PTS Participation & Experience Survey

ZOS_Kevin · September 18

Hi everyone! We put together a short survey to help us better understand ESO Public Test Server (PTS) participation, and how we can improve the overall experience. This survey will be open until the end of September 25. We’d love to hear from you even if you’ve never participated in the ESO PTS. Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts with us!

Link to the survey: https://beth.games/46niSAe

skinnycheeks · September 18

Thanks Kevin! Great to see yall gathering feedback about the PTS experience. Definitely a lot of improvements that can be made here!

Syldras · September 18

I really appreciate to see you asking us for feedback more often. Thank you!

Morvan · September 18

Just sent mine, very glad to see more communication lately, thank you.

Destai · September 18

Thanks, Kevin, glad to see surveys!

Entered my feedback in the survey, but want to reiterate here.

I mainly won't participate in PTS because I don't feel like my feedback changes anything. Whether it's bugs or controversial changes, it seems like PTS is "too late" to get you guys to truly change course on things. I would think if something's poorly received on PTS, it's pulled from the build and given more time to bake. The core problem is things are being released too soon. Subclassing is the prime example, but there's been countless bugs and combat changes over the years.

Also, as I said in another thread, the spreadsheet way of doing things needs to change. No one wants to offer detailed, well-reasoned feedback only for some spreadsheet to take priority. Combat changes especially. Seeing where the current changes fall in the overall roadmap is important. Understanding why changes have to be made is important. The little developer insights we get now are too brief and see no follow up. And if those explanations provided don't stand up to public scrutiny, there's no reason why the change should go live.

As a console player, I'm really limited in what I can do with PTS anyways. I only have the base game on PC, which used to be enough, but no longer is. So, either make PTS free or provide console PTS. The more people that can test, the better off you'll be.

spartaxoxo · September 18

Gave my feedback in the survey but want to reiterate it here to make sure it's seen. Console should really have a way to participate in PTS. Even if it's just template only and nothing carries over.

twisttop138 · September 18

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Gave my feedback in the survey but want to reiterate it here to make sure it's seen. Console should really have a way to participate in PTS. Even if it's just template only and nothing carries over.

I agree with this very much. I used to be a PC mmo player but since my kids have gotten to be teenagers I do the gaming PCs for them. Just PS5 for me. I used to always do pts in multiple games. I would love to do this again.

LalMirchi · September 18

Done! Thanks.

StihlReign · September 18

Bam done!

tomofhyrule · September 18

Thank you so much for giving us the chance to give feedback on the PTS. I know I’m not the only one who was severely disappointed about how the PTS and feedback from thence was handled this year.

I really hope the devs take our responses to heart. I always want to do my part to make the game better for everyone, even if I’m just a normal guy, not a content creator.

Here’s hoping U49, 50, and beyond and their PTS cycles will give us all a reason to love this game again!

PS: Don’t worry Kevin, we all still love you regardless!

LunaFlora · September 18

nice survey, i filled it in

ZOS_Kevin · September 18

skinnycheeks wrote: »

Thanks Kevin! Great to see yall gathering feedback about the PTS experience. Definitely a lot of improvements that can be made here!

Yeah definitely. We want to make sure PTS still serves its purpose while being helpful to players generally. The leadership team wants to make sure that short-term and long-term changes can be made to improve the PTS experience overall.

Looking forward to reading through everyone's feedback!

ZOS_Kevin · September 18

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you so much for giving us the chance to give feedback on the PTS. I know I’m not the only one who was severely disappointed about how the PTS and feedback from thence was handled this year.

I really hope the devs take our responses to heart. I always want to do my part to make the game better for everyone, even if I’m just a normal guy, not a content creator.

Want to echo this. The survey is to make sure we get feedback from everyone. We know many want to help in making the game better for everyone. We want to make sure we are giving everyone the tools to do that. And if we are missing some of those tools, we can see what is possible to resolve pain points.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · September 18

Sent! Happy to see this. 😄

Destai · September 18

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you so much for giving us the chance to give feedback on the PTS. I know I’m not the only one who was severely disappointed about how the PTS and feedback from thence was handled this year.

