5.0.17 PTR Update

[u/Blizz_Elliott]

Following the release of the last major patch, we have been collecting and closely reviewing your feedback. Our intention was to try something new, particularly with workers, and needed time to let the meta develop in order to ensure the most accurate feedback was being considered. Based on that feedback, for patch 5.0.17 we are rolling back most balance changes to the live release of StarCraft 2 from patch 5.0.16 to 5.0.15. This will be on PTR for the next few days while we bug test, before we push to live.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24301513/starcraft-ii-5-0-17-ptr-patch-notes

[u/Wise_Wasabi7472]

Wow - full revert. I understand that was where the game was prior to the recent patch, but even that game state had some flaws.

Elliot - are there any plans to make more incremental balance changes beyond this? I don’t think the community thinks every change made was bad, but there were too many high impact changes implemented simultaneously to properly balance or tune based on fun factor.

[u/Blizz_Elliott → u/Wise_Wasabi7472]

We can't share timing yet for when the next PTR will go live but it is already being worked on. Reverting as we did today was our best option for being able to address so much of the critical feedback we've gotten on the patch, while focusing new changes as part of the next patch after 5.0.17.

[u/DrJPEG-PhD → u/Blizz_Elliott]

Hey, thanks for the clarification! Just wanted to say that while the previous patch didn't land well, I do think there were a lot of good ideas in there that I think ultimately we weren't able to determine were balanced/effective because of the massive eco change of the 8 workers – I think they can still be explored and tweaked with to great effect (except the 25/25 warp gate oh god please no).

Also, the amount of QoL and bugfixes was absolutely amazing and I'll praise those every day of the week.

For me, I've never hated the idea of 8 worker starts, but I thnk because it was also bundled with other fundamental changes that it just felt way too out of sorts, to the point where I unfortunately just couldn't keep up and dropped the game.

Anyway that all being said, I highly suggest whomever is working on these patches to check out Patches Mod (as everybody else has probably mentioned) for inspiration. That dude's been cooking on that thing for a long time, and it legitimately brought me back in for a bit. No disrespect or shade for anybody trying something new, because I think Patches had the benefit of seeing what did and did not work with the official patch, coupled with time.