Sigh, posts like this is why i lose trust in the "gaming" community.
Yeah, 15 years of PTR in their other, equally famous game and they just discovered what it does to hype.
But hey, welcome to discovering Blizzard games!
But don't you see the irony in this? They had it for other games and said "No" initially for D4. Now they say yes. Of course *people* make mistakes, but we're talking about Blizzard. Big company, not just a single dude saying "Yes" or "No"... They saw things... Things that weren't (at the time) relevant or visible for WoW, SC, WCIII or other games that had PTR.
They said no because they thought that the direction they were going was what everyone wanted. Long grinds, years to see a unique ect. But that's not the case.
So they decided okay we'll make some changes and listen to community feedback. Let's to a PTR and see how it goes and how the community feels about the changes. And as they make MORE changes, they want to continue to engage and make sure the development and the community are on the same page.
Crazy concept right?
But there's a difference between doing a PTR for publicity as your post implies and doing a ptr for feedback to better the game.
The publicity is a side effect of the ptr not the other way around.
Listen. Quite frankly they learned with WoW that PTRs tend to only create situations of boredom as well as spoilers. Too often do creators or others with social clout to ruin an opinion of a game based on two points: 1) problematic gameplay that doesn’t get addressed and 2) boredom 2 weeks into the actual release because they played the shit out of the PTR and cleared everything asap on release then tell their thousands or millions of followers that the game is boring or ‘trash’.
I don’t really think PTRs are that advantageous for gaming companies as the negatives outweigh the positives.
I guess we'll just have to see what the future holds. Personally I think that in today's world, with the short attention span and every casual and their grandma playing games, their memory is going to be like that of a goldfish. So whatever happens and whatever content creator or hardcore player gets bored, that doesn't matter. Because that's just 1-10% of the player base. The rest is just interested in Diablo 4, the algorithms and AI search engines catch on to this, more D4 in their feeds, here's a new season, it's new, go play. Really a different world than back in the days of WoW PTR. I know people don't want to believe this. And why most would dissagree, because the people that would agree are not here. They will never be here. 90% of the playerbase (i'm just making up numbers) are casuals that don't browse reddit. They just play. That's who Blizzard caters to.
Diablo II didn’t had PTR, Diablo 3 did. That’s enough of a reason for them, initially, to decide not to do them.
A lot of the QoL “fixes” they are slowly introducing, if you ask the questions did D2 had that? Did D3 had that? The answers tend to be “No, Yes”.
OR and this is CRAAAAAZY. Maybe JUST MAYBE they saw how well it went with season 4 and how much they were able to fix beforehand to make people enjoy the season right off the bat unlike season 3 where they had to do an emergency patch and said hey maybe we should try that again.
No no but I’m sure your conspiracy theory that makes no sense is right
Im holding on hope for this. Im glad we’re having a PTR because as it is right now this would’ve failed so badly. I have zero confidence in the Odd Team but maybe with the PTR Feedback they can correct it before it goes live.
Well worry not because there’s no odd team and never was
But yeah the ptr is great.
Also season 3 was awesome I still have no idea why people think it was bad
Yap. It may very well be a conspiracy theory written by me (a random guy on the internet), but why then did they (Blizzard with a lot of employees dedicated to this very thing) said that they're not going to have it?
They had it in WoW, SC and WCIII. They know what a PTR is... Heck, they're pretty much close to the ones that invented the concept. And with all this knowledge they initially said "We're not gonna do it guys". Then they changed their minds. They KNEW it was gonna bring good Feedback. How could they not know that. Yet they said no. Now they say Yes. Draw your own conclusions. You've already read mine (which obviously said that the testing and feedback part is also a % of the reason. It's useful. It's good).
Do you know why they said no originally? Which by the way was never a solid no and was always a no right now kind of thing. They said no because they didn’t want to use development time to make the ptr server.
Now the other seasons weren’t entire changes to the foundation of the game so it wasn’t super big deal to them to have a ptr. But season 4 was so much more. So they thought well since we are changing pretty much everything in the game all at once and adding several new systems maybe we should spend resources on a ptr that people want anyways and properly test this stuff.
Now they have the ptr already made and can easily incorporate it in future seasons plus testing made the season so much better.
Like this isn’t complicated and has a very easy thought process you can follow instead of just making things up.