I really hope the devs take our responses to heart. I always want to do my part to make the game better for everyone, even if I’m just a normal guy, not a content creator.

Want to echo this. The survey is to make sure we get feedback from everyone. We know many want to help in making the game better for everyone. We want to make sure we are giving everyone the tools to do that. And if we are missing some of those tools, we can see what is possible to resolve pain points.

FWIW - I know that SkinnyCheeks offered to sit down with Brian and walk through the sets for a couple hours. Man - what an idea - can that happen? Can that be a live stream please?

Speaking of tools - I think understanding how people like him test or what tools they've been given by ZOS would go a long way. Having standard metrics, forms, etc. to test with would be helpful.

LonePirate · September 18

I submitted my feedback as I have been poking around on the PTS since it was first turned over to players many years ago. As I said in the survey, my biggest complaint about the PTS is that ZOS largely ignores bugs and issues reported by players unless they are major issues that block content or processes - stuff that the internal ZOS team should have found before it reached the PTS. If players are going to the trouble of downloading the PTS, testing changes or content and using the /bug function to report feedback and issues, then ZOS should prioritize fixing those issues. There is so much rigid schedule adherence that unexpected issues reported by players seem like an afterthought and probably contributes to why they are often ignored. Respecting players’ time should be a PTS priority and that is definitely not the case.

Fischblut · September 18

I am very grateful that this time I can also participate in survey like in good old times, no forbidden access!

Something was done on ESO-end to allow participation, thank you

colossalvoids · September 18

Glad that's getting some attention, quit participating in cycles because no feedback being acted upon and just testing for myself feels not needed anymore in my personal player journey. Hopefully PTS could get back to what it was around Summerset, where you were able to submit a report and see it fixed the next cycle or one after that instead of spamming same ones patch after the patch without any recognition. I get that it's not bad marketing tool but honestly the primary purpose should be a priority, an absolute one at that.

festegios · September 18

its great that you are asking for feedback,

but what I want to see is that you actually take action on that feedback,

why not do a:

you said:
we did:

Tannus15 · September 18

We need some sort of feedback loop.

I do a lot of parses on the PTS when there are balance changes or new item sets to see what's useful, but I honestly don't know if that feedback is seen or valued at all.

If it is, then something along the lines of "that's interesting" or "that's working as intended" would help.
If it's not useful then "can you try it under X circumstances" so I can see the intent of something.

Take the new set "Xanmeer Genesis". I don't know what the purpose of this set is. I don't know what kind of feedback to the devs are looking for when I can't see anyone using the set under any circumstances.

A good example though is the poisonious serpent changes a few updates ago. The set was and is badly underperforming as a PvE set. Is that what it's intended for? It comes from a trial, so my understanding is that it should be a PvE set, but the proc and poison damage is far too low for that. I posted a CMX to show that, but nothing was changed. Am I missing something? What is the intended use of the set?

festegios · September 18

Tannus15 wrote: »

We need some sort of feedback loop.

What is the intended use of the set?

I honestly think that about a lot of sets, there are far too many that are dead on arrival, or that once had a purpose but then fell behind.

obviously not every set can be 'meta' for PVE DPS, but there shouldnt be such a wide divide, and the solution is not just to nerf those high performing

Tannus15 · 12:07AM

festegios wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

We need some sort of feedback loop.

What is the intended use of the set?

I honestly think that about a lot of sets, there are far too many that are dead on arrival, or that once had a purpose but then fell behind.

obviously not every set can be 'meta' for PVE DPS, but there shouldnt be such a wide divide, and the solution is not just to nerf those high performing

the solution currently is to pretend everything is fine.
I don't get it.

Tannus15 · 12:12AM

I should have put this in the feedback.

Do you want suggestions for solutions or just an outline of the problem?

I read a lot of long, well thought out posts on the PTS forum which give suggestions of solutions and none of them ever get a reply or implimented. Are these people wasting their time with suggestions that you guys don't care about because you want to come up with your own ideas, or are they taken on board and then dismissed or put into a backlog of some sort?

I stopped giving suggestions ages ago because nothing ever comes from it and it doesn't seem to be welcomed.