Fleet updates via S&P?

[MongooseMatt]

If GW (2,500-odd employees) and WotC (with, what, 150-odd these days?) are unable to release a game that does not need revision and errata, and we are not talking about new editions but bona fide fixes, then you will also see that duplicated in a company, like Mongoose, that has 1% of their staff numbers.

GW revise their games every X amount of years or so as part of their business strategy. It’s questionable if some of their revisions have been a positive move 2nd ed 40K to 3rd for example. Space Marine was one game they broke & have never been able to recover.

You may or may not be right in this, but I was specifically not talking about new editions

 

[Rawwar]

You may or may not be right in this, but I was specifically not talking about new editions

I was talking about Codexes too there are examples such as the Dark Eldar to name one that got many revisions during the lifetime of an edition. Chaos Space Marines is another one which has ruffled a few feathers too it all about got an appology out of Jervis Johnson because of the outcry.

 

[Triggy]

I have to agree with Greg and Matt for the most part on the main issues but I have a couple of points to bring back to illustrate some of the issues.

Go back to the Demos... why did it get the interceptor and nothing to off-set it? Whitestar... why was it's operation as a single hull type in play so important that it was changed?

This was a ship that I didn't even see had an Interceptor until it was released (this shows that some things can just slip the net), the second tier testers pointed it out as an issue too. However, the initial playtests had other, bigger issues to deal with for the Centauri - mainly that the entire fleet was new (the Ion Cannon switch) and we had little idea at what point to balance the ships until we'd played a number of games and not just against Interceptor-heavy EA and Stealthed-up Minbari Even after all of this testing as Greg points out there is still no consensus with some feeling it's balanced, some that it needs a minor tweak and some a major tweak. This is also where public opinion comes into it and if there is a mass outcry for a change then often it will happen.

Look at what happened to the bimith... no one seems to have run it much, or really thought out what it did in the fleet. Was there a score sheet somewhere with tallies of what ships had been in how many playtest reports, just so you knew if it had been run much, by different folks?

Most fleets I feel have a clear role:

Narn - Bruiser
Minbari - Sniper
EA DotTA - Combined arms
Vree - "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"
Centauri - Knife fight
Drazi - Charge

There are one or two that have either two identities (e.g. Dilgar, Drakh) and there are one or two that the identity has been lost a bit. The Abbai really had as their defining style, a survive for as long as possible and use that opportunity to gradually wear the opponents down with crits (combat lasers) and damage (quad arrays). Where the Abbai fall down is that their short range generally means that they either need to be extremely durable or more likely, need a bit of manoeuvrability (as opposed to speed) to keep them in the fight. If they got more Shields in regeneration and the Bimith in particular lost Lumbering and regained its extra turn this would go some way to bringing the Abbai back to where they ought to be. You could argue that the Lakara and Milani/Marata could do with gaining a turn too of course.

 

[Ripple]

Triggy, I'm not arguing the expense or scale of the project. I'm just saying that it gets even more important as a project grows to have a clear, easy to assess chart of goals and progress around.

It's easy to make typos or create bugs... that's why you have second and third sets of eyes that look at stuff. Chances are they will have some of the same initial reactions that the first set had, but if you have those comments you can just say, 'we covered that this way' and get a new first set to double check your work. Second tier wasn't able to have much impact due to the time scale... but their also wasn't any back and forth communication there.

Anyway... I don't communicate well in this format. My goal was not to irritate the folks who are invited to help and donate their time. I just wanted to suggest a simple system (chart with say ship, playtester group, and designer comment columns) to help keep things on the front burner.

Ripple

 

[Triggy]

I don't think I was really disagreeing Ripple. I think time was the biggest concern and given that the direction of a fleet itself was under discussion (like everything else) - nobody could have actually kept up with that sort of a list. It would have required a playtester working pretty much full time on it to keep up rather than playtesting (with dozens of emails a day at some stages). It would have been nice though.

 

[Ripple]

I guess that's the way I would read the dozens of e-mails myself. I would have a pad of paper next to me making notes as I read, and simply type it up as my last act of the day, and send it out.

of the dozens of e-mails how many can be summed up in a line or two?

