Should XIV add more end game combat content.

[nguyentri11]

i think i will accept that the testing and design teams that created the actual encounter know more about that than you do, tested it extensively, knew what they were doing every step of the way and leave it at that.

You will forgive me if I absolutely disregard the opinion of armchair "experts"

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0d4531ed55c440
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9127cc0433327/

I see they planned these to be fixed later every step of the way.

[VelKallor]

And? So? Therefore? Big deal, bug fixes are always the case regardless. When you get near a point..make it.

[Sebazy]

i think i will accept that the testing and design teams that created the actual encounter know more about that than you do, tested it extensively, knew what they were doing every step of the way and leave it at that.

You will forgive me if I absolutely disregard the opinion of armchair "experts"

You're so wrong it's actually really quite funny lol.

Yoshida himself has clearly explained on multiple occasions how high end fights are tested:

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/12...tions-requests

Well, since we're doing adjustments we're starting from a "rough" state of the final fight, so it's a bit different. By implementing the mechanics roughly and testing them in an invincible state, we can make larger adjustments for the mechanics and get a feel for each phase. Once we've made the primary adjustments to the mechanics, we apply a different version of the invulnerable status.

The HP gauge will drop from damage as usual, but instead of falling when it hits 0, it gets refilled to max. Finally, we remove it and we see whether it can be cleared normally with no changes.

For the third and fourth parts of Alexander savage specifically, we tested each phase. The FFXIV battle team is made up of some pretty good players, but these aren't world class players. It would have taken longer to perform adjustments if we tested as usual, so we tried to shorten it a bit.

Now go sit back down in your armchair ta

[VelKallor]

Yoshida himself has clearly explained on multiple occasions how high end fights are tested

Thats a two sentence brief of a much larger process.

Now go sit back down in your armchair ta

You never read my posts..do you..had you done so youd know I used to both alpha and beta test on a number of levels. But...............believe whatever you want, facts wont ever change your mind.

[Sebazy]

Thats a two sentence brief of a much larger process. But believe whatever you want, facts wont ever change your mind.

I should probably add that I worked as a world builder and optimiser for Bullfrog/EA up until Bullfrog got absorbed with the move from Chertsey back to Guildford after the PS2 port of Quake 3. Whilst sure, CBU3 is a different team, I can promise you that they operate a very similar testing scheme because for it's flaws, it's by far the most efficient and cost effective way to handle things.

The simple fact remains that they aren't testing Savage and Ultimate fights in a live environment with kosher characters. They will have a suite of tools as mentioned. Invulnerability, the ability to manually set phases and so forth. Testing this way is monumentally more time efficient than testing with live characters and rules but it also has the potential to hide issues in certain cases. Gordias was the best example of this with them accidentally overtuning the DPS requirements because they were heading into each phase with fresh CDs without realising this would be a major problem once you tried to tackle the fight as a whole. TOP's auto attack issue just confirms the obvious in that they still test phase by phase for the sake of efficiency.

However if I'm wrong on this, by all means feel free to explain what you know.

*edit*

Legit question, when did you do your testing? Did you test from home remotely or in a dedicated testing facility? What sort of scale are we talking? Testing for an indie or mobile developer as an external contractor is a very different setup compared to being on the payroll and in house for a major publisher's teams.

[VelKallor]

Legit question, when did you do your testing? Did you test from home remotely or in a dedicated testing facility? What sort of scale are we talking? Testing for an indie or mobile developer as an external contractor is a very different setup compared to being on the payroll and in house for a major publisher's teams.

Early 80's through to mid 90's. I got married in 1992 so..well..my priorities shifted.

I tested from home and on two occasions at a specific site with members of a team, I was given specific objectives and tasks to complete using inhouse tools and systems. I was allowed on a few occasions to sit in on teleconferences with the game devs , designers and story writers..on the proviso I kept my mouth shut at all times.

Back then testers werent really paid unless they actually WERE employees, I was a volunteer who did it for the fun of it. Its a long story, one day Ill tell you all about it.

