Playtesting in Detail

Stormonu · Nov 12, 2012

Draconians, eh? I wonder if that's just a throw away mention or if Dragonlance, Eberron and FR will get some mention in the playtest materials. Or perhaps draconian will be the flag they try to sell Dragonborn under to non-4er's.

Jeff Carlsen · Nov 12, 2012

The use of scrum explains the nature of the playtest packets. Each packet has a handful of features that have been worked on, while the rest of the system remains mostly untouched, even when there are known problems. It's because addressing those problems wasn't assigned to a given sprint.

The method makes a lot of sense for this playtest, which is inherently iterative. Using the red, yellow, green method for features may mean that green features won't get further experimentation, but it does mean that the final game will be made up of mechanics that most people like.

My hope is that there's some time in the schedule for wild experimentation, but I think they're on a good path.

CasvalRemDeikun · Nov 12, 2012

Stormonu said:
Draconians, eh? I wonder if that's just a throw away mention or if Dragonlance, Eberron and FR will get some mention in the playtest materials. Or perhaps draconian will be the flag they try to sell Dragonborn under to non-4er's.

I really doubt they are going to kill the Draconian and take its stuff...again. From the looks of it, he was just discussing where they would go with campaign specific stuff. I am curious what he means by that though. Would the Draconian and the Warforged be part of the core?

tomBitonti · Nov 12, 2012

Hi,

Too many specify replies to quote. I find the application of Agile/Scrum interesting. I don't see any huge problems with this particular application.

I am curious as to what would be their build and test process, and what constitutes a story in this context.

Thx!

TomB

Grimmjow · Nov 12, 2012

Li Shenron said:
My guess is that Mike answers this question a few lines later: it's a prestige class, and probably in the core.

oh i see. i havn't read over the whole thing yet but that would make sense.

Grimmjow · Nov 12, 2012

i just got done reading it. It looks like they are asking for more comments in the surveys.

GX.Sigma · Nov 13, 2012

Stormonu said:
Or perhaps draconian will be the flag they try to sell Dragonborn under to non-4er's.

I'd call it "draconian" even if I wasn't trying to pander to non-4er's. Even if Bethesda doesn't get the trademark, everyone who hears "Dragonborn" these days immediately thinks of Skyrim.

Grimmjow · Nov 13, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
I'd call it "draconian" even if I wasn't trying to pander to non-4er's. Even if Bethesda doesn't get the trademark, everyone who hears "Dragonborn" these days immediately thinks of Skyrim.

i think of scaly dragon-man from 4e i hated skyrim's dragonborn

Chris_Nightwing · Nov 13, 2012

Gundark said:
I hear what your saying, however at point would you want them to accept a green light rule and move on to designing other parts of the game?

Well, taking their 1-5 scale that they use on surveys I would look for a response that trended upwards from 1 to 5, and set some threshold for the average response. What they shouldn't do is accept something that 90% of people score 4 or 5, but the remainder score 1 or 2 - a binomial distribution indicates that there's a strong divide and they should think further for a solution, or offer alternatives within the core.

Hussar · Nov 13, 2012

Chris_Nightwing said:
Well, taking their 1-5 scale that they use on surveys I would look for a response that trended upwards from 1 to 5, and set some threshold for the average response. What they shouldn't do is accept something that 90% of people score 4 or 5, but the remainder score 1 or 2 - a binomial distribution indicates that there's a strong divide and they should think further for a solution, or offer alternatives within the core.

Sure, but, there's only so many hours in the day. At some point, you have to say that something is good enough. If you have 90% of people on board, and 10% hold out, you're likely never going to get any better than that. You might, but, at some point, it's just diminishing returns.