Blizzard needs to stop (PTR)ing raids for new content.

[Deleted]

Doesn't matter for majority of the playerbase. External testing lasts only for a short time to get a glimpse of how the fight works, and to check if there are any gamebreaking bugs with it. A foobared line of code can make the diffrence between playable and unplayable boss. For example boss has an aura that makes it take 100% addidtional damage in a certain phase, like Gorefiend. Now if someone slipped a finger and made it 1000% instead of intended 100, the fight would be utterly broken.

Testing avoids situations like this.

The only instance where I disagree with Blizzard's decision was when people get banned for unintentional "exploitation" on world first races. The most notable example of this is Lich King saronite bombs. Fortunately, this happens extremely rarely, in fact that Lich King kill was the only major incident. Abusing LFR in Dragon Soul was kinda intentional cos they knew how many bosses were meant to be available on that particular date.

Today's raids are saturated with mechanics (too many mechanics for my taste tbh, IMO there should be much less stuff going around, but the stuff that IS going around should be meaningful and harshly punishing if failed). They need to ensure all this mess works correctly.

[Benomatic]

Test it yes. Public test it yes. Public broadcast, no. Keep some surprise. Lore spoilers, content spoilers, ban the lot. I want a fresh start personally. I could opt not to read fan sites but I's prefer a ban on leaks.

[Not jaylock at all]

Who the hell does this?

The LFR plebs who think Method clears the raid in 1 week due to it being 'easy'? ROFL

The reason raids are cleared so fast now is because arbitrary barriers, like resists, are gone. When they do arise, (like spine of deathwing) then we get a glimpse into the bullshit that was in every tier prior to most of WOTLK, Cata, MOP, Wod.

These raids are cleared quickly because of that reason alone, on top of this, world first raiders raid MUCH more than they did in vanilla or tbc. You could expect a world first kill on a 'difficult' boss in vanilla or tbc to take 50-150 wipes. Now? thats a medium or low difficulty boss. The hard bosses now are clocking in 250-450 pulls.

Raiders are much more efficient, they're developing their own addons, they're able to theorycraft every fucking scenario.

Literally the only way to make raids last more than a week is have a ludicrous travel distance on each wipe, and a crazy amount of bosses. Think 22 bosses, Molten Core corpse run on every attempt. (they'd just get around it with vanishes and warlocks, but thats the point. THEY WILL GET AROUND IT. they have seen everything by this point.)


So tired of people thinking Vanilla or TBC was hard. TBC had like two hard bosses ,and they were hard for stupid reasons, like dps checks, akin to spine of deathwing. Vanilla didn't have hard bosses. It had buggy bosses like C'thun, or stupid shit like resists, 8 tank requirement, etc.

And this is only talking about world first raiders, which are the fucking 0.01%.

Exactly.

Mythic raiding does have harder mechanics but more forgiving in damage.

Vanilla/bc raiding was over tuned bs. Back then damage from bosses was too high and resistance/immune was a thing. The majority of the playerbase was 10-16 and there was less people raiding with the req amount being 40 compaired to now.

Raiding wasnt exactly harder then but it was harder to get a raid.

[Valech]

Here is why testing heroic raids on ptr is not an issue:
There are many types of players who enjoy PvE but for this topic, we can differ between two:
1) Those who enjoy the content up to (read: up to = including normal and lfr) heroic but are not interested in mythic
2) Players who aim for mythic and use heroic as a one-week-steppingstone for their progression in mythic.

Type 1, rightfully, lacks ambition, which is their good right. They are satisfied with heroic content. Requirements by guilds for this content are less strict. Chances they will ready themselves with ptr videos or guides in general is low. And even if there are a few who do prepare themselves, they will struggle with the heroic content for a while anyway. Possibly longer then it takes the mythic oriented guilds to clear the content on mythic. In other words: Since preparations are less strict/ambitious, even with the help of those preview videos they will not progress faster then they would without.
Type 2 is not affected by heroic tests at all.

[huehuehue]

I don't know, was being 1-shot by C'thun the second the fight began sound like a fun raiding experience?

in it's own way, yes.

It should be from unexpected mechanics though, not bugs.

[PosPosPos]

IF a smaller raid team like Square's FFXIV can make compelling raids that are just as hard as mythic fights without public testing, then yes, Blizzard can as well. Don't let the me to drones here on the forums tell you otherwise. Blizzard is just being fucking lazy or just lacks the gaming skill themselves to do so.

That's because they took 3 more years to develop the game after botching it pre-ARR. If WoW had that timeframe to design and test raids from 2005 all the way to 2013, then you have a modicum of point there.

[The Madgod]

Testing is a part of gamedev. If fights weren't tested, they'd be of a much lower quality.

Like, it's not a coincidence that games which have betas that are more of a marketing tactic than actual testing periods have worse design issues on launch.

[Cæli]

Completely agree.

No PTR, no datamining. Internal pro testing, previews sometimes.

Would make the game better.

It's becoming hard to keep things secret now. I already know what awaits me in Legion.

I don't know, but it's Blizzard money anyway.

[Kraineth]

I guess people just forgot the last time they left a boss untested? Ra-den anyone?

The boss that was meant to be a real challenge, ended up being a complete joke because they didn't test it outside of their office.

No thanks, I don't need any more of that.

[The Madgod]

I guess people just forgot the last time they left a boss untested? Ra-den anyone?

The boss that was meant to be a real challenge, ended up being a complete joke because they didn't test it outside of their office.

No thanks, I don't need any more of that.