You end up having to read all the mail anyway, and respond to at least some of it, why is the summary chart seen as over the top? Anyway, again... you have your own way of approaching it, I'm not trying to force anything. Just different way of tracking stuff that wouldn't rely on my memory or awareness to track two hundred moving designs. I know my limitations in that regard, I assume you know yours.

Ripple

 

[Davesaint]

Completely disagree. The more playtesters you have, the more likely you are to catch stuff like errors and unbalancing factors of a game. Do you (or anyone else) have a rationale for fewer the playtesters, the better?

Yes, the Law of Diminishing Returns - as stated earlier in this thread, we have run playtests ranging from a dozen participants to a couple of hundred. We have run playtests in a range of formats, from set piece Q&As to the playtester/sub-developer arrangement we have with the Five Good Men. We have even, from time to time, released intentionally buggy texts to playtesters to measure their responses. With every step, we refine the playtesting process.

However, you cannot move away from a fundamental point. If GW (2,500-odd employees) and WotC (with, what, 150-odd these days?) are unable to release a game that does not need revision and errata, and we are not talking about new editions but bona fide fixes, then you will also see that duplicated in a company, like Mongoose, that has 1% of their staff numbers. You can scale this up too - think of computer games companies that have the capability to pour a million Pounds or more into a project (even seen a buggy computer game?) or international publishing houses (ever seen a typo in a novel?). The problem is that all those companies rely on one fallible factor.

We all use humans.

Now, you _can_ armchair design, and think 'well, I wouldn't have made that mistake.' Maybe not - but other issues would have arisen. You have to remember, the people who do this have many years of experience, and do this full-time, each day and every day.

You mentioned making games better, not necessarily perfect - I would have to ask, is that not what we have been doing? Compare 2e with the first CTA box set - better balanced, more comprehensive. . . a better game.

Your issue of numbers in the playtest has less relevance once you pass a specific point (diminishing returns again) but you also have to realise that whether we used 5, 50, or 500 playtesters, their work would pale into insignificance compared to the thousands who will end up buying the game, and spend potentially hundreds of hours each playing it. That is the other reason games companies produce new editions (the first is that any organic system that grows over time will need 'trimming' from time to time), refining what they have learnt in their own games, and from feedback from the largest pool possible, over an extended period of time.

We could include the entire CTA community in playtesting a new edition, and resolve all issues - but the game would never be released

Being glib about it, there is an old saying that films and novels are not so much finished as abandoned. The same factors can apply to games.

Is there a law of diminishing returns, sure, but I am not sure that you were there yet. I can see having a core group of playtesters that are about 5-10, however, I think this should have gone to second tier playtesting much earlier. Our group in Chicago was willing to put in 3 games per week for use in playtesting. Personally we felt that to adequitely playtest the material sent to us we would have needed about 3 months playing about 3 games a week, however we could see concerns from initial screening of the rules and fleetlists.

As I have stated before, with the 1 week until press time that we had to review it, we had 13 pages of notes in a word document. Not all of these notes were negative, but there were some major concerns, and also some major kudos we sent.

I just hoped that we had more time to review it.


Dave

 

[Triggy]

Davesaint - I think we all hoped that you'd have more time (Matt included). We only finished a first pass of the Psi Corps in the couple of weeks before it got handed on to you!

Ripple - If you see some (most?) of the e-mails I sent and the replies given, there were often comments on 20+ ships and people replying in a drop-down manner to each of the comments in a single mail. This would require collating, at the peak of playtesting, several hundred points or comments a day... This really wasn't feasible unless someone was dedicated to the task unfortunately. I'm sure Greg can c.c. you an e-mail or two as example

 

[Ripple]

If he's feels up to it, I'd love to see one or two to get a better feel of it. Properly edited for the privacy of everyone of course.

But like I said, just how I do thins when I'm bing organized and efficient. Not nearly as common as I'd like, but that's all.

Anyway, maybe if Dave gets to be in tier two again I'll get a chance to send you an example of how I would do it.

Ripple

 

[Triggy]

Brilliant - it'd be good to see how you do it. I think we all agree this approach would be nice and it would be good if more people had more time too.