Losing interest....

[Nagol]

They wouldn't have to constantly give us new rules or material to keep us interested. How about giving the playtesters some goals instead? There must some things that they still need more info on. Once a week or two they should propose a new test. Examples -

Everybody fight room XX and time your combat, we want to see exactly how long they are taking in real time and number of rounds.

Everybody run an all thief party. Report experiences.

Gladiator fights! Everbody fight pc vs. pc. Who won?

etc.

There are two groups who could run this approach: developers and manrketing.

Developers are constrained by the amount of analysis that can be performed.
Coming up with tests that don't cover the same territory as being currently worked on can be challenging. They would swmp themsleves with data and the need to revew the reported experiences, determine if they fit with expectation, and determine if further development as necesssary or if the tests are no longer relevant due to other changes already in the pipleine.


Marketing doesn't care about the analysis. Its goal is to maintain interest and excitement. But the challenges and responses gathered by marketing are unlikely to feed into development changes for the reasons given above. The big downside from marketing would be once the testers realised their input wasn't being critically examined the test pool would shrink considerably and the public outcry over the 'useless' testing would outweigh any advantage from trying to keep the pool engaged.

 

[B.T.]

So my question is then, what do you want?

When 4E (and, I assume 3.X) came out, you couldn't swing a forum by it's phpBB without hitting a thread about how WotC was doing it wrong by not having a long, extended playtest where the players have an actual say in how things are designed, etc.

Now that they are doing it, they now have people complain that WotC should have done more and thus giving the players less input over what can be done.

If I'm going to be playtesting a game, I expect the game to have a reasonable amount of polish. In videogame terms, we're in the early, early alpha playtest. We should, at the least, be in the early beta stages. We haven't even seen the nuts and bolts of the system yet--just ideas about "bounded accuracy" and "flatter math." We have levels 1-3. And not even the whole levels 1-3, just a bunch of pregenerated characters that show none of the flexibility or usability of the system. That's not very helpful. It's like someone telling you about how computers are by showing off Solitaire.

 

[mudbunny]

If I'm going to be playtesting a game, I expect the game to have a reasonable amount of polish. In videogame terms, we're in the early, early alpha playtest. We should, at the least, be in the early beta stages. We haven't even seen the nuts and bolts of the system yet--just ideas about "bounded accuracy" and "flatter math." We have levels 1-3. And not even the whole levels 1-3, just a bunch of pregenerated characters that show none of the flexibility or usability of the system. That's not very helpful. It's like someone telling you about how computers are by showing off Solitaire.

You appear to be asking for two mutually exclusive things.

If we want WotC to be providing us with a real playtest where we can have real input and change fundamental systems due to our feedback, then you cannot* be given a system which is well-polished and almost done. I am going to blame this on the "beta testing" that we see in vidoegames these days which are, in reality, simply a marketing tool as it is so late in the game that there is no realistic way for anything to be changed.

* Well, you could, but that would require that the design/development team rewrite massive, massive chunks of the system due to discovered problems in the base parts of the system. And that is just a complete waste of time.

 

[B.T.]

You appear to be asking for two mutually exclusive things.

If we want WotC to be providing us with a real playtest where we can have real input and change fundamental systems due to our feedback, then you cannot* be given a system which is well-polished and almost done. I am going to blame this on the "beta testing" that we see in vidoegames these days which are, in reality, simply a marketing tool as it is so late in the game that there is no realistic way for anything to be changed.

* Well, you could, but that would require that the design/development team rewrite massive, massive chunks of the system due to discovered problems in the base parts of the system. And that is just a complete waste of time.

The developers should be competent enough that they shouldn't have to rewrite massive chunks of the system. And if they are and they create an awful mess, they should rewrite it if they want our money. That's why they're the developers.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

When a workable draft of the character creation rules are released, it will heat up appreciably, and probably stay that way. It won't be as red hot as it will be in the weeks before release, but it will be notably hotter than it is now. Think of this as the calm before the store--your chance to rest up.

 

[filthgrinder]

If I'm going to be playtesting a game, I expect the game to have a reasonable amount of polish.

What you are after is what modern video games do with their open "beta" tests, an early demo.

Wotc didn't release a demo, they released a playtest package. They provided directions, "play this game, and let us know if it feels like D&D". They prefaced it with, "this is really early, let's get your feedback now, so we don't have fundamental issues with the core of the game".

I'm a 4E fan (Eberron game starts back up on Thursday), but 4E at it's core has some features that turn off players who prefer specific playstyles. To them, 4E doesn't feel like D&D. That's important to realize early in the process. That didn't happen in 4E, so they are specifically trying to avoid it with 5E. The goal of the first playtest package is "does this feel like d&d".

The goal isn't to start the marketing cycle. The goal isn't a demo. While those are side effects, it's not the intended test.

If they released polished character creation rules, 20 levels of advancement rules, 37 background, 20 themes, and 10 character classes... It's not so much of a playtest, then a demo.

We'd all go down the rabbit hole of, "feat x combined with skill y, and item z is over powered compared to..." And the test of, "does this feel like D&D" is lost.

I mean, look at the bickering threads about what HPs represent.

The test came out, and they got an early feel of what the community reaction was, and they know where they need to go.

 

[Agamon]

If I'm going to be playtesting a game, I expect the game to have a reasonable amount of polish.

In RPGs, I know of exactly zero betas with polish. Having been involved in DDN, DCC, Hackmaster and 13th Age, none have had "polish". Unlike video game "betas", which are really just about bug hunting and server load capacity.

Betas shouldn't be about just getting to play the game before it comes out.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, what I'm hearing is ... D&D Next is not videogamey?

 

[B.T.]

In RPGs, I know of exactly zero betas with polish. Having been involved in DDN, DCC, Hackmaster and 13th Age, none have had "polish". Unlike video game "betas", which are really just about bug hunting and server load capacity.

Betas shouldn't be about just getting to play the game before it comes out.

When writing a paper, you don't ask for a peer review of a rough draft. You ask for a peer review of a second or third draft. This is the same way. It's fine for WotC to release a pregen adventure, but they should also have already had semi-functional rules modules in the works. They need to be releasing previews of backgrounds, themes, feats, and so on. Again, they've already been at this for months.

 

[BobTheNob]

If I'm going to be playtesting a game, I expect the game to have a reasonable amount of polish.

Why? Its a playtest.

If it was a "introduction" game (like a "you can play levels 1-3" type of marketing dealy) yea I would expect polish.

But it wasnt. It was a playtest. It wasnt done for your sake or mine, it was done for the designers sake, and we simply agreed to help. It was volunteer work, why a volunteer would turn around and gripe about expectations of quality I just dont get.

Having read this thread, I can only say I agree with Morrus's posts. Calm down, be patient, and stop making these "Im bored so 5e is doomed" or "I made a minor observation so obviously 5e = epic fail" posts.