I've felt less inclined to play since the PTR was launched. PTR's sacrifice well timed hype for cheap testing

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TL;DR: PTR systems provide a net negative impact on the game as a whole. They reduce hype, and harshly affect player engagement prior to the associated patch dropping.

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Much of marketing in game development is curating effective and well timed hype about the game, its release, patches, and upcoming content. In order to do this effectively, the delivery of information to the playerbase needs to be tightly controlled and done in a calculated manner that maximises the excitement around the new content, without sacrificing the current contentā€™s relevance.

The introduction of a PTR is a (sadly) standard thing to do nowadays as it makes development cheaper, using unpaid players to do your final testing stages for you. But itā€™s not only wrecking any kind of hype your team could properly implement, itā€™s also making your existing content mostly irrelevant between the date of the PTR and Retail release.

Iā€™d suspect if you look at your server data on player actions, trade post listings, etc. and cross-reference them with your announcements and PTR releases, youā€™d see a sharp decline in player engagement relevant to the the content youā€™re changing.

My personal example is working really hard to max out weaponsmithing, have all 3 trophies, all the gear, everything. Itā€™s cost me a considerable amount of gold, and thus a considerable investment of my play time! I was about to begin trying to craft 600GS items, only a few thousand gold away from the 3rd and final house; but I stopped, like 2000 gold short of the finish line as soon as the latest changes were mentioned. Iā€™m not one personally to read spoilers, I honestly hate them as they just rip out all the excitement of new things for me, I donā€™t watch movie trailers, and I donā€™t play on PTRā€™s. At the same time, Iā€™m at a significant disadvantage being completely blind, so I have to read some of the relevant info. This sours the whole thing for me honestly, I feel like thereā€™s no point continuing my weaponsmithing work until the patch drops, I donā€™t want to do stuff thatā€™s about to be made worthless, and I donā€™t want to go on the PTR and basically cheat mode my way around the game.

A PTR is playing a game with cheat mode on, before the release date. I refuse to accept there is a net benefit to your studio from the minor surface level cost saving of proper QA testing, or analysis of design choices that youā€™re asking a few thousand random players to do for you like New World is an open source design project (wtf). I would love to (although Iā€™m very aware Iā€™ll never be able to) see the data to demonstrate if Iā€™m right or wrong.

Cheers,

Husky (Dr Squirrel)

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I like your opinion and i think having no ptr is good for the hype and economy of the game but sadly without a ptr there would be even more game breaking bugs with every new patch.
I would love to be in a world where they do not need a ptr and are able to balance and test new patches by their own but that is not the state of the game right now.

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Weā€™re the same person. Armor 200, 3 minor trophies, 3 houses, 4/5 gear and almost all the mats saved up for a set of 600. But Im happy waiting bc there will be less of a chance Ill waste my mats to rng. The heads up from the PTR players is a blessing. Its the stealth, undocumented changes that upset me. Showing up in Malef to a door that took 3 of us 10 min to beat on was just discouraging and sad that night. Arriving to Myrk in a group of 10 and getting surprised smashed was confing and toxic. Finding out you have to craft more, if not the same, when they said itd be easier is simply horrible PR.

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Sounds like youā€™re frustrated by upcoming changes more than there being a PTR.

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We need a PTR.

but

I too am feeling less inclined to play now instead of waiting for the PTR changes to go through. If enough people feel that way, it might be an indication that the upcoming changes are unpopular. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not at all. I think my post clearly outlined what Iā€™m frustrated with, my personal example was merely to help illustrate the point, the example given isnā€™t the main subject of discussion.

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Outside of balance related stuff I ignore the PTS.

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Yup, I completely agree that this is the state of play right now. I donā€™t think itā€™s entirely viable for them to run without a PTR, it feels like a corner theyā€™ve backed themselves into. I still feel the point is valid that PTR does damage the live game quite badly. I guess itā€™s only the devs that can have enough data to decide which is the best course of action, and that decision was made.

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I never thought I would see someone take the position ā€œwe need less information before big changes come and less testingā€, but here we are.

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I didnā€™t say less testing, I said AGS were using the PTR as a method for cheap testing.

And as players, no, we shouldnā€™t need the information before big changes; if done properly, thereā€™s absolutely no need for us to know beyond usage for building hype for the update.

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There is no realistic way to replace 10s of thousands of testers and some corner cases are impossible to find without testing on that scale., it isnā€™t about cost it is about feasibility

Absolutely disagree. If they are going to change something that makes putting in my time on something now pointless I want to know ASAP.

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