Speaking of being paid, I dont remember when it was, but IIRC there WAS a lawsuit in the US where a bunch of testers were being paid who then sued the company saying that made them "employees"..which is why I think the big companies relied far more on their own internal staff down the line.

I dont know of any volunteer testers these days..I think its all in house now.

[Sebazy]

So depending on the year you were onsite and if it was a developer specific or publisher owned team, you may have seen the start of the shift to shared teams and tickets before you quit the industry?

The quickest way to describe it is that large scale publishers tend to operate a large pool of testers that are shared amongst the first party teams and divisions. So for example, one shift Tester Timmy might be tasked with testing a phase on the next Savage tier, but the following day he is every bit as likely to get shifted onto a different CBU3 project like DQ Builders 2 or maybe even a CBU1 title such as FF7 Remake.

The advantage of this of course is it reduces downtime and time wastage to near zero. Modern CVS systems can automate preloading the required game client files onto a tester's terminal ahead of shift and in the situation where CBU3 doesn't have anything urgent to look over, Timmy can be dropped immediately onto a different project as required. As you well know, the games industry has never wanted to pay testers any more than they are legally obligated to, and paying them to sit around doing nothing is doubly offensive in the finance department's eyes

This approach isn't perfect of course, one advantage is does have is it brings more pairs of eyes, hands and approaches to the testing table making a wider variety of issues more likely to be found. The big downside of course is that the testers will likely not get especially good at the game content they are testing. At least not to the standard of play that you would expect out of a serious team that progged and successfully cleared TOP in a reasonable time frame.

Thus you end up with the need to break fights down into small chunks so that they aren't wasting time failing on earlier mechanics and are able to test later phases efficiently. This leads to the risk of issues I mentioned above of course.

This all has you ending up with a surprisingly compact development team (Remember that the Monster design team is roughly 5 strong from memory) that has a somewhat limited depth of talent within the testing pool. Remember that CBUIII doesn't invest in testing to anything like the same degree that Blizzard has at times with WoW. The lack of early leaks as compared to WoW is all the evidence you need to confirm this.

Meanwhile what the community lacks in tools and inside knowledge, it makes up for in sheer numbers and man-hours that all gets pooled together into public knowledge. Thus it's all too common for the player base to sometimes understand the game and it's systems better than SE themselves. Don't believe me? Look at the whole saga over Warrior in 2.0 where Yoshida publicly stated that we were playing the job wrong, then promptly had to backtrack and apologise when it received a near top to bottom rework for 2.1 because it was hopelessly inefficient to keep alive in end game content. This isn't the only time SE's internal testing has failed to pick up clear and obvious problems. Remember in 4.0 where SE significantly reworked SCH and forgot to give them a spammable AoE for dungeons? Any experienced healer with a decent standard of play would spot that almost instantly.

SE and CBU3 didn't.

This isn't a dig at FFXIV or Yoshida, it's just how things are in MMOs.

[VelKallor]

So depending on the year you were onsite and if it was a developer specific or publisher owned team, you may have seen the start of the shift to shared teams and tickets before you quit the industry?

Yes.

Definitely. I do remember that. At the time it seemed like an elegant solution...until the human factor stepped in. Sebazy, Im an Aussie, so a lot of it WAS remote, the teleconferences I was in, they called me, told me to sit tight, then tied me into the call.

Remember the old PABX systems? They WERE clumsy for their time..but they did work.

Sort of.

[Yushees]

I'd love something with the ultimate fights difficulty for solo / 4 man players. Something very challenging I could tackle on my own time after work and not have to worry to find a group.

[Kyrj]

Thought what exactly? Omega UItimate WAS tested, thoroughly, there was even footage of Yoshi ingame..so where does this assumption that it wasnt tested come from? Or is this just another sneer at the devs in this mistaken belief that you know more than they do?

No. Thought so, as in you're stuck so far up your own ass you can't admit when you're wrong. But it's okay, I get it. Or rather I know you from around the forums so it's on par.