wow The Final 3 Bosses of the Sepulcher Shouldn't Be Tested on the PTR and Here's Why

[Starym 3,775]

 

With Blizzard announcing that they're thinking about skipping PTR testing on the final 3 encounters of the 9.2 Sepulcher of the First Ones raid, I wrote another of my idealized concept articles, as I really REALLY think it would be an excellent and very important idea to implement.

With Anduin being the "final" boss for the first week, and the last three (the Jailer, Rygelon (aka not-Algalon) and the Lords of Dread) won't show up until Mythic week, it really is a perfect opportunity for them to just not be tested on the PTR whatsoever and for everyone to have to see them on live servers for the first time. In the full article over on Raider.IO, I talk about the amazing feeling of going into a raid "fresh", meaning without having seen anything about the bosses, whether it's actually testing it on the PTR, watching kill videos, or reading guides about it. Since I actually raided progression back in the days when the PTR didn't actually exist, and was present for the very first raid boss PTR test as well, I have a pretty good overview of both sides, so I went over the pros and cons.

Source: Raider.IO.

In short, I think it's absolutely, 100%, without a single doubt worth it, no matter the cost (yes, even very buggy encounters), because that "fresh" feeling is what raiding in World of Warcraft is supposed to be, and it was so amazing back before the PTR. But here are some of the pros and cons I go over in-depth in the article:

Pros:

• The amazing experience of learning a boss blind, knowing absolutely nothing about what's going to happen when you stand in front of them - no guides, addons, WeakAuras, nothing. (This wouldn't be the case this time around, as there are already datamined abilities available, but if this became the norm for the last few bosses, it would be easy to simply not even put the data on the PTR to begin with in future raids.)
• A change in the way fights are perceived: every mistake a player makes is actually a learning experience, and not a failure to have already learned the fight from videos, guides, or to just incorrectly have followed the addon that tells you what to do etc.
• Top raiders already love this idea and are asking for it specifically.
• The Race to World First would be even more amazing with 3 completely unknown bosses and us getting to see the guilds actually create strategies from the ground up, as we've already seen from the final boss being the most exciting, and being the only one not tested on the PTR in ONE difficulty.

Cons

• Balance and bugs. This is really the only downside, but it's a potentially big one, as we've seen that even with PTR testing a lot of bosses have issues on live servers, from bugs to over/under-tuning.
• Some players would just wait for the guides and kill videos instead. This one can't really be avoided, and you could make the argument that players can already choose not to look at the guides, videos and addons, but without the PTR testing it's at least a more significant choice, as they'd have to wait - and some would definitely give a few bosses a try with the new system.

The full Raider.IO article goes into a lot more detail on all of the above, as well as gets some opinions from top raiders, so in my (totally biased) opinion it's very much worth a read!

[Migol 425]

I'd be on board if Blizzard committed to something like "no balance/bug fixes until the next reset".

It not only feels bad when they suddenly change a boss to "easily killed" mid attempts (perhaps after some guilds have given up) but it also seems like they might artificially raise the difficulty of a boss that's going too easily or something.     The last few race to world firsts we keep seeing boss health being adjusted on the fly, strategies blizzard didn't like invalidated mid attempts, that sort of thing.

[Langoroth 3]

I think this is a great situation. Bugs happen no matter what cause interactions and physics behind them a developer can't foresee every possible possibility. As for tuning. They have a full week to tune the last 3 from data obtained from the first 8. Every encounter seems to have a patchwork, a cleave, an add and high mechanic fight. So they can base the tuning of the last three of thousands of actual players and raid teams actual data before we come even close to killing them. 

[Starym 3,775]

31 minutes ago, Migol said:

I'd be on board if Blizzard committed to something like "no balance/bug fixes until the next reset".

It not only feels bad when they suddenly change a boss to "easily killed" mid attempts (perhaps after some guilds have given up) but it also seems like they might artificially raise the difficulty of a boss that's going too easily or something.     The last few race to world firsts we keep seeing boss health being adjusted on the fly, strategies blizzard didn't like invalidated mid attempts, that sort of thing.

Can't say I agree on this at all tbh. They do need to retune and rebalance things on the fly, it's the only way to get a proper boss. They've done this since the very beginning (well, not with the "you can't kill me" bugged bosses, but that was a bad thing so), and the "invalidating strategies" bit just sounds like a bit of fan backlash - they SHOULD have removed Echo's strategy if it wasn't intended. They're the ones that decide how en encounter should be done and what is and isn't ok to do, that's always been part of the deal.

The problem if they "just leave it as it is" is that, well, it's always bad at first. We as the audience usually don't even get to see how bad it is when the WF guilds get there.

