Would you buy more books if they were beta tested first?

[Mercurius]

I would buy more books if there were more books to buy.

 

[renau1g]

WotC does have playtesters - you can see the little beholder icon on them on their forums.

That said, I'm kinda curious what you'd do if you were a playtester for the PH3, and let's say you had 2 whole months, while not playtesting anything else, to playtest that book. How much do you think you'd get done? And how easily would the, say, two WotC guys who read your findings find it to process your groups' findings and implement important changes.

Now change it so you're also playtesting two other books at the same time, say Martial Power 2 and Monster Manual 3.

And that job of deciphering results is a pretty harsh one - I know a _lot_ of people who say something is "broken" when it's, say, 5% out of expected bounds. So you need to hope you're getting truly constructive criticism from the playtesters.

Personally, I'd be looking at having lordduskblade and a few of the other Char-Op guys/gals brought in. They caught a lot of broken stuff right away and also a lot of really garbage stuff. They have a solid grasp of system mastery and would give some additional insight. Their opinion wouldn't be the only ones of course.

That said, I stopped buying books for the most part as it was all crunch and then with the errata (which I do like for the most part) I didn't feel it was as value-added as the DDI account . Monster Vault has got me changing my mind though.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION]
Yeah, I think you hit on the challenge of professional playtesting.

That said, I'm kinda curious what you'd do if you were a playtester for the PH3, and let's say you had 2 whole months, while not playtesting anything else, to playtest that book. How much do you think you'd get done? And how easily would the, say, two WotC guys who read your findings find it to process your groups' findings and implement important changes.

I know this was meant more rhetorically, but I thought it was an interesting question since I have very little insight into the process of professional playtesting. How many sessions per week? Is information coded by priority? In a short 2 month timespan would the group be limited to one tier of play? How many products would a group simultaneously test? Would the DM be WotC's "caller" or would other players have a direct means of providing feedback too? Are different playtest groups synched up so that each has it's "niche" (I.e. The large party, the small party, the party of all strikers)? Is there some standardized process/form or is it a more organic process unique to each table?

 

[Zaukrie]

I would buy more books if there were more books to buy.

This.

I would prefer not to get a bunch of material in DDI, then get the chance to pay for it again 6-8 months later. I am strongly opposed to that. We get limited material anyway.

 

[eamon]

I've stopped buying some stuff after errata-burn. If better testing removes the need for errata, I might buy more books. I could well imagine a public beta working OK; sure people will rate things differently, but they can filter responses, right?

Basically, the game as it is now is OK, and a new book needs to add more value than it costs in effort. I'm certainly buying less because I don't have faith in the quality of the printed books at the moment.

 

[Talok]

I cannot believe you are really serious here. You think the volume of errata is what it is now with NO playtesting.

It's three years after the PHBI was released and they are still "updating" the classes from that book. That seems to indicate that something is terribly wrong with whatever process they are using to "playtest' the material. The amount of errata for 4E is ridiculous and should be embarrassing enough to a large company like WotC to make them change their playtesting process. Pathfinder's core book is much larger than PHBI and it has a tiny fraction of the errata (mostly typos instead of rules rewrites) that PHBI has. This shows the difference between doing enough playtesting to make a balanced, complete product and trying to rush the books out the door as fast as possible and trying to fix them afterwards.

 

[Kzach]

That seems to indicate that something is terribly wrong with whatever process they are using to "playtest' the material.

Eh, I'll have to stop you there and point out that a lot of the 'errata' is actually rules updates. I think there's an important difference to be noted there. One is fixing problems, the other is including changes because they felt the changes improved the game.

Personally I'm against the inclusion of Essentials into the base rules. I was shocked to find that there's no such thing as a fighter anymore. I'd much rather Essentials be wholly separate. But at the same time, they couldn't predict the things they would learn about the system as they progressed beyond the PHB1. And what they have learned, they've used to update the rules, for better or worse.

 

[Blue]

Right now I use DDI compendium more than books because of the errata. It isn't as huge a deal as it seems, but I say the way we play it's a gotcha at least every other session and every time we level we need to spend time for the players who don't have a DDI subscription.

Personally, I'd be looking at having lordduskblade and a few of the other Char-Op guys/gals brought in. They caught a lot of broken stuff right away and also a lot of really garbage stuff. They have a solid grasp of system mastery and would give some additional insight. Their opinion wouldn't be the only ones of course.

I'm a long time lurker on CharOp with only a few dozen posts to my credit. They know their stuff, and I'd love to have the devs tap them for beta and/or errata.

I'd want to go one step further - CharOp also is good at identifying the under-performing. Instead of constantly introducing more character content, instead refining the poor power/feat/paragon/CLASS options. And also closing off corner