I think what the OP is saying though is that... well since they have publicly said they are on further play tests, why are we still having problems of the fundamental game? If they are starting to do other stuff why are we still in limbo after a bit more than half a year later still having major balance issues with the core game? At least that's my question. It doesn't give me very much confidence that they are already going on to test stuff that they will have to change significantly after getting feed back from these playtests.
I'm not sure why people keep making this claim, when damage numbers are a simple externality, not a "fundamental game" thing. I mean noone has actually mentioned anything
fundamentally wrong with DDN. The entirety of the problems cited have nothing to do with the fundamental structure of the game.
That's all well and good, but why are they going and starting -SEVERAL- playtest packets ahead of us when they are just going to change the stuff we are telling them here?
I hate to Rules Lawyer here, but "several" means nothing, a long-time follower of Mark Rosewater from the MTG side of Wizards, you learn that "double the number of dinosaurs" is pointless if the original number of dinosaurs is ZERO. Furthermore, WOTC hasn't said they're several packets ahead, only several WIP's(or similar language), they don't even MAKE a playtest package until they're ready to give it to up.
It makes no logical sense no matter which way you spin it. Especially from the revisions I have seen this play test go through. There are some sweeping changes to the game. Why aren't they focusing on the here and now. They need to STICK with something and get it absolutely right before moving on.
This is absolutely NOT how BETA tests work. You develop a rough framework for the game, you start adding on this and that, some of those things develop faster and easier than others. It's not a linear progression from A to Z, sometimes F gets finished before D but after Q. AND: if WOTC "stuck with something" until they got it "absolutely right", it would negate the whole point of the playtest! You can't playtest Fighters without having Wizards in the game, you can't playtest 1-5 without some vague idea of where 10-20 might be.
This is why the play test will fail is because they are on some materials that's way ahead of this packet, then they get feed back, change whats in this packet, which will trickle down to the more complicated stuff, but then WAIT they already have some of the core fundamental aspects of that in place which they will have to change because of what we said.
God it's such a crappy way of work flow. You are essentially doing twice the work.
It's VERY common, almost every beta test works this way. Even before they release the test package, the devs are already finding new bugs, errors and trying out new ideas. So by the time we actually get to see the test package, developers are already two or three steps ahead of us, having found a great many of the problems with the system as-is already. And yes, sometimes even things that seem to be set in stone will get changed in later test packages, and then once the game comes out,
those things might not even be included at all! This is pretty typical for bets tests.
I'm a little worried that maybe Wizards is leaving too much up to the playtest and then blame the people if the game doesn't turn out right. "This is what you people asked for so it's not our fault it failed".
It's possible, and to be fair I wouldn't blame them if they did! It's exactly what we asked for, we wanted more say in the development, we wanted more communication with developers, so when we ask for the moon and they deliver it to us, it certainly is our own fault when we find out it isn't made out of cheese.
It's not unrealistic, it's establishing a functioning base mechanic before jumping off to something else. Other gaming companies do it so why does Wizards think they need to go a different route. Right now the playtest looks like a jumbled mess that will take them ages to get out of. I mean they have already jumped to level 20 before taking care of level 1 to 5.
A base mechanic for WHAT? I mean you all keep claiming DDN lacks these mystical "base mechanics" and "fundamental" things...but you haven't mentioned anything specifically other than damage levels, which are neither base mechanics nor fundamental, and are very easy to tune up or down with little to no impact on the game at large.
Why does Wizards go a different route? I don't know, why does anyone every bother to try anything other than the norm? Maybe because...they want to? Because they think it's better? Hey it's nice that you think these other guys have the right ideas...but here's a surprise, the world of ideas aren't limited to what those guys have already done.
Honestly I do not feel as badly about the playtest as you do, it doesn't feel jumbled or like a mess. The
majority of the packet is pretty clear, and oh no...there's room to abuse a 9th-level spell? Well it's a 9th-level spell, so no surprise there(thank god for 4e and getting rid of this sort of crap entirely).
Uhm... the combat system is definitely there (and I agree also that damage is not hard to adjust and will be adjusted), but I couldn't honestly say that the other systems are in place, because major things such as the spellcasting mechanic (of the Wizard), how martial damage dice is used by others than Fighter, and how skills work, have all changed in the last packet (skills and martial dice also changed in practically all the previous packets). Therefore there is no sign that their current version will be the last.
I'm not sure what's wrong with the spellcasting mechanic other than it's an interesting hybrid of previous systems. ANd I suspect that with how much we've seen martial damage dice change, it's possible they may not be a Core, fundamental element, and might simply be an interesting option WOTC is playtesting early.
Playtesters are the second set of eyes that are supposed to filter the errors after the initial group has filtered their share. The designers shouldn't slack off and rely on the playtesters to all the errors.
We are talking about some obscure creature from the Monster Manual 6, we are talking about a creature that has been around since day one and is the iconic creature that a "group" of high level PC's are supposed to fight.
I'm sorry if all your faith is in their ability and you don't want to see it challenged but so far they are all over the shop and it's not looking good IN MY OPINON.
Fixed that for you. I really would appreciate if you would stop presenting your opinion as fact. It's detrimental to the discussion.
Here's an example from my betatesting past.
I tested SWTOR early on, it was a very rough game and there were particularly glaring issues in it's development. I was upset and felt like we were getting yanked around by the devs when non of the "obvious" stuff changed and lots of weird other things were made even worse. So I quit for about a year. When I came back to testing I was astonished at the game I was looking at. Not simply because it was so much better, but because it was so different. Aside from still being Star Wars, it felt like an entirely different game.
With "sometime in 2014" as a release date, which will no doubt be moved to 2015, WOTC may produce a product that is utterly unlike anything we are playtesting now.
You sound like you are getting burned in the way I did, so I really suggest you take a break from it. Kick back, take a back-seat and just watch from a distance, or don't watch at all. Check back at the end of 2013 and see where WOTC is on the project. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
