The Playtest Agreement

Hussar said:

Now, you have 40k people on the DDI VTT Beta signup list. Imagine for a second that they all decide to go for the playtest. How do you weed out that information? After all, playtests have to have controls in place so that the data is not skewed. How would thousands of responses from a different play "area" skew the results.

For example, one recurring problem in 4e is the number of effects in a round. I totally understand why people would have that problem. I don't. I play online with a framework in Maptools that tracks all of those conditions. With a bit more work, you could have a framework that would actually track those conditions and add them in for you automatically - see the DDI VTT for that.

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I think they could easily compensate for this by making one of the early, control questions "Did you play via a VTT?". Then they can sort survey responses as they see fit. They could even see if something works better in one gaming medium than another.

dd.stevenson said:

I don't think there are any publicly available numbers that support this assertion one way or another. Are there?

Orders of magnitude are a pretty big deal.

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Ok, fair enough, I'm exaggerating for effect.

IronWolf said:

I think they could easily compensate for this by making one of the early, control questions "Did you play via a VTT?". Then they can sort survey responses as they see fit. They could even see if something works better in one gaming medium than another.

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Oh sure. But, is this the time for that? You've got two years of playtesting ahead, do they need to do this RIGHT NOW?

There's another issue as well for the whole "must only playtest with people's who've signed up". It does put something of a stop to malicious people who would sign up with fifteen thousand different emails and then spam the crap out of the surveys.

You need unique email addy's for each and every playtester. I imagine one of the questions on the surveys will be, "What's the names of the people at your table"? Now, you could still work around this, but, it's a lot more work- you'd need to have all those email addy's plus unique WOTC DDI addresses as well.

Look, I understand what people are saying. But, I do think that there should at least be a little bit of an attempt to understand why these decisions might be made. Jumping up on the "WOTC is Evil" bandwagon again, this early, is a bit tiresome. There's very legit reasons for having all playtesters be contactable and not allowing online play. I might not like those reasons, but, it doesn't mean that they're not there.

Couldn't they add something like:

"If you want to play the playtest module online in addition to your regular playtest to advertise the new game, feel free to do so, but we sadly cannot analyze it at this time, so please don't try to report your online games to us."

This way, I could at least try it out for myself (no regular RL D&D group at the moment).

Hussar said:

Oh sure. But, is this the time for that? You've got two years of playtesting ahead, do they need to do this RIGHT NOW?

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I think they should have allowed online playtesting right now, yes. As for time, it would take about a minute of tweaking a SQL query to split the results across those who did it face to face and those who used a VTT. Probably not even that.

Why not gather data on what is becoming a very common mode of play? Sure it might end up with it seems to be playing face to face very well, but not so well on the VTT or over Skype and that may be an issue they choose not to address now. But certainly having the data this early in the game would be useful.

Hussar said:

There's another issue as well for the whole "must only playtest with people's who've signed up". It does put something of a stop to malicious people who would sign up with fifteen thousand different emails and then spam the crap out of the surveys.

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I don't really have issue with saying each person in your group must have signed up. I would be happy to walk people in my group through the process if they felt intimidated. This seems a more reasonable expectation.

Hussar said:

Look, I understand what people are saying. But, I do think that there should at least be a little bit of an attempt to understand why these decisions might be made. Jumping up on the "WOTC is Evil" bandwagon again, this early, is a bit tiresome. There's very legit reasons for having all playtesters be contactable and not allowing online play. I might not like those reasons, but, it doesn't mean that they're not there.

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I am certainly not entitled to know why they chose to exclude a whole realm of potential playtesters. I am certainly curious though. This would be a good time for WotC to perhaps address that in their FAQ since it seems to be generating a lot of negative commentary.

Walking Dad said:

Couldn't they add something like:

"If you want to play the playtest module online in addition to your regular playtest to advertise the new game, feel free to do so, but we sadly cannot analyze it at this time, so please don't try to report your online games to us."

This way, I could at least try it out for myself (no regular RL D&D group at the moment).

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Sure, they could. But, then it's not a playtest is it?

People seem to forget that this is being done for a very specific purpose. "Advertise the game" is not that purpose. Are they missing out here? Maybe. But, then again, like I said, this is probably a blanket sort of thing to prevent PbP games from posting the playtest rules every place and then having people contantly try to report their online playtest.

