Is it time we had Public Test Servers?

[Lexocpma]

Tbh people would just use it as an opportunity to play the game asap and learn anything and everything about the content before it comes out, instead of actually testing. That's what happened to wow and what i love about 14, prog is actually prog and not just a race to see who can do the preset strategies faster. a PTR would be awful for this sort of environment

[Singularity]

Tbh people would just use it as an opportunity to play the game asap and learn anything and everything about the content before it comes out, instead of actually testing. That's what happened to wow and what i love about 14, prog is actually prog and not just a race to see who can do the preset strategies faster. a PTR would be awful for this sort of environment

I agree with this. I don't want content to be playable before release. It would only create tension between those who want to experience the game spoiler-free and those who want it done as quickly as possible.

That said, for things like job changes, I believe it would be OK. Just something like the media tour - one zone (not even a new zone, can be a repurposed old zone or one purpose-built for testing) with some striking dummies, a variety of mobs and maybe a repurposed dungeon and trial to test party stuff would be enough to try out how the jobs play and give feedback.

[TalithaSolarien]

Tbh people would just use it as an opportunity to play the game asap and learn anything and everything about the content before it comes out, instead of actually testing. That's what happened to wow and what i love about 14, prog is actually prog and not just a race to see who can do the preset strategies faster. a PTR would be awful for this sort of environment

This is what happens on ESO everytime they put a new trial on their PTS system. Doing a "world first clear" just mean who (on PC) can execute the strategies fastest on launch day.

Also, most companies don't bother to include their Console population in their test environments (Overwatch or ESO for example), making this kind of early access unfair.

[Kalise]

There already are Public Test Servers.

They're called the Live Servers.

[TitaniaZero]

You know what would come of a Public Test realm...

"They aren't listening to our feedback at all" (See WoW)

[Mavrias]

You know what would come of a Public Test realm...

"They aren't listening to our feedback at all" (See WoW)

probably because wow devs do a terrible job of even showing feedback was heard.

[Kaedan]

No, not a public one. A private one with well-known and proven players might work. Public test servers are just toxic vats of nasty people who just use it as an excuse to play early and then whine about everything.

[SaberMaxwell]

I would say no for right now; any player suggested adjustments would probably be ignored or the dev team wouldn't have time to implement them.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sebazy, they need to expand Sato's team. They have four people working on seventeen jobs with quandaries like "We can't take verraise away but letting RDM keep it makes prog a bit wonky and it's hard to balance around that capability" stopping them in their tracks even when not dealing with healers.

In my layman's opinion they need to increase their combat development staff, and perhaps reach out to the community that has so far been theorycrafting their work anyways, and create a bit of a dialogue.

If there were a test realm I'd like it to be established after an expansion of the team, and be one with a parser enabled so the theorycrafters could be hand in hand with the developers.

[White_Wolf_X]

Most problems ffxiv got are server or code related really.

[Valderen]

I don't think it's needed, first no consensus would be reach as far as design and class balance because people want different things, the community in any games has never agreed on what they want. Most notably, people want their class to be the best.

Since as far as I am concerned, FF14 has done a great job of releasing with few bugs, most of which have not been game breaking...so their internal testing team is doing a good enough job as far as bug reporting.

I don't see the point really.