Test Server Feedback

Throwing a bump out here for this as I'm interested as well. Just logged in for the first time to help a corpie try out some fits to find out he can't fit half the stuff we want to test cause hes missing over 2mil SP.

Whenever CCP feels its necessary to re-copy the database.

I.e. When they actually need it, not because "us" want it done. The longest mirror I've had was >6 months

I suppose its due to the fact that after distributing all 2m or however many SP you have, you gotta wait till another mirror to get more, some people will distribute to fly say a carrier for example but then want to test a titan.

Or they've not been on buckingham since the mirror so they've technically lost >1month of Training

Fair enough, didn't think about that. But anything else is just excuses.

CCP Uses Buckingham to test for bugs. Its not a personal playground although as many of us use it as one. But CCP uses it to work out bugs on this server before they go to TQ. So they will mirror when they feel confident that most or all bugs have been worked out. or they messed up to bad and they will mirror back to another point in the mirror before that happened. So normally CCP don't even know when they are going to mirror. I hope that's a good reason why they are not mirroring :)

I understand that it's a fairly involved process for them to do a full mirror (assets, etc) because they have to delete so much stuff (towers, etc), seed the markets, etc... I think I remember reading that a lot of it is automated to some degree, but maybe not.

It *would* be nice, though, if there were some relatively painless way for them to automate mirroring just the character skill info every 2-3 weeks. As a previous poster said, the mass tests are almost always run at times when I am at work, so I can't be on those. I don't log on to the test server faithfully to see if my character skills have been updated, so by the time I DO see that it has been mirrored, I am usually a few or several weeks behind again.

Most of the testing I would want to do (for my personal gain, not CCP tests; so yea, it's not their primary goal) involves things I am currently training. So missing a month or more of my Singularity skills usually makes me say, "Bah. Nevermind."

The current mirror was applied on the 24th October. It's not even 2 months old, so I doubt we'll see one before next year.



Yeah it would! I would like few things more than an easy way to copy this data across. Sadly it's non-trivial and pretty far down in the pecking order of important stuff to do for the test server :(

Fair enough . You certainly know more about what is involved. It was just an idea. Here's another possible idea that would accomplish something along the lines of what I would love to see. It is probably even more difficult and unworkable. But just in case it would actually be easy, I'll mention it.

Use the "unallocated skill points" feature to give skillpoints to everyone on the test server. Maybe run it as a script once a week that adds some average amount of SP (say, 2300 per hour) to each character/account. That idea is "unfair" in that someone who actually chooses their training gets a double benefit, but I say so what? It's just the test server. If it were simple enough to do, why not? You might even get more participation on the server when people know they can "catch up" or "jump ahead" to some degree, like the SP rewards you give for mass test participation.

By all means, I understand that you have much higher priorities. This is just an idea in case it is easy to do.

Maybe there should be a reward system for people who find bugs? Say maybe 1 Million SP per new bug reported or something along those lines.
I think this would increase the number of players coming on to search for bugs as opposed to simply having buckingham be a playground for super pilots etc.

Eventually, players would unlock more and more skills to train up, and be opened up to a larger variety of items to test out and potentially find bugs with. Would it be anything from titan doomsdays not working, poxy issues (as are currently ongoing with buck), or simply not being able to drop a ship in an SMA.

Now, about the mirror. If you miss some weeks or months of training cuz you dont login to the test server, maybe you should start spending 20-30mins spread over a week patching and loging into the test server to check for new mirrors, if not just check the eve forums for dev posts under the test server feedback.

When it comes down to it, for the super-capable pilots that cant afford them on TQ, being able to spend 1-2 months to build them on the test server to give them a try is like a VIP pass. As it stands having mirrors every 2-3 or so months is perfect. Gives people enough time to build supers to try them, it gives non-super pilots a reasonable buffer while they get built, and a fairly short amount of time with the supers.

I think that covers just about everything.

o/

Would it be a big deal to say add 1-2 millions "spare" skill points to characters every time they the do a mirror?

The main reason for this is that most of us have a build queue in our heads for our characters, and we would like to boost a few skills to try a new hull immediately, that way if aren't impressed - say we train a Golem but we aren't getting the results expected due to other skills not up to scratch - we can either boost those and retest OR change paths completely.

After all, if we don't want to spend those SP's we can leave them untouched for a later idea.

Heck, here's my credit card, just bill me and let me just edit my skills directly, I mean, it's a test server right? TAKE MY MONEY DAMMIT.