Just return to 1 week ptr

[Gegeforce-2680]

If patches stay in the same size as the last two, then we will see more item adjustments besides the two new sets. Just like patch 2.6.8. The question is just will it be like 2.6.8 if one class in focus of legendary changes or is spread overall classes 1-2 items.

[Gegeforce-2680]

How would it be to focus on PC first and deploying console patches/seasons 2-3 weeks after pc? Don’t now if this would be to elitist.

[Gilthas-1277]

@Nevalistis

We want to continue to make changes and tweaks for the foreseeable future based on both your feedback as well as on ongoing class performance.

This is good and hasn’t been forgotten. But I also think that the new sets shouldn’t be released broken right out of the gate. We want to be able to have fun with the new stuff.

[MOE-22195]

@StuRedman-2654

and the wd only usable with support group

That’s not quite true. If you look at the NS leaderboards, WD’s new set has the highest solo GR clear. 145+ I believe Last time I checked.

[Venaliter-1813]

@Nevalistis

@Morgan-12891

I only wish my typing speed = my writing speed cknopp, what’s your secret? Authors everywhere would love to know

Man, I wish it worked this way. My average is in the range of 115-125 WPM. I COULD GET SO MUCH DONE.

It’s true I haven’t posted much since the second round of PTR. Honestly, I haven’t had time. My focus is on making sure all your feedback is getting into the right hands to evaluate and risk-assess any additional tuning passes and bug fixes.

Then Blizzard is aware the multitude with bugs with Typhoon’s Veil and the fact the set is underperforming significantly?

[LennyGhoul-1732]

I like the Two week format but these things need to last even longer to make sure bug fixes didn’t break other things, like what already happened with the first ptr patch. I know that Life in the Big Mega Game company simply doesn’t work that way, but it would be nice if they didn’t pretend that everything can be updated and properly fixed in a set time frame.

[Qwenta-2321]

@Nevalistis

We’re also planning, long-term, to do additional balance passes after we’ve finished adding all the new class sets to the game.

I do not agree with the order of execution. With the most balanced classes can be good for them, but wiz has been broken for ages. The only great build we’ve played for many seasons is vyr/chantodo, everything else was “exploiting the game” (twisters, SP). The class needed a fix before adding a new set.
Here is a topic where devs can check my suggestions as a wizard player:

Typhon's Veil reworked and more changes for Wiz

I started trying to add MI to the set but I could not find an idea that satisfies me so I tried to do the same with MM. I’ve added more changes to exisiteng legendaries. I was going to add more changes (Wave of force and Blizzard) but one step per patch is better than nothing.

The best gift for wizards should have been change DW and ES to only buff channeling skills and then add power to 5-7 legendaries to make them viable, not a set that is dead before going live because it has the same bad mechanic that the entire class has: channeling or T13.

[LilTreeWater-1150]

@Nevalistis

Honestly, I haven’t had time. My focus is on making sure all your feedback is getting into the right hands to evaluate and risk-assess any additional tuning passes and bug fixes.

Yet you still manage to blast out these posts, and others threatening to punish players without any real follow up.

I miss the days when Blizzard was silent and said nothing. You just were pleasantly surprised when a new game or expansion came out. The community was it’s own backbone releasing content through editors, or simply creating their own self imposed league mechanics.

I get it we all want more for less. This just seems like a slap in the face.

What’s the point of communication if it’s meaningless.

[Callamity-2128]

every season is an extended PTR

they get feedback every season on what is needing buffed/nerfed. there should be a sweeping balance patch at the end of every season.

small in between season PTRs like this should be for testing new sets. to test if they work mechanically.

[Jumpman-1575]

@Nevalistis

Man, I wish it worked this way. My average is in the range of 115-125 WPM. I COULD GET SO MUCH DONE.

It’s true I haven’t posted much since the second round of PTR. Honestly, I haven’t had time. My focus is on making sure all your feedback is getting into the right hands to evaluate and risk-assess any additional tuning passes and bug fixes. Time I take posting is time I take away reading/parsing more feedback. Getting any more changes into the game in a timely manner is important so we can hit submission and validation dates - all of that takes time, and the amount of time necessary varies between all the console platforms we support in addition to PC.

