Hereâs the thing, Blizzard used to have people who did take it seriously, and they did have massively more numbers. Then they chased most people away.
The current numbers are still better input than the less than 200 people who are working on the game at Blizzardâs HQ.
no, it is permanently offline now.
The numbers you are using are WAY off. If there are more than 1000 using the PTR at any one time I would be surprised and of those people how many are really able to speak to balance? Maybe sub 1% of the games that take place between skilled players and of those how many are taking them seriously and not just trying stuff out?
Basically its hard to gleam numbers from the games themselves (though its VERY easy to predict based on them). The actual feedback Blizzard wants on what will happen comes from when teams are scrimming against each other using the PTR data.
I keep saying, if they want to incentivize people to go there, give them comp points for doing so. A very trivial amount, of course, but it would be something to give them for it. Like, 1 point for being in a match beginning to end, 3 points for a victory. There, now you have given people a reason to do it.
Double shield helped them collecting further data that showed how broken Moiraâs healing and self heal was.
Itâs been well-established for a while that PTR is just to iron out any bugs. They should be using it to adjust any buffs or nerfs they have made, but they donât.
Not true, they have made several revisions before a change went live recently.
they havent since before mercy rework.
nothing new.
Thatâs not how statistical bias works.
Players who choose to play the PTR are not members of the normal player population simply by virtue of willingly choosing to participate; they are not randomly selected, but rather self-selected. Self-selected populations are subject to all sorts of confounding factors that led to their self-selection that do not make them suitable for comparing to a general population unless you can provide explicit and concrete proof that they are representative of the general population in every other ways that matter.
As an example, the complete lack of linked progression has been cited by many players as a reason why the PTR is not played. That means any player who willingly participates in the PTR, and especially plays the PTR for long enough to have a reasonable amount of experience playing in matches on the PTR patch, places less importance on progression. This means they are likely less reward-driven than the average player, and may have a high amount of play time on Overwatch but are either not high enough ranked for SR decay to be a factor or donât play on the competitive ladder at all. Any of these factors likely is at odds with the sort of player who would care about the impact of a patch on general or competitive play, and thus they would be a poor choice for feedback.
You notice that only now? I donât even try to play PTR cause no feedback matters. Only time something didnât go live is when GMs complained about Moiraâs vape on stun.
Meanwhile, when Junkrat was added to Heroes of the Storm, people found a way to do a lot of damage to structures with one of his ults and trait. So, like the next day, damage of his trait to structures got reduced. Here it takes good three weeks before PTR patch goes live with zero differences. I get that it costs money to patch it on consoles or something, so they drop console patches all at once, but you can patch it when you want on PC.
No, thatâs how it always worked because PTR is not for balance testing.
Yes they do. Except for balance-related ones. That needs testing on live servers.
Hahaha. Oh yes, itâs exactly like slavery. You know, like how slaves chose to participate in slavery willingly, by selecting the slavery server from a dropdown menu.
Be more melodramatic.
Thatâs the whole point of testing, yes.
They do.
They do.
Testing stability, and specifically not balance. See, coding is complicated, and when you add something to a code youâre likely to break seven other things. So you need to test. Basically PTR is there to make sure the upcoming patch isnât going to make your PC explode.
Also it helps them deal with the certification process of consoles in the meantime so they can release patches simultaneously on all platforms.
No, itâs Public Test Region. It says so on the launcher.
Youâre likely not on top of every single change, so your hand-counting holds little water. Iâve been playing since release and Iâve participated in every PTR at least a little bit, and I know theyâve made tons of changes to PTR patches before they hit live.
Again, no. PTR is needed for stability testing and for console patch syncing.
Whether they use PTR or not doesnât affect patch regularity or frequency at all. They can choose to do either at any time.
Also finally, stability is not the only thing they test on PTR. Iâm sure they do their own analysis on various things, but more importantly, they listen to feedback about how it feels to play something thatâs added or changed. Not balance related feelings, mind you, but âgame feelâ type stuff. Like Lucio wallride, Baptiste lamp effects, etc.
So there you go.
Also itâs ok, you can just say youâre an annoyed DF player or something. At least it would be less ridiculous.
Mercy 2.0 was significantly stronger than the monster we initially got on live, on the PTR.
Zen discord throguh barriers ws also tested and never made it to live either.
on the other hand you have barely any players actually testing.
Honestly, i wished PTR was basically just a normal Arcade mode in the Live Game, would bring much more players into the PTR
But also PTR is imho more for Hardcore Bug findings that can potentially Absolutely Destroy the game.
Aka: Hammond Game Breaking Bug just to name one
which had to be removed on live as thereâs no Console PTR to test it for consoles, There ya go, Hammond Destroyed overwatch on console and made it litteraly unplayable, bc of a bug.
a OP Broken AF Hammond canât break the game, Faulty Code Stopping the game from running does and should NEVER ever make it to live.
a Overpowered ability, yeah thats less problematic than the Game Completely crashing without anything you can do.
The only time they done something was at the Mercy Rework, just because that was unbelivble bad stuff, out of the human kind conception. Just only thinking that was ok, should have the whole team behind this game fired.
Everyone on PTR: Sigma is super busted and oppressive
Blizzard and the balance devs: Release that stuff
Players: Quit the game because balance is horrible
Devs: 
While this is true, iâve played PTR a few times because I was just hyped to try out the changes and get ahead of the curve. I would be significantly more active on PTR if I knew Blizzard actually listened to feedback though.
There was Anas healing halved once what got reverted before the patch went to live.
I think people misinterpret what the PTR stands for. Its not testing to see if you like it, its testing for bugs and glitches. Of course theyre not ging to change balance when theyre testing for something completely different.
Then itâs indeed attempt to use players as unpaid testers. Once I had really funny bug on PTR - ice wall could push you through ceiling.
Just because they donât implement every single and might I add, stupid, change suggested on the forums doesnât mean they donât listen.
We get people complaining about the PTR everytime it pops anyway.