Something the FFXIV developers should learn from the WoW developers

In a recent interview with PC Gamer magazine, Lead developer Ion Hazzikostas stated:

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"If the team had their way, none of the story would be revealed before an expansion, but the benefits of a beta outweigh keeping the entire story a surprise. . . Blizzard tries to keep major story points hidden until they are experienced in the live game. This is mostly done by excluding major cutscenes from testing periods."

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It is extremely apparent that in FFXIV many of the past and present content that wasn't well received could have used beta testers giving honest feedback. Speaking truth to power.

The developers of this game need to understand and be mindful of the fact that not all players play content the same. Group think and echo chambers are extremely dangerous things that halt ingenuity.

https://www.pcgamer.com/wows-game-di...cky-pre-patch/

To be honest, if FF14 had beta servers it would probably be JP only so I'm not sure how much difference it would make for us. :(

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

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Originally Posted by Rymm

To be honest, if FF14 had beta servers it would probably be JP only so I'm not sure how much difference it would make for us. :(

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

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This or just available to streamers who'd be on a NDA and be ultra limited.

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"Beta tests are useful."

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Agreed.

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"<Ambiguous buzz words.>"

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Ambiguously agreed? Or maybe not at all. Who knows.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

This or just available to streamers who'd be on a NDA and be ultra limited.

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Giving test server access to streamers only to bind them by an NDA is pretty pointless.

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Originally Posted by Rymm

To be honest, if FF14 had beta servers it would probably be JP only so I'm not sure how much difference it would make for us. :(

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

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JP had a lot of the same complaints we do about Eureka, at least Anemos. I was surprised to learn that they were actually even lazier than we were - AFK at the crystal in town until an NM popped. They did their own version of a train, make no mistake.

Still, they need to engage the customers in SOME meaningful way and I've long thought that the paranoia surrounding 'spoilers' in this game is over the top.

That would only lead to delays and such.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

That would only lead to delays and such.

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I would rather have a single well-thought delay for a bunch of fixing than spread-out content that may or may not work, more and more time and resources going into more coding for servers for housing, and so forth that we have going now. I'd rather know that the game actually works well, and has a ton of things for us to pick up and choose to do any any given day, rather than an uninspired routine that reinforces itself every other patch, because all else was abandoned by some combination of the players or the devs.

They would probably want a sub for that too...

Paying subs to beta test content for them? Sounds wrong to me so no thank you.

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Originally Posted by Aster_E

I would rather have a single well-thought delay for a bunch of fixing than spread-out content that may or may not work, more and more time and resources going into more coding for servers for housing, and so forth that we have going now. I'd rather know that the game actually works well, and has a ton of things for us to pick up and choose to do any any given day, rather than an uninspired routine that reinforces itself every other patch, because all else was abandoned by some combination of the players or the devs.

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so you want a very long content drought that may take months and months of continues delays because that may happen if they keep chaging stuffs adding or remove etc... vs what we have currently atm a very stable patch schedule and alot of fun content updates?.

To be honest, I think XIV devs just don't have any idea how to properly implement content and innovate. One of the biggest problems plaguing this game is the fact that the content cycle has become increasingly stale and uncreative. Side content is not designed with the intent of making it fun but instead incentivise you to get you to do the content. (Diadim, PvP, Eureka, Verminion) Then theres the fact that Yoshi doesn't even want to release blitzball because he doesn't know if people will like it the way they implement it so decides that turning it into football manager is the quickest and easiest way to get past it, just screams that the fun aspect is not taken into account. That and the fact that the devs are giving us less and less content per patch. 3.3 literally has twice the amount of content 4.3 has.

Edit: Is there any reason to even buy the new expansion at 5.0 launch when there is going to be a 6-8+ month long content drought?

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Originally Posted by giwaman

so you want a very long content drought that may take months and months of continues delays because that may happen if they keep chaging stuffs adding or remove etc... vs what we have currently atm a very stable patch schedule and alot of fun content updates?.

