Seriously.
I understand the desire of video game developers/publishers to let the players beta test your new content and save money, but PTRs have become so much a part of the development process that nobody has stopped to say "why are we doing this at all?"
After all, if the entire point of playing a game is to experience new material, why allow everybody the ability to cheat like this? Is it just so that the elite raid teams can get "practice time" in on the next raid, and then they can provide a strat for everybody else?
If that's the case, then the entire point of MMOs is simply "how quickly can you finish a raid".
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As you can tell, I dislike the concept of "open betas" and "PTRs" in the first place. They keep all players from experiencing content at once, and instead of everybody muddling through and trying to figure out how to handle new content, the sandbox is already there for people to try to figure it out beforehand.
I was in a run --I think it was Upper Blackrock Spire-- when one of the players commented that it is so much better now in Classic than in Vanilla because we all now know what to do; back then we were all muddling through trying to figure it out, but now we've the advantage of 15+ years of insight to know how to handle things. While I agree that it is nice to have detailed data to fall back on, I'm not convinced it is "better" now. We just know what we have to do, and all we're left with is just execution. There's no "hey, this isn't working, let's try this instead" or "WTF was THAT attack about?"
The thrill of discovery, and the knowledge sharing that happens following a "eureka!" moment is all lost. Now it's all about "Go look it up on the forums" or "Check out the YouTube video for how to run it".
Perhaps if dev staffs got back to not using PTR servers, MMOs might see a resurgence in that Vanilla excitement that nobody seems to be able to generate anymore, yet everybody complains about.
FFXIV doesn't have PTRs or betas. It delays the "optimum strat" part by a week or so. However, it does make the stories more enjoyable, as everyone experiences them together.
ReplyDeleteWoW is the opposite unfortunately. I saw that new trailer which came out last week, but when I went to the forums to discuss it, pretty much everyone was referencing spoilers from Beta.
I'm thinking the same thing; and that shows the emphasis of FFXIV on story and experience versus the WoW de-emphasis of the same thing. I've always thought that the massive exodus surrounding Mists and Warlords was due to the extreme amount of time the expacs spent in Open Beta; everybody who wanted the story got it, and after release people rushed through it and then unsubbed a month or two later.
DeleteAnd don't get me started on the storyline concerning the main characters; if Jaina and Thrall aren't Mary Sue and Marty Stu I'll eat my Cincinnati Reds cap. The plotlines alone, in both in-game and the books, read more like a soap opera for the elite than anything else.
I can't speak for WoW, but in other MMORPGs I play, the less public testing there is, the buggier the live releases are. GW2 has no open testing whatsoever and almost all major content drops require multiple patches before they're fully playable. Plenty of people, myself included, like to leave it a while before attempting anything time-consuming because otherwise it's as likely as not it will be time wasted.
ReplyDeleteEverQuest and EQ2 are unusual in that they have Test servers that are also full-time, permanent home servers for a cadre of players. I played on EQ2 Test as my main server for years. You can't (or couldn't) copy characters there. You have to level up like anywhere else. The problem there is that they can't attract sufficient high-level players to stay there to test endgame raid content.
In EQ2 they eventually chose to get past that by having another Test server, which they call Beta, which they fire up for anything that needs testing. They also run closed tests with invited guilds for top-end raid stuff because no-one else can test it.
And even then, stuff is usually buggy when it goes Live. Better now than it used to be, though. My feeling is that keeping the secrets comes a poor second to having content that actually works. Given that most teams will never have the resources or budget to pay enough professional testers to check regular content updates, what's the alternative to some form of PTR?
At this point, I prefer bugs to a PTR. When the players get to see everything and let the elite guilds work out all the strats, there's no discovery left in the game.
DeleteI personally think that's one of top reasons why retail isn't in a good shape right now, because the PTR realms give away everything just so that raids work better. Oh sure, it's a better game in terms of mechanics balance and polish, but is it a better game in terms of story and player satisfaction?
I look at PTR realms as a feedback loop for WoW: people find out the best strats for leveling and raiding, and they take it to retail where everybody then focuses on getting through all the leveling just to get to the raiding. Then the next PTR patch comes through, and cycle repeats itself. The net effect is everything becomes about the raiding, and less and less about everything else. And because of that, people become conditioned to believe all WoW is about is raiding. God forbid people want to do anything else, because you'll deviating from the optimally designed process already figured out in the PTR beforehand.
I can't claim that the PTR realms are the sole --or even the primary-- reason why the retail story has been drifting into into fanfic territory*, but I'm sure it contributes because of the lack of emphasis. I'm sure there's market research that Blizz conducts that says people want great raids far more than an interesting story, so guess where the effort goes? And the PTRs emphasize that because people want to get to the raids as fast as possible, and PTRs provide a pain free way to figure all this out.
*I mean really, if someone had written back at the end of BC some fanfic about Jaina and Kalecgos shacking up, you'd have cringed. And yet here we are.
I used to do a lot of beta testing when it really was all testing and bug reporting and feedback in a variety of games. It is exciting to see new content! In a brand new game you could tell a great deal about the developers and game company from how they ran the testing and by what the state of the game they planned to release was.
ReplyDeleteWorld of Warcraft has always been refreshingly transparent. There are Alpha forums for discussion and feedback as soon as the alpha is up. If you're in any stage of the beta you can put your opinions and concerns right out there. Never an NDA. WOW is like many games that have test servers to broaden the feedback on class changes, professions, character advancement, and how the game plays on a range of machines. Anyone playing the game can create a character there or copy their own to see what it will be like. It certainly isn't an elite few. My guess from playing their betas over time is that the raiders you speak of are in the alpha, so they see all the changes and provide feedback all along. My personal habit in a beta the first time I play through is to take notes so, report all bugs, or problems with particular quests. I'm in really late this time, because I did not opt in, but I always have beta testing marked for WOW. I think next time I will have more faith and opt in if that's how it goes.
As an ex-software engineer, I salute your devotion to bug reporting. (Seriously.)
DeleteHowever, doesn't it bother you that the entire story is provided to you before launch day, and that going into launch day there will be no twists and turns that wills surprise you?
In my personal experience, I did part of the open beta for ESO's Elsweyr expac, and as soon as I realized the entire storyline was there for the taking I backed off so I wouldn't find out anything ahead of time.
No, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't read in advance on the expansions, but if I'm play testing as they used to say, I'm happy to see how everything plays out. What I do find is I hate taking my druid back through the same content they've been through multiple times over a longer test period where there are wipes when the game goes live.
ReplyDeleteNow that my Galaxies play is gone, World of Warcraft is my main game and I have played it steadily since Wrath, I think, without unsubscribing. Also, I'll run at least 14 characters through the Shadowlands content now I'm all stocked with 120s. I am careful what I write about the game beta, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone else.