A Question to the devs

Clawfangshadow · April 16

Do you guys host public test servers for console? I am an Xbox one console user and my experience with update 49 when it first came out in March made me think there should be one for console. For the whole of March update 49 had so many visual glitches no matter what I did to attempt to fix it that it prevented me from playing much for a good couple of weeks. It was not a device issue since the issue only appeared after update 49 dropped and all the other games on my system ran smoothly.

Now at the current time the glitches are gone but I wasn't the only one experiencing it and some of those people haven't returned to the game since the second week of update 49 being active for console. Is there a possibility that console could get a public test server as well? I know pc users get them and console users tend to get lots of bugs each update and I am wondering if that could be changed.

Arunei · April 16

Iirc there is a specific reason Console doesn't have a PTS but I don't remember what it is. I think part of it is to do with space maybe, as Console typically doesn't have as much storage space (I believe consoles can be expanded with HDDs/SD cards but I don't know how much) as PC/Mac does.

I think another reason is because they'd need to make two entirely new versions of the PTS (one for PS and one for XBox) and that could potentially take up a decent amount of dev resources, since a number of things function differently on the PTS than on Live (namely the Template characters that give you a TON of Boxes to try all manner of things like Sets, Potions, Cosmetics, and so on).

Clawfangshadow · April 17

Well that sucks if that is the case. I remember the last few updates being kind of broken game level. U49 was the worst since I started playing back in 2018. As I mentioned in my original post the game had so many visual glitches that I wasn't able to play much for a couple of weeks and some others experiencing the same thing haven't returned to the game.

LunaFlora · April 17

i asked Jessica about it in the PTS Update post from January:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8412363#Comment_8412363

LunaFlora wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

only thing i still want to know, since updates will launch at the same time now,
will PlayStation and Xbox ever get to test on a dedicated testing server too?

That's a great question and one I asked as well when we first heard we were moving toward simultaneous releases on all platforms. While it's something we'd love to extend to our console players someday, it's a bit more complicated than just flipping a switch to allow console players access to the PTS server. As the PTS is built now for PC, it's a separate client download even though it uses the same patcher as the PC EU and NA servers. This would mean splitting our build pipeline further, and asking our console players to download an additional client, which isn't ideal or realistic. There may be additional technical hurdles as well. It's possible this is something we could revisit when crossplay comes online in the future.

thank you Jessica, it is nice to know you asked it as well.
The explanation for *why* it is not currently possible is helpful!

i expected it would not be possible currently, but Crossplay might make it possible.
Though i am looking forward to Crossplay regardless of whether or not PTS gets expanded to Consoles.

Clawfangshadow · April 18

Thank you LunaFlora that makes sense now. Still disappointing but I understand better about things regarding my initial inquiry.