But I do understand where you're coming from, when you spend days and days trying a strategy and then it just gets invalidated, that's frustrating as hell. I just don't think it's feasible fort them to ever stop balancing stuff (although as a personal opinion, they shouldn't nerf stuff as fast as they do, but that's an entirely different discussion).

[Starym 3,775]

28 minutes ago, Langoroth said:

I think this is a great situation. Bugs happen no matter what cause interactions and physics behind them a developer can't foresee every possible possibility. As for tuning. They have a full week to tune the last 3 from data obtained from the first 8. Every encounter seems to have a patchwork, a cleave, an add and high mechanic fight. So they can base the tuning of the last three of thousands of actual players and raid teams actual data before we come even close to killing them. 

Yep, agreed, although as I mentioned in the full article, we have to give Blizzard a LOT of slack if they try this, cos it's gonna be a mess at first. They're already struggling to balance stuff even with full PTR testing, so the first few times they try it without is gonna get ugly. Unfortunately I do not trust the current WoW community to just take it and give it a shot - I can already see the "lol Blizzard bad, incompetent" posts.

[zigrifid 121]

And i hope they will add extra phase or extra skills for the mythic versions and not mentioned in the journal so noone can be prepared 😄 now thats a world first race worthy of viewerships 😄 

[Koxsos 38]

Nah. If blizz can save money and have you test it for them, that's final.

I myself would not want to be a beta tester on a live server and burn time on an overtuned undoable boss as a community we have been there, we have done that, it does not work well.

If the world first race is to become less of a joke given release times, I suggest making it difficult but keeping that difficulty clarified rather than having gms sit there and decide who actually wins.

Most of the pros can be achieved regardless, just don't min max so hard. If you want to feel fresh don't prep, don't even read the dungeon guide.

Wipe for hours on a trivial mechanic and have 9 dedicated people do it with you. And feel "fresh".

Just don't drag entire game with you so you can have your classic nostalgia moment. 

 

 

 

 

[Migol 425]

On 12/1/2021 at 3:36 PM, Starym said:

Can't say I agree on this at all tbh. They do need to retune and rebalance things on the fly, it's the only way to get a proper boss. They've done this since the very beginning (well, not with the "you can't kill me" bugged bosses, but that was a bad thing so), and the "invalidating strategies" bit just sounds like a bit of fan backlash - they SHOULD have removed Echo's strategy if it wasn't intended. They're the ones that decide how en encounter should be done and what is and isn't ok to do, that's always been part of the deal.

The problem if they "just leave it as it is" is that, well, it's always bad at first. We as the audience usually don't even get to see how bad it is when the WF guilds get there.

But I do understand where you're coming from, when you spend days and days trying a strategy and then it just gets invalidated, that's frustrating as hell. I just don't think it's feasible fort them to ever stop balancing stuff (although as a personal opinion, they shouldn't nerf stuff as fast as they do, but that's an entirely different discussion).

Again though, what's one week of "no touch" really going to hurt?    You might have a boss that goes down too easy, or one that is impossible to beat till fixed.    That's still preferable though IMO to keep the race to world first fair and even across the board, rather than who is just starting their progression when the latest big hotfix hits either way.

[Starym 3,775]

17 hours ago, Koxsos said:

Nah. If blizz can save money and have you test it for them, that's final.

I myself would not want to be a beta tester on a live server and burn time on an overtuned undoable boss as a community we have been there, we have done that, it does not work well.

If the world first race is to become less of a joke given release times, I suggest making it difficult but keeping that difficulty clarified rather than having gms sit there and decide who actually wins.

Most of the pros can be achieved regardless, just don't min max so hard. If you want to feel fresh don't prep, don't even read the dungeon guide.

Wipe for hours on a trivial mechanic and have 9 dedicated people do it with you. And feel "fresh".

Just don't drag entire game with you so you can have your classic nostalgia moment. 

 

 

 

 

First off, wonderful attitude there at the end, really makes me want to talk rationally with you. Second, you can't just assume people won't min max based off of nothing and never having experienced the benefits of not doing it. I'm lucky because I got to experience it since there was no PTR when I started, so why should people who came in after it be denied even knowing what that's like? If they decide they still want the "let's just all follow the instructional video and get the loot" options, that's totally np.

[Koxsos 38]

21 hours ago, Starym said:

First off, wonderful attitude there at the end, really makes me want to talk rationally with you. Second, you can't just assume people won't min max based off of nothing and never having experienced the benefits of not doing it. I'm lucky because I got to experience it since there was no PTR when I started, so why should people who came in after it be denied even knowing what that's like? If they decide they still want the "let's just all follow the instructional video and get the loot" options, that's totally np.

Ah well. Might have overdone it. Thanks for being the bigger person.