Can we try a Public Test Realm

Feels overdue, maybe changes would be received better if we weren't testing them on the live game so much and had time to play with them in a separate space and provide feedback from there.

Well they do have a lot of things complete months in advance and just sit on the patches, testing them and fixing bugs for months. They have over 100 QA. When the schedule for releasing the patch comes up, they've fixed hundred or thousands of bugs, according to one of the panels they did where this process was explained.

Maybe they could instead release that in a very broken state months in advance to a test area but then it would spoil lots of things, and "surprise" is how SE markets the game and story is also valuable to them as a selling point so releasing it at the same time for everyone means some people aren't seeing it a lot earlier or trying to obtain data they shouldn't to spoil future events.

For raid content or jobs?

I wouldn't want a PTR done for raids. One of my biggest gripes with World of Warcraft is everything is datamined and battles are solved long before a patch goes live, where as in FF14 everything is a surprise. The PTR for WoW is kinda needed though because they're notoriously bad at rushing unfinished products out the door to meet strict deadlines. The number of bugs that end up live in FF14 is extremely small compared to WoW.

However if you're expecting sweeping job changes because they're playable on a PTR then you'll be greatly disappointed. They might use the information to balance the numbers a bit better and avoid things like the weird monk potencies, but that's about it. If player feedback from live content doesn't get them to rework jobs or make them more complex, why would a PTR? A PTR is pretty much the finished product, they're simply releasing it so players can help them find and iron out any bugs the QA team missed.

I think the utility of that would still depend on our feedback here being read and considered.

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Originally Posted by gllt

Feels overdue, maybe changes would be received better if we weren't testing them on the live game so much and had time to play with them in a separate space and provide feedback from there.

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Believe me, i've had the same thought before; but i think overall, no PTR is better. For the most part, on a PTR, we wouldn't get to change the things we would want to change and we'd lose any sense of discovery for the game.
I do not enjoy that three months prior to a WoW patch, i already know everything about it because its the internet and i'm not going to be able to hide from spoiler-talk.

WoW needs a PTR because addon use makes internal balancing basically impossible. Mechanics vs boss mods is a never ending arms race and Blizzard just straight up cannot predict how good the players will be and how much DPS they'll be able to put out ahead of time. FFXIV doesn't have that same problem.

No thank you. We see already how much wows ptr spoils things. It's an irreplaceable thing everyone experiencing new things together. No, no, a thousand times no.

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Originally Posted by Espon

For raid content or jobs?

I wouldn't want a PTR done for raids. One of my biggest gripes with World of Warcraft is everything is datamined and battles are solved long before a patch goes live, where as in FF14 everything is a surprise. The PTR for WoW is kinda needed though because they're notoriously bad at rushing unfinished products out the door to meet strict deadlines. The number of bugs that end up live in FF14 is extremely small compared to WoW.

However if you're expecting sweeping job changes because they're playable on a PTR then you'll be greatly disappointed. They might use the information to balance the numbers a bit better and avoid things like the weird monk potencies, but that's about it. If player feedback from live content doesn't get them to rework jobs or make them more complex, why would a PTR? A PTR is pretty much the finished product, they're simply releasing it so players can help them find and iron out any bugs the QA team missed.

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A surprise that only lasts like 2 hours per boss before its solved

The top Wow guilds are pretty much in discord chats with the developers. We don't have the same level of communication here.

For job changes using existing content? Sure.

For anything else? Absolutely hard no.

The worst part of WoW was hearing spoilers from anyone who took part in the PTR or stumbling upon them when reading the game's news. Spoilers from everything regarding pieces of the story to dungeon / boss design, to boss mechanics

I have never once felt like my feedback has ever mattered in any capacity in this game