WotC Jeremy Crawford Interview: Playtests from experimental to focused. By Christian Hoffer at GenCon.

[mamba]

This absolutely is a minority sabotaging the majority."

That seems to blame the people expressing their opinions.

That is not how I meant it, the process allows for this, therefore the process is broken. The minority has every right to have and express their opinion, and WotC has every right, I would even say the obligation, to ignore them in favor of the majority.

That they did not do so is the issue. WotC created the issue, WotC is at fault here

 

[Maxperson]

That is not how I meant it, the process allows for this, therefore the process is broken. The minority has every right to have and express their opinion, and WotC has every right, I would even say the obligation, to ignore them in favor of the majority.

That they did not do so is the issue. WotC created the issue, WotC is at fault here

I believe you. As I said, that's where my confusion came from.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The 11th hour turn where a bunch of stuff is rushed into the new edition without consulting anyone. Just like last time.

The CON Save to keep concentration would be one of those, since I don't ever remember that being in the playtest for 2014 PHB or even being asked about.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

“Interestingly, many of the bigger changes reached the threshold that Wizards considers to be a success – a 70% success rate. "The thing is, the scores are not the full story," Crawford said. "We also look at what are people saying in the written feedback and what they are saying in online discussion forums. And while people were often excited by a number of these experiments, there was also a lot of concern about what would this do to the existing game."”

so they should have iterated, and instead threw them out because there were some loud naysayers, great. I positively hate this process.

What a weird take. Nothing in that statement says what you are saying it says.

That is not how I meant it, the process allows for this, therefore the process is broken. The minority has every right to have and express their opinion, and WotC has every right, I would even say the obligation, to ignore them in favor of the majority.

This is nonsense. It doesn’t even match what happened. If you’ve been following the process then you know that they look at whether a thing reaches the threshold enthusiastically or if it’s just “yeah sure, this is fine”.

They aren’t going to put every iteration they come up with in the public playtest, either.

That they did not do so is the issue. WotC created the issue, WotC is at fault here

Work gets the credit, more like, for doing exactly what they should.

 

[Parmandur]

I expect this is what was meant. And hope that as little of anything rushed is needed.

I mean, if they have a decade of internal playtesting showing that a particular Spell is disruptive, but they know that a lot of players like it being disruptive...at a certain point, balance has to trump people liking a problem.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I expect this is what was meant. And hope that as little of anything rushed is needed.

Heh... well that's the biggest boon with not going forward with new ideas...

Less stuff to test and possibly have to rush through the testing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The CON Save to keep concentration would be one of those, since I don't ever remember that being in the playtest for 2014 PHB or even being asked about.

I would say there will absolutely be things in 5E24 that the designers themselves just want to do, or changes they themselves want to make... and they'll make those changes, no questions asked. Will those changes be playtested first? I mean, probably, to a certain small extent (even if it's just the designers' home games)... but that's the one advantage of being employed as a designers in the D&D department of WotC-- you get to make any change you want arbitrarily without any input from the greater gaming populace (and probably just have to convince your co-workers to go along with it.) Membership has its privileges and all that.

Now I don't think any of them actually take themselves up on that offer (at least not for anything even remotely substantial)... but I'm sure there will be the occasional small rule that could get changed that never appeared in any of these playtests but just came out of something like balancing or the editing process. And we all should go into that fact with out eyes open to the possibility.

 

[Shardstone]

THAT WAS THEM SWINGING FOR THE BLEACHERS??? LMAOOOOO

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean, if they have a decade of internal playtesting showing that a particular Spell is disruptive, but they know that a lot of players like it being disruptive...at a certain point, balance has to trump people liking a problem.

That depends on how unbalanced it is, and how much people like it how it is.

Personally, I’d love to have fireball do even more damage but be harder to use safely. Really I want magic to interact with the world more in general. Whether that’s written into spell descriptions or general rules for Spellcasting and DM guidance on running the game, I want an ice AoE to create a patch of frozen ground, a wall of fire to radiate heat above it and catch things on fire within 10ft of it if they’re flammable and dry, and fireballs to fill the space they’re in.

But since that won’t happen, I’m fine with fireball doing a couple dice less damage, I guess. (Or whatever spell being lightly “nerfed”)

 

[Shardstone]

“Interestingly, many of the bigger changes reached the threshold that Wizards considers to be a success – a 70% success rate. "The thing is, the scores are not the full story," Crawford said. "We also look at what are people saying in the written feedback and what they are saying in online discussion forums. And while people were often excited by a number of these experiments, there was also a lot of concern about what would this do to the existing game."”

so they should have iterated, and instead threw them out because there were some loud naysayers, great. I positively hate this process.

I feel so VINDICATED RIGHT NOW. SO MANY PEOPLE ON THIS FORUM TOLD ME THAT OUR VIEWS WERE MINORITY!!! Hahahhaahah.

Defcon, @Charlaquin and all the rest — all that nonsense about this playtest process being healthy, good, or effective can go straight to the trash. This playtest was sabotaged just like the DND Next playtest was. Incredible. Just incredible.