[2020] Priority Pass Testing on the PTR

Hey everyone,

Today’s PTR patch introduces the new Priority Pass feature. The Priority pass seeks to help address the population imbalance between Tank, Support, and Damage roles, and the longer queue times that Damage players often encounter due to this imbalance. Players can earn Priority Passes by choosing Flex when they queue, with more passes earned for wins than for losses. When you select Flex, you’re essentially signing up for all three roles and will fill whichever is most needed at the time. You can then use a Priority Pass to decrease queue time for a role currently experiencing higher traffic.

Since the population of players who play on the PTR is small compared to the live environment, we anticipate that the feature will not drastically reduce queue times, even when a Priority Pass is used. The Priority Pass’ ability to reduce queue times is heavily dependent on the number of people actively in queue. This means that if you use a Priority Pass on PTR, your queue times may remain relatively unchanged compared to queueing without using a Priority Pass.

Our goal on the PTR is to test the stability of the feature rather than its efficacy at reducing queue times. We will get a better idea of the efficacy of the reduction to queue times once the feature reaches a much wider audience in the live environment. We will be keeping an eye on feedback throughout the PTR phase to ensure that there aren’t any abnormalities like getting stuck in a weird state, game crashes, etc. If you encounter any issues with the feature aside from the lack of reduction to queue times, please let us know!

We can’t wait to get this feature on the PTR to ensure that it’s stable ahead of the live release! It’s also important to note that once the feature reaches the live environment, we’ll continue to monitor and make adjustments to the system based on its performance. Learn more about the Priority Pass with Scott Mercer in our latest blog.

An additional detail when using Priority Passes: Priority Passes may not be used when playing a group of 5 or more. Since we try to pair large parties against other large parties, and parties this large already contain a good balance of roles, we do not anticipate that using a Priority Pass would actually reduce queue times. As such, we don’t want players to waste their passes if this wouldn’t have a noticeable effect towards the feature’s goal.

Quick Play and Competitive Play will both have Priority Passes, but these will be separate, meaning you won’t be able to use the Priority Passes earned in Quick Play within Competitive Play.