PTS QoL?

tomofhyrule · March 26

Let me start by saying again that U49’s PTS was incredible. The weekly updates really went a long way to helping us feel heard.

With the U50 PTS dropping on the 13th, I would just like to ask if some QoL for the PTS specifically has been considered, since those sorts of things wouldn’t have been in the stream since they’re not relevant to the Live server.

Specifically:

The change a while back to have template characters come with nothing unlocked means that players need to spend a significant amount of time unlocking things from nested boxes instead of just jumping in and testing. This is doubly painful for players who are testing cosmetics (fashion or housing) considering how long it takes to learn every collectible even after opening the boxes and dumping inventory every few minutes.
Has the team considered an easier/quicker way to unlock all collections for templates?
The balance between NA and EU copies has been off, with NA only ever having two weeks to test each patch (and as we’ve seen, some things were not even activated until week three in the first place so NA never got to test with their characters), while EU always has to wait to test on their copy but instead keeps the PTS copies for multiple months to test things in the off-cycle.
Has the team considered balancing this, perhaps by allowing EU to start and giving NA the long haul every other patch?

Thanks.

Emeratis · March 27

I'm going to jump in on this too besides what was already mentioned there is a major pain point for those of us who only play on one server not having access to our limited and premium cosmetics for the pts, which limits our ability to test fashion and housing things for bugs or awkward interactions. I can't count the number of times even in this pts alone I was frustrated that I didn't have access to an outfit style or skin or body marking I've owned on live for years except for two weeks.

I would really like to see the pts be more fair to NA in general, but I also think that giving us more access to our crown cosmetics on pts would also alleviate some of the frustration for fashion testers especially.

Maitsukas · March 27

One thing that bummed me out (and a lot of other PTS players) was the rather late announcement of U49's PTS cycle being only 4 weeks long instead of 5 weeks. I wonder if it is going to continue with U50 as well.

Kelinmiriel · March 31

I've also pointed out every time this comes up (which is pretty much every PTS cycle), that the NA/EU imbalance is unfair not only to NA players, who only get two weeks out of every cycle, but also to EU players, who never get their setups to test things first.

And one of the things that's never possible to unlock easily is wayshrines. In fact, I made a character on EU that's a clone of my main on NA, who has picked up some of her more important limited-time non-crown cosmetics, and has all the wayshrines collected.

But that's a time-consuming method of dealing with things, and should NOT be required! There aren't so many people playing on PTS that it should be a problem with allowing access to all the collectibles that have been available. We don't get to keep them anyway. And as for wayshrines - just give them to our max template characters, please.

xencthlu · April 2

I was actually coming back here to make a thread on this exact topic, so thanks, Tom. Can always count on you to be both on the ball and the most reasonable voice in the room.

Instead of repeating the points you made well already, I'll just stress that the current PTS status quo makes it nearly impossible to do any meaningful housing testing. A major furnishing crafting material - flour - isn't available from boxes. You can only get about 40 from opening your various testing boxes, not an unlimited amount, not a stack. That means any provisioning-style furnishings can't be tested before launch.

As well, it's impossible to get luxury furnishings on the PTS if you do not already have them. The lux vendor isn't even enabled on weekends. That means that new luxury furnishings on the PTS literally cannot be tested. I have to assume that's an oversight. Why would you put items on the PTS that players literally cannot test because they cannot acquire them?

I think a lot's been said about the unfairness of the balance of NA/EU mirrors (why does the smaller server get priority? Who thought that was a good idea,) but I'll reiterate the major housing ones: When it's not a NA mirror, NA players can't get access to any luxury furnishings. When it's not a NA mirror, NA players can't get access to achievement or antiquity furnishings -- the boxes will only provide a single one, and the boxes do not have all of the achievement furnishings. When it's not a NA mirror, NA players can't acquire all homes -- last cycle, Druidspring Conservatory wasn't included in the home grants from the boxes. When it's not an NA mirror, NA players can't place mounts, pets, or houseguests in homes.

PTS housing testing is functionally not possible in the current status quo. You might as well push housing changes straight to live, for how little we're able to actually do with the current PTS tools.