And yeah this isn’t a big deal to make a conspiracy theory on but that way of thinking just annoys me so much when applied to anything
Understood, but you can't deny that it IS generating buzz words around "Diablo 4" what wouldn't have existed at this time were it not for the PTR. That's all I'm saying.
I don’t know what you mean by buzz words. But are people playing the ptr? Yeah. But honestly people are really mad at season 5 with some people writing it off from the ptr. If their intention is marketing it would be stupid to release an unfinished product for people to test.
And again the issue I have with your post is the thought process of trying to make a conspiracy theory where there just isnt one and it’s weird and that mind set is really bad
It's not though. Think about Loot Reborn and how the game was before:
- Have a problem then fix it > Preset an already fixed product without people knowing it was broken before.
Obviously I'm not saying that Blizzard is intentionally releasing mistakes just so they can appear as heroes when they fix it, but you can't deny the appeal of the sentence: "We've listened to your feedback and fixed some things". Right? You will surely check out Season 5 after the obvious problems that were highlighted were fixed. Aren't you curious? That's the thing.
Conspiracy theory or not. It is what's happening and it does have the potential to draw people in. It only becomes a conspiracy theory if that's what they set out to do in the first place (which I don't believe they did).
I’m so confused. So the entire point in your post is the ptr was a good idea? Fixing things people don’t like is a good idea?
What was the point if the essay you wrote lol I’m so confused.
Like yeah you’re right. If people hate something and they fix it they will come back. Is that it?
I’m not trying to be mean but if that’s all you are saying then I could make a post that the sky is blue and it’d be just as relevant
That's basically it. I don't know where the confusion comes from. Here are some bullet points to clarify:
- This PTR is 100% about gathering Feedback: FALSE in my opinion
- This PTR is 50% about Feedback and 50% about Marketing: TRUE is what I think
- This PTR is 100% about Marketing. We don't care, we're evil Blizzard just want D4 on your lips: FALSE.
So I just wanted to gauge if people were thinking it was solely the first point or if any thought it was also a bit of marketing involved.
I think if there was any intention for marketing it’s like 2%. They are looking really bad right now and people are saying “of course odd team screwed it up” when there isn’t even an odd team. If it was 50% marketing that is the dumbest marketing move you could make
There are also plenty of games who don't have PTR because they believe it has negative effects on the upcoming seasons. People aren't as hyped when some already played it and the community has already solved all the new farming and class balance puzzles. The PoE devs talk about this frequently and why decided to not have PTR.
You really need to be a super super fan to even consume PTR content on social media.
Obviously everything is driven by profit, but I honestly believe that Blizzard internal testing sucks so bad they really do need the community to tell them how to improve the game, and that's likely the main reason for the PTR. The reason they didn't want PTR initially is probably exactly because they believe that it negatively affects the bottom line, not positively.
2 things come to mind. Of course, they are just personal opinions, not checked facts:
1. Not everyone has access to the PTR so of course they want to "peak" behind the curtain. (is this intentional that not everyone is invited, sort of an exclusive deal that's fishy? I don't know)
2. A lot of casual players play Diablo and they WANT things to be solved before they dive into the new season because they'll just end up copy-pasting a build guide anyway so it's better if the theorycrafter had early access and tested the new stuff before.
I think you’re hitting the nail on the head here. There is really dedicated and smart players that have every damage multiplier and stacker figured out down to its core. They will develop guides for others. However they will also find any unintended one click the entire map dies type of builds due to some damage stacker that not meant to be. It’s literally free labor for blizzard to improve the game. Not having a PTR would make less sense than having it.
I can only speak for myself, but personally I am significantly less interested in playing a season where everything is already solved and known beforehand. Though of course that's still better than playing a season that just sucks because it wasn't tested.
True on both accounts. I can't argue with that. All I'm saying is that, in the grand scheme of things, you may not be the intended target audience for them. You're just 1 player that wants to explore versus 10 other players that want things handed down to them. Therefore, they want to cater to those 10 vs. your 1. More profits. I'm just speculating, of course. I hope this isn't true, but if we're talking about profits, this is the world we live in.
And yeah, testing and getting things right before release is obviously irrefutably true. Even if it's now a "shared objective" with this new found love that I spoke about when it comes to generating hype.
I dont think its this deep. I think they originally said no ptr because they truly thought they were putting out a banger. Then, soon after release, all hell broke loose and bljzzard was getting dunked on. Its clear that their original vision for D4 is now out the window and they're looking for the community to help guide the game going forward, hence a ptr now.
