Comments from the Devs

[shaddix]

I'm going to be at the beach that week if it really starts on the 17th

[Sephiroth]

It's surprising because...

It defeats the purpose of the beta since it doesn't give them much time to fix anything, and it doesn't really give them any time between Phase 4 and Early Access. I don't know of a single thing that Yoshida has said that would lead to Phase 4 happening so late. I think most people thought Phase 4 would be from the 13th through the 20th.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that Phase 4 is only ~4 days long.

I don't think phase 4 is about fixing things, it seems to be more of a demo. If the original roadmap was on track we'd be playing phase 4 now so they already have an extra 3 weeks to fix things. Saying that, if the original roadmap was on track we'd have probably been playing phase 4 in June lol. Everything since phase 2 ended has been massively delayed.

[Gokulo]

Yeah, aside of stress testing, Open Betas are not really about fixing stuff.

[Raldo]

Yeah, aside of stress testing, Open Betas are not really about fixing stuff.

So you think open betas are for stress testing, but if problems arise from that, it's not about fixing it. Okay.

[Carth]

Someone on Reddit brought up the concept of Phase 4 being a business week, instead of a full week.

So Phase 4 would actually be five days, instead of seven. This would give Square 1-2 days to fix anything that's broken.

[Ratatapa]

My vacation starts the 17 :D

[Obsidian]

The game needs more female Highlanders.

[Deuce]

I won't be believing shit between now and the 8th until I see an official announcement.

[Gokulo]

So you think open betas are for stress testing, but if problems arise from that, it's not about fixing it. Okay.

You usually don't need a lot of time to fix whatever issues arise from that though. MMOs can even have stress tests a day/two before release. This is not what I meant by 'fixing stuff'.

[Lucavi]

We're close enough to the end now where it really doesn't matter. Within 20 or so days, we'll all be breaking shit in dungeons.

[Gulkeeva]

SE has.. within "hours" fixed some of the early alpha/beta server crashing "stress testing" issues before, I'm sure they can do the same for phase 4.
Although like some I am kind of worried also, as they are probably shoving a craplaod into the game (like they do for each phase) and having little time between open beta, head start and launch.

SO far nothing massive/catastrophic has happened so, they must be doing something ok, only a few issues have really came up that was bad, like the 100% HQ chance, fates overloading the server, and people far away from US+Japan complaining about lagging as usual.

[miokomioko]

The whole reason this is Phase-4 instead of Phase-3 is because they are confident that there won't be any major issues that would require anything other than fine tuning.

[Raldo]

Well, I'm glad they're confident in all their FC stuff that wasn't testable in Phase 3, and the myriad of other things. I assumed that was the purpose of Phase 4.

[Churchill]

I only believe things that reddit says

[miokomioko]

Neat. So, what did Reddit say?

[Elcura]

With this long between P3 and P4 a lot of things must've been changed/added, as well as effectively the rest of the game being playable at this point as well (I assume?). I can't think of anything major that wasn't already in P3 that needed to be tested. Maybe some FC features but that could've easily have been covered by in-house testers, especially if that's the only feature they didn't let the public test fully.

Everything else (class/dungeon/boss/quests/events), can be balanced at any point so there probably isn't that much needed in the way of testing that isn't stuff that can be fixed before, at or after release.

[Niiro]

When and if something big goes wrong we can start referring to launch as "phase 5".

Also

The game needs more female Highlanders.

[Deuce]

When and if something big goes wrong we can start referring to launch as "phase 5".

Don't you mean phase 25?

[Adajer]

I have said it before, maybe not here, but I don't see them giving us a long time to play P4. I don't think they want to give people too much free time to play the game w/o paying for it. I also think they don't want people to get too large of a head start of everyone else.

I don't see the logic in doing P4 so close to the launch of the game AND squeezing in early access. I think the fact that they haven't given specific dates for early access works greatly in their favor. They could give us an hour of early access and still have kept their word.

This also makes it seem a lot more likely to have a delayed launch due to cramming in late patches. I pretty much assume all major launches will be delayed on initial launch. It happens so often, looks like it will again here.

[AidenCarby]

I've learned not to question Yoshi, let's see what he has up his sleeve.