What is the point of the PTR?

Many people who jump on the PTR never even give any feedback, they just want to be the first ones to play with the new toy. Let’s hope that the developers get some good feedback that will benefit the entire community. Not just the “I want this, I want that.” I also encourage the developers to actuality listen, and implement some of the good feedback from some of the people who actuality play the game. This PTR for the next season looks interesting (TYVM), have fun this week. :sunglasses:

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To be perfectly frank:

People jump on the PTR for a couple reasons:

  • 1: Play with the new toys.

  • 2: Enjoy a huge legendary drop buff (legendaries fall from the sky)

  • 3: Try new combinations or experiment with things they were reluctant to on live.

All that said.

There are several examples of feedback in the past on PTRs that were completely ignored/overlooked and ended up being a problem later on live that had to be patched. Or continue to be ignored.

Due to that, many don’t bother with feedback because they feel its a waste of their time. Why give feedback (good or bad) if its overlooked.

Sure, they make take some of it into account, and act on a little of it, but a large majority never sees anything but the feedback forum.

Just saying, there are reasons people play and don’t speak up. Not saying everyone is this way, but there it is.

Game on.

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That is why I said:

“I also encourage the developers to actuality listen, and implement some of the good feedback”

They also gather info independent of player reporting. They need a PTR to provide more statistics than a handful of devs can generate on their own.

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Since 99.9% of feedback is generally ignored anyway, how about you make a thread asking what the point of LEAVING feedback is?

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Even playing with the items will give them feedback. So just hop on and start slaying

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Let’s try this one more time, what part of “listen, and implement” did you not understand?

This is very very true. They are monitoring and recording lots of stats while we play. Sure, the written feedback helps too, but just getting a bunch of people using those items is what they mostly go for. That is why they make it so easy to get everything on the PTR, and why they go for huge buffs that make it extra attractive to play around on.

By the time things hit the PTR, they are nearly final. There are sometimes adjustments, but rarely will they make any major changes (like changing what an item does overall).

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That’s exactly my feelings. Blizzard PTRs are pointless.

Especially now that they’re sticking with their significantly reduced PTR periods. If I weren’t employed maybe I’d be more willing to squeeze in the time, but it’s kind of a hard sell to devote my free time to a testing realm where my feedback doesn’t matter at all.

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Might be selfish but I only play PTR to test stuff I’m interested in myself.

That way I can decide easier what to play in the next Season since I like to know that before the Season start and plan out things.
PTR is pretty much the only place where I use my NS chars and resources to test out new stuff and usually never bother with the PTR Season.

I don’t leave feedback cause I belive that there are more capable ppl than me in that regard + I don’t think I test stuff out well enough/in depth to leave a proper feedback.

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its mostly about the automated data collection.

IE does a player suddenly do 50% extra damage on a build that they had not intended to effect? does some glitch of configuration cause more mobs to be left unkillable? etc. all this can be automatically collected and doesnt require user feedback, just users playing.

PTR is not about gathering suggestions for the most part, its about implementing PAST suggestions. hence, new sets, and lots of changes for barbarians to try and catch them up to the meta some. these are both often requested features by players.

that said, they do occasionally listen during PTR as well, just go read the last live patch notes for S18, its got about 5 instances where they changed from PTR to live based on player feedback.

at this point the team is very responsive to player feedback overall. its just your average player is an idiot when it comes to understanding business process and think that its flipping a switch, rather than a 90-120 day process to make changes.

folks… its a business. you do not just flip switches… thats how you break things very very badly. instead you plan, test and deploy. thats a process of time and availability of staff to handle each step.

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As above, they are also testing for server strain, network lag (from their end), excessive, unexpected issues from changes to be implemented.

By the time PTR hits, the changes are 99% completed. It’s the final tweaks that are detected, isolated and corrected\adjusted. The front end is completed, its all about the back end processing that we players never see.

There is a log file for every of your gaming session. They going through them to make sure nothing is weird too, I think.

Most players should honestly ignore the PTR.

That way they don’t get all excited only to throw a fit when there’s a change when the patch goes live.

If you actually plan on min-maxing and pushing high GR content or looking for bugs, then you should play the PTR. Everyone who just wants to play with the new toys to get an idea for the next patch… YouTube is your friend. And even that might be a bad idea because the YouTube video might get your hopes up for no reason when there is a change to the live patch.

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Seems like 100% of the barb changes are from feedback not only during PTR but ongoing for multiple seasons.

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Someone posted a thread that said how many posts were on this forum since its inception.

Taking this into account, has anyone you know, whether Cheetah, the most avid forum follower etc etc etc - read every single post in every single thread???

  • I seriously doubt it !!

So expecting the developers, Cheetah, Nevalistus…whomever people think ‘should’ have read ‘this or that’ is unrealistic.

Here’s a novel idea:

Consider the wording, consider that 'you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar’, also consider why Free in his collaboration with the Barbarian community got Blizzard to listen??? Write in such a way it gets their attention POSITIVELY.

"It’s not what you say or do, it’s HOW you say or do it."

As you all were.

EDIT: If the opening statement from ANYONE indicates to the person or group they are an a-hole - It is difficult for ANY human being to see anything positive after that, no matter how open minded they are. It is human nature.

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This is part of the purpose of PTR - to test if things actually work. I don’t mean balance (I believe maths will do a better job than PTR), I mean game crash.

People complains about this even without PTR so this doesn’t matter :rofl:

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This is a strawman of the highest form. The argument isn’t that Blizzard should have knowledge of every single thread on the forum. But they should be able to notice popular or recurring ideas when they occur. Take the Barbarian players for instance. How many years have they had to wait for their feedback to be heard? Countless threads, some of them having the most amazing amount of analysis and number crunching I’ve ever seen, all silently ignored until recently.

The fact of the matter is, how we present our feedback is irrelevant, or where we present it. Blizzard will act on it if and only if they give a rat’s butt to do so.

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Some do- Some don’t… the PTR is also probably being watch by Blizzard so they can do internal stuff from what they see when people play. I’ve given a review/feedback in the PTR form and people said things like “”“Don’t write a wall of text”" - meh~

Seeing you wish to insult then

This is a moron of the highest form who has English as a second language.
You really think people have time to read thousands of threads? Put your tinfoil hat back on.
FOOL.