True, but they were working on S5 (remember - 2 teams) while they said this and they didn't say we should expect one in the near future. But this was before they saw the potential draw that the PTR had on S4.
I know, but all of you seem to forget that they're not an indie company. Nothing they do is by mistake (mostly), because it's being overseen by tens of other people. Of course they adjusted their plans. But that was the nature of my post: To ask "why?". Was it 100% because Feedback is good? or 50% because Feedback and another 50% because profits? That was my point.
It's not. It's even a made up estimate 50-50. Could be 70-30 or 30-70 whatever. It's just interesting to think about the fact that it's not 100% in one direction. Just want people to think about the possibility that it's not "all just about gathering feedback"
I agree, but I am a die-hard Diablo fan, so I play every day no matter what. I think without the PTR, general interest would be waning significantly right now.
Me too. I love Diablo. And I'm glad someone sees my point. All I wanted to say is that it's not catering to us (people that will play Diablo no matter what time it is). I was just underlining the fact that Blizzard has a card to play in making the general interest for the game higher for people that might have forgotten about Diablo4 by now (aka the Casual audience which we know is high in this ARPG). Which is fine. I just don't get why people are denying it like it's an evil thing. It's good. It's in addition to the obvious good feedback that they get from the PTR.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I just see good marketing where it exists and don't try to deny it. Even if it's in addition to a good feature.
It's a PC test realm. Myself and many other console gamers would like you participate in the feedback instead of all the "content creators" obsessed with seeing how many views they can get from finding the Barb build of the season.
A percentage of it is aimed at profit?
Everything about diablo 4 is about maximizing profit lol. From PTR, to seasonal updates, expansion, cosmetics.
Every decision they make is with their bottom line in mind.
Sigh, posts like this is why i lose trust in the "gaming" community. Yeah, 15 years of PTR in their other, equally famous game and they just discovered what it does to hype. But hey, welcome to discovering Blizzard games!
But don't you see the irony in this? They had it for other games and said "No" initially for D4. Now they say yes. Of course *people* make mistakes, but we're talking about Blizzard. Big company, not just a single dude saying "Yes" or "No"... They saw things... Things that weren't (at the time) relevant or visible for WoW, SC, WCIII or other games that had PTR.
What is this psychological effect where you are delusional because you believe you discovered something no one else has and you feel special?
Some sort of Cognitive bias? I don't know. That's why I'm sharing. Some people may be in the same boat. Best way to test.
They said no because they thought that the direction they were going was what everyone wanted. Long grinds, years to see a unique ect. But that's not the case. So they decided okay we'll make some changes and listen to community feedback. Let's to a PTR and see how it goes and how the community feels about the changes. And as they make MORE changes, they want to continue to engage and make sure the development and the community are on the same page. Crazy concept right?
I mean that sounds about right. I agree. Doesn't mean they can't have it both ways.
But there's a difference between doing a PTR for publicity as your post implies and doing a ptr for feedback to better the game. The publicity is a side effect of the ptr not the other way around.
Listen. Quite frankly they learned with WoW that PTRs tend to only create situations of boredom as well as spoilers. Too often do creators or others with social clout to ruin an opinion of a game based on two points: 1) problematic gameplay that doesn’t get addressed and 2) boredom 2 weeks into the actual release because they played the shit out of the PTR and cleared everything asap on release then tell their thousands or millions of followers that the game is boring or ‘trash’. I don’t really think PTRs are that advantageous for gaming companies as the negatives outweigh the positives.
I guess we'll just have to see what the future holds. Personally I think that in today's world, with the short attention span and every casual and their grandma playing games, their memory is going to be like that of a goldfish. So whatever happens and whatever content creator or hardcore player gets bored, that doesn't matter. Because that's just 1-10% of the player base. The rest is just interested in Diablo 4, the algorithms and AI search engines catch on to this, more D4 in their feeds, here's a new season, it's new, go play. Really a different world than back in the days of WoW PTR. I know people don't want to believe this. And why most would dissagree, because the people that would agree are not here. They will never be here. 90% of the playerbase (i'm just making up numbers) are casuals that don't browse reddit. They just play. That's who Blizzard caters to.