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Yes.

I would rather the delays be due to getting the content right, rather than now, where we already have delays on some things, and half-assed attempts on some others, because so much time is spent fixing things. For instance, when they made the loot of 24man raids all Greed Only, and went back shortly afterward to undo that change, do you think it was a simple on/off switch, or do you think someone in the dev team took a portion or more of their day--time that could and should have been spent on other things--on both changes?

Even without that in mind, my answer is still, emphatically, yes. I want quality over quantity.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

so you want a very long content drought that may take months and months of continues delays because that may happen if they keep chaging stuffs adding or remove etc... vs what we have currently atm a very stable patch schedule and alot of fun content updates?.

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I would not mind a delay in content release if it meant what we were getting was vetted for "fun factor"*. Clearly SE has the technical side down pat (as much as you can in an MMO), it's way past time for them to start getting player feedback on whether the upcoming content is actually worth doing or not. Or exploitable. A PT Realm could have forewarned of the NM train in Anemos at the very least. Since SE clearly didn't like that they could have adjusted for it. And Pagos has shown that only a very tiny minority of players will enjoy this type of content if they can't cheese it so SE needs to step it up and find out what we like instead of handing it to us and saying "take it or leave it".

If they're worried about trial boss spoilers, they can have a dummy model with fake move names.

*This needs to be incorporated into the development cycle so it doesn't significantly delay patch releases. Perhaps when they start technical testing they can add the new content to the PT realm as well, thereby getting large amounts of feedback on both bugs and the quality from a player perspective.

What you quoted has nothing to do with your concern. The quote was about trying to hide plot points from players, not changing content based on player feedback during beta testing or other public testing (they tend to fail at hiding the plot points, regardless). Blizzard doesn't make changes to content based on tester feedback once development moves out of alpha and into beta. The most you see are some changes made shortly after beta testing begins that weren't ready to be implemented before alpha ended.

If you knew anything about the history of WoW beta testing, you'd know that opening FFXIV beta testing to players would not achieve the result you're looking for. WoW is notorious for ignoring tester feedback even when most of the time the feedback is spot on for predicting how the player base will react after release.

The other thing you're conveniently ignoring is something you pointed out yourself - not everyone plays the same way or for the same reasons. Making changes to please one segment of the player base is going to upset other segments.

Any game developer ultimately needs to stick to their vision for their content design. Games would be a mess if they were constantly messing with things trying to please a player base that's not in agreement about what they like and what the game should be.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What you quoted has nothing to do with your concern. The quote was about trying to hide plot points from players, not changing content based on player feedback during beta testing or other public testing .

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One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Blizzard doesn't make changes to content based on tester feedback once development moves out of alpha and into beta.

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Except no gaming company tests for feedback; they test for analytics. Numbers and percentages related to content being done are much easier to read than any (mostly) jibberish that winds up in player feedback, which is why any written feedback is usually taken with a grain of salt. Looking back nowadays of when I took part in the ARR beta, I'm fairly convinced that whatever reasons SE may have had for player testing they believe can be done through in-house testers and mathematicians.

Ironically though, what testing possibilities that could be offered to players wouldn't involve story content at all. The same means that have been stated for testing job gameplay for example (target dummy testing and fight mechanic simulation testing) could be done by players willing to do it at no expense to the company.

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

Except no gaming company tests for feedback; they test for analytics. Numbers and percentages related to content being done are much easier to read than any (mostly) jibberish that winds up in player feedback, which is why any written feedback is usually taken with a grain of salt. Looking back nowadays of when I took part in the ARR beta, I'm fairly convinced that whatever reasons SE may have had for player testing they believe can be done through in-house testers and mathematicians.

Ironically though, what testing possibilities that could be offered to players wouldn't involve story content at all. The same means that have been stated for testing job gameplay for example (target dummy testing and fight mechanic simulation testing) could be done by players willing to do it at no expense to the company.

