Why are there no PTR hotfixes every day?

PTR Feedback
1

Most open source developers post nightly builds for people trying to test their code. Many of these developers are one man shops, yet they can automate this process and provide updated versions daily. Blizzard has a big team of developers, yet you guys have gone completely quiet after the first hotfix. Why can’t you prioritize your work and provide a hotfix daily while this PTR is going on?

One of the most common complaints heard is the low amount of aether dropped during Infernal Horde runs, and lack of rewards in the chests that are opened at the end. Both of these seem like extremely easy tweaks that could be done and rolled in a hotfix.

Similarly the boss health is currently bugged and pit progression is slow. There is already working code for the pit in the live game, so it’s not like the fix for this is not known. Why can’t this be fixed in a hotfix while the PTR is ongoing? Do you really want us to believe that you will listen to our feedback? Then tackle these easy things in a timely manner, and show us, instead of just talking about it in the campfire chat.

Action speaks louder than words.

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2

Blizzard isnt even replying to this PTR feedback forum already. They did in the first day, now …silence.

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3

Don’t expect forum feedback, just hope they keep reading and implementing changes ASAP (or at the very least for the launch).

4

If you want to comment, publish in X.
The forums for them is cause for allergy I think.

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5

This build is likely weeks old. The devs are busy working on the current version. Having them spend time fixing stuff on an old build takes away time from them working on the current build.

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Why post a weeks old build? Remember when the posted the mid season patch notes, they said, they were rolling it out before the PTR, because the changes in there would also be in the PTR?

The PTR started three days ago. Why wouldn’t they have used a build compiled few days before the start? If they have a new build compared to what we are running, why not upload it, so we can give feedback on the most current version?

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7

This’s a pretty bad take.

It’s PTR. The point is to aggregate (people all have different ideas on what to improve) all the signals from this test and then fix together afterwards. They’re not gonna be hot fixing this like it’s in production just so in 1 out of the 7 days of testing you got what you wanted. Hot fixes create a lot churns with any major software release cycle.

I’d just give clear feedback on what needs to be addressed and wait for them to give a summary on the learnings of PTR and how they will improve for the actual release of S5.

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8

If there are bad bugs in the PTR build such as the boss health is too high and rewards are too low, so that nobody is getting the new items to test, then those need to be fixed as a priority. These bugs negatively affect the quality of the feedback you get, because the test itself is flawed. You want good feedback, fix the test first.

I for one have not gotten any of the new unique gear to test on my barbarian build, except for the amulet that Grigoire drops. How am I supposed to test the new gear, if I can’t get it due to the poor reward quantity in the Infernal Horde mode, where this gear drops. If that gear does drop, how am I supposed to test it properly against bosses, if their HP is bugged. Is it the gear that is bad, or is it the bugged HP. Who knows. This is why you fix the bugs as soon as you find them in a test environment. Once all the known bugs are fixed, then you start aggregating the feedback data.

IMO opinion the PTR should have run for two weeks, with the first week focused on fixing the major bugs, and the second week focused on aggregating the results on a relatively static, and mostly bug free build.

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9

I don’t expect daily patches but the PTR is too short to accomplish much of anything. By the time they make changes, it’s too late to test them. The reason PTR so short is the seasons are so short.

The PTR they are using is not much more than a marketing tool they use for streamers to showcase the next season and generate hype and maybe find a couple busted builds to nerf. Unfortunately for them this season they misjudged the new end game content and they are giving too much medicine again. They found a busted build item they will no doubt nerf to the ground plus give sorcs and druids a few more just because they don’t understand the bug though.

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10

It’s just a PTR why do you care what state is it in? They are shutting it down after a week.

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Because I believed them when they said, they want my feedback. If they were lying, I will longer play the broken PTR. If they value my feedback enough, they should implement timely fixes within reason during the PTR period, so that I can properly formulate it.

Many Linux distributions post nightly builds for the beta testers. If it’s just a beta, why do they bother fixing those bugs. Why not just let the beta run during the test period. They do it, because as they fix some bugs, others that were hidden before will show up, and in the end the final product will be better.

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12

Because they didnt fix the bug build in PTR last season the moment those were reported, players have little chance to test other bug and overtuned builds like Rogue victimize and Barb bash. End up we have a season plague with class balancing issues.

