4E playtesting or lack thereof

[ggroy]

In a post by Windjammer in the closed thread "WotC Strategy of Planned Obsolescence?", an issue of playtesting 4E stuff was brought up.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4842667-post17.html

In that vein, I recommend reading the same author's observations over there (and especially his two follow-ups here). As he points out time and again, WotC has NOT playtested a single version of skill challenges to date (June 2008-June 2009) and has not released a version that is actually used by the designers in their home games, whether in a core book for which they charged $30 or an similarly pricey online service. Which is disheartening.

Frank's 2006 post seems to suggest "never mind WotC stopping to playtest - it's for 4E", with the clear implication "WotC is directing all its playtesting efforts into 4E (ergo, 4E will be solidly playtested all around)". As it turned out, that was overly optimistic.

Does anyone know if the splats WotC currently releases are solidly playtested? Or are we back at the stage of the 2nd 3.5 Complete Series which was commissioned to be written by freelance writers and had only moderate quality control?

I vaguely recall something about the RPGA being used to playtest 4E before it was released. I remember reading older Dragon magazine articles which mentioned older editions also used the RPGA for playtesting, such as for 2E AD&D.

Does anyone know how much playtesting was actually done on older splatbooks, campaign settings, etc ... back in the 1E/2E AD&D and 3E D&D days?

Some of the links in Windjammer's article refers to articles by FrankTrollman suggesting that very little to no playtesting was actually done on later 3.5E splatbooks, such as "The Book of Nine Swords".

If it turns out that the 4E splatbooks had very little to no playtesting done on them before publication, it would be interesting to see how robust 4E is to overpowering/underpowering and whether balance is determined by a publicly unknown (ie. proprietary WotC) secret mathematical formula run on all new crunch rules.

 

[Lanefan]

edit: it helps if I read what I'm replying to. Nothing to see here...please move along...

 

[Mouseferatu]

As he points out time and again, WotC has NOT playtested a single version of skill challenges to date (June 2008-June 2009)

Hogwash. My group had access to numerous incarnations of the playtest rules before 4E's release, and they absolutely had skill challenges included.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Not constructive, never mind

 

[La Bete]

Hi,

I don't think the mods look too kindly on a person creating a new thread based off their previously locked one.....

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Hogwash. My group had access to numerous incarnations of the playtest rules before 4E's release, and they absolutely had skill challenges included.

Ari. with out giving away too much (aka break non disclosure stuff) can you give us an idea of what WotC playtest stuff is like...or was like??

1) did you see all classes and races tested?
2) did you see all three teirs tested??
3) Do you know how they test (as an example) all the items in adventures vault?? do they just make characters with each oone?

 

[Mouseferatu]

Ari. with out giving away too much (aka break non disclosure stuff) can you give us an idea of what WotC playtest stuff is like...or was like??

1) did you see all classes and races tested?
2) did you see all three teirs tested??
3) Do you know how they test (as an example) all the items in adventures vault?? do they just make characters with each oone?

I had access to pretty much the entire early drafts of the PHB, DMG, and MM. I know at least some other groups also had access to the entire rules set, though there might have been some that were only given parts.

As far as how they test specific items from books like AV, I honestly have no idea. My playtesting experience is limited to the main core material (and at the time, I personally was more concerned with learning the rules for my writing contracts than anything else).

 

[Baumi]

If it is not playtested, why do we have so many playtest-Articles and several changes from Playtest to the Published Material (Barbarian, Artificer,..)?

Also why is it that there are no stinker or overpowered classes so far if there was no playtests? Where are the Pun Puns of this edition?

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Where are the Pun Puns of this edition?

Not to get off track but your need a while longer for that. If I recall pun pun could not be donme without more then just the 3 core books.


Maybe I am recalling wrong but it's the splats that brought many of the worse offenders into being. Well that and GM's who didn't know how to say no it seems

 

[Plane Sailing]

I had access to pretty much the entire early drafts of the PHB, DMG, and MM. I know at least some other groups also had access to the entire rules set, though there might have been some that were only given parts.

I have been told by some groups that they only had access to some parts; it did seem that there may have been a two-tier process of playtest groups.

It is difficult to judge since the playtesting was more secretive in 4e than it was in 3e (I like the 3e playtest groups 'bits' they had when coming up to the launch of 3e, BTW - it was an interesting insight into the process and the changes that came about because of the playtesters.)

Regards,