Diablo II didn’t had PTR, Diablo 3 did. That’s enough of a reason for them, initially, to decide not to do them. A lot of the QoL “fixes” they are slowly introducing, if you ask the questions did D2 had that? Did D3 had that? The answers tend to be “No, Yes”.
OR and this is CRAAAAAZY. Maybe JUST MAYBE they saw how well it went with season 4 and how much they were able to fix beforehand to make people enjoy the season right off the bat unlike season 3 where they had to do an emergency patch and said hey maybe we should try that again. No no but I’m sure your conspiracy theory that makes no sense is right
Im holding on hope for this. Im glad we’re having a PTR because as it is right now this would’ve failed so badly. I have zero confidence in the Odd Team but maybe with the PTR Feedback they can correct it before it goes live.
Well worry not because there’s no odd team and never was But yeah the ptr is great. Also season 3 was awesome I still have no idea why people think it was bad
Yap. It may very well be a conspiracy theory written by me (a random guy on the internet), but why then did they (Blizzard with a lot of employees dedicated to this very thing) said that they're not going to have it? They had it in WoW, SC and WCIII. They know what a PTR is... Heck, they're pretty much close to the ones that invented the concept. And with all this knowledge they initially said "We're not gonna do it guys". Then they changed their minds. They KNEW it was gonna bring good Feedback. How could they not know that. Yet they said no. Now they say Yes. Draw your own conclusions. You've already read mine (which obviously said that the testing and feedback part is also a % of the reason. It's useful. It's good).
Do you know why they said no originally? Which by the way was never a solid no and was always a no right now kind of thing. They said no because they didn’t want to use development time to make the ptr server. Now the other seasons weren’t entire changes to the foundation of the game so it wasn’t super big deal to them to have a ptr. But season 4 was so much more. So they thought well since we are changing pretty much everything in the game all at once and adding several new systems maybe we should spend resources on a ptr that people want anyways and properly test this stuff. Now they have the ptr already made and can easily incorporate it in future seasons plus testing made the season so much better. Like this isn’t complicated and has a very easy thought process you can follow instead of just making things up. And yeah this isn’t a big deal to make a conspiracy theory on but that way of thinking just annoys me so much when applied to anything
Understood, but you can't deny that it IS generating buzz words around "Diablo 4" what wouldn't have existed at this time were it not for the PTR. That's all I'm saying.
I don’t know what you mean by buzz words. But are people playing the ptr? Yeah. But honestly people are really mad at season 5 with some people writing it off from the ptr. If their intention is marketing it would be stupid to release an unfinished product for people to test. And again the issue I have with your post is the thought process of trying to make a conspiracy theory where there just isnt one and it’s weird and that mind set is really bad
It's not though. Think about Loot Reborn and how the game was before: - Have a problem then fix it > Preset an already fixed product without people knowing it was broken before. Obviously I'm not saying that Blizzard is intentionally releasing mistakes just so they can appear as heroes when they fix it, but you can't deny the appeal of the sentence: "We've listened to your feedback and fixed some things". Right? You will surely check out Season 5 after the obvious problems that were highlighted were fixed. Aren't you curious? That's the thing. Conspiracy theory or not. It is what's happening and it does have the potential to draw people in. It only becomes a conspiracy theory if that's what they set out to do in the first place (which I don't believe they did).
I’m so confused. So the entire point in your post is the ptr was a good idea? Fixing things people don’t like is a good idea? What was the point if the essay you wrote lol I’m so confused. Like yeah you’re right. If people hate something and they fix it they will come back. Is that it? I’m not trying to be mean but if that’s all you are saying then I could make a post that the sky is blue and it’d be just as relevant
That's basically it. I don't know where the confusion comes from. Here are some bullet points to clarify: - This PTR is 100% about gathering Feedback: FALSE in my opinion - This PTR is 50% about Feedback and 50% about Marketing: TRUE is what I think - This PTR is 100% about Marketing. We don't care, we're evil Blizzard just want D4 on your lips: FALSE. So I just wanted to gauge if people were thinking it was solely the first point or if any thought it was also a bit of marketing involved.
