✅ Buffs/Nerf on Live servers Today

General Discussion
1

Probably not going to happen.
But it could.
If the devs wanted to.

Since there’s no structural code changes to heroes, just “number changes” that require zero bugtesting.

They wouldn’t even need to restart the Live game servers. Thanks to a new hotfixing feature they put into the August 28th patch:

PATCH 1.39.2 HIGHLIGHTS

New Feature: Hotfixing

With this patch, the Overwatch client on all platforms can now automatically receive minor updates (hotfixes) without needing to be restarted.

And if that’s not good enough, they could just upgrade it so that the Live Servers ruleset is similar to editing the rules of a custom game.

So there you have it. “Ideally” devs could post the balance changes to Live servers, Today.

Why wait?

2 Likes
2

Hotfixing does not apply to balance changes. Only to critical issues. I confirmed this with Bill Warnecke a while back.

6 Likes
3

One could argue that really bad gameplay balance is a critical issue :slight_smile:

But really though, if that’s resource limited in some way, they could just implement an Admin level ruleset changes feature. Similar to editing custom games. Just with a lot more editable fields.
(Although something like that would take a while to develop).

4

They technically do have those functions, but do not immediately apply those in a hotfix. This is more of a policy decision if anything. Furthermore, the PTR still serves the purpose of making sure balance changes do make sense before they go to live. While it rarely happens, not all PTR changes make it to live (such as the attempted buff to Moira allowing her to Fade out of a Zayra Graviton Surge).

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5

While true, they could just push that to Quickplay or some arcade mode, and get a ton more feedback data than the few people that play on the PTR.

Also they’d get console feedback data, which was previously blocked for them.

6

Isn’t playing a comp match in the early minute of the game at a 5v6 situation without getting the game cancelled, counts as a critical issue?
It been going around for a while and It still didn’t get fixed neither we heard about it from the devs.

7

Yeah but the truth is not many people play ptr after the first week.

I don’t think this will change, not many people would really play on PTR after 4-5 more days and they should push it to live next week itself.

What is the point of having month long PTR’s?

8

Really makes you wonder why they don’t just grab 1 more player from the matchmaker, and restart the match.

Rather than kicking 11 players back into queue.
Up to 4 of which are DPS with 6-40 minute queues.

9

This is more of a debate. I haven’t been playing a lot of Competitive on my end, but the last time I had a related instance to this, the system was working intended the last I have seen.

10

The matchmaker never replaces a person in a Competitive match at any time. This is because of how matchmaking is more strict in Competitive. Simply replacing a player (even if they have the same alledged skill rating) still changes the competitive balance of that match.

11

It would, but the alternative is a completely brand new match, with tons of delays.

Which would have different player balance as well.

So it’s kind of a moot point.

12

PTR has an “active” playerbase for the first 1-2 days and thats about it. Keeping changes on the PTR for 3 weeks is completly pointless.
And the whole PTR situation in general is completly pointless. “While it rarely happens, not all PTR changes make it to live” -> Jeah it rarely happens and because it rarely happens nearly the whole playerbase has to suffer from slow updates. Or has there even been a major change which would have broken the game without beeing on PTR first? Not that I remember.

The bug with the match not cancelling isnt a debate. Its a real issue. Happened to me alone about 3 times and I dont really play a lot anymore. Plus a few more times to some people I know. Mostly happening when multiple people leave the same second.

13

Which is why the same should cancel in the first minute of game time.

14

She could fade out of it before that change and she still can, a more apt example would be a Reinhardt Earthshatter

15

There needs to be a lot of testing to understand if/how viable Orisa, Sigma and Wrecking Ball as main tanks are after the patch; I doubt this patch goes through without iteration as Rein is just stupid OP on PTR.

16

I disagree, if you’re comparing a brand new match, with the same match with a reset score/clock but one player swapped.
The distinction isn’t worthwhile enough to matter.

Especially if the leaver was a DPS, since there’s a bumper crop of those to pick from.

A Tank leaver gets to be more complicated. But wouldn’t be a huge issue for the vast majority of players.

17

The fun part about a faster patching process, is that you get a lot better feedback from frequent incremental changes.

Also with a larger player sample, you’re more likely to get someone who can “break” the balance.

18

It also commits them to the changes immediately, I think iterating on live would confuse the hell out of casuals.

19

Which is fair I guess.
Although casuals don’t pay much attention to PTR anyways.
Much less specific balance numbers.

Worst comes to worst they just make the balance changes into an Arcade custom game.

20

Arcade I could get behind, rewards people for beta testing at least.