Do you think 6 months are enough for playtesting?

[Nebulous]

Well I'm not so sure... 4e is killing some sacred cows of D&D and is changing some of the fundamental aspects of playing D&D such as the need for resting of the spellcasters. This is a major change to the whole game IMO.

Agreed. They're making some gutsy choices in actually trying to improve gameplay. Having constantly to rest and recuperate spell casters is something i'll be glad to see gone...in theory.

 

[Piratecat]

Exactly, which is really good news in a way, because it means that the concepts HAVE been playtested, both internally and by the public. Sure, they'll be plenty of changes, but the core ideas seem to have already been seeded in 3e.

The problem isn't - and never is - changes in mechanics that are known to work. The problem is how all of those changes interrelate once they're in the game. There are a vast number of subtleties that won't show up until people beat on the game for a while. The job of playtesting is to catch them.

Take a look at the Tome of Magic, for instance. Cool classes, two of which are unplayably weak. I'm told it had internal playtesting. This does not fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Of course, many more people will have been paying attention to 4e, so that won't happen. I'm hoping that they allocate enough people to managing and collating data from the playtesters. It's going to be extremely important.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the fact that some of 4e subsystems have been out and played will help (TO9S, SAGA, etc).

For example, SAGA has had a lot of scrutiny on the WOTC boards. There are definitely a few problems that are being errated out.

That said, I do think 6 months is too short, even if you have a whole nest of playtesters. You have to wait for the newness to fade so people can make informed choices.

 

[Jhaelen]

They won't worry about getting it perfect. Did anyone see the reason WHY there won't be a 4.5? It's simple. With the DI, they have the ability to auto-update everyone's copy of the rule books (the digital versions at least) with any changes they need to make. So, instead of a 4.5 there will be a 4.01 and a 4.02 and 4.03. They won't be labeled as such, but they have the ability to "patch" the game now on a regular basis with confidence that a large number of players will get the update.

That's what I fear but somehow expect, too. Since the plan is to roll out errata quarterly, we're going to have up to four versions of every game rule per year. Fun!

With a new set of the core books each year, they'll also be able to make changes to the system a lot more frequently than ever before.

Reminds me of the 'balance' updates for the Guild Wars game:
They track every skill/build used in PvP games and make quarterly changes so if someone finds an 'I win' group build, their key skills will be toned down and skills that have been rarely or never used will be improved.
Thus the 'metagame' is constantly changing. You always have to adapt to stay on top.

Works like a charm for a CRPG but it'll be the death for a pen & paper RPG...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

6 months is plenty of time for playtesting. 3 months is probably adequate. However, I highly doubt that there is sufficient time between the end of the playtest and sending the books to the printers. It's impossible to say for sure, though, without inside knowleddge.

 

[breschau]

I work in publishing. Here's the break down of a books schedule.

Lets work backwards...

Time from delivery of files to printer for the book to hit the shelves = 3 months.

This is mostly due to delivering the full-color book from China where most full-color printing is done now (watch out for those red pages). Book launch in May for PHB1 means they have to get the files to the printer no later than February 2008.

Finalized book manuscript goes through layout and design = 4 months.

Gathering all the images and making sure they're all in the right places. Determining the heads, subheads, sub-subheads, etc is a long process. With constant tweaking and hunting for widows and orphans. And there's the infamous backwards art, etc.

This means the text (rules, fluff, everything) has to be set in stone (very minor copyediting can be done at this point, but emphasis on minor, every time you change a line length, you have to reset everything that comes after it in a chapter, i.e. you piss off the typesetter, and that's bad) no later than early October 2007 to hit that launch date above.

That's what, 6 weeks of playtesting, at most, if you keep to schedule and if you want the book out on time.

 

[Beckett]

I like to think there will be enough, with 2+ years of internal playtesting as well as this being a smaller shift than from 2e to 3e. Still, we might be getting more playtesting, past the point where the book is sent to the printers. With the Digital Inititive making it easier to distribute errata and download it right into electronic copies of the books, we could see playtesting right into May, with the first errata set to download on launch day (I guess in that way, 4E could be MMORPG-like ) Hopefully the major systems would be in place, but it could accomadate smaller tweaks.

Might also be that the bulk of playtesting is devoted to the online content, the character creator and virtual tabletop.

Perhaps my glass is a little too half-full, but I like to think that there are enough people with enough experience on the 4E team that one of them would have stood up and said, "Too little time for playtesting" if that were the case.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I'm cautiously optimistic, although I do expect errata and it doesn't scare me. With anything of that size, there will be errors--then again, I'm used to math and science textbooks that are riddled with errors through several editions.

 

[Banshee16]

With the books coming out in May, that's about the time left for playtesting (maybe 1 month more).

Is it enough in your opinion? I don't remember how long for 3e playtested for example, and of course internal playtesting has been going on in WotC already for a long time. Still, I hear pretty major changes to the game as a whole.

What about editing errors? Will we see the same (high) amount of errata as in 3rd edition? Less? Worse?

How long was 3E playtested? It seems to me like things are being rushed somewhat. When are they registering playtesters? If it's not until later this fall, does it really give them enough time to get a quantity of playtesting completed, collate the results, *and* implement changes based on the playtesting?

This all seems very rushed...

Banshee

 

[Christian]

We started playtesting 3e in November of (I believe) '98, nine months before it was announced and more than a year and a half before it launched in August of 2000. That's one of the reasons that the relatively short 4e playtest cycle concerns me; sorting and processing playtest comments in that short time, and making iterative adjustments that are themselves tested, seems highly problematic.

The bolding is mine--and that's the part that really concerns me. There's absolutely no way, given the production schedule they've committed to, that any substantial changes can be made on the basis of playtester suggestions. Even if they could rush them to the printers for the actual books, they couldn't get the revisions out to the playtest groups quickly enough to get substantial playtesting of the revised rules. It's pretty clear that their expectation is that the playtesters won't find any significant problems with the rules, and that changes based on playtester suggestions will primarily be minor issues of organization and wording.

And that tells me that they have a tremendous amount of confidence in the design and playtest work that's already been done. Whether that confidence is justified remains to be seen ...