So how do we use that to determine whether a build goes live? We know not everything is going to be optimal, so where and how do we draw that line? And is it more than just 'is it worse than what's currently on live'?
TL;DRThe score is not the only gate: they try to beat live when they can, but the four-week cycle's fixed ship date and gate reviews focus everything on shipping, even over minor issues.
No. We always try to shoot for better than live when we can. But there's a lot of things that we look at to be able to ship a patch. Now, obviously, for this year, it was a very big change for the development teams because moving to a four-week cycle means that we are always shipping. We have a ship date that we give ourselves and a schedule. And then we've got our gate reviews. And everything is chained up to get there. Well, the closer you get to this date, from the player's perspective, when you guys see daily PTUs go, go, go, and it's always update, update, update, that's because we're getting close to the release. And so we're trying to get to the date, and we're trying to validate all the things we need to validate as fast as possible. The focus is really on shipping. So even minor issues become top priority. And so it's been really difficult for the teams this year to keep up with this because we finish a patch like, yay, OK, we're late for the gate review. Literally, it's going like this. Obviously, we balance this across multiple teams, but there are teams that unfortunately are on everything, and so they're always on it.