The PTR is for bug testing/testing the community feedback. One could argue that the PTR doesn’t matter at all.
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This would be a more reasonable excuse if they were actually transparent with us, instead they keep us in the dark for ages before popping up again with some new changes before vanishing again, wondering later why the community doesn’t trust them and constantly criticises them.
We could have avoided most of the big problems we’ve had in Overwatch if they had actually worked with the community on certain issues (like actually using the PTR as a way to actively test new balance changes with the community instead of a gameplay demo of the next update) and actively communicate with us instead of making a statement about a new update that the community may or may not like and then letting it stew before making another statement.
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I kind of understand it right this moment, purely because we’re in the weeks leading up to Blizzcon. It’s gonna be extremely busy. But leading up to these last couple of weeks or so, I still agree with you that communication has been lacking.
I recently learned that they only have less than 100 people working on overwatch, while fortnite has a whopping 700. I find it funny how they make boatloads of money from WoW Starcraft and Hearthstone and they can hardly invest any time or money into this game besides OWL
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It’s because they care about the game on a deeply disturbing emotional level, and don’t want others to “touch it.” They need more people working on it though.
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I just find it confusing how blizzards net worth is more than double epic game’s and they can’t afford to hire even at least 200 people to work on their game
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You heard it here guys 9000 IQ statement. THE PUBLIC TEST REGION IS NOT FOR BALANCE TESTING, THE COMMUNITY HAS NO RIGHT TO TEST OR KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE VIDEO GAME.
I know that balancing isn’t easy, and that bugs happen. That doesn’t justify the company ignoring its main source of feedback about the game, especially when those balance changes don’t actually work for the game.
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Free DLC =/= Entire game and development team is exempt from criticism
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I would be absolutely fine with the social additions and UI updates if only playing the game (outside of strictly the game balance) was actually enjoyable or actually gave some sort of incentive to play. I still manage to find reasons to play games like Hearthstone or HotS because of their quest systems, yet we have a large FPS that gives a handful of achievements and reduces any sort of progression/completion based system to “just win 9 games in arcade 4head”
This also applies to the event modes as well, giving us skins but nothing new to do is like giving someone a half eaten apple. It still tastes like an apple, it’s just as good, but it’s nothing more than that (I hope im not the only one who though junkenstien’s event was going to take place on that deathmatch map, because the promotion for it spelled out the complete opposite of the actual event). In the last dev update we’re essentially being put in a waiting room for something that isnt going to be available this year, has most of the development work (supposedly) being put towards that, and yet we have blizzcon coming up in more than a week which doesnt inspire confidence at all. if we already have a window of time (for something) to look forward to later next year then what are we supposed to be looking forward to in relation to now and in the next few months?
If the last dev update was made to be some form of transparency on the situation, it does a fantastic job on giving some clarity on a topic that won’t ease the concerns elsewhere.
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It is.
I got tired of warning: If this “revert mercy or fix her or we riot” bs won’t stop, you’ll put the dev team 210% away from us. Nobody listened.
That spam (and actual, but bit less) made by a certain discord community who witch hunted every single blue post, made youtube videos picking literally every wording every dev or mod used to benefit their point of view led to this.
Blizzard isn’t wrong. As much as I miss them, let them keep like it if they want the game to be fixed and not spammed every time they give their honest (and correct) opinion on stuff. At least until the forums are back again, the mercy spam ends and they’re free to focus on what matters: the game and not a angel hero who’s been meta for more than a year and half.
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This community doesn’t know a balanced game when they see it. Almost every Hero is viable, and even the weakest outliers like Bastion, Reaper and Roadhog see situational play.
This community also doesn’t understand the balance process. The Devs can’t just toss number changes on the PTR and see if winrates rise or fall. It takes time to find balance adjustments that will succeed in the long term.
Why should the Devs explain themselves to people who don’t see the big picture and will complain on principle?
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Jokes on them because it really needs to be an MMO.
by not explaining anything, it sends the wrong message and creates more confusion about the subject. Just because one person sees the bigger picture doesn’t mean the thousands of other people standing next to them do as well, nor is that something you can expect of others even if the things they say or claim to know seem incredibly unreasonable to you. Being uninformed and forcing people to assume is worse than deliberately being vague or even lying. People will force some kind of irrational thing as realistic and there’s nobody to stop them. Transparency is always important.
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It’s been a little over 2 years. They should have some clue by now.
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Where exactly do they see play?
I’m just gonna ignore your tinfoil hat conspiracy. This statement here is interesting because I’m sure this tickles your fancy, as well as many others who dislike the perpetual mercy threads.
Pretty sure that if you say “a revert is possible if this doesn’t work out”, then people can (and will) interpret those words as if a revert is possible. Who knew words could be taken literally?
Pretty sure that most people, most of whom were MERCY MAINS, were saying “oh my god this PTR Mercy is a godlike beast this will not be good for the game. Please don’t do this, tweak current mercy or do something else, but not this”.
Guess what? She was implemented as-is.
And now all of these people have headaches from the perpetual facepalming, and a sore throat of saying “told you so! now please revert!”
There was no mercy meta until after the rework. Anyone who says there was a mercy meta before the rework is either misremembering or intentionally lying to suit their own agenda.
Blizzard has done multiple reworks since Mercy’s. Like Symmetra. Sombra. Torbjorn.
See many complaints about those heroes? I mean sure, some people dislike the changes, or have a beef with one or more elements, but they are heavily drowned out by people who do think the rework was overall positive.
With Mercy? I think the sheer amount of people who bash skulls over whether or not she’s fine, is a pretty good indication that something went wrong. Especially if that discussion keeps. on. going.
Then yes, go long enough without developer input to talk about it (because it is still a big subject), people will nitpick on everything. They will point out every single mistake and statement the devs made and keep on pointing them out over and over again. Louder and louder. That’s generally the only thing you can do as an unsatified customer.
And would you blame them? Would you do any different if your hero was reworked into an overpowered mess which then got a nerf every couple weeks for several consecutive months and your words fell on deaf ears the entire time from the very start?
It’s fine to make mistakes or unpopular decisions. Nobody will judge a dev for doing that.
It’s however NOT fine to make mistakes or unpopular decisions but still proudly proclaim “We did nothing wrong. Everything is fine. Shut up now.”
It will have the exact opposite effect.
It is also not okay to make mistakes but then say nothing about it, and have the thought that if you ignore a problem for long enough it goes away. It doesn’t work like that.
Anyone with even the tiniest bit of knowledge on society knows that.
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Oh please,
The Mercy rework went live and was allowed to fester for half a year before finally being toned back. Literally one test round on internal servers should have told any competent development team “oh hey, the team with the Mercy has almost infinite sustain” you don’t need game development experience to spot that but they not only let it go public but let it go live.
Don’t talk to us about “it takes forever to look at”
Oh what about the grav dragon meta. Yeah Hanzo’s rework caused that, were they looking at all things that interact when they let an OP Hero also have the most reliable ult combo that required one hero to get nerfed and one to have power shifted to compensate a few monthes later.
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Not sure if anyone else has asked this before but the platform the game is running is not Unreal Engine but something built from the scrap by themselves something new, right ?
So you know, maybe, just maybe, the platform they work on is more complicated than we imagine, judging from the amount of bugs heroes tend to have after each new patch. Thus why they take so long.
What can I know, I am working at a store, not coding. I am pretty sure the rest of people here who throw accusations have worked at the said company or coding in general.
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Better to rip off bad balance changes like a band aid then continue to have toxic poison of balance changes trickle onto our tongues if you ask me.