Quote Originally Posted by Atmora View Post
Wait why do you think the top end NA/EU community is less qualified when the skill level is much higher than JP at the top.

Edit: I'm sorry I'm really having a hard time understanding these points, I know English may not be a first or even second language for you but this is all very poorly structured.

There's also no plyer beta test even on JP, at least not in the same way as in other MMOs. I think you also are fundamentally misunderstanding the reason you'd want high level players to be testing in the first place. It's to check things like fight tuning so things like Gordias don't happen again and fracture the player base. It's not necessary to have testing like that but some MMOs have opted for it in the past to decent success.
I'm explaining what happens in test servers using experience from non-beta tests that I have participated in that were NOT FFXIV. If I had access to a FFXIV test server, I would not even be on the forums, because that would be breaking the NDA. I shouldn't even be talking about test servers, so I still have to be careful explaining a test process without explaining the reasoning for it.

In short:
1) FFXIV only has one development branch, not one for each localization.
2) All development of the game is done in Japanese, because the developers are Japanese. It would slow development down if everything had to be translated back and forth between developers that do not speak Japanese.
3) FFXIV is localized as features become "final"
4) One a feature is considered final for that patch, localization tests on "final" builds are done for the MSQ, side quests, new areas flavor text, and dungeon cutscenes. Localization testers are not testing mechanics, the mechanics may get some feedback about difficulty, but there will never be any changes made to mechanics unless the localization is not clear.
5) Internal test teams for mechanics and difficulty are only done in the language the game is developed in so that ticket triage doesn't involve translation. This is entirely why V1.0 screwed up so bad. By the time it reached the external feedback, it was too late to change anything.
6) External tests (alpha/beta/media feedback) are only about finding bugs related to capacity and getting people exited to play the game. Anyone who tested beta tested V1.0 will tell you that Square Enix didn't even allow feedback from anyone outside Japan (filing a ticket was responded with a "we aren't accepting feedback on this.") All feedback was ignored, and as a result V1.0 was released and the media tore it to pieces. Why would they repeat this again?

Like on the surface it looks like Square-Enix is repeating it's mistake made with V1.0, where they made changes that external testers didn't like, and have dismissed external feedback as "not trying it", and it's now too late to unroll any of it. We're going to have to wait a year and a half for V5.0 to see any substantial changes made to the jobs again. Unless you want V4.0 to be delayed another 6 months as they go back to the drawing board.

At some point you just have to go with what you have, no game is ever released in a perfect state because you can't account for everyone's play styles, and even if there was an open test where they allowed 1000 people from every country try the game, they would never get any useful feedback because the vast majority of them do not give useful feedback, they just complain that something changed in a way they don't like.

Look at how many threads the WHM changes created. Look at changes to the Tanks, What exactly could SE have done to anticipate the amount of complaining on the forums without even playing the game yet. In someone's mind on the development team these changes made sense, and it's very likely the majority of the players are perfectly fine with these changes. It's just the 2% of the players that actually do raiding are complaining about the small losses of DPS these changes are going to create.

If SE makes proactive changes with anticipation of the negative blowback to those changes, then we will keep getting power-creep nerfs to content instead of actually interesting skills, because right now, all the tanks are samey, and all the healers are samey because if they aren't, one gets favored over the other, and you get stuck in a "one true tank", "one true healer", "one true dps" configuration, and no amount of testing is going to create that organically.