It’s hard to get good values out of a small sample size if the sample is biased, though, which by virtue of PTR being self-selecting and progression being non-transferable means it is.
Even if PTR had ten times the population (I think Jeff mentioned the PTR population cap was somewhere around 5500 players I think?) it would be difficult to get meaningful information about how a given change would affect the live version.
It IS indicative of bad process
For smaller changes like stuff that is already facilitated through game settings, such as cool-downs - I agree. Just announce it as an event day a week before it goes to live, send it to live, if people complain after a day and the numbers show skewed results, revert it and send the next batch to PTR.
Hasn’t it always been this way?
Back in the day they used to actually revert stuff while it was still on PTR.
This your first rodeo? First day back on this game and forums… and I’m seeing posts statments from 2 years ago when I stopped playing after Mercy 2.0 went through.
Check the old forums for my account history. Used to be so proactive about this game… Not anymore though… Not anymore…
IIRC there were Orisa changes that didn’t hit live during the last tank patch, while they’ve never really changed things solely based on ptr feedback anyway. The only thing I can think of were some of the Lucio changes.
Orisa had a movement speed buff while firing which is no longer there. People were predicting Rein/Orisa with Lucio to speed boost as the meta pick because of it but it never made it to live.
I had forgotten or not known about a lot of these, so that gives me a little hope at least.
The old forums was taken down.
The PTR has been this way for the longest time. You people needed to complain back in the beginning when they were actually listening. It is too late for basic requests like this. FAR too late.
It’s been that way since ironclad bastion when they released ptr.
Rework Mercy.
Release Brigitte.
Rework Hanzo.
Every one of them were tried on the ptr and the community said they were awful. It came to live, and sure enough it was awful. The excuse we keep getting is there’s not enough people playing ptr. meanwhile the ones who do are usually accurate right away.
Moira’s fade, Roadhogs hook changes underwent lets just say revision upon PTR feedback, and I think 1 or two others were changed but in general PTR is for testing and literally just testing the changes that are going to go to live servers.
They never listened to PTR feedback. It has to be totally broken for them to respond. That’s why I stopped using the PTR a month after it was introduced.
they use PTR to watch for unexpected bugs, not to see if people like it or not… tho i dont get it because nobody is on PTR
It’s mainly for bug testing.
It’s certainly better than them pushing gamebreaking bugs that their internal QA teams didn’t find to live. Nobody’s forcing you to use the PTR.
Lots of the reported bugs wind up going to live too. That bug with Symmetra Sentry turrets getting inside of walls got reported plenty of times when Sym 3.0 was on PTR. I saw several with screenshots and videos of it occurring. Yet they didn’t do anything about it until months later after a clip on Reddit got highly upvoted.
Now? That’s how it’s always been. They put nearly immortal Ironclad Bastion on PTR and despite everyone saying he was off the-the-scale broken (could take like 3 ults to the face without dying) and they pushed him live anyway.
…Had to be emergency patched after a few days.
“The PTR data and feedback was inconclusive”
The wait from ptr to live is inexcusable at this point.
How can you get feedback if no one plays? There is NO ONE on the PTR.