There’s a lot more I do behind the scenes, but to be honest, it’s most important that I’m actually doing those things rather than posting about them. The two week PTR process has been fantastic for working out some of the larger issues, so it’s likely we’ll continue this process for future PTRs. We’ll have updated patch notes detailing any final changes for the Season in the S20 preview blog, which should be out before the patch launches.

I’ve said this before, but reiterating in case it’s been missed: We’re also planning, long-term, to do additional balance passes after we’ve finished adding all the new class sets to the game. We want to continue to make changes and tweaks for the foreseeable future based on both your feedback as well as on ongoing class performance.

Sounds like you should implement a poll system that way you can use it to see which features are most desired. Either make it where only blues can do a poll or allow players to create threads with them. This would be better than reading thousands of posts.

This could also be used to help players judge which ideas players like over others. Anything to speed up the process would be good.

Another idea, is to open up a non payed intern position to game developer students who can provide a helping hand at blizzard. It would not only help their education, but help blizzard get more hands on deck.

A third idea is to let the PTR run all the time and throwing out random changes each weak even ones that are over buffed, absurd, or odd. Then you can decide what to do with that data in the future. You can simply limit the ptr to players who have at least 1 paragon on the count that way the people who didn’t pay for D3 ros can’t play the ptr for free endlessly which is my guess as to why it’s never open like that between seasons for more extensive testing.

Edit:

Another idea that I had, if the developers are not getting paid enough, If its not against the rules of blizzard, maybe they can setup a go fund me with goals where players can help fund them that way the developers can spend some outside hours making extra money and making diablo 3 better. I’m just throwing out ideas because alot of player would love to see more improvement in this game. D4 will not be for everyone, so those who dont want D4 will come back to D3, just like how players stayed with D2.

[Snaky-2455]

@Nevalistis

The two week PTR process has been fantastic for working out some of the larger issues, so it’s likely we’ll continue this process for future PTRs.

Fantastic is not the word that comes immediately to my mind, although it is way better than last PTR which was an horrible failure because of that short duration, and the real test environment was unfortunately the live servers and you had to hotfix them.

I am delighted that D3 is still being updated after all these year, that’s awesome, and as a large part of the PTR players, I’ll be glad to help blizzard to make great patches, but let’s be honest : there are still issues in the process. The PTR is about to close (I assume it won’t be extended further since the S19 end date is coming) and no one can really test the new wizard set since it did not work properly during the whole PTR.

The first fix has clearly not been tested at all before being deployed on the PTR : the set 4p mechanics is meant to be used with some shields, and shields are blatantly broken with the new hydra set. By now way I am blaming the devs, I am myself a software developer is another industry, I think I have a pretty good idea of what is happening behind the scene and I am pretty sure the whole D3 team is really doing their best.

But you still do have an issue with your QA during the PTR and you should try do change things to enhance this.

• Release patches more often : you can maybe release hotfix ASAP when a bug prevent a new feature to be tested. Waiting a whole week for a balance patch may be fine since it is juste tweaking numbers and you need to gather enough feedback, but if you need to change game mechanics, please use the community as another QA team early in the process, we are begging for it and will be glad to help you. I think most of us don’t care if everything is not 100% polished, if such an incremental PTR patch do not have the release note translated in every language, it’s fine (and I say that as a non-english native speaker), google translate is enough. Don’t know if your build and release processes are fast enough for that, but it will definitely be a good step

• Start the PTR a little bit earlier from the season end : having a 2 week PTR is OK if everything goes fine, but have the possibility to extend it to 3 or 4 week if you really struggle to have everything debugged and balanced. Releasing something on the live servers without a real feedback is really uncomfortable either for the devs and for the end users. Please avoid to do that if you can, I think no one wants to experience the initial release of patch 2.6.7 on live servers again

• Maybe communicate earlier on what you plan to do. Once again I’m referring to the wiz set since it was the change that I am the more comfortable to talk about, but as soon as the patch notes was public, nearly all known streamers and good wiz players were thinking “dunno if the set will be good, but clearly the LoD version will be way better”. It may cause more work for you to sort the reactions between fair feedback of neutral players and whiners, but it may help you to tweak numbers even better early during the PTR.