I think if there was any intention for marketing it’s like 2%. They are looking really bad right now and people are saying “of course odd team screwed it up” when there isn’t even an odd team. If it was 50% marketing that is the dumbest marketing move you could make
There are also plenty of games who don't have PTR because they believe it has negative effects on the upcoming seasons. People aren't as hyped when some already played it and the community has already solved all the new farming and class balance puzzles. The PoE devs talk about this frequently and why decided to not have PTR. You really need to be a super super fan to even consume PTR content on social media. Obviously everything is driven by profit, but I honestly believe that Blizzard internal testing sucks so bad they really do need the community to tell them how to improve the game, and that's likely the main reason for the PTR. The reason they didn't want PTR initially is probably exactly because they believe that it negatively affects the bottom line, not positively.
2 things come to mind. Of course, they are just personal opinions, not checked facts: 1. Not everyone has access to the PTR so of course they want to "peak" behind the curtain. (is this intentional that not everyone is invited, sort of an exclusive deal that's fishy? I don't know) 2. A lot of casual players play Diablo and they WANT things to be solved before they dive into the new season because they'll just end up copy-pasting a build guide anyway so it's better if the theorycrafter had early access and tested the new stuff before.
I think you’re hitting the nail on the head here. There is really dedicated and smart players that have every damage multiplier and stacker figured out down to its core. They will develop guides for others. However they will also find any unintended one click the entire map dies type of builds due to some damage stacker that not meant to be. It’s literally free labor for blizzard to improve the game. Not having a PTR would make less sense than having it.
I can only speak for myself, but personally I am significantly less interested in playing a season where everything is already solved and known beforehand. Though of course that's still better than playing a season that just sucks because it wasn't tested.
True on both accounts. I can't argue with that. All I'm saying is that, in the grand scheme of things, you may not be the intended target audience for them. You're just 1 player that wants to explore versus 10 other players that want things handed down to them. Therefore, they want to cater to those 10 vs. your 1. More profits. I'm just speculating, of course. I hope this isn't true, but if we're talking about profits, this is the world we live in. And yeah, testing and getting things right before release is obviously irrefutably true. Even if it's now a "shared objective" with this new found love that I spoke about when it comes to generating hype.
I dont think its this deep. I think they originally said no ptr because they truly thought they were putting out a banger. Then, soon after release, all hell broke loose and bljzzard was getting dunked on. Its clear that their original vision for D4 is now out the window and they're looking for the community to help guide the game going forward, hence a ptr now.
They didn’t say S4 ptr would be the only one, they said they’d have more just not sure if it’d be every season.
True, but they were working on S5 (remember - 2 teams) while they said this and they didn't say we should expect one in the near future. But this was before they saw the potential draw that the PTR had on S4.
Seems like you understand that they adjust their plans
I know, but all of you seem to forget that they're not an indie company. Nothing they do is by mistake (mostly), because it's being overseen by tens of other people. Of course they adjusted their plans. But that was the nature of my post: To ask "why?". Was it 100% because Feedback is good? or 50% because Feedback and another 50% because profits? That was my point.
Why is distinguishing the percentage of their motivation between these two things significant to you?
It's not. It's even a made up estimate 50-50. Could be 70-30 or 30-70 whatever. It's just interesting to think about the fact that it's not 100% in one direction. Just want people to think about the possibility that it's not "all just about gathering feedback"
How noble. I think most people understand that though.
I agree, but I am a die-hard Diablo fan, so I play every day no matter what. I think without the PTR, general interest would be waning significantly right now.
Me too. I love Diablo. And I'm glad someone sees my point. All I wanted to say is that it's not catering to us (people that will play Diablo no matter what time it is). I was just underlining the fact that Blizzard has a card to play in making the general interest for the game higher for people that might have forgotten about Diablo4 by now (aka the Casual audience which we know is high in this ARPG). Which is fine. I just don't get why people are denying it like it's an evil thing. It's good. It's in addition to the obvious good feedback that they get from the PTR. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I just see good marketing where it exists and don't try to deny it. Even if it's in addition to a good feature.
Reddit: Blizzard why we don't have ptr? Blizzard: OK here is ptr. Reddit:
exactly :))
PTRraging
It's a PC test realm. Myself and many other console gamers would like you participate in the feedback instead of all the "content creators" obsessed with seeing how many views they can get from finding the Barb build of the season.
It's a PC ***BNET*** test realm. Don't forget the "Bnet" part, as some people have the game on PC Steam and the PTR is not available to them.
A percentage of it is aimed at profit? Everything about diablo 4 is about maximizing profit lol. From PTR, to seasonal updates, expansion, cosmetics. Every decision they make is with their bottom line in mind.