTS is transient in nature.

Ty - good to know - bad to hear

If I knew that before, I wouldn't have invested so much time at the prior weekend.
I was even putting much time on sunday to get the house ready for better and faster testing

@ZOS_GinaBruno - because of this I would recommend that the CP3600 template at least comes with all CPs set (in my opinion even if there are more then 3600 necessary) and we only have to choose the 4 active ones for each tree.
In addition any hint about the short lifespan when you create a new PTS char could help future noobs...

Zabagad · February 13

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Yep, as ApoAlaia said, when the EU characters are ported to the PTS in week 3 and the NA characters on the PTS are wiped from the PTS server (alongside any new characters created during the first 2 weeks of the PTS) at this time.

The characters on the PTS don't remain forever on there, they only last as follows

Weeks 1&2:
NA characters (+ any created during this time)

Weeks 3-5:
EU characters (+ any created from week 3 onwards)

After PTS finishes and patch goes live:
I can't remember if the characters remain after the patch goes live until the next PTS cycle. But they are definitely wiped sometime after the patch goes live and before the next PTS patch is added to the PTS server.

Ty 2

ApoAlaia · February 13

Is also worthy of note that this PTS cycle they have made it - in my opinion - unnecessarily cumbersome for testing using template characters.

There is already a thread on the subject here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/651864/no-collection-on-pts#latest

Something to keep in mind if this is 'how is going to be until further notice'.

tomofhyrule · February 13

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Yep, as ApoAlaia said, when the EU characters are ported to the PTS in week 3 and the NA characters on the PTS are wiped from the PTS server (alongside any new characters created during the first 2 weeks of the PTS) at this time.

The characters on the PTS don't remain forever on there, they only last as follows

Weeks 1&2:
NA characters (+ any created during this time)

Weeks 3-5:
EU characters (+ any created from week 3 onwards)

After PTS finishes and patch goes live:
I can't remember if the characters remain after the patch goes live until the next PTS cycle. But they are definitely wiped sometime after the patch goes live and before the next PTS patch is added to the PTS server.

After PTS finishes, it stays what it was. So technically NA gets 2 weeks total while EU gets their characters for the next 8-10 weeks.

Yes, PTS is for testing new content, but a lot of people also use it to test things like housing builds or other things (I love going in for screenshots). That does make it a bit unfair as to which server gets the long haul.

I'd love if it would switch who got the (most unpolished) first two weeks and then who got the closer-to-final week 3 and beyond.

ApoAlaia · February 13

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Yep, as ApoAlaia said, when the EU characters are ported to the PTS in week 3 and the NA characters on the PTS are wiped from the PTS server (alongside any new characters created during the first 2 weeks of the PTS) at this time.

The characters on the PTS don't remain forever on there, they only last as follows

Weeks 1&2:
NA characters (+ any created during this time)

Weeks 3-5:
EU characters (+ any created from week 3 onwards)

After PTS finishes and patch goes live:
I can't remember if the characters remain after the patch goes live until the next PTS cycle. But they are definitely wiped sometime after the patch goes live and before the next PTS patch is added to the PTS server.

After PTS finishes, it stays what it was. So technically NA gets 2 weeks total while EU gets their characters for the next 8-10 weeks.

Yes, PTS is for testing new content, but a lot of people also use it to test things like housing builds or other things (I love going in for screenshots). That does make it a bit unfair as to which server gets the long haul.

I'd love if it would switch who got the (most unpolished) first two weeks and then who got the closer-to-final week 3 and beyond.

Probably too much financial and logistical hassle to be viable but ideally we should have a NA and a EU PTS.

PC/NA players would get a reasonable time to test stuff with their characters instead of having to rely on template characters that take time and effort to set up (more so now).

PC/EU players would get reasonable ping that would make testing more reliable (as opposed to now where it ranges from 'bah' to 'unfeasible'.)

Zabagad · February 14

ApoAlaia wrote: »

Probably too much financial and logistical hassle to be viable but ideally we should have a NA and a EU PTS.

PC/NA players would get a reasonable time to test stuff with their characters instead of having to rely on template characters that take time and effort to set up (more so now).

PC/EU players would get reasonable ping that would make testing more reliable (as opposed to now where it ranges from 'bah' to 'unfeasible'.)

On my first 2 days I assumed to be on PC/EU because my testing was perfect and lag free.
Then I had some situations where it was "bah" and I checked out where the PTS is located

So compared to my real NA experience from Germany, the PTS has performed really well so far.

Anyway - I started yesterday to (re-)create my CP3600 char from the first 2 weeks and I had to invest more then 40min to reach the status again. And I'm still pretty sure that I have some minor differences to the char I created and developed during the first 2 weeks.
That's a thing which makes testing unnecessary difficulty and if I try things on the PTS ever again, I will start my tests after the .2 Version to prevent to waste that much time > void again.

Edit: Oh and I see now, that I lost (ofc) all the wayshrines and have to ride to all of them again

Oh - and I can remember now, why I wasn't using the PTS before

I tried it once ~2019-2020 and at that time I downloaded the PTS for est. 20 hours over night. (this time it were less then 3 hours)
After I finished finaly the download and maybe one day later I wannted to start my first PTS access.
But there was a maintenance on the PTS which ended with a message like: "You have to reload the 90 GB because we changed something"