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13

they are live in the first world country where work-life balance is the virtue.

nobody will demand anybody to burnout in their job.

would you like the working life of fixing bugs day and night?

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14

that’s the exact reason they can do that. no waterheaded organisation of 17 different managers above their head.

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They are a group of a lot of people, coding. I don’t know exactly how many people they are, or how fast they code.

Near the end of the day, some code will likely be written that fixes some bugs. Build a hotfix from the said code. Roll it out. Then go home and enjoy your work life balance. If the day’s work didn’t result in a bugfix, you picked something too hard. Continue on it the next day and it will eventually get done and be included in a daily hotfix. Pick an easier bug to fix next time.

Save 15 minutes at the end of the day to complete a timesheet of which bug you fixed, so that your manager won’t yell at you. They can measure your coding efficiency at the end of the year during performance review. They can also aggregate the data and report it to their manager, showing that they are neither under nor overstaffed. This is so that that manager can aggregate that data and write a report about hiring more people, or having a layoff in the department next quarter. This data will continue to move up the food chain until Phil Spencer can write a report to Satya Nadella about the status of Xbox division, including how Blizzard is doing.

No, I wouldn’t. Can I have a working life where I don’t have to show any bug fix results at the end of the day instead? Can I also have a raise?

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17

Um, they live in the US, not the EU.

18

I agree with other posters on their explanation about the meaning of a PTR. You ask why, so I will spend my precious time (all of our time is precious) to share my views as well. Because we are all fan of Diablo and I would like to think we all want the same: The best Diablo experience. So here is my lengthy understanding of why - from a coders perspective - and maybe a bit of psychology behind how a company sees feedback :nerd_face:

The meaning of a test is to gather data (feedback being one of those)
That data can improve the product, but the test is not about entertainment. That is the focus of the live product, the game itself.

As a company you encourage feedback, because it’s a nice circle of helping each other. Players feel rewarded for having access to something new and (hopefully) exciting, and they feel valued for their time spent when you say that this fix or improvement was based on player feedback. Not mentioning names makes sure that all participants feel valued, even though it may not be their feedback that you mean. This in turn makes the player want to keep spending their time giving feedback with the hope that they can help design the product into what they personally consider the best version of itself. And if you are lucky other players (like me) will spend their time helping others, which can go both ways, but the hope is that it can improve the feedback loop and the sense of belonging (psychologically we all need to feel like we belong).

Any creature is more likely to agree with feedback that already fits their own agenda, and it is only a bonus if they can say that a goal was achieved in collaboration, like in the case of games, when they call it “player feedback”. This is not a lie to the player, but a way that acknowledges that feedback helps shape the product. After all, the product would be worse if it was developed in a silo (only using insider insight).

Now for your question: Why are there no hotfixes every day?
As other have written: Time. It’s a short test.
This is not a production environment, the people behind the code don’t need to fix anything to get the feedback they need to improve the product; this only becomes a priority if incoming feedback is below an acceptable threshold, which, judging on this forum alone isn’t a problem :wink:
You may also see hotfixes if the feedback becomes unvaluable because of bugs.
But these two reasons are likely the only reasons you see hotfixes for a test so short.

With all this in mind, let us look at what they have gathered:

So, clearly, they got a ‘plethora of feedback’ to improve the product. That means, objectively, the PTR was a huge succes and they have ideas how to improve both the PTR experience and the live product, being the game.

But the question I am also sensing from you is: Don’t you agree that they should fix the bugs on PTR while it is running?
To which I can only reply: Absolutely! It would be so nice if Blizzard truly rewarded our time spent with the best possible experience. But I don’t demand this, because I think it is unrealistic to expect that of them these days. Through history Blizzard has been shattered and reorganised so many times, that it is a testament to the will of the people creating these entertainment experiences when they can band together than create such a pure high quality end product as Diablo IV (not speaking of game design, but, the overall quality of all the assets that created the complete experience which, at least makes me keep coming back to spend my precious time on.

When you think about it, it’s a short test and the staff for quality assurance, IT and support (the forum is part of support) was dramatically cut. In that light, I think they are doing much more than I could expect of them running a continued legacy like the Diablo franchise and while it is far from perfect, you only need to look as far as to Diablo Immortal to see how much worse it could have gone :relieved:

I wanted to share some thought on why I think the Linux distros you mention are in a much better dev loop position, but this post already far exceeds my original intent to create insight.

