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Why not have a second round of PTBs?
Something I've always wondered about the way PTBs work, and the latest one brought it to mind, is why is it that BHVR does a PTB and then sometimes (usually) makes massive changes without a second PTB?
This isn't a criticism of their balance decisions per se, the whole point of the PTB is that even if something looks good on paper, it might end up being a failure. I'll even defend BHVR on that trying to balance the game is much harder than many people think it is given the vastly different ways it is played between regions and MMRs.
So why not do a second round of a PTB if after the first go you feel the need for a drastic change? With the latest developer update I'm specifically thinking of Sadako and Adrenaline Vial. It feels like we're being given an entirely new version of Sadako (again), feels like at a minimum it should be tested. With Adrenaline Vial the design went from thinking a -55% turn rate penalty was called for to throwing it entirely out the window.
If you feel the need to move something a percent or two, sure that can go to live, but anything else should get a second look.
Again, this isn't about balance, but given it is such a drastic change shouldn't it get a round of testing?
And I know a possible answer is that just because something is on the live servers doesn't mean it won't be looked at, but everyone knows that PTB is really the only reliable time things are actually addressed
So why not change up the PTB format? Lop a few days of the initial test, and then plan like a week for a second PTB to happen. If at that point you still feel radical changes are necessary, don't just push it to live, push the next set of large changes to the next PTB.
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Most likely because it does not fit their schedule. They said that a few days after the PTB dropped they push the Chapter to live, because it takes that long to prepare the Patch for all Platforms. So they can only take into account the first wave of Feedback and even then it is questionable if they can do changes before Release.
Most of the time the feedback they gain from the PTB is used in Hotfixes after a Patch dropped.
I guess it is just not possible to do a second PTB.
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It's probably a combination of many different factors that all play into each other.
#1 Time: After a PTB, it takes a while to analyze all of the data that comes in. Player feedback doesn't get posted immediately, some people wait a few days. Any potential changes have to be discussed with the team internally and agreed upon, then coded, then tested, etc. Then they'd have to prepare another PTB and go through the same process. They would have to schedule PTBs much earlier to allot for this additional time.
#2 Interest: A lot of people are excited to try out new ######### on the PTB but it's like one big initial burst on the first day, then it wanes a lot. There aren't a lot of people who play the PTB on the second day. The amount of people who would play a second PTB with only minor tweaks is very small because the initial excitement is gone.
#3 Quality: There's no matchmaking on the PTB, there aren't any rewards, people just screw around to test out mechanics and DC frequently with no penalty. PTB games on the whole aren't comparable to live games where people sweat as if there's money on the line. A lot of the serious gameplay problems don't emerge until a patch goes live and people try it out for real.
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Others have beat me to it, but I can add a little bit more context. It mostly comes down to time.
The PTB window is already fairly tight. Once the PTB goes live, we have about a week to figure out what changes we'd like to make, implement them, playtest them, and QA them. After that, the update needs to be sent off to the various platforms so it can be certified (where they ensure it is safe and works correctly). By this point, it is too late for another PTB; any feedback we receive from it would be past the cutoff for the release and could not possibly make it in. We use this time to work on any other changes that are needed for one of the following hotfixes.
Beyond that, we have to keep in mind that there's nowhere near as many people playing the PTB as there are on the live game. The PTB is only available on one platform, and only a fraction of players on that platform make the switch. Within a few days, the number of people on the PTB drops significantly. When a brand new update hits the PTB for the first time, it's obviously exciting and a bunch of people want to check it out. But the second time around, it'd be much less so. It's the same content again, but slightly different. The number of people who would be interested enough to check it out would be even lower. The PTB is great because we can get feedback from a wide range of people, but if that sample size is too small, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
The PTB is a great step to have, but just because something goes to the live version doesn't mean it's final. This is a live game at the end of the day. Things will change, we will reassess, and then they may change again if necessary. We'll always try to get it right the first time around, but nothing is set in stone if we don't.
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Thank you for responding.
Does the first round of the PTB have to be as long as it is? As @WhoSoup and you mentioned most people play within the first few days. It's not just add a second PTB onto the existing schedule, but shorten the first PTB to give some time for a potential second.
A second round of the PTB would attract less interest, I can see that, but being less things are being tested I would think those are more focused. Especially when we're talking about something like an overhaul to a killer that Sadako is looking at I'd feel you'd get plenty of feedback on that.
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This goes back to the part of coming up with changes, implementing those changes, and so on. By the time everything's ready to test a second time, the first PTB will have already run its course and it would be too late to for any feedback we collect to make it into the release. (For reference, the PTB typically runs over the first weekend and then shuts down.)
Shortening the PTB wouldn't really change anything because that's not the bottleneck, the changes wouldn't be ready to test yet.
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I have a question regarding the part of you comment about platforms. I can't say how many other games have it, but For Honor has its ptb equivalent as a separate gamemode within the main game. With DBD getting new gamemodes, would it be possible for the ptb to be made into a gamemode so that all platforms could be included?
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This is a good question! I'll answer this in two parts.
1: To do this, the game would need to support two separate versions of the same content simultaneously, and currently this is not possible. To give an example (totally hypothetical, not real), say The Trapper has a brand new power that we want to test. He would need to have that fancy new power in that side mode, but keep his regular power in normal matches. At the moment, the game is not set up to do this. It's not impossible to do, but it would be quite a bit of work.
Additionally, one thing to keep in mind is that queue times in the PTB can something be rough for one role or the other. If a PTB features mostly Killer updates or a new Killer, a lot of people want to play Killer, causing the queue times to be very long for Killer players. One nice thing about PTBs currently is that they can opt to play a custom game against bots to skip the queue and get a feel for it. As a separate gamemode, however, this wouldn't be possible.
2: Sadly this would also require an update to pull off. Even if the contents of the update are for testing, they still need to go through the usual certification process before it can go live. This would add a few weeks to the process, and those few weeks have to come from somewhere. Either A) the update comes out sooner and eats into development time for that update, or B) the update comes out later and prevents us from being able to collect and act upon feedback before the real update goes live.
It's a great idea, and I can see how it would be very effective for other games, but it unfortunately does not fit in the current release schedule we have for DBD.
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