Greetings Champions! This Developer Insights blog aims to shed light on how our PTS process works, from the version that we use internally to the final version that becomes the Live build and everything in between. In the past, Evil Mojo has discussed PTS and veteran players may know a lot of this info, however, we felt it was time for an updated rundown of how we utilize this for the modern team using Street Style: World Tour as an example.
Internal Testing
As many players know, we start to work on an update in a development build designed for rapid iteration and implementing things into Paladins on our own timescale. Often, smaller changes in Dev are intended to go out the following update while larger changes tend to exist in Dev multiple updates prior to release. For example, Wave Defense was in Dev for 11 months before it entered Beta in July and we already have some changes aimed for next year in our Dev build. However, whenever we’re ready to move all those smaller changes over to PTS, we go through a process called branch. Basically, this is when we move over all the files and changes in Dev to be reflected in the PTS client & servers.
This process can sometimes be quick, or occasionally take days depending on what we’re moving over, any issues or concerns we have during the process, and the current timeline. Generally, we try to branch a month out from the planned release date to allow us 2 weeks before public PTS.
Private PTS & Partner Playtests
Once we’ve branched, our testing and changes are entirely focused on the PTS version of the game. This usually means refining our existing changes as well as resolving bugs players may be unable to playtest through. As an example of the state changes that tend to be in during this early PTS testing, look no further than the first blog of this series on Talent Design. Those Talent designs are the Dev versions we pulled to PTS, with test values and rougher designs than you all saw during public PTS.
The reason we released that blog – and the reason we always do private PTS testing for a bit – is to be able to iterate on designs, balance, and new content in the exact environment that players will playtest in. Once we’ve gotten PTS in a state we’re beginning to feel comfortable with, we then start Partner Playtests. This is a fairly new addition to the process that started in the Anniversary Update (June 2023) and has evolved to replace AoC previews from 2022 and prior.
The current iteration allows a select group of creators & community members to playtest on the PTS build alongside us about a week before it’s made public, giving us early feedback to start trending towards before we reveal the changes publicly. This group has been super helpful in allowing us more time to make larger changes to match community expectations as well as have a wider gamut of skill levels interacting with all the adjustments. Once we’ve held a few Partner Playtests, it’s time for the public!
Public PTS & Feedback
Once we’ve announced and revealed the patch to players, we can release the public PTS and get feedback! In the past, PTS had been a larger moment due both to the number of team members we had and the number of players who would playtest, but it’s still quite impactful even today! We discover many new issues, bugs, and feedback points during public PTS that we wouldn’t be able to quickly find otherwise as well as further refining and guiding our work towards the best version for players.
After the weekend of public PTS, we then go through all the feedback we’ve received and sort it into categories of importance and feasibility. Naturally, with the update releasing less than 2 weeks out, the changes we can make are limited in scale to comfortably hit our certification deadlines. However, the typical feedback breakdown looks something like this:
Color-coding is used to signify the necessity of a change, with Green being “Can ship as is” and then a scale that goes to Red of “Revert before Live!”. The only Red entry for this update was the Gyro Sensitivity changes (sorry Gyro players for the scare, we didn’t have enough internal people to test those changes well!), but that also doesn’t mean it’s the only revert. Azaan’s Eternal rework was an Orange, which after discussion felt best to revert instead of trying to force in changes. You’ll get the full list of changes between PTS and Live sometime next week before release!
Final Build
The last stage of PTS is preparing the final build, which is the version of PTS we send off to have platforms verify and prepare for release. This usually is tackled a week before the update, but can change based on how much work we need to get in to make the launch as smooth as possible. It’s never perfect, game development always wants more time, but we have to be quick because the next branch is almost always ~3 weeks away and we need time to work in Dev.
Once the update is released to the Live version of the game, we take the launch day to celebrate & look for bugs or major balance issues to hotfix, then get right back to work in Dev. If we do need to hotfix, we do all of that work in PTS as well meaning we have to make the call to hotfix or not before the next branch. If we wait too long, we won’t be able to easily, so that's why if an issue is discovered several weeks into an update, it has to wait until the next update.
Until Next PTS
This blog has a lot less to do with Paladins specifically and is more a peek behind the curtains into what goes into making a PTS that is available to the public in general. It’s an intense process that takes a lot to make happen but is often worth it for a majority of updates. Sometimes, we do skip a PTS if we either don’t have time or deem the changes safe to send without that level of feedback, but we try to make that an exception.
Hopefully, this has helped players understand more about how and why we handle PTS the way we do & our continued interest in listening to community feedback, even if at times it feels we can’t change everything players may want in a given update. We appreciate everyone who plays on the PTS & encourage anyone on Steam to hop into the next one!