BWL update - PTR available again

Nostalrius official announcements

Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Armilus » Thu Sep 03, 2015 7:30 pm

Mud wrote:Most guilds "Progressing" BWL in the PTR were most likely going to down it the first week anyways. It's September, BWL when?


Actually it's the opposite. The guilds that were going to clear BWL in the first week are clearing the instance on the PTR and actually testing everything. It's the guilds that are going from breaking 4 eggs on razorgore before a wipe to wiping in phase 2 after 3-4 weeks of 'testing' that are the ones progressing :P
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Mud » Thu Sep 03, 2015 8:29 pm

Armilus wrote:
Mud wrote:Most guilds "Progressing" BWL in the PTR were most likely going to down it the first week anyways. It's September, BWL when?


It's the guilds that are going from breaking 4 eggs on razorgore before a wipe to wiping in phase 2 after 3-4 weeks of 'testing' that are the ones progressing :P


You call the progressing??
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Imbaslap » Thu Sep 03, 2015 8:33 pm

best way to handle future PTR testing in my opinion.

pick guilds and assign a staff member/GM and have a coordination of when those guilds will test PTR and have GM assist incase things go horribly wrong.

Do it like Rift did:

for Example in BWL:

Blacklisted/Dreamstate: Test Flamegor/Chromaggus/Lab Packs - all mechanics and abilities, then once killed ( if its killed) GM respawn and have them try and exploit, run away, kite away, tank in a wall(doesn't matter) to see how to bypass the crap without doing it legit.

Coalition/Convulsion: Test Firemaw/Ebonroc/Lab Packs: Same as above.

Dank Buds/Entitled/Axiom: Razergore/Vael/Death Talon Packs: Same as above.

NOPE/Pheonix: Test Broodlord/Suppression Room: Same as above.

submit reports to bug tracker and all streams/recordings found. GM/Staff (Nano for example) will send PM to Guild masters/officers about a retest.
#Bring the PTR down for a week to apply fixes/updates. this prevents 24/7 yoloing and on the side scumbag practicing.
bring up the PTR when new fixes were applied and reschedule testing with the guilds for that week. ( 1 week notice please)

After all those bosses were tested and retested after first line of fixes (if there is any)

Next test:
ALL GUILDS ABOVE TEST NEFARIAN.

Schedule with GM/Staff (hopefully more than just Nano) to watch/stream/record, Same things as above:
the first 7 bosses and trash will be cleared by GM so the guild can effectively test the end boss for their entire raid time there.



things to provide the testing guilds prior to ANY content wanting to be tested on the PTR:

A custom Vendor/s with all the current gear that patch gives (Tier 2 gear vendor for BWL) consumables/shards/flasks/everything needed.
*this helps get feedback on testing set bonus's for tier 2 and if they work.


what the GM/admins will do during the test (watch the guild attempt the encounter on their own. watch for things not working. after some failed attempts (wipes) and the data is collected. kill the mobs and have them move on to the boss.
Same thing applies for the boss. check all mechanics/abilities. let guild attempt a few times. if they kill it in 1 shot, respawn it and have them check and recheck. then go about breaking the encounter and see what happens.


if we had all of this above, BWL would be fully tested and probably already released by now. this also helps mend relationships with the staff and playerbase by working with them, instead of being in the dark about whats going on.


my recommendation for ZG test:
gear vendor with all the enchants/consumbs/rep items available. all trinkets/items available for those ZG sets to be tested.
Same thing with everything above(consumables/flasks/shards)


For AQ40 test:
same thing above, have all the tier sets (2.5) available for set bonus testing, tokens to turn in to test quests.
same thing as above, assign guilds to certain bosses and trash piles.

same thing goes for Naxxramas PTR testing.
this will assist the guilds and the Admins on PTR as a whole. it also keeps guilds from "progressing" on content that is not released and ignoring testing the content entirely. (pretty much gaining a head start or ignoring certain encounters and not try and actively test it)

The whole goal of the Player test realm is to get feedback from the players about the content requiring testing. this is not a "go and play in AQ40/Naxx/BWL until you can full clear it before release" type of show.

this saves time on the guilds participating (not having to RECLEAR the ENTIRE INSTANCE just to test nefarian again) which ends up wasting about hours of time(maybe days) for some guilds.

do you expect guilds to full clear AQ40 just to test cthun? how about KT in Naxxramas? that will take a few months to a year. the way it is now, is not effective.

all of my recommendations helps keep the Live realm progression alive. it keeps the competition alive and prevents guilds scumbagging the PTR for their own benefits.