Once again, I’m very happy that there is way more communication than before between the D3 team and the community, but you can improve it even more, we are eager to help you ! There are not a lot of companies that still update a game 8 years after its initial release, and I will always be thankful to Blizzard for this

[Venaliter-1813]

now THIS post of yours deserves a like.

[StuRedman-2654]

@Nevalistis

Time I take posting is time I take away reading/parsing more feedback.

So how much time would it take after reading an excellent bug analysis (like the one about shields getting you one-shot with TP set) to type “thanks guys for the fine analysis, I have passed it to development to get fixed”?
(Less than typing this huge zero content post probably.)

@Nevalistis

We’re also planning, long-term, to do additional balance passes after we’ve finished adding all the new class sets to the game.

This is a sad statement in the context of complaints about new content being broken. Sounds like kick it out unfinished and fix it later perhaps.

@Morgan-12891

I hope this implies that DHs and Necros will be getting the lion’s share of attention in 2.6.9

Me too, but after seeing this patch my hopes are near zero. Not that DH will get something, sure, but something useful?

@MOE-22195

WD’s new set has the highest solo GR clear.

Yes, it’s fascinating what elite players can pull off with anything that does good damage (no matter how complicated or squishy). I very much doubt that the average player will find it fun and have success with it.

@Venaliter-1813

Then Blizzard is aware the multitude with bugs with Typhoon’s Veil and the fact the set is underperforming significantly?

No. It was already meh on PTR start (overshadowed by the bug of course) and they nerfed it further.

@Jumpman-1575

implement a poll system

To get a D3 hater cloud vote for some rubbish just out of spite? NO.

[Kindran-11838]

@StuRedman-2654

This is a sad statement in the context of complaints about new content being broken. Sounds like kick it out unfinished and fix it later perhaps .

Haven’t you heard? It’s the new hip thing now adays to release unfinished and bugged to all hell games/patches.

Honestly, I want to say that the ability to patch a game led to the downfall of receiving a quality product at launch. Look at Wolcen release. It’s chalk full of huge game breaking bugs.

Developers just don’t care anymore. If a game released back when as it does now then that game company would have gone bankrupt.

[TheRugester-1819]

@StuRedman-2654

I doubt many people are still testing anything.

Which we shouldnt be doing in the first place. Go back 20+ years where games companies actually had full teams dedicated to just testing the game and trying to break it unlike today because multi billion dollar companies like craptivision blizzard wanna save a few bucks. Back then companies actually cared about their product and had to make sure it was in 99% working order because there were no online patches to fix a game if something wasnt working. Just shows how cheap game companies are now a days and blizzard still cant release any kind of patch, even a background patch with out breaking something THAT DIDNT EVEN NEED TO BE TOUCHED TO BEGIN WITH.

@Nevalistis

There’s a lot more I do behind the scenes, but to be honest, it’s most important that I’m actually doing those things rather than posting about them.

It literally takes 2 minutes to type something like this up with out thought. If you cant take 2 minutes to do your job as the COMMUNITY MANAGER, then you dont need to be in that position. Simple as that.

You also mention your giving feed back to devs. Since when do they actually listen? They dont so you can actually spend 2 minutes a day talking to people on the forums. Other game companies much smaller then blizzard can, so can you. You can have 34534534 people saying 1 thing but then have two people saying another thing and for some stupid reason you people go and do what the 2 people want instead of the masses…

@Nevalistis

Not every Season is going to give a huge amount of power. Not every Season will be as compelling to every player. There is a reasonably large echo chamber here between a handful of players that aren’t interested in this Season. And there is a fair amount of feedback from many other players across a variety of community spaces that are really excited about it.

This here I just found on another topic and proves my point the devs and this community manager dont listen. You can go on this forum, twitter, and reddit and about 95% of the topics about this new season say they dont like it. But once again, they for some reason wanna go and do what the 5% of people want instead of the masses…