Should PTR raids be removed?

[Deleted]

Was thinking about it this morning, what if all the top guilds can't go on PTR? Everyone has to work on raids while they're live, it'll stimulate guild recruitment, teamwork and strategy. Right now it's mostly guilds that do the bosses earlier and then blast through 30% of the bosses in a day or so. Clearing the content will take a lot longer as well, while still being challenging. Just an idea, not sure how it would work in reality, any thoughts/ideas?

[Deleted]

Oh you mean like in Vanilla? wanna really have me spell C'tun out for you?
So, no

PS: How does it concern YOUR gameplay when guilds like Serenity do raid beta tests for Blizzard, apart from not at all?

[ComputerNerd]

No, because raids have been shown to be needing adjustments and fixes even on live during the server-first races and later.
Imagine the state they would be in without the PTR.

[brunnor]

I would love it if they didn't need us to PTR test, ie having a good enough internal team, but I don't think that will ever happen. I do hate knowing everything about the zone, normal heroic and mythic, before even walking in to the zone on live.

[Airlick]

If only Blizzard was able to test their raids so that bugs and exploits couldn't affect the race for world first, then yes, it would be good if raids were not tested on PTR. But that's never going to happen, and it's not really Blizzard's fault, it's just impossible. So no, PTR raids shouldn't be removed.

[Deleted]

Sure, if they would get their own internal team to test it thoroughly before release.
This would actually make the first weeks of raiding "intreresting" again.

[Deleted]

In an ideal world yes, in the real world no.

[Deleted]

They did that with Blackwing Lair in Vanilla. Didn't work out well. Probably will still continue churning them out on the PTR to smooth out bugs.

[ComputerNerd]

Sure, if they would get their own internal team to test it thoroughly before release.
This would actually make the first weeks of raiding "intreresting" again.

Internal testers who know the encounters do not play the same as real players, are they are in much smaller quantity too.
This has been brought up repeatedly, and dismissed too for the reason I just described.

[The Kao]

In an ideal world yes, in the real world no.

This pretty much. There are dev studios that manage to test their stuff well enough internally to be able and release in a proper state. Blizzard can't do that for all their endless layering of mutually influencing code. Heck even with excessive help from the outside they still sneak in bugs that never get resolved, it's laughable. But that's reality. I'd sure welcome it if patch content wouldn't get public long before it goes live, but that's not how it goes with Blizzard. They outsource testers simply because they can't (or don't want to) do it by themselves.

[Rotted]

I think they should be removed, purley for the shit storm that would follow

That being said I think guilds who have had practise on the PTR shouldn't be elgible for world firsts. Hell I don't even think we should have access to video footage, reviews and guides yes. But actual footage no

[Cernunnos]

C'thun, bugged to shit with tentacles spawning where they weren't suppose to, eyebeam doing stupid amounts of damage, encounter was basically impossible.
Kael'thas would despawn mid fight for no reason (amongst a host of other bugs)
Chromaggus hitting you with all his debuffs right away (or whatever the bug was)
Lady Vashj was also notoriously bugged if I recall.

Unless blizzard is actually going to test encounters properly prior to release, raids need to be on the PTRs to avoid the situations we had in vanilla and TBC were bosses were simply unkillable due to bugs.

And to also avoid the "solarian problem" where a boss undergoes several iterations on live before blizzard sticks with a version of the fight. Completely changing how a boss fight goes is definitely something that shouldnt happen once the encounter goes live, redo it however many times in alpha/beta sure, but not on live.

[Nevcairiel]

wanna really have me spell C'tun out for you?

Its funny because you misspelled C'Thun. Sorry, couldn't resist!

But I agree otherwise, testing of the raids is important, otherwise they end up quite buggy.

[Deleted]

No. They are still good players anyway.


What I would say though is that it's unfair when some say "getting in the beta should be reserved for top raiders". THE OPPOSITE! Most of those players aren't there to report, but to hide what quirks they found to help their progress.

Besides, there is the concept of passive testing. Blizzard doesn't only want you to report, they want to see how you PLAY the game.

So, in fact, most of the help Blizzard is getting might be from you just being there, not necessarily writing assays to them.

[yeto]

It has become part of the race, whats the next, guilds can only raid 2 nights a week?, you cant farm for gear before the raid?, cant do spilt runs?, cant look up guides?, cant use addons?.

stop trying to make rules for others and enjoy the way you play the game.

[Deleted]

that would mean retards doing the shitty race dont have time to learn the fights before the patch release . blizzard wont do it

[Spriestlawl]

Oh you mean like in Vanilla? wanna really have me spell C'tun out for you?
So, no

PS: How does it concern YOUR gameplay when guilds like Serenity do raid beta tests for Blizzard, apart from not at all?

C'thun? how about Kael and Vashj.. those fights were beyond broken for EVER

[Army Dreamer]

Should PTR raids be removed?

PTR should never existed at all.

[Deleted]

Internal testers who know the encounters do not play the same as real players, are they are in much smaller quantity too.
This has been brought up repeatedly, and dismissed too for the reason I just described.

Ofc I ment testers without internal information about the encounter(s), just like a "normal" player. Could be a dreamjob for some people.

[Deleted]

No. If you tested raids on PTR you will know why they shouldn't be.

There are often so many bugs in instances, where bosses can be exploited because their mechanics, don't work, or have weird bugs that sometimes makes the boss freeze and forget his abilities, or in other cases sometimes the bosses go crazy and do a few mechanics at once. That doesn't even include the possibility that blizzard gets their tuning wrong and causes an entire region to get stuck on bosses because they are potentially overtuned.

PTR testing of raids, always finds tons of bugs that blizzard might have overlooked, and because so many guilds test it at once, it also gives them specifics on how to solve them. IF they were to do this internally, they would genuinely not find the bugs and the content patches would probably take even longer to come out.

So no, PTR should not be removed, everyone can test on the PTR, there's even PUG's on PTR, so I mean, there's no disadvantage to anyone, only those that are lazy and refuse to take part in the testing.