Quote Originally Posted by flowerkatie View Post
Feel free to reference this where they've stated the overtuning came from paper-calculations, might be the first time we actually get a real piece of evidence behind these statements.

Edit: Re-reading your statement actually I realize this doesn't prove anything wrong. You said yourself, "They admitted to taking the numbers their teams were capable of reaching" and then applied a percentage to that. So you're saying they did do in-game testing and balancing, but then on-top of that they proceeded to make the mistake of adding a % increase.

Meanwhile, I was asked to try and somehow come up with an arbitrary value of a pretend raidwide damage for a party we have no context on. That's totally the same situation (/s)
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...340b373870140b

We always add a little bit extra to the boss values before rechecking the fight and releasing it live.

The team responsible for balancing boss fights does so without debug commands and at the appropriate item level, employing available materia, foods, and medicines while experimenting with mitigating actions and various job compositions. Yet we recognize that player skill far exceeds our own. If we were to ship content with the same values which challenged our battle team, the top raiders would be deprived of that by-the-skin-of-your-teeth victory in the initial week of release.

Based on the team's skill and our experience, that "little bit extra" usually translates to:

Balance test clear values +1-2% HP

The final values account for other mathematical factors too, of course, such as the estimated damage the party could deal from the moment of victory to the end of the time limit, as well as total burst damage potential based on frequency and amount inflicted. The numbers these various calculations are based on are what we were referencing when we said that our team’s performance was higher than anticipated.
Emphasis mine. "Estimated damage." based on players being more skilled than the dev team. So, not even real numbers. They estimated it and got it wrong.

Say it with me. Paper. Calculations.