Quote Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso View Post
The Media Tours or whatever they are called are moreso marketing...not testing the game. And they sign DNAs and cant talk about the game till a certain period.
But they still talk about the game prior to its release anyway. It's minor spoilers at best, and officially sanctioned, but it's still a spoiler, especially if you're going to say

And side content may not be MSQ, its still story, and there are people who care about that
to the proposed random fates and random dummies.

Also if they are gonna do testing, theyd want to test multiple things, not just one thing. So access to raids and dungeons would be accessable to Test that as well.
That's quite a leap in logic; just because they would want to test multiple things, it does not mean that they would want or have to provide access to raids or dungeons. It really depends on what it is they'd want to test, but if they're really so concerned about certain aspects of a dungeon or a story element that they would want player feedback for it, and then had no other means to test it other than by sticking someone into that part of the dungeon or story, then a more suitable approach, in order to avoid the leaks, would be to have a more closed and controlled test where applicants would have to sign an NDA (much like with the media tour).

But there's plenty of data to be gathered without having to mix any kind of story into the situation.

If all SE was just gonna have a field with dummies and some fates....then why dont they just test it themselves?
Because a team of game developers cannot possibly account for what happens when their software actually collides with their end users. This holds especially true if their personal testers have a planned and conveniently well-known and pre-approved behavior or bias on how to handle certain gameplay situations.
The reason certain elements of job balance, bugs, and inconsistencies are brought up in the first place is because of what the developers expect and provide for vs. what the players put in/out, and we wouldn't be having reworks or revisions if everything were going exactly as the developers proposed and expected. They're not perfect, nor should we expect them to be; which is why there are some things they just wouldn't know is necessary until after the players end up jam-handing their pristine work.


Why use us to test their game especially for something so small?
This confuses me.
Are you saying that the core combat gameplay, which is repeated ad nauseam from the start of play to the end of it, is a small thing?
Or are you saying that prior testing to ensure that things go well when players begin to take control of the gameplay is a small thing?
Or are you saying something else?

The idea of a PTR for this game invites the idea...that people are ok with SE just getting lazy and not doing any QA themselves
I hate to break it to you, but if you think a Public Test Server is what's going to make people think that SE is getting lazy and that other players are ok with it, then you probably should take a moment to re-examine these forums for a while. There is no shortage of threads or discussion about the state of the game, and you'll easily find remarks that SE are either "getting lazy," "purposefully cutting content," and/or that they just "don't get it."