:roll:
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Plask » Sun Sep 06, 2015 9:44 pm

Imbaslap wrote:best way to handle future PTR testing in my opinion.

pick guilds and assign a staff member/GM and have a coordination of when those guilds will test PTR and have GM assist incase things go horribly wrong.

Do it like Rift did:

for Example in BWL:

Blacklisted/Dreamstate: Test Flamegor/Chromaggus/Lab Packs - all mechanics and abilities, then once killed ( if its killed) GM respawn and have them try and exploit, run away, kite away, tank in a wall(doesn't matter) to see how to bypass the crap without doing it legit.

Coalition/Convulsion: Test Firemaw/Ebonroc/Lab Packs: Same as above.

Dank Buds/Entitled/Axiom: Razergore/Vael/Death Talon Packs: Same as above.

NOPE/Pheonix: Test Broodlord/Suppression Room: Same as above.

submit reports to bug tracker and all streams/recordings found. GM/Staff (Nano for example) will send PM to Guild masters/officers about a retest.
#Bring the PTR down for a week to apply fixes/updates. this prevents 24/7 yoloing and on the side scumbag practicing.
bring up the PTR when new fixes were applied and reschedule testing with the guilds for that week. ( 1 week notice please)

After all those bosses were tested and retested after first line of fixes (if there is any)

Next test:
ALL GUILDS ABOVE TEST NEFARIAN.

Schedule with GM/Staff (hopefully more than just Nano) to watch/stream/record, Same things as above:
the first 7 bosses and trash will be cleared by GM so the guild can effectively test the end boss for their entire raid time there.



things to provide the testing guilds prior to ANY content wanting to be tested on the PTR:

A custom Vendor/s with all the current gear that patch gives (Tier 2 gear vendor for BWL) consumables/shards/flasks/everything needed.
*this helps get feedback on testing set bonus's for tier 2 and if they work.


what the GM/admins will do during the test (watch the guild attempt the encounter on their own. watch for things not working. after some failed attempts (wipes) and the data is collected. kill the mobs and have them move on to the boss.
Same thing applies for the boss. check all mechanics/abilities. let guild attempt a few times. if they kill it in 1 shot, respawn it and have them check and recheck. then go about breaking the encounter and see what happens.


if we had all of this above, BWL would be fully tested and probably already released by now. this also helps mend relationships with the staff and playerbase by working with them, instead of being in the dark about whats going on.


my recommendation for ZG test:
gear vendor with all the enchants/consumbs/rep items available. all trinkets/items available for those ZG sets to be tested.
Same thing with everything above(consumables/flasks/shards)


For AQ40 test:
same thing above, have all the tier sets (2.5) available for set bonus testing, tokens to turn in to test quests.
same thing as above, assign guilds to certain bosses and trash piles.

same thing goes for Naxxramas PTR testing.
this will assist the guilds and the Admins on PTR as a whole. it also keeps guilds from "progressing" on content that is not released and ignoring testing the content entirely. (pretty much gaining a head start or ignoring certain encounters and not try and actively test it)

The whole goal of the Player test realm is to get feedback from the players about the content requiring testing. this is not a "go and play in AQ40/Naxx/BWL until you can full clear it before release" type of show.

this saves time on the guilds participating (not having to RECLEAR the ENTIRE INSTANCE just to test nefarian again) which ends up wasting about hours of time(maybe days) for some guilds.

do you expect guilds to full clear AQ40 just to test cthun? how about KT in Naxxramas? that will take a few months to a year. the way it is now, is not effective.

all of my recommendations helps keep the Live realm progression alive. it keeps the competition alive and prevents guilds scumbagging the PTR for their own benefits.


