Something the FFXIV developers should learn from the WoW developers

[Deceptus]

What you quoted has nothing to do with your concern. The quote was about trying to hide plot points from players, not changing content based on player feedback during beta testing or other public testing .

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.