Why are there no PTR hotfixes every day?

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

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

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.

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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.

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

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That’s the thing right there.

PTR town lives matter. We didn’t fight Shin there, and didn’t know she was sitting on an egg. Now both Shin and Son of Shin have come for Tokyo in Season 5. And Son of Shin is 1,000 times worse than Shin. All we had to do before was end Shin with a single bullet and then discover the egg she was sitting on that the Son was in. But we waited, because we didn’t care about PTR town, and now we are in big trouble.

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The PTR is so broken, the testing can’t be tested.

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That is something I agree about. I am about to generally skip and drink…

Bro don’t let D4 be the reason you pick up drinking.

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i was replying to the silence on bug fixes, problems, and the plans. Having meetings about meetings, discussing other meetings, but not resolving anything.

I’m sure most of you can relate to that. Walk into a meeting to discuss a plan and then one of the people in charge goes on a martyrdom rant and then starts showing pictures of his family on vacation. I’ve walked out of many meetings asking ‘What was the purpose of that? At least I’m getting paid for it’.

don’t drink, but you should watch Shin Godzilla!!!

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I am allergic to any profession that has a said meeting mechanic.

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This is funnier the more I read it. Funny but has a lot of heart in it.

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I would have thought Blizzard working overtime to get more balanced PTR out before the weekend. But apparently… they are only working overtime on the expansion and Season 5 is already a L.

how can we even really push builds/test when things like crown of lucion remains unfixed? they need to punch out as many hotfixes as possible in order to get on top of these issues or the whole process is just a huge waste of time! ugh.