Pathfinder 1E WotC's playtest and Paizo's playtest -- how do they compare?

wedgeski · Aug 16, 2013

I have a passing academic interest in the differences between the two playtests for DDN and Pathfinder.

To anyone who participated in both, what would you say were the highs and lows for each one? What lessons can the next company to hold a high-profile RPG playtest learn from them?

I'm not interested in any edition warring and ask from a position of genuine curiosity.

Dandu · Aug 16, 2013

What lessons can the next company to hold a high-profile RPG playtest learn from them?

Rule number one: Listen to player feedback.

Rule number two: See rule number one.

I have heard stories from playtesters that both companies heard of the issues in their games, but ignored them. In WotC's case, for example, playtesters supposedly found out early on that some monsters were too strong for their CR (I think it was the Beholder in the story I heard) and WotC didn't care enough to change its CR.

Olgar Shiverstone · Aug 16, 2013

I'd argue the two would be very difficult to compare just from the standpoint that Pathfinder was a direct evolution of 3.0/3.5, and one cold argue that 8 years of playtesting preceeded it; while WotC went back to first principles to rebuild the game from the ground up.

Couldn't tell you on mechanics, though, as I didn't follow the PF playtest though I received some of the initial products.

Jeff Carlsen · Aug 16, 2013

They're definitely different, with very different purposes.

Pathfinder was a beta test. It was a complete ruleset put out for people to hammer on.

D&D Next has been a series of tests of various alpha builds, meant to test concepts as they were developed. Now they're off to flesh out the game.

My only hope is that, before they go to print, they do a proper beta test to catch the little things.

Okay, not only hope. If the next packet generally reflects the the shape of the final game, I'd like to see various rules modules released for testing between now and the release.

Jester David · Aug 16, 2013

Completely different.

What Next has done has really been a concept test. They wanted to see how the fans reacted to broad ideas and various executions but were less interested in collecting feedback on the actual performance of mechanics and fixing individual problems.
Feedback was handled by surveys that were used to gauge general satisfaction.

The Pathfinder playtest was the presentation of the Beta rules followed by fixing all the individual problems.
Feedback was handled on the forums. The conversation was directed by the designers, who collected feedback on certain parts of the document before moving on, slowly working their way through the Beta.

What can new companies learn? It might be a little to early to tell as things aren't over yet.
Well, I'm praying WotC isn't completely finished testing and will open up the friends & family playtest to a larger pool to actually betatest their game, doing what Paizo did on a less public scale. If not they run the risk of releasing a game built of concepts and mechanics that everyone likes but that aren't very well balanced or polished. So the lesson might end up being "don't stop playtesting until you're ready to actually go to print."

JRRNeiklot · Aug 17, 2013

From what I can see, both pay about equal attention to feedback from playtesters - none.

Dannager · Aug 17, 2013

JRRNeiklot said:
From what I can see, both pay about equal attention to feedback from playtesters - none.

Because they didn't fix your personal complaints, or what?

Iosue · Aug 17, 2013

JRRNeiklot said:
From what I can see, both pay about equal attention to feedback from playtesters - none.

This is true. The classes in the latest packet are pretty much the same from the first packet.*

*Statement may include some sarcasm.

KidSnide · Aug 17, 2013

It's important to remember that Pathfinder was starting from a very different place than D&DN. Pathfinder was trying to evolve 3.5 in the same general way that 3.5 evolved from 3.0. It wasn't trying to create an entirely new version of D&D. D&DN is a much more involved process where they are really trying to incorporate the strengths of various editions into a single, more flexible version of the game. D&DN needs alpha testing in a way that Pathfinder simply doesn't.

That being said, I agree with the general principle that D&DN needs vastly more testing than its seen so far, and more testing than I think it's likely to see before release. As much as WotC took a lot of flack for publishing 3.5 so shortly after 3.0, it was a much better version of the game. Likewise, I think 4e would have been much stronger if they had started out with the lessons they had learned by the time they released Essentials. After 3 months of playing 4e, my biggest wish was that WotC had tested it for another year. I appreciate 4e errata, but it's annoying that my books are so useless.

I sympathize with the problem that WotC can't just release an "almost done" free version of the game and then expect everyone to purchase the final version. But at the same time, I wish they had a better mechanism to get wider feedback and more polish before they release the "final" version of D&DN. Speaking just for myself, I'd would gladly pay for an "escalation" edition (to borrow from 13th Age) that came with a series of PDFs of increasing "doneness" and ended with receiving a physical copy of the completed rules -- especially if those rules were better tested than 3.0 or 4e.

It just takes a few years of solid play to knock out all the bugs in a game like D&D. I really wish WotC had a business model compatible with that reality.

-KS