D&D 4E 4e Playtesters revealed!

[Wormwood]

The most eye opening thing about the entire 4e process was how many people are what I call ideologues when it comes to D&D. The end result - whether the game is fun, interesting, and enjoyable - plays a distant second in their minds to the structure of the rules. The process, be it multiclassing, monster hit dice, or whatever, is more important than the end result of that process.

A fair assessment, I'd say.

 

[OchreJelly]

Respectfully, Mike -- why would correcting the record have been a waste of time, particularly if someone were actually lying about playtesting? If the real scoop was that 4e playtesting was an obviously awesome process superior to anything done before, couldn't that have been conveyed simply and definitively by, say, someone from Wizards familiar with the process? Was it really better to keep quiet and let people churn on misinformation?

See this is a sentiment I just don’t understand, but I suppose it’s the nature of the internet: i.e. why people will churn on limited information to begin with? Sure it’s fun to speculate about what’s coming but to be outright negative about something when you can’t see ‘the whole elephant’ to me is a waste of energy. YMMV of course.

I would never expect the devs to course-correct message boards in this fashion because that way leads (madness) to an endless pit of even more questions. It’s not only a resource issue (sounds like a full-time job to me), but one that causes more problems than it’s worth.

Edit: I didn't want to imply that Garnfellow personally was being negative. My musings were addressing his musings. Sorry if it came off as the former.

It seems like 4e playtesting is a good example of a place where Wizards failed to get "its" story out. And if it is an awesome story, I would like to hear it. As it is, my perception -- inaccurate though it may be -- is this: external playtesting was largely limited to a relatively small group of people, pulled out of a Gleemax hat, and done at a late stage of the process after all the mechanics were already nailed down. The playtesters were only acting as fact-checkers and QC'ers. If the real scoop is different from this perception, I'd love to know that -- it would go a long way to allaying some of my concerns about 4e.

What actually is interesting is now, with the previews, the whole elephant is being revealed a bit at a time. This is an exciting time, but then again I’m in the camp that says real criticism can begin after a full ruleset has been read and digested.

 

[Gundark]

Respectfully, Mike -- why would correcting the record have been a waste of time, particularly if someone were actually lying about playtesting?

I saw lots of WotC people try to rectify misinformation and it didn't really do anything, as there were lots of "yes buts!!"

 

[TerraDave]

Did Mearls just quote Hong?

I ENWorld

 

[eleran]

Yeah, its been a weird month. Mearls quoted Hong, and Hong was the voice of reason in another thread.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The most eye opening thing about the entire 4e process was how many people are what I call ideologues when it comes to D&D. The end result - whether the game is fun, interesting, and enjoyable - plays a distant second in their minds to the structure of the rules. The process, be it multiclassing, monster hit dice, or whatever, is more important than the end result of that process.

My observation (and my own experience) is that players are/were extremely receptive to "more fun" rules, and rightly vested a lot of trust in Lead Developer Mearls, but that spines started stiffening when it came to the setting changes.

It's a silly thing, yes-- but can you explain why it is "more fun, more enjoyable, and more interesting" for the succubus to be a devil, not a demon (just to pick a random example I personally don't give a fart about)?

 

[AllisterH]

My observation (and my own experience) is that players are/were extremely receptive to "more fun" rules, and rightly vested a lot of trust in Lead Developer Mearls, but that spines started stiffening when it came to the setting changes.

It's a silly thing, yes-- but can you explain why it is "more fun, more enjoyable, and more interesting" for the succubus to be a devil, not a demon (just to pick a random example I personally don't give a fart about)?

If it's anything like M:TG design, the people that design the rules != the flavour writers generally speaking...

Kind of curious, how many of those testers were from the char-op board...I recognize a couple of names from there.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

If it's anything like M:TG design, the people that design the rules != the flavour writers generally speaking...

I am sure that's how it works. I guess I was saying in a roundabout way, that Mearls shouldn't take most of the complaining to heart, since my suspicion is that most of the complaining started with ideological inflexibility over the setting, not Mearls' rules changes.

Everybody wanted rules changes; IMO the players were more than happy to open the door for that. What was unexpected were all the other changes that came barging through the open door.

 

[hexgrid]

It's a silly thing, yes-- but can you explain why it is "more fun, more enjoyable, and more interesting" for the succubus to be a devil, not a demon (just to pick a random example I personally don't give a fart about)?

They did fully explain their reasoning behind this change.

It doesn't do any good- it just leads to nitpicking over the validity of the reason given.

 

[xechnao]

Having run a number of playtests, I can with 100% certainty say that just giving people the entire set of rules and hoping they manage to use everything and provide good feedback is the stupidest way to do things.

But by having the feedback of what people managed or found more appealing to use versus what they did not is an important aspect of a balanced game testing, you would want to consider. Of course, I understand that the less playtesters you have the more this aspect is going to mess with the other aspects of playtesting.