D&D 5E Final playtest packet due in mid September.

[Warbringer]

The "boring" comment seems to me an opportunity to contact him and request becoming a part of the next phase. Can't hurt to ask, the worst he can say is no.

Certainly a good idea; have the feeling though this the initial experience crowd (I think 500 of them, right?)

 

[Li Shenron]

Considering 3e needed a revision after two years and had some pretty major flaws, this somehow does not fill me with confidence.

Mah... I personally like 3.0 more than 3.5, and I think most of those "fixes" were done only to justify/promote gamers to buy the revised core books, and then pump the sale of supplements. There were very very few actual "fixes" (caused anyway by gamers who wanted to exploit some specific spells, while other gaming groups had no issues with them), while most of the changes were just "buffs" to character classes in order to encourage players to demand update to 3.5 to their DMs.

I've always been of the opinion, and still am, that 3.0 was more solid because it was designed "organically", and lost some organicity (?) when 3.5 was done in patches. Now eventually the real problem with 3.0 (and 3e in general) is that is made a lot of assumptions on the gamestyle that it presumed people would/should have played. 3e was designed around that gamestyle (or in the best case, a limited "range" of gamestyles) and then of course it didn't work well as soon a gaming group wanted something different, including our group BTW.

 

[Ahnehnois]

In contrast with your "sour grapes" theory I suspect the people who didn't like 4E will be pretty interested in Next: they didn't like the game, so the company killed it off early and started publicly testing and discussing a new edition that's a lot more like the previous editions. WOTC listened and did exactly what they should have done given the circumstances. Given two years to talk it up and let 4E fade into history I think any lingering resentment will be inconsequential by the time it launches.

Beyond any sour grapes, I wonder if people will stay away simply because they've realized they don't need to buy new D&D books.

A lot of people simply bought D&D books because that was the default thing to do, and then suddenly realized that they couldn't do that any more. Then, they moved on to other things: Pathfinder, or another rpg, or continuing with 3e. If that course is working for them, what motivation is there to buy 5e? Very little, as I see it. If 5e were some great new revelation, that would be one thing, but we haven't seen that so far.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Certainly a good idea; have the feeling though this the initial experience crowd (I think 500 of them, right?)

Probably. So the opportunity may take more than just asking. They might take someone on though that presents a well-thought-out gaming group resume of sorts. It may not lead anywhere, but if one had enough of a concern they could certainly spend the time to try.

 

[Jester David]

In L&L he stated that the next phase of playtesting can be boring and that then planned playtest is to be as large, if not larger, than the one for 3rd Edition. The "boring" comment seems to me an opportunity to contact him and request becoming a part of the next phase. Can't hurt to ask, the worst he can say is no.

It really struck me as a justification. As if they didn't want to (or were not allowed) to have the late rules available for free and now they're trying to sell that to the community.
"Oh, we're ending the playtest. Good job everyone. We can handle it from here because the rest is.... umm... Boring. Yeah, that's it. It's really boring and you wouldn't like it. And we need more information on our playtesters."

Well, the Character Op forums on the Wiz Community are filled with people who LOVE spending their free time comparing powers and balance.
And it often doesn't matter if feedback on a power being broken is coming from a story heavy group or an optimizer group. If a power is not working as intended or there's an obvious abuse then the source is irrelevant.

It wouldn't even be hard to manage the feedback. Just set-up a form.
Have a spot on the playtest website where you pick the file, the page number, and the name of the mechanic in question and then write a sentance or two on why it does not work. And likely the type of problem, be it wording, grammar, math, or an abusive combo.
If a lot of people are writing about the same mechanics then it's worth seeing what they have to say. If only a couple people are writing about a mechanic it's worth less of a look.

It's such a huge missed opportunity. And it really means they cannot make mistakes. Because they're ending the playtest after doing none of the fine-tuning & balancing (aka the actual playtesting) they had better deliver a product just as good as if 150,000 people gave it a playtesting pass.
They can't afford to have a situation like 3.5e or Essentials again where they release a corrected version of the edition, nor can they have the Day One updates that plagued 4th Edition.
If 5e comes out and they need to immediately patch and fix obvious mistakes... that will really be a big mark against the edition.

 

[Warbringer]

So if their 150,000 numbers are to be believed (and by the way, a little SEM web-trawling indicates that number is 159,000 so looks good), if only 30% or so of those were unique and still playing (testing), thats 50,000 players looking for a new game system to play with ... I don't know if I wouldn't keep them engaged... seems a mistake

 

[Cybit]

A) As someone who is more..privy to how the internal testing is going -- it's well over 1000 people currently testing the game at its' latest packet. Most employees are being given carte blanche to invite their friends, friends friends, friends friends friends, etc, as well as many RPG designers & freelancers.

B) Dude, this is a playtest. As someone who has played in well over a dozen MMO playtests and multiple closed RPG playtests, including ones by very large competitors of WotC who shall remain nameless, this is exactly the same thing they gave us. I have ran these for an RPG company, this is how you playtest an RPG.

C) Everyone's aware Pathfinder has like six different printings of their Core Rulebook to errata stuff that was broken, right?

D) Wait till you guys see the next packet -- if it is what I think it is, you may be surprised at how much gets put into it.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

It really struck me as a justification.

I could see how one could interpret it that way. They way I took it is that the next phase is much more structured. That they expect their dedicated playtesters to perform on a schedule. They don't want to wait as issues randomly filter in on a forum, they want to focus in a specific areas and do so repeatedly until the issues are fixed. At this point it becomes more like work than fun. But, as you stated, some people find that work fun. If you are, then present your case to them about joining the next phase of playtesting.

 

[Ahnehnois]

C) Everyone's aware Pathfinder has like six different printings of their Core Rulebook to errata stuff that was broken, right?

Name me one rpg that doesn't have any errors.

We're dealing only in shades of gray here; "better" or "worse". There's never going to be an rpg that doesn't require revisions.

 

[Jester David]

Everyone's aware Pathfinder has like six different printings of their Core Rulebook to errata stuff that was broken, right?

That's slightly different. Every time they do a new print run of their hardcover books they incorporate the errata, so you don't need to consult a separate document. (And if you have a PDF of the Core Rulebook it's updated as well.)
But the vast majority tends to be actual errata, small typos and sentence errors that slipped through. And it's 9 pages compared to the 27 pages of the 4e PHB alone.

Pathfinder's also a very different case as it's a revision of a revision. There should be fewer obvious errors and the fact they F'ed up a few things (stealth) is egg on their face.

Errata happens. If 5e comes out and after four years it has nine pages of errata and fixes I'll be okay. If after that same time it has 34 pages.... that's a little frustrating.