1 Like
19

I appreciate your insight. I am not a professional game coder, but as a Civil Engineer, I have dabbled in some coding along the way in my career. To characterize all hotfixes to the running PTR as “nice to have,” misses some of the nuance I was trying to convey. There are actually some fixes that are in the essential category, as they directly affect the quality of the feedback sought during the PTR. I will give examples of some of these issues.

  1. New uniques are unavailable to players to test. Getting redesigned tempering manuals require a large amount of grinding that players are generally unwilling to do. How good is the feedback, if the new uniques and manuals are inadequately tested during PTR?
  2. Players are complaining that not enough aether drops in the Infernal Horde mode. What is the correct drop rate at which players feel properly rewarded and can open the chests at the end?
  3. Players are complaining about the amount of loot obtained from the Horde mode chests. How to define at what point is the quantity and quality of loot is enough without getting player feedback during PTR? Is twice the loot enough? How much of it should have greater affixes? How many uniques should be awarded?
  4. Boss HP is bugged and pit progression is worse than before. I haven’t gone into nightmare dungeons, but this may also be happening on those bosses. The shadow bosses are applying tormented boss buffs in the pit, making things harder. The boss HP is changing upon player respawn. How to get proper feedback on the new items as well as new class tweaks if the content they are tested against is flawed?

Now let’s take a look at a difficulty of fixes for this during the short PTR test.

  1. There is already an interface to transfer legacy items into stash at the end of a season. There is also an interface to recover legendary items and such left on the ground. Let’s just leverage what we have drop one of each new uniques and tempering manuals in one of these places. Problem of item availability solved. Can the shattered and rebuilt Blizzard implement this via a hotfix within a week? I believe so.
  2. This is only happening in the Infernal Horde mode, and is likely covered by a very small amount of code. Easy to double or triple the aether drop rate by adjusting a few simple variables. Can this be done is a hotfix in less than a week? Absolutely.
  3. Again governed by a few lines of code and a couple of variables. Let’s adjust them and roll out the fix, and then monitor the feedback.
  4. May be a little harder, but we already have working code of boss HP, shadow boss behavior, pit progression, and nightmare dungeon boss HP in the live season 4. Let’s do a comparison and fix the bad code by merging in the right code. Seems doable. Nobody has to figure out what to do. Just do it, and roll it out.

There are other things that are essential but harder to fix, such as class balance issues and unforeseen interaction between items resulting in unintended results. Let’s wait until the PTR is finished and then decide on a roadmap on how to fix these.

Then there are things easy to fix, but not essential. An example of this would be Helltide without the seasonal Profane Mindcage is not as much fun. This is one of those “nice to have” fixes. If we are already rolling out essential and easy hotfixes, and we already have fixed it, let’s put it in the next planned hotfix.

Finally there are things that are not essential, and will also take a long time to fix. This would be things like an in game trading interface so that external websites are not needed. These are things that will have to wait a while until everything else is done.

Does what I am saying not make sense? Who at Blizzard is prioritizing if there are any essential but easy things that can get fixes while the PTR is going, and then communicating to the players that a fix for these is coming? Otherwise all the feedback we get will be the same complaints over and over again. We know it’s a plethora of feedback, but a mountain of crap is in the end not worth any more than a little bit of it.

I know it’s a bit off topic, but I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on why Linux Distro developers can get the loop right, but Blizzard can’t.

20

I imagine it’s like the politics in Shin Godzilla.

Oh lets meet in conf room 1, to discuss the current state of bugs and class balance. 5 mins in…
‘Sir someone posted another exploit’.
‘Lets conclude this meeting. Let’s meet in east conference room 4’.

New meeting starts, 2 mins in.
‘Sir, someone just posted Entangling roots is doing a quadrillion damage’.
…‘have we called in any experts?’
‘Samantha is about to leave to pick up Q’doba for everyone for lunch’.
'Lets conclude this meeting and meet in ‘Auxillary Conference floor 8’.

Meanwhile Shin Exploits has grown legs, is standing vertically, and is now rampaging through town.

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21

I am dying here laughing. It’s only PTR town after all. Shin can wipe it off the face of the earth.

1 Like