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I don't know that i trust players opinions on jobs after the SAM speculation before launch/ and the numbers people saw on some skills at launch. Thats one of the reasons its in such a poor place right now, everyone complained it was too strong because they saw potencies, but it wasn't, and after like, 4 weeks, other jobs got buffed due to the backlash.

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Originally Posted by giwaman

so you want a very long content drought that may take months and months of continues delays because that may happen if they keep chaging stuffs adding or remove etc... vs what we have currently atm a very stable patch schedule and alot of fun content updates?.

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Define fun for one thing: is eureka fun? is potd 2 fun? Is rathalos fun? For me fun is doing dungeons and getting gear that doesn't become obsolete in few weeks.

Secondly, think of this way: let's assume they delay one patch for giving us some ACTUAL good content, content that lasts, content that is worth being called content - like some sort of speed run dungeon feature or mythic like wow - and this content is balanced, gives us some good reward - and i mean actual good rewards like gear and weapons and not fluff rewards like pets - and overall it's great.

Now think of this: they took longer to deliver this and will take longer for the next, but since this content is worth something and it's good for progression and it's well balanced, people will be fine waiting longer to get better and balanced content because it's good, it doesn't become boring really quick, it gives some reward for our time and overall it's worth the wait.

In the end it would cycle this way: longer waits for patches but better and lasting content that doesn't get boring immediately. Right now we got so many fluff content that isn't just worth it - biggest example is gold saucer - and they basically become obsolete within 24 hours if not less.

Meanwhile in wow even events like Darkmoon Faire grants us benefits for our gaming experience (they give exp and rep boosts) while ALSO being fluff content (and not even bad either!)

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I don't know that i trust players opinions on jobs after the SAM speculation before launch/ and the numbers people saw on some skills at launch. Thats one of the reasons its in such a poor place right now, everyone complained it was too strong because they saw potencies, but it wasn't, and after like, 4 weeks, other jobs got buffed due to the backlash.

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And that backlash (along with the dumpster fire that was the tank accessory debacle) could've been avoided by having players test SAM beforehand and realizing that the numbers are intended to offset its complete lack of utility (which I'd argue is why it's in a poor place these days).

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Originally Posted by Kazrah

Except no gaming company tests for feedback; they test for analytics. Numbers and percentages related to content being done are much easier to read than any (mostly) jibberish that winds up in player feedback, which is why any written feedback is usually taken with a grain of salt.

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A good gaming company will look to both, and Blizzard does do this - but here's the catch: Most of the written feedback they've looked at and implemented is related to class design/balance. Does a change make something feel clunky and weird to use? Does the payoff for a particular rotation feel lackluster? That's the kind of written feedback they look for. Occasionally that written feedback will include whether or a particular piece of content feels rewarding (lately it's been leveling speed and scaling). There's plenty of "this isn't that fun" feedback, of course, and it's rare that those things get changed, leading to an all too common refrain - "Why wasn't this caught in beta?" "It was, Blizz just didn't listen again."

For the analytics - during the beta, it's about stability, and balance, and things working the way they are supposed to, NOT numbers related to content simply being done. I've been a beta tester in the betas for 5 out of their 7 expansions (including the latest one), and we generally just play through the quests and check out the classes/dungeons, or test what they specifically tell us needs testing.

The analytics for people actually doing the content (and presumably having fun with it)? That's the kind of thing that would get tracked in the live environment and is data that would be applied toward the next round of design decisions...and even then Blizzard has a tendency to decide to do what they think is fun in the end anyway.

Analytics for people doing the content should be taken with a grain of salt anyway - if you hate it but it's the most efficient way to get something, that's what you end up doing. Path of least resistance and all that, right? From just a numbers perspective, that "dislike but doing it anyway" element would never show up and instead it would look like the players at least like the content because they keep doing it.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

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Well yeah. their Mission Statement is gameplay first, so that isn't really surprising.

