Something the FFXIV developers should learn from the WoW developers

[Berethos]

Except no gaming company tests for feedback; they test for analytics. Numbers and percentages related to content being done are much easier to read than any (mostly) jibberish that winds up in player feedback, which is why any written feedback is usually taken with a grain of salt.

A good gaming company will look to both, and Blizzard does do this - but here's the catch: Most of the written feedback they've looked at and implemented is related to class design/balance. Does a change make something feel clunky and weird to use? Does the payoff for a particular rotation feel lackluster? That's the kind of written feedback they look for. Occasionally that written feedback will include whether or a particular piece of content feels rewarding (lately it's been leveling speed and scaling). There's plenty of "this isn't that fun" feedback, of course, and it's rare that those things get changed, leading to an all too common refrain - "Why wasn't this caught in beta?" "It was, Blizz just didn't listen again."

For the analytics - during the beta, it's about stability, and balance, and things working the way they are supposed to, NOT numbers related to content simply being done. I've been a beta tester in the betas for 5 out of their 7 expansions (including the latest one), and we generally just play through the quests and check out the classes/dungeons, or test what they specifically tell us needs testing.

The analytics for people actually doing the content (and presumably having fun with it)? That's the kind of thing that would get tracked in the live environment and is data that would be applied toward the next round of design decisions...and even then Blizzard has a tendency to decide to do what they think is fun in the end anyway.

Analytics for people doing the content should be taken with a grain of salt anyway - if you hate it but it's the most efficient way to get something, that's what you end up doing. Path of least resistance and all that, right? From just a numbers perspective, that "dislike but doing it anyway" element would never show up and instead it would look like the players at least like the content because they keep doing it.

[Vaer]

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

Well yeah. their Mission Statement is gameplay first, so that isn't really surprising.

There are ways to make a PTR without spoiling story though. They even did it during ARR alpha/beta. They just had placeholder text and deleted the cutscenes. The actual fights were still spoiled though.

I doubt a PTR would have helped in Eureka's case, if anything it would have just made Anemos what Pagos is like now and people would still hate it. During Diadem 1.0, everyone went to dino island or whatever and just farmed there. When they released Diadem again they just forced the player to play the way they wanted you to with objectives. Same thing happened with Anemos, everyone did the train and ignored what they wanted you to do in there so when Pagos came out they changed it to encourage players to play the way they want.

At the beginning of ARR, people started corpse running or CCing mobs and locking them behind boss seals to skip trash since they dropped nothing. (You would have the tank pull half the instance, die in a safe spot and get res'd and keep going or you would sleep/bind large packs and go to the boss, the boss seal going up would make them reset) They then added walls that only go down when you kill all the mobs or interactables to dungeons to stop it. Same thing, different coat of paint.

Honestly Blizzard isn't much better considering the cat and mouse game that is going on right now with the grouping tools/WQ. Even in a game like GW2 the devs had to go in and break up the zerg by forcing the player base to split due to mechanics and scaling mechanisms. I'm pretty sure Anet has nerfed farms multiple times, too even back in GW1.

[JunseiKei]

Reading this, the point of a beta is to find bugs, exploits and breaks in the game. It's to make sure what is being placed into the game works. It is not to give feedback on how fun the content is.

[DeaconMoore]

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

Funny, go over to the WoW forums, go to their ptr beta forums, look at all the posts about things that are an issue for months that make it to live and turn into complaints on general.

Having a beta won't mean an end to echo chambers. Beta is to find bugs and squelch them. Beta doesn't mean they'll listen to other issues with the content they think is great as is.

[Jojoya]

One of the main reasons SE has stated they don't want a Test Realm is they want to keep the story a secret.

I'm pointing out that the lead developer of the most successful MMO ever thinks that the benefits of having a PTR outweighs the need for secrecy.

He's a Game Director that just inherited a dying MMO because those who made it successful have moved onto other things. While he shares some of the credit for success for the years he spent as the Lead Encounter Designer, the overall success of WoW is due to people like Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan. They were the visionaries that led WoW to its popularity.

He's also a Game Director that isn't trusted by the player base due to many design changes made to the game since he was promoted from Lead Encounter Designer to Assistant Game Director and then to Game Director. He has been deceptive in his communications with the player base, twisting words to imply things later found not to be the case at all. The last thing you want to do is bring up something said by Ion Whatsitcostas/Fuzzikoalas with the WoW player base if you want to be taken seriously.

The benefit of public testing to Blizzard is publicity and to get enough bodies grinding through the content to find game breaking bugs missed by their small Internal Testing team. They want the game trending on Twitter. They want the streamers putting out content on Twitch and YouTube to advertise the game in advance of release. They don't make changes to content. A lot of the content in WoW still ends up raked over the coals by the player base after release just as we see in FFXIV.

The OP wants a better game experience than he feels he's getting in FFXIV. Public testing isn't going to create it.

[Lunalepsy]

They should be their own person. It's time to stop cloning!

[Kazrah]

Reading this, the point of a beta is to find bugs, exploits and breaks in the game. It's to make sure what is being placed into the game works. It is not to give feedback on how fun the content is.

Bug-proofing is a primary goal, but not the only one. By showing people having fun with the content in a beta (WoW for example), they can build hype for the content. If that content is, say, an expansion, that hype can be used to build up sales and bring in new players.

[Deceptus]

They should be their own person. It's time to stop cloning!

It's never a bad idea to take the best features of the competition and incorporate them into your product.

See: Personal housing, glamour logs, daily quests, dungeon finders. . .

[KaldeaSahaline]

The benefit of public testing to Blizzard is publicity and to get enough bodies grinding through the content to find game breaking bugs missed by their small Internal Testing team. They want the game trending on Twitter. They want the streamers putting out content on Twitch and YouTube to advertise the game in advance of release. They don't make changes to content. A lot of the content in WoW still ends up raked over the coals by the player base after release just as we see in FFXIV.

The OP wants a better game experience than he feels he's getting in FFXIV. Public testing isn't going to create it.

The thing is though, they HAVE made changes based on feedback. Sure they don't make all, or even intelligent ones sometimes, but to imply that they never make changes is nothing short of a exaggerated lie.

From a FF14 perspective an open beta would have likely identified a few low hanging fruit for fixing if SE was interested. Stuff like WHM lilies, Raubahn/Pipin EX, Eureka being barely serviceable as content instead of a barrens chat simulator.

[giwaman]

Yes.

I would rather the delays be due to getting the content right, rather than now, where we already have delays on some things, and half-assed attempts on some others, because so much time is spent fixing things. For instance, when they made the loot of 24man raids all Greed Only, and went back shortly afterward to undo that change, do you think it was a simple on/off switch, or do you think someone in the dev team took a portion or more of their day--time that could and should have been spent on other things--on both changes?

Even without that in mind, my answer is still, emphatically, yes. I want quality over quantity.

Ya know people will complain if patches are taking forever and content droughts are worst, and so your complaints are half ass content that you dislike and get tired of so fast, but you also want less "content/quality" but are you sure it will appeal to everyone and not fail or get bored of it so quickly? Plus in regards of the 24 man raid greed only issue, I do agree it was a risky move and i give props to them for fixing it asap but around that time most players are around max ilvl370 such as myself thnx to savage so it din't really affect majority of playerbase unless ofcourse casuals etc, well nobody is perfect but all that matters to me is they deliver a fun timely patch content to keep community satisfied/happy.