The whole point of playtesting is control. They have a very specific set up in mind, obviously, and that doesn't include online games. It probably will in the future, when the rules are bit more nailed down. But, for now, they only want tabletop groups who are willing to sign the OPTA.

Not a huge deal.

If you really think that the purpose of this playtest is really to gather game rule feedback and not advertise and market it, you are being extremely naive.

I don't have a problem with the onerous playtest agreement - if I figure I need to, I'll just ignore it, like most EULAs - but it does speak to Wizards' stance on openness and towards their customers.

I had hoped that given the new line we were hearing from Mike Mearls and the "open playtest" and all that maybe we were back on a trajectory for a D&D that was part of a rich ecosystem and one that realized it only exists for real in the mind of all its players. This is the first warning sign that "no... not really."

mxyzplk said:

I don't have a problem with the onerous playtest agreement - if I figure I need to, I'll just ignore it, like most EULAs - but it does speak to Wizards' stance on openness and towards their customers.

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Don't play online is onerous? Really?

I also fail to see how, except for the most hyperbolic claims, it is any sort of statement on "Wizards' stance on openness and towards their customers." We are (counts on fingers) a little over 4 days into a playtest that, by all reasonable estimates, will run at least a year.

mudbunny said:

Don't play online is onerous? Really?

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Onerous? No. Probably not.

A disappointment? Yes.

They should have included this in the agreement itself and not via the FAQ. See, I was one that read the agreement prior to downloading. I understand they have interests to protect and a delicate balance between letting the public have access to the rules without having things taken from them or copied or modified.

So I read the agreement and all seemed well. Then I start seeing links that say we can't playtest online. I never had reason to look at the FAQ because the agreement was fairly straight forward. But now I am finding out I can't playtest online because a FAQ has said that is not allowed.

Yes, that was disappointing and frustrating. A lot of people play RPGs online. The Google Plus community is full of online gaming. It is such a viable option to play RPGs these days that to see people that do game in this manner excluded from the playtest is frustrating.

People like to talk about people feeling entitled to things they aren't. I readily admit I am not entitled to playtest D&D Next online. That does not change the fact that such an exclusion is not frustrating and disappointing to me.

mudbunny said:

I also fail to see how, except for the most hyperbolic claims, it is any sort of statement on "Wizards' stance on openness and towards their customers." We are (counts on fingers) a little over 4 days into a playtest that, by all reasonable estimates, will run at least a year.

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I do think it is some indicator as to the state of WotC still not understanding how people are playing the game these days (or at the very least being hamstrung by their lawyers). Agreed that we are only 4 days in and I hope they change their minds.

Regardless of what WotC intended with that exclusion, how that exclusion is perceived is very important. They should take the opportunity to actually use the FAQ to explain why they do not want online playtesting. I've heard several rumors and such, but none of them have been something I couldn't do with a face to face group.

IronWolf said:

Onerous? No. Probably not.

A disappointment? Yes.

They should have included this in the agreement itself and not via the FAQ. See, I was one that read the agreement prior to downloading. I understand they have interests to protect and a delicate balance between letting the public have access to the rules without having things taken from them or copied or modified.

So I read the agreement and all seemed well. Then I start seeing links that say we can't playtest online. I never had reason to look at the FAQ because the agreement was fairly straight forward. But now I am finding out I can't playtest online because a FAQ has said that is not allowed.

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This, restricting via the agreement was one thing, via FAQ was bad form.

IronWolf said:

snip......

I do think it is some indicator as to the state of WotC still not understanding how people are playing the game these days (or at the very least being hamstrung by their lawyers). Agreed that we are only 4 days in and I hope they change their minds.

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I agree, and instead of prohibiting play, just forbid online redistrubtion for any other purpose than online play and request that no feedback be given from online play at this time would be a better approach. It would have generated no badwill among people that cannot run the material face to face and not skew the results of the play test.

IronWolf said:

Regardless of what WotC intended with that exclusion, how that exclusion is perceived is very important. They should take the opportunity to actually use the FAQ to explain why they do not want online playtesting. I've heard several rumors and such, but none of them have been something I couldn't do with a face to face group.

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I agree with this also.