Slycer's full translation of the 4gamer interview should be done sometime in the next day or two. Here's a partial translation.
Quote:Yoshida: For high difficulty battle content like the extreme battle series, Bahamut's Coils, and the savage version of Alexander, we begin by performing adjustments to the mechanics from an invincible state. Since members of the planning team are practicing the fights for the first time just like players do, if they had to wipe repeatedly there wouldn't be enough time to make adjustments. The priority in this stage is to make sure the mechanics are understandable and hinted at.
By looking through the whole fight in an invulnerable state, you can still repeat with trial and error but it takes less time to get used to the mechanics.
Yoshida: Well, since we're doing adjustments we're starting from a "rough" state of the final fight, so it's a bit different. By implementing the mechanics roughly and testing them in an invincible state, we can make larger adjustments for the mechanics and get a feel for each phase. Once we've made the primary adjustments to the mechanics, we apply a different version of the invulnerable status.
What are the differences?
Yoshida: The HP gauge will drop from damage as usual, but instead of falling when it hits 0, it gets refilled to max. Finally, we remove it and we see whether it can be cleared normally with no changes.
I see. And this applies to the highest difficulty content like the fourth section of Alexander savage?
Yoshida: For the third and fourth parts of Alexander savage specifically, we tested each phase. The FFXIV battle team is made up of some pretty good players, but these aren't world class players. It would have taken longer to perform adjustments if we tested as usual, so we tried to shorten it a bit.
So the release would be delayed if they tested until they could clear.
Yoshida: Since the development cycle is limited we had to proceed with the development of other content. You could sort of say we've cleared it completely through (laughs).