Seriously. As someone who's developed games... internal playtesting is a great thing to do but in my experience it's nowhere near as useful as testing that your players will do. Because everyone who's testing it internally is doing so as their job. That tends to hard-wire people into certain thinking patterns, to look for specific things. Players are much more diverse and are really great at looking at a game from different angles than anyone on the internal team. Never mind the sheer volume of data that a company the size of Blizzard can get from even an hour's worth of external testing.

And as a player, if I had to choose between learning how a boss works early to try and get an edge on progression but having a higher quality encounter or keeping it a surprise and potentially dealing with a buggy or broken encounter... I'd rather spoil the surprise. Progressing on an encounter that just doesn't work properly isn't my idea of fun... But that's just me.

[ComputerNerd]

I think the game would be better if they didn't allow public testing of raids. Pay some testers.

Testers do not think like players.

As has been shown repeatedly by bugs getting through even with PTR testing, the content would be in a horrible state were it to hit the public realms without it.

Testers will know how they are supposed to behave.
Players do not.
Players will break the rules.

[klogaroth]

Well when you let players test the whole raid in PTR or beta or in a alpha and also on hard modes, they jump into the real servers and know exactly how to beat it.

How is this situation any different than what we would have a couple of hours after most bosses have been pulled by a handful of guilds?

No testing would mean a couple of hours change in kill times on non-bugged bosses. At the most.

The dungeon journal isn't going away.
Data mining certainly isn't going away; creating an easily patchable, non data-mineable game isn't going to happen. The ability to play whilst still downloading game content, if you want to encrypt all of that content? That ain't happening.

That mystery of a first pull, that's still out there. It's on the PTR, or it's staying away from guides and data mining websites.

Unless you're going in there day raiding in the first week the fact there's a PTR doesn't matter. The info will be out by the time you're on those bosses.
And if you're going in there day raiding in the first week it's near certainty that you were part of the PTR testing, so you already experienced those pulls before there were any solid strats.

[Deleted]

Reason i think this is because people complain about raids being too easy and short, blah blah. Well when you let players test the whole raid in PTR or beta or in a alpha and also on hard modes, they jump into the real servers and know exactly how to beat it. No such thing as progression when they do that. Have blizzard have 10-25 personal raid testers for it and keep the information for themselves. They should keep the raid content a secret. I know you want to test the raids and stuff but i think there could be a better way.

You heavily overestimate PTR, in terms of training for bosses.
You only have 1 hour of testing usually on a boss, and if the boss would die in that hour or you would get quite far, he's horribly undertuned and needed the test so it gets buffed anyway. Even if there was no ptr, no datamining, no dungeon journal, there would be videos before 99.09% of players get to those encounters.

As for bugs.There could be a book written with a list of bugs that world first guilds see on untested mythic bosses.

[Usagi Senshi]

That's because they took 3 more years to develop the game after botching it pre-ARR. If WoW had that timeframe to design and test raids from 2005 all the way to 2013, then you have a modicum of point there.

That's not even remotely close to the same comparison and you know it. I also still stand by what I said about the FFXIV devs being more skillful at their game than the Blizz devs with WoW and thus can test their content better without spoiling it.

Considering the quality of FFXIV:HW (and its patches and past ARR patches) without beta testing, I'll stand by my statement.

[Erwarth]

WoW Mythic raid are way harder than FFXIV savage raid. But they're equally fun.

[diox990]

Reason i think this is because people complain about raids being too easy and short.

Looking at the wipe counts from this xpac and previous ones, I don't think most mythic raiders agree with you.

[Tharkkun]

That's not even remotely close to the same comparison and you know it. I also still stand by what I said about the FFXIV devs being more skillful at their game than the Blizz devs with WoW and thus can test their content better without spoiling it.

Considering the quality of FFXIV:HW (and its patches and past ARR patches) without beta testing, I'll stand by my statement.

I have yet to find any other game where raiding was as challenging as the top difficulty in WoW. Wow's challenge is a mix of gear curves along with skill. Other games it's about gear.

[brunnor]

I agree, Blizzard needs to fully internally test raids like FFXIV does. Players need to be in the dark when walking in to bosses if they want them to last more than a week or two. Thinks like dungeon journal are also problems in this regard, players can know 100% of what a boss does before ever seeing it on live servers.

Blizzards test team has gotten a ton better and they need to use them correctly to test all bosses and only them. Drop DJ out of the game until LFR opens up each time so that LFR players can know whats up or people stuck on bosses the same.

- - - Updated - - -

I have yet to find any other game where raiding was as challenging as the top difficulty in WoW. Wow's challenge is a mix of gear curves along with skill. Other games it's about gear.

Savage FFXIV matches WoW in terms of difficulty. WoW is ahead, but it isn't enough where one game can be fully tested internally and the other can't. On top of that WoW has much more money to pay testers to get it done right.

[Coldvibes]

I think it would be a great idea to cycle the top guild of every tier in either the US or EU to be a raid tester for the next tier ie, Method/Serenity finished this tier first, they test T19 and only they test T19, and their guild is taken out of the race for that tier. Blizzard can pay them to test.

It not only changes who wins the race every tier, it also incentivizes players to try and go for a world first.

[Dracodraco]

I think it would be a great idea to cycle the top guild of every tier in either the US or EU to be a raid tester for the next tier ie, Method/Serenity finished this tier first, they test T19 and only they test T19, and their guild is taken out of the race for that tier. Blizzard can pay them to test.

It not only changes who wins the race every tier, it also incentivizes players to try and go for a world first.

You assume that a guild would be okay with being "out of the race" for an entire tier at that level. It would never work, because they are competitive people. There's no way they wouldn't all just form a second guildname and win with that (or join other guilds and still compete).