There’s a new PTR coming for Overwatch, planned for release “later this week some time”. Blizzard say they’re going to do things a little differently for this one. It’s going to be a longer phase of testing, for starters, allowing Blizzard more time to react to feedback and implement changes before the public release of the build.
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“This time around, the PTR is likely to be around a bit longer than before, so we’re taking this opportunity to try out some more significant hero changes, and the push more significant iterations throughout this PTR cycle,” says principal designer Geoff Goodman on the Battle.net forums.
“The PTR patch changes you guys see are unlikely to make it through PTR unchanged, unlike previous PTR cycles. We want to try a bunch of things and see whats fun and working, and iterate more quickly from there. In this way, we get to have you guys involved earlier in the process.”
Words alone aren't enough to express how incredibly thankful we are to our 1 MILLION+ followers, but hopefully this remix comes close… pic.twitter.com/IJeuIXanoe
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) October 19, 2016
He goes on to say that the much aniticpated Symmetra changes won’t be arriving in this patch, as her changes are so significant that they need more time. There’s also no mention of Sombra after tonight’s ARG madness.
There’s no exact date on this PTR’s release, but Goodman says Blizzard are “hoping for later this week some time”.
I was chatting to news editor Ben ‘BlizzBoy’ Barrett about this just now and we were speculating on the reason for the longer patch. Tonight’s ARG quite clearly pointed to Monday for a Sombra reveal, so Blizzard perhaps want to test a bunch more changes before everyone starts playing as the new hero, who will probably be added early next week sometime following a big old BlizzCon reveal.
Elsewhere, Goodman also responded to a fan who was asking if Blizzard would consider letting players keep a portion of PTR experience earned, giving them more of an incentive to get involved. “I like this idea a lot,” he responded. “I’ll ask around about it.”