As i see it, PTR exists to Test things.
So if they have idea that they want to try, they just throw it on their test server and see how this plays out.
Right now PTR is more like a demo for upcoming patch notes. A really small amount of PTR changes don’t go to live servers.
Well, at least you can test to find out all the bugs new hero/map has, so when it get released, they know what breaks their game and they’ll fix it in a next month
They just test if new stuff crashes the game not if its balanced or not or if new stuff give massive fps drops
Yeah im sure bonus fire rate can crush the game
At this point, i doubt how they even dared to make that Orisa can deploy barriers while reloading, it could delete all accounts if not tested out properly
PTR is meant mainly for bug testing
It’s not used primarily for testing whether or not something is balanced because the sample size is too small
PTR doesn’t encompass the majority of players and all levels of play to get definitive results
Imagine if some things went directly in live, like the bug that prevented you from choosing Reinhardt, the one that prevented the pyload from proceeding after the second point of Havana etc.
It would be chaos. Obviously it can always happen to see bugs in live, but usually they are immediately solved depending on the gravity of them.
Actually yes it can.
Xbox is now having a problem were if someone dies to a Hammond ult their game can freeze and crash.
Game development is very hard and complex. Even changing the rate of fire for one hero can completely break the game somewhere else.
Blizz has stated it is not for mechanics changes normally, though they have on occasion changed something on PTR. It is more for players to test new things for server stability.
Its basically just for bug testing.
Dude you seem to have absolutely no idea how game design and development works. You are clearly not familiar with the concept of regression in a software and how small tweaks can sometimes lead to some major issues.
So refrain giving your point of view on that particular point or just go on the internet to find any infos about how the IT world woks.
Thx in advance.
PTR is mainly for bug testing rather than balance testing. You not believing that balance changes can cause instabilities is quite frankly not their problem.
Blizzard PTRs are usually demo. It’s been like this for years.
For new maps, it’s a “how bad can Mei break this?” test area.
For new characters (or reworks), it’s a how can we break their abilities to make them do things they should’s (see Sym rework, 1000+ DPS bug, teleporting turrets into cars, etc.).
Blizzard is pretty particular of the quality of the game on a surface level, this is what the PTR is for. It’s a final round of bug testing on an already finished product to ensure it doesn’t throw a wrench into the game. This is how they almost always avoid hot fixes, maintenances, and the fatal errors they are supposed to fix.
With that said, I’d personally prefer if they just pushed PTR patches live. The quality of PTR is already incredibly high, and it only extends the development cycles that they have. That’s just my opinion though.
They did push Sombra LoS patch straight to live (when she got 0.65s hack time), it didn’t go well for her.
the mccree launched is a nerfed version of the ptr one (ptr:0.40s -> live:0.42s)
The main reason for the PTR is to make sure not to break the game for the 50 million (or whatever the real number is) players, playing the game when they are pushing changes to the live server.