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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6171668" data-attributes="member: 37579">Okay, 1000 people. Out of curiosity, let's do some math.Let's assume even numbers for groups and a good 1:4 ratio for DMs to players that's 800 players and 200 DMs. For a GenCon release they need to have everything sent to the printers by mid-February. If they're testing as they're writing that means they have six months of actual playtesting to get the math fix and look for imbalance. Or 24 weeks. The holidays will devastate testing so really 22 weeks. There'll be some groups that play weekly and some that play monthly, averaging out to 11 weeks of testing. We'll also take off a week for final revisions. There are 9 classes but some are more complex and some are less, so for the sake of easy math we'll reduce the number of classes to 8, leaving 100 people per class. This is further reduced due to different builds. Like 25 per individual build. With 10 weeks of testing those 25 people need to completely test two levels of their build each and every week.So that means any particular level or class feature was tested by twenty-five people for half a game session. &nbsp;&nbsp; I've seen a lot of MMO playtests and few completely rebuild classes with every iteration. That's concept testing. Which is fair. I'm very, very happy WotC did decided to concept test, and did it for a year. But it's not playtesting, which involves balancing and fine tuning. The stuff WotC is keeping private.Good point. Maybe the next packet will be much closer to done and will have some content that needs testing. So everyone can take a look and then send in feedback of what needs work. WotC might be about to school me with an awesome package that we can playtest.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 6171668, member: 37579"] Okay, 1000 people. Out of curiosity, let's do some math. Let's assume even numbers for groups and a good 1:4 ratio for DMs to players that's 800 players and 200 DMs. For a GenCon release they need to have everything sent to the printers by mid-February. If they're testing as they're writing that means they have six months of actual playtesting to get the math fix and look for imbalance. Or 24 weeks. The holidays will devastate testing so really 22 weeks. There'll be some groups that play weekly and some that play monthly, averaging out to 11 weeks of testing. We'll also take off a week for final revisions. There are 9 classes but some are more complex and some are less, so for the sake of easy math we'll reduce the number of classes to 8, leaving 100 people per class. This is further reduced due to different builds. Like 25 per individual build. With 10 weeks of testing those 25 people need to completely test two levels of their build each and every week. So that means any particular level or class feature was tested by twenty-five people for half a game session. I've seen a lot of MMO playtests and few completely rebuild classes with every iteration. That's concept testing. Which is fair. I'm very, very happy WotC did decided to concept test, and did it for a year. But it's not playtesting, which involves balancing and fine tuning. The stuff WotC is keeping private. Good point. Maybe the next packet will be much closer to done and will have some content that needs testing. So everyone can take a look and then send in feedback of what needs work. WotC might be about to school me with an awesome package that we can playtest. [/QUOTE]

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