Blizzard fears regular PTRs could spoil Diablo 4 Seasons

During an IGN interview, Rod Fergusson discussed Diablo 4’s first PTR and what to anticipate for future PTRs.

The Season 4 PTR for Diablo 4 was eagerly awaited and proved to be a great success, with many players providing positive feedback. Season 4 is looking quite impressive, and some people even compare it to when Diablo 3 introduced the Loot 2.0 system in the Reaper of Souls pre-patch.

Despite their usefulness in previewing upcoming features, Fergusson expressed concerns about potentially spoiling the game with future PTRs:

“The hard part about it for me with PTRs is the idea we’re giving some of it away. As a game developer, we always want to surprise and delight, and one of the problems we run into is sometimes we have to give up the surprise in order to earn more of the delight.”

Related: Fergusson on ‘Diablo 4 is now Diablo 5’: “It is a foundational change.”

The developer is struggling between surprising players and obtaining feedback earlier. So, for Blizzard, it’s an ongoing conversation about running a PTR, and the success of its first PTR is something Blizzard wants to continue: “But no-one should take that as gospel that we’re going to be doing PTRs for every season. Because there are times when we’re still going to want to have the surprise be more meaningful than the feedback in that moment.”

Players shouldn’t expect Blizzard to release a PTR for every season, as sometimes the surprise factor outweighs the need for feedback. Season 4 received a PTR because “Season 4 being so fundamentally different and so foundational in its changes, like we’re changing how the game literally plays, that we better get feedback early, and so that’s why we had the PTR.”

Be sure to check out the complete interview over at IGN.com.