There are ways to make a PTR without spoiling story though. They even did it during ARR alpha/beta. They just had placeholder text and deleted the cutscenes. The actual fights were still spoiled though.

I doubt a PTR would have helped in Eureka's case, if anything it would have just made Anemos what Pagos is like now and people would still hate it. During Diadem 1.0, everyone went to dino island or whatever and just farmed there. When they released Diadem again they just forced the player to play the way they wanted you to with objectives. Same thing happened with Anemos, everyone did the train and ignored what they wanted you to do in there so when Pagos came out they changed it to encourage players to play the way they want.

At the beginning of ARR, people started corpse running or CCing mobs and locking them behind boss seals to skip trash since they dropped nothing. (You would have the tank pull half the instance, die in a safe spot and get res'd and keep going or you would sleep/bind large packs and go to the boss, the boss seal going up would make them reset) They then added walls that only go down when you kill all the mobs or interactables to dungeons to stop it. Same thing, different coat of paint.

Honestly Blizzard isn't much better considering the cat and mouse game that is going on right now with the grouping tools/WQ. Even in a game like GW2 the devs had to go in and break up the zerg by forcing the player base to split due to mechanics and scaling mechanisms. I'm pretty sure Anet has nerfed farms multiple times, too even back in GW1.

Reading this, the point of a beta is to find bugs, exploits and breaks in the game. It's to make sure what is being placed into the game works. It is not to give feedback on how fun the content is.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

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Funny, go over to the WoW forums, go to their ptr beta forums, look at all the posts about things that are an issue for months that make it to live and turn into complaints on general.

Having a beta won't mean an end to echo chambers. Beta is to find bugs and squelch them. Beta doesn't mean they'll listen to other issues with the content they think is great as is.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

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He's a Game Director that just inherited a dying MMO because those who made it successful have moved onto other things. While he shares some of the credit for success for the years he spent as the Lead Encounter Designer, the overall success of WoW is due to people like Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan. They were the visionaries that led WoW to its popularity.

He's also a Game Director that isn't trusted by the player base due to many design changes made to the game since he was promoted from Lead Encounter Designer to Assistant Game Director and then to Game Director. He has been deceptive in his communications with the player base, twisting words to imply things later found not to be the case at all. The last thing you want to do is bring up something said by Ion Whatsitcostas/Fuzzikoalas with the WoW player base if you want to be taken seriously.

The benefit of public testing to Blizzard is publicity and to get enough bodies grinding through the content to find game breaking bugs missed by their small Internal Testing team. They want the game trending on Twitter. They want the streamers putting out content on Twitch and YouTube to advertise the game in advance of release. They don't make changes to content. A lot of the content in WoW still ends up raked over the coals by the player base after release just as we see in FFXIV.

The OP wants a better game experience than he feels he's getting in FFXIV. Public testing isn't going to create it.

They should be their own person. It's time to stop cloning!

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

Reading this, the point of a beta is to find bugs, exploits and breaks in the game. It's to make sure what is being placed into the game works. It is not to give feedback on how fun the content is.

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Bug-proofing is a primary goal, but not the only one. By showing people having fun with the content in a beta (WoW for example), they can build hype for the content. If that content is, say, an expansion, that hype can be used to build up sales and bring in new players.

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Originally Posted by Lunalepsy

They should be their own person. It's time to stop cloning!

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It's never a bad idea to take the best features of the competition and incorporate them into your product.

See: Personal housing, glamour logs, daily quests, dungeon finders. . .

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The benefit of public testing to Blizzard is publicity and to get enough bodies grinding through the content to find game breaking bugs missed by their small Internal Testing team. They want the game trending on Twitter. They want the streamers putting out content on Twitch and YouTube to advertise the game in advance of release. They don't make changes to content. A lot of the content in WoW still ends up raked over the coals by the player base after release just as we see in FFXIV.

The OP wants a better game experience than he feels he's getting in FFXIV. Public testing isn't going to create it.

