Overwatch PTR’s Lack of Incentives Explained

If you know anything about the Public Test Realm server for Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, it will likely be the ability to play new maps, heroes and test other changes before they make it to the live game. For PC players this is even more enticing since the PTR is restricted to that platform alone.

However, apparently due to the lack of rewards – like experience or unlocked cosmetics carrying over from the PTR account into the live game – the PTR doesn’t attract the kind of attention required. One player on the official forums believes that the PTR isn’t encouraging players to use it for what it’s meant for and that incentives or rewards would go a long way towards improvement.

Director Jeff Kaplan chimed in and noted that, “We’d love to improve the PTR experience. The difficult part for us is that the same time and resources we spend improving the PTR experience could go towards improving the core game. For that reason, we usually flavor the latter.”

So as an example, team members would be better suited working on match history and replay features for the live game rather than allowing progress to carry over from the PTR to the live game. Don’t expect any changes to the way the PTR works until more resources can be devoted by Blizzard.