:roll:

Some of those guilds aren't even capable of clearing BWL. I think the testing was fine like it was. Well maybe the guilds that haven't reported a single bug shouldn't test next time since they already had their chance to contribute.
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Imbaslap » Sun Sep 06, 2015 10:50 pm

then do it like Open beta then.
give everyone access to instant lvl 60. all gear vendors, consumables, trainers, pets.
that way, you don't have some guilds with members who are 1 month behind on gear, and some guild roster issues like it is currently with some guilds.

the more tools you give us testers and players, the easier it is to log on to the PTR and just go in and test crap.

sure, the live copy works for the first week.. but every retest becomes more and more stressful for the raiding guilds, and more of a hassle when our new recruits cant even effectively do good damage because they are fresh 60s or lvl 58 during the live realm snapshot.

do it like open beta,
give us all the stuff to test, tell us what needs tested and bring the ptr down when you don't need it up, and problem solved. its a test realm, its not like we care what character/class we play on. we just want to make sure everything is working before it hits the Live realm.

im sure a pug of 40 members from the top guilds could hop on the ptr right now and do a full bwl test if they had all the crap above.. anytime of the week.

oh... coalition needs 10 more people for PTR test? let me make a character real quick and gear it out in t2 in 5 minutes. oh, phoenix or dreamstate need another person on horde to help? let me do the same thing again. I'm not in their guilds, but if it has anything to do with testing content and having fun doing it. why not? giving them the ability to just have people swap to characters to make the test happen, then more power to it. what if a guild has 18 healers and no dps show up? you expect them to just call the test quits because of a few people? hell no, I could have 6 healers remake dps characters and have t2 quality gear so my guild could complete a test run. same thing for guilds who don't have enough healers online.
its just a test realm. nothing matters on it except the quality of the scripts.

I don't understand why its an issue when you had it all set before you released the server. if your stance is about throwing bodies at the instance and get testing done, then do it like Open Beta. who cares if a pug of 40 people test the content, its just a test. as long as you get your bug reports, what does it matter?

in open beta, I had my guild remake entire characters to do 2-3 reclears of ZG and AQ20 just to bypass the instance lock to get another look at bosses and such. why cant we do that on PTR? that's 2 more test runs from the same people! that's MORE EXPOSURE TO BUGS!

just my opinion though.
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Badtank » Sun Sep 06, 2015 11:31 pm

Ayy typical plask and his useless shitposting, lmao.


That's a very good plan Imba, the way testing was done I just felt fucking weird, We tested later in the week and everything we found was all ready known so I felt like it was useless to do anyway. The only real testing we got to do was on nef for about three hours wth nano and that felt like we where being useful but the rest was just practice.
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Imbaslap » Sun Sep 06, 2015 11:54 pm

Badtank wrote:Ayy typical plask and his useless shitposting, lmao.


That's a very good plan Imba, the way testing was done I just felt fucking weird, We tested later in the week and everything we found was all ready known so I felt like it was useless to do anyway. The only real testing we got to do was on nef for about three hours wth nano and that felt like we where being useful but the rest was just practice.


with 7,000 capable testers online everyday. I don't even think you would need to keep the PTR up for more than a week if they all had access to instant level 60s and gear. could you imagine how many people could hop on the PTR and just test your raids? probably 500x more than what it is currently. imagine the amount of reports you'll get within a week? :roll: :roll:
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Slicy » Tue Sep 08, 2015 8:24 am

Imbaslap wrote:
with 7,000 capable testers online everyday. I don't even think you would need to keep the PTR up for more than a week if they all had access to instant level 60s and gear. could you imagine how many people could hop on the PTR and just test your raids? probably 500x more than what it is currently. imagine the amount of reports you'll get within a week? :roll: :roll:


I don't think the solution is to give everyone and their brothers and sisters PTR access. Among the 7k capable testers you mentionned, half of them or even more don't give a fuck about what is working or not, how it should work, reporting bugs, etc. It won't increase the number of (quality) reports on the tracker. You'll just get shit tons of useless/misinformed reports, assuming they even end up on the tracker.

