Current Pts cycles are flawed

BohnT2

For the past years a typical PTS cycle looks like this:
Week 0: Patch X.X.0 is released and the discussions about the biggest imbalances begin

Week 1: Patch X.X.1 is released often without any combat balances, discussions about the biggest imbalances keep going with no one knowing what will happen

Week 2: Patch X.X.2 is released and includes further balance changes and maybe fixes for the issues implemented in X.X.0 but might also bring in new imbalances. New discussions about imbalances emerge or are continued

Week 3: Patch X.X.3 is released often again without any balance changes. While discussions about imbalances continue.

Week 4: Patch X.X.4 is released with the last changes to the balance most of the time. If big imbalances aren't touched here there's a good chance for the coming to the live server and staying for 3 more months till the next patch is released.

Week 5: Patch X.X.5 is released to the live server and often equals all changes that have occurred till X.X.4 without further balances.

That means we're often looking at only 2 incremental patches that can fix potential imbalances.
Granted this pts cycle the combat team changed the things each pts patch however the main issue of dots hasn't been touched.

Now let's swap over to the next big issue and that's how things can be tested on the PTS.
The overall number of players on the pts is smaller than on live this means especially for PvP the only way of testing are duels which are only a small part of PvP and don't represent OW combat as builds, CP allocation, useage of LoS and number of people included differ and make it impossible to get somewhat precise predictions how the changes will affect PvP in all aspects.
In general people can point out the biggest imbalances but it's impossible to give precise feedback as the people your fighting on pts differ from the ones you've been fighting for years in OW.
On live you can match every player you meet to a skill level and if you meet them after the patch you can give much better feedback how the changes affect different players in OW in their performance.

A good way to tackle this is to extend the PTS cycle by 2 weeks after it was put on the live server. This gives everyone the option to collect much better feedback and the ability to better classify the changes (especially for players on EU).
This also helps to tackle the lack of patches to deal with the imbalances to create a much better experience for everyone.

Major_Lag

LOL

Hahahaha, do you seriously believe that the devs will even LISTEN to any of the feedback? We might as well shove it where the sun don't shine, for all the good that it will do.

At this point, it's obvious that there is no salvaging this mess.
It's time to grab some popcorn, open some beers, and watch the madness unfold.

BohnT2

And now we're in second week of playing the new pts patch and as mentioned above nothing changed and we're still facing all the issues from patch 5.2.0.
Time is running and balance is what will come out as the loser (again)

Nolic1

Well there is one major problem with your idea. The PTS does not account for even a fraction of the live server player base and thats where they will get more data about the changes. See the Public Test Server is to see how things are working to see if any bugs and such are missed by the QA team not to adjust the skills on whats coming cause there is no way to test the true player skill use. This is and always has been how all games do there testing for the most part does it suck sure but the only way to truely test how skills will be used is with a larger player base then whats ever on PTS.

BohnT2

Nolic1 wrote: »

Well there is one major problem with your idea. The PTS does not account for even a fraction of the live server player base and thats where they will get more data about the changes. See the Public Test Server is to see how things are working to see if any bugs and such are missed by the QA team not to adjust the skills on whats coming cause there is no way to test the true player skill use. This is and always has been how all games do there testing for the most part does it suck sure but the only way to truely test how skills will be used is with a larger player base then whats ever on PTS.

This part is directly pointed at what you criticize

A good way to tackle this is to extend the PTS cycle by 2 weeks after it was put on the live server. This gives everyone the option to collect much better feedback and the ability to better classify the changes (especially for players on EU).
This also helps to tackle the lack of patches to deal with the imbalances to create a much better experience for everyone.

This means that they keep their PTS workpace for two more weeks when the patch is already on the live server to exactly get feedback from all players and from all types of combat (not just duels)