It is great to see that a Console thread was responded to (for once… This is only the third time this year that a Console thread on the forums got a response).
But don’t you think that you guys can increase your communication with the Console player-bases a little more? There have been a lot of major issues that have been hitting the Console version for a very long time now.
Among other things, this list includes:
- The M&K users on Console
- No means for us to appeal in-game suspensions
- QOL items that would greatly improve the Console experience
- No other Console-Specific balancing
- No official E-Sports Representation
- The Region Block for the playable languages on OW-Console (why is this even a thing?)
A lot of things could be addressable by you guys within Blizzard. But it’s kind of hard to tell if you actually want the Console Player-bases around if you guys aren’t responding to our major posts expressing this kind of constructive criticism.
Not to mention that the game masters are pretty much no help to Console Players either (no offense intended). They’ll either state things that the Console Player already knows regarding the issue they’re trying to get resolved, or the game master will straight up state that they can only help with PC-Related issues.
I, like many others, want to believe that you guys do care. But the lack of responses from you guys to Console posts makes it very easy for Console Players to feel like you guys are not treating them like valued community members.
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Exactly how I suspected, I begged for answer on issues like K&M or Smurfing but nothing.
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Jeff, hopefully you see this but I have a question for you in regards to how you do your updates.
When I worked in gaming it was before and at the start of this generation of consoles and I remember the talk early on of being able to handle submissions to third party differently in certain cases. If it was just data changes I believe you could send those without submission but I honestly cannot remember because it was a few years back.
Have you guys talked about possibly trying to dynamically drive some of the values in game through a CMS or some equivalent that makes updates on the fly? For example, spread randomization for characters being a number that is just data being sent and not have to go through cert.
Obviously you couldn’t put new animations or characters in but does the minor tweaking of numbers like damage/move speed/spread/ rate of fire etc. seems plausible? You wouldn’t have full capability of doing a PTR but it would at least allow for some things like the reaper changes, the recent Pharrah changes.
I would be interested to hear your answer and really hope to hear your thoughts but I understand you guys are busy and if not it’s ok. Thanks for continuing to make Overwatch a great game.
the pure irony of this is that this conversation has derailed into a Mercy discussion.
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This is absolutely the most important part imo. Hopefully the situation changes soon so we can get Console PTR, but that last paragraph is reassurance that you do care about us
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Well…that explains a lot why PTR is mostly just a preview and rarely making any changes mmh…
Can’t say I really like that Jeff. I understand, but I don’t like the outcome.
Thanks for at least trying. I am hoping you can bring this to fruition however, even though content will held by 1-2 weeks (takes long for most content to get to us all anyways doesn’t it?) don’t you think it’s worth it for your console fans? To make us happy too?
Other games can do it so its not impossible, based on what ive read and heard the delays are in the initial setup e.g a new game (roughly 5 days) or a day 1 patch (another 5 days hence you can read about upcoming day1 patches pre launch and the whole culture of releasing unfinished games to boot), after that unless theyre drastically changing stuff that requires new certification, you can just do rapid patches in a matter of hours.
So to me I cant see once the initial ptr is setup, what would take all that long, Char changes wouldnt require certification (hence in the past consoles have gotten patches to fix broken patches in a matter of hours). They know when theyre going to ptr so they can plan ahead and besides, ptr usually lasts for weeks, so so what if PC gets 3 weeks and console gets 2 or 1. Its evidently needed, only gotta look at the Bastion patch to see why.
Sony is abit of a pain because Sony is 3 companies - SCEA (Sony America), SIEE (Sony Europe) and Sony Japan which all require their own submission process for certifications, ratings, pricing, and patching etc
However MS is still the worst and even despite the 3 companies needed for Sony MS will still take a week longer to get it done. This aint flaming or starting wars, its just the case.
Whole point of it all is to protect the customer so no consoles get bricked etc yet despite that you still get those issues anyway haha
I think that it is already live 
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Why would you want PTR on console? Don’t you have a mobile phone???
I think you might have gotten confused regarding what Sora meant there. What Sora meant in that post was if the Development Team had any other Console-only balance changes planned for the future (something similar to the Torb/Sym turret nerfs, which only affected Console and not PC).
Now I don’t why you’re thinking mobile phone here. My only guess would be to have SMS verification for battle.net. Plus, there is no such thing as a PTR on a Mobile Phone for a game that’s also on console; it just does not make sense. If neither of those two things were what you meant and I’m wrong, please do note what you meant!
As for PTR on Console:
There would be several benefits to giving such. To name some examples:
- It can give some other potential ideas for Console-specific balancing
- Console-specific issues can get addressed more easily (for example, Ana’s Ally Aim Assist would not be affected by friendly turrets anymore, as it is on live right now; and has been ever since she got it on Console)
- Console-specific bugs can be nailed down more quickly (to name a couple things here, issues like the Voice Chat bug that happened during SG2018 and the Push-to-Talk control issue in March of this year wouldn’t have become issues at all, as they would’ve been able to be addressed immediately.¹)
- To give better attachment between the Development Team and the OW-Console community. Although, I don’t think you need me to state much regarding how detached the Development Team is with the OW-Console community.
- To allow us to also test upcoming balance updates/new heroes and see how said updates and heroes would affect our versions of the game.
¹If you need some context on this issue, they implemented the Voice Chat - Push to Talk Control to Consoles on March 20th of this year. Yes, the same control that’s been on PC since launch if that helps. However, at its implementation, it was a useless control. Not because of lack of button space, but because the ability to change Voice Chat modes (from Open Mic to Push to Talk) was not present. An issue that would be around for 3 weeks, could’ve been addressed immediately if there was something such as a Console PTR around.
It was a Diablo Immortal Joke…
Fair enough; I won’t argue against that. A ‘/s’ would’ve been nice to see though, as it would’ve been able to prevent such confusions.