The Overwatch PTR has too few players and too many leavers, Jeff Kaplan says

This article is brought to you by StatBanana, the best Overwatch strategy tool.

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has revealed why the game’s test servers have become progressively slower recently: There are simply fewer players on them.

He attended a Q&A session for a small committee at a Los Angeles university. There, he answered many questions about game design, but also one about the test servers (PTR), according to an attendee.

Related: Orisa bug makes her fly back to safety after Roadhog hook

He said that the peak of concurrent players in the PTR role queue amounted to 60,000. Out of the 40 million Overwatch players in the world, that’s a very small number.

The other issue is leavers. On the PTR servers, players only want to test out heroes that were impacted by balancing changes or new characters. If they can’t lock in their desired hero before another player, they’ll leave the game. He reportedly didn’t talk about a possible solution to resolve those issues, though.

Among other topics, Kaplan explained his vision and how he likes to design characters. He also said that the calendar of seasonal events would be reworked when Overwatch 2 is released. Since the release of Overwatch in 2016, the calendar hasn’t changed except for some added events.

He didn’t reveal any additional information on Echo, the upcoming hero in Overwatch. A release date has yet to be announced by Blizzard.