Wait... No Public Test Server for this game?

[Dwill]

The 'advantage' negates the purpose of the PTR.

How so ? People can test the fights, find bugs and glitches that are there (which there were at early ScoB but still made it live). Yes it might give raiders an early advantage in the fight but then again, why do people care about the advantage it gives raiders in a race to something they wouldn't even partake in for quite some time in the first place ? Or does that not caring about what other people do only applies when it's advantageous to you ?

[Saccharin]

Rift had public test servers, and they were great.

Rift still has a public test shard and the quality of releases are as buggy as ever. Progression for what few serious raid guilds there are now starts on the PTS. Rift's PTS is a good argument for not having one.

[Tupsi]

How so ?

Sadly, it's well known that people mostly use PTRs for gaining prior knowledge on everything which sometimes delays content because devs tend to change stuff around or implement the "feedback" - very rarely do you see it used for actual bug squashing. So in some extreme examples, it does work, it's not so much the 'advantage' you gain with the preview, it's the fact the purpose of it is rarely why it gets used, making it honestly a waste of resources. This is why some have them yet have extremely long content cycles.

The only reason people are, once again, calling for one is because of 'Hunt', which SE has stated three times now was a last minute addition.

[Dyvid]

I was reading this article (http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07...ts-are-broken/), when i read something that I just couldn't believe:

"...this is one of those places where Final Fantasy XIV could benefit immensely from a public test server..." (Eliot Lefebvre)

Is this true? Is there really no Public Test Server for this game?

Well I doubt public test servers would have fixed the issue. Hunts on paper was a solid concept, but PTS can't predict what the actually community will do with it.

[ValVae]

Think if we could've gotten our hands on Atma, Hunts, Frontline, Wolves Den, all early.

If the did it how they did early phases of beta and just restrict the content (they wouldn't be able to test things like coil fights and such) but content like hunts and frontlines then it may be successful. I wouldn't think that would be terribly hard to implement but I'm also not a programmer.

[Aylis]

Well I doubt public test servers would have fixed the issue. Hunts on paper was a solid concept, but PTS can't predict what the actually community will do with it.

That is one of the reasons why PTS's should exist. Something may look good on paper, send it to the PTS, see what the community does with it, then make the fixes before things mess up the live servers.

[Tiggy]

I'd rather they not do one. I understand the benefits of a PTR, but the negatives are too strong. People can preview content which can greatly affect the primary game on release, and to avoid that they would have to devote programmers to limiting the game just for PTR instead of working on useful projects.

All they need is a little more insight into how people play the game. How western audiences approach gaming is very different from how the Japanese do it, and it's something they need to try and wrap their heads around. They need to make themselves aware of all the cheat apps out there and what their capabilities are. They can easily do this on their own, and for long term success they will need to. No real need for a PTR.

[Dwill]

Sadly, it's well known that people mostly use PTRs for gaining prior knowledge on everything which sometimes delays content because devs tend to change stuff around or implement the "feedback" - very rarely do you see it used for actual bug squashing. So in some extreme examples, it does work, it's not so much the 'advantage' you gain with the preview, it's the fact the purpose of it is rarely why it gets used, making it honestly a waste of resources. This is why some have them yet have extremely long content cycles.

Plenty of bugs get caught on PTRs, saying they are rarely used for such is purely anecdotal and full of conjecture.

I won't disagree that some people will use it to see content in advance but in the end:

why do people care about the advantage it gives raiders in a race to something they wouldn't even partake in for quite some time in the first place ? Or does that not caring about what other people do only applies when it's advantageous to you ?

The only reason people are, once again, calling for one is because of 'Hunt', which SE has stated three times now was a last minute addition.

Or potential ATMA feedback before release, bugs and exploits in both Coils on release, Titan HM exploit on release, speed runs in AK that were nerfed after being run for a few weeks, the joke of 1 gil that was in dungeons before they fixed it, the repair cost being too high for awhile are just a few of the stuff that could have been caught on a PTR.

There is plenty of other stuff that could have been caught on a PTR before they hit live servers. The Hunt would just have been another on the pile.

[Gextiv]

Aye.

I could do with less of the frequent EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE!

[DarkStar]

Aye.

I could do with less of the frequent EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE!

Due to IRL stuff preventing me from logging on until late at night, the recent slew of EMERGENCY MAINTENANCE has actually made it so I haven't really been able to play FFXIV at all, which along with previously mentioned IRL stuff has gotten me rather frustrated of late. At least I finally managed to get my Animus weapon just before the servers went down last night...

On topic, I've noticed a good few occasions in the past where a bug managed to get past the airquotes "Impeccable" end-airquotes QA, such as when I was trying to do ACN quests and I kept getting booted out of a story cutscene before it could even start due to some error about being moved while in the cutscene or something. If there had been a Public Test Server, while it's possible that that particular bug might still have gone unnoticed, at least there would've been a CHANCE that someone would've caught it before things went live.