WotC_PeterS talks about his "aggresive playtest" (with Le Rouse, SKR, & Noonan)

Voss · Dec 19, 2007

Thinking and hoping led to 3.0, 3.5 and the Great Polymorph Dance, Chain Binding Efreets, Balor Mining and CoDzilla, among other sad and terrible things. (And ultimately, outside of core, to Pun Pun)

I would rather 4e had systematic, professional playtesting.

Scott_Rouse · Dec 19, 2007

Voss said:
I hope you realize that this isn't very useful for playtesting. It will give you a general idea of how things work, and may clue you in on what to expect, but ultimately tells you nothing about what the actual versions of class abilities you have in your current documents do against Monster X in Situation Y.

You have to beat the actual, current rules against the walls hard, to see where the current system breaks down. Otherwise you're going to be doing the 4e version of the Polymorph Dance in a year and a half, with a mob of people claiming that class X sucks and class Y is broken. And being able to pick up such and such Wizard ability will allow a Warlock to win every fight at level Z.

Its a grueling process, but it needs to be done well to create a good product. And if the playtesting indicates that big sweeping changes need to be made, you've got to break down and make them.

And just playing the game like normal *isn't* playtesting. I've been down that road before personally. I'd suggest you ask Troika Games where that type of 'playtesting' leads, but they're out of business. And that came out rather harsh, but I actually meant it in a friendly, useful warning sort of way. Casual play just doesn't catch the problems that systematic playtesting does.

It's covered, we hired these guys to run our playtest.

and this guy to run D&D Insider

Reaper Steve · Dec 19, 2007

^ I love Scott Rouse!

Voss · Dec 19, 2007

I can totally see that happening.

Scott_Rouse · Dec 19, 2007

Reaper Steve said:
^ I love Scott Rouse!

The Grackle · Dec 19, 2007

I always assumed that this was the standard model for playtesting...

I could see it's flaws though. Player's need time to figure out how to use their character's abilities, -- not to mention group synergy,-- and one hour might not cut it. Also, they'd take more risks w/temporary characters; where a real group would play more conservatively.

spunky_mutters · Dec 19, 2007

Scott_Rouse said:
It's covered, we hired these guys to run our playtest.

and this guy to run D&D Insider

See, that's your problem. The guy with the 'got root?' shirt should be running the DI.

Li Shenron · Dec 19, 2007

I think this is a very good way to playtest. I only hope he's not the only one doing this sort of playtest, because you need more than 1 encounter with each specific monster to really "test" it!

A'koss said:
In 3e though the game underwent significant changes over the playtest period

Don't want to derail the OT, but it would be nice to know what changes has you group seen happened.

small pumpkin man · Dec 19, 2007

Gundark said:
Well I would think (and hope) that Scott knows what he's talking about. I have to say I've been surprised at the "yes buts" directed at Scott from people who have no insider info into how WotC is putting together 4e (and possibly no professional xp with putting a game out).

The the way you test "things" is similar enough that any engineer can tell you that you need to do large amounts of testing by end users as they would normally use it to figure out what problems come up in normal usage, as well as getting people who know what they're doing to systematically push whatever it is your testing to the edges of its functionality. While they certainly seem to be doing a lot of the first, this is the first I've heard of the second , and it's being treated as "strange" and "uncommon" by the insiders who are talking about it.

While I don't really expect WotC to listen to me, as an "Engineer of some kind", I find this "unsettling", and wish to express my doubts.

Sitara · Dec 19, 2007

Hye Scott;

Since you've been paytesting the game and all and are up2date with the crunch, could you answer two small q's I've had for a long time?

1) Will Paladins get a domain equivalent? That is, depending on their deity, do they get different powers/abilities? It would suck if a Paladin of bahamut and Paladin of tiamat had no difference due to the deity they choose.

2) Will ranger and paladin spell casting (finally) be removed or at least, optional?

Regards.