That’s basically how it works now. They don’t even listen to PTR feedback any more. They essentially use their loyal fans as bug testing slaves, and in return they get to try out what’s coming to live 4 week later.
Seriously, if you don’t listen to community feedback or ever change anything, then what’s the point of the PTR? It’s Public Testing Realm for gods sake. Yet I can can count with my hands the amount of times they actually changed something on PTR.
You might as well send it to live so we don’t have to wait a full month just to get some balance changes. Maybe then we wouldn’t be stuck with stale metas that last over 6 months.
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The only time I can remember a change being reverted was Moira’s Fade. I hope this time they really are paying attention but that’s probably just wishful thinking.
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That was funny.
They were considering buffing her due to being awful at higher ranks for so long…
…but ended up nerfing her because double shield enabled her to become meta
Oh blizzard
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They’ve done a bit more than that. At one point they severely changed the way doomfist’s movement worked on the ptr and reverted it because everyone complained about it. They reverted being able to apply discord orb through barriers (thankfully). There’s the moira fade as well. Many changes also end up being nerfed by the time they get to live. For example, mccree’s fire rate wasn’t the same value on the ptr vs live, it’s slightly slower than the one that was ptr. I’m expecting doomfist’s change to also be mitigated a bit (my bet is .4 instead of .5 recovery delay)
Seems weird what they decide to let through though. Like 50% lifesteal and Bastion’s old ironclad buff was pretty insane and confused everyone.
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That’s pretty optimsitic regarding the Doomfist change, but I hope you are correct. It’s a lazy change and not the right one for him. Not being able to move or fight back while his target can is just…terrible. For so many reasons. If you ask me they should nerf his shield decay instead so he has less residual shields left over from his last dive.
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Pretty sure it is mainly used to test stability. Tho they have sometimes made changes on the ptr based on feedback. Often it is hard for them to take some feedback as very useful when people give it without even trying anything out, or playing for 5mins then saying patch sucks horrible changes. Kinda need to bring things to live to actually be tested.
Some things are more clear than others, like fade being usable while hit by cc, good thing they changed that back. But other things I wont understand, like mercy 2.0 going live without further nerfs.
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There is no way to know if something is balanced during PTR because the sample size is too small.
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Their refusal to revert changes that do go live if they don’t work out is a huge issue though. This makes the PTR so much more important.
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Exactly this LOL.
Who even said that PTR was for the players assess the changes? Actual question… but I think they never said that and only do that to catch bugs and stuff…
Actually they reverted quite some changes already… in different patches but they did. They are doing it right now in fact, with Hanzo’s projectile speed. One developer said they regret doing it and would revert and the current PTR patch has the revert.
Therein lies the catch 22:
People don’t use the PTR because they know the devs do not listen/act on feedback.
So the sample size is too small and the devs push all changes through as is.
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They have reverted some changes after time, but I agree. In general we just need more frequent changes.
They never put orisa’s movement speed in the live version
Actually no. I’d say people don’t play PTR because they’d rather play comp.
PTR also doesn’t guarantee that the quality of games will be good as you’ll have people not playing seriously.
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People have reported bugs on ptr as well that still end up on live. Remember when Symmetra’s turrets could target you through walls? That was reported as a ptr bug yet the devs still ended up pushing that to live.
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There are a lot of reasons why, but the end result is the same.
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Almost like they should just put some balance changes on test server, then push those changes to Live without patching.
And maybe do that 2 or 3 times before patching.
No reason balance changes need to be held hostage to bugfixing patches.
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To squash out bugs, so that when it goes live it has as little bugs as possible.
Why do you think that you(or me or anyone other than devs) should be involved in decision making? When they go bust, should suits come to you to pay their boat repairs?
They also reverted Sombra’s 4 meter detection range and Sym’s 15 second teleporter.
I think they also stopped a Mercy buff once.
They buffed her damage boost to 50% on ptr but never went to live and reverted it to 30%. They never tried 40% or any other value.
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You know a small sample size isn’t necesarily indicative of a bad study, right?