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The thing is though, they HAVE made changes based on feedback. Sure they don't make all, or even intelligent ones sometimes, but to imply that they never make changes is nothing short of a exaggerated lie.

From a FF14 perspective an open beta would have likely identified a few low hanging fruit for fixing if SE was interested. Stuff like WHM lilies, Raubahn/Pipin EX, Eureka being barely serviceable as content instead of a barrens chat simulator.

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Originally Posted by Aster_E

Yes.

I would rather the delays be due to getting the content right, rather than now, where we already have delays on some things, and half-assed attempts on some others, because so much time is spent fixing things. For instance, when they made the loot of 24man raids all Greed Only, and went back shortly afterward to undo that change, do you think it was a simple on/off switch, or do you think someone in the dev team took a portion or more of their day--time that could and should have been spent on other things--on both changes?

Even without that in mind, my answer is still, emphatically, yes. I want quality over quantity.

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Ya know people will complain if patches are taking forever and content droughts are worst, and so your complaints are half ass content that you dislike and get tired of so fast, but you also want less "content/quality" but are you sure it will appeal to everyone and not fail or get bored of it so quickly? Plus in regards of the 24 man raid greed only issue, I do agree it was a risky move and i give props to them for fixing it asap but around that time most players are around max ilvl370 such as myself thnx to savage so it din't really affect majority of playerbase unless ofcourse casuals etc, well nobody is perfect but all that matters to me is they deliver a fun timely patch content to keep community satisfied/happy.

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Originally Posted by Voltyblast

Define fun for one thing: is eureka fun? is potd 2 fun? Is rathalos fun? For me fun is doing dungeons and getting gear that doesn't become obsolete in few weeks.

Secondly, think of this way: let's assume they delay one patch for giving us some ACTUAL good content, content that lasts, content that is worth being called content - like some sort of speed run dungeon feature or mythic like wow - and this content is balanced, gives us some good reward - and i mean actual good rewards like gear and weapons and not fluff rewards like pets - and overall it's great.

Now think of this: they took longer to deliver this and will take longer for the next, but since this content is worth something and it's good for progression and it's well balanced, people will be fine waiting longer to get better and balanced content because it's good, it doesn't become boring really quick, it gives some reward for our time and overall it's worth the wait.

In the end it would cycle this way: longer waits for patches but better and lasting content that doesn't get boring immediately. Right now we got so many fluff content that isn't just worth it - biggest example is gold saucer - and they basically become obsolete within 24 hours if not less.

Meanwhile in wow even events like Darkmoon Faire grants us benefits for our gaming experience (they give exp and rep boosts) while ALSO being fluff content (and not even bad either!)

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My fun bucketlist contents:
savage raiding
dailies
UwU
primal extremes
eureka
24man raid
Hunts
Glamour farms from old to new raids

Longer patch or delays are not always going turn out to be so great, and it always depends on what kind of content they want to take time or add plus this is not WoW so stop comparing two different games.

v2 had a beta though.
Cutscenes where blocked but the rest were available. Even if it was up to lvl20.
But it was also another time.

However i do think it would be usefull to avoid thing like Raubahn EX

If they wanted beta testers, make it specific to a very small group: People who can beat Ultimate or something. Give those beta testers, btw, some in game stuff (beta testing glamours they only have access too) as incentive. Theyd have to sign NDAs to participate though.

No betas, please. We're players. We pay to play. Betatester are professionals who spent a lot of time teting games. They do not play for fun, it is their work. And as job, it mus be paid. This last years we're talikng about open betas or invites to betas. They are hiring betatester FOR FREE. So you're paying a game (in most cases) to be a betatester, when you SHOULD be paid for that. Soory, but not. Beta testing for profesionals, not for players. Let's not spread this bad beahviur of some comapnies. We will be doing THEIR job and not getting paid for it.

So no. No beta testing without a salary. You're contributing to this fraud with this kind of things.