Giving 7k players instant 60 (a lot of these 7k aren't 60 on live) and free raid gear > PTR will be seen/used as a fun server. There's already enough retards trying to get HKs on the test realm when only raiding guilds got access (correct me if I'm wrong). Don't need to waste more testing time waiting for players to corpse run to even get to the raid when logging into PTR already takes between 3 and 20 minutes.
And apart from the wpvp heroes you would get, I do think a minimum of organisation is needed to test raids efficiently. Good luck testing AQ40 with pugs and without voice comm if you see what I mean. :P

Like others said, the ideal situation is to have a GM watching what is happening so that he can witness the bug(s) happening and help out reproducing/fixing* them. There isn't enough GMs/communication to assist every testing raid currently. Having more and more raids on PTR won't mean more quality tests imo.

*Perfect example is when Nefarian encounter keeps reseting during P1. This bug happened a lot of times for different guilds and we've yet to reproduce it enough times with different variables to figure out what is causing it apparently.

However the ideas of having a standard (and appropriate, like NR sets and qiraj tanks for AQ) raid gear and items vendor + GMs assigned to raids and scheduled testing timeframes would surely help out.
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Plask » Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:42 pm

Badtank wrote:Ayy typical plask and his useless shitposting, lmao.


That's a very good plan Imba, the way testing was done I just felt fucking weird, We tested later in the week and everything we found was all ready known so I felt like it was useless to do anyway. The only real testing we got to do was on nef for about three hours wth nano and that felt like we where being useful but the rest was just practice.

What takes time is applying fixes and retesting them. Some fixes can cause other bugs etc or do not work in the desired way and needs to be redone. If you wanna feel useful as a tester take your time and research how stuff should be, apply your knowledge and try to pinpoint bugs, and submit a detailed bug report with sources.

Imbaslap wrote:with 7,000 capable testers online everyday. I don't even think you would need to keep the PTR up for more than a week if they all had access to instant level 60s and gear. could you imagine how many people could hop on the PTR and just test your raids? probably 500x more than what it is currently. imagine the amount of reports you'll get within a week? :roll: :roll:

Alot of bugs took weeks to get fixed and needed to be retested anyways. More testers =/= faster development. Infact they would probably spend months sorting through the 1000s of bug reports (Tons of em being duplicates or wrong, it happens).

And let's not forget the realm would be swamped with players there to worldpvp (yes I remember getting ganked several time outside BRM on PTR) and just in general to fuck around. Especially if there was instant 60 and free gear.. That would gaurante pretty much any idiot would join the PTR to get their hands on some cool gear and duel with it.

Nah, just keep it the way it is. I think there's a reason there's not a shitton of free stuff at PTR, the things mentioned above being a few of them. The consumable vendor was neat I guess, but giving more wouldn't serve any purpose (although, please update our characters for next test ;) ).
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Re: BWL update - PTR available again

by Nano » Wed Sep 09, 2015 1:02 am

First of all, a big thank you to all the guilds who tested and reported issues with BWL. From our perspective, this PTR has been a huge success and the opening of the PTR to everyone capable of testing was clearly the right decision. We're incredibly blessed to have such a great player base who not only wants to play and enjoy the server themselves but will also give up their time and energy to make the server better for others. It's true that opening up the PTR to such a large group of players may seem overkill but the purpose of testing and retesting content with different eyes can't be understated.

If you have specific feedback and suggestions for the next PTR, feel free to detail those in a PM to myself. And for those who are interested in getting involved more, the IsVV team is still recruiting a few more people. The next PTR will include a new character update and new content but we're currently putting some last touches on BWL and the rest of 1.6 for release.

As this thread and discussion seems to have run it's course and our focus is on release, we'll lock this thread.
Please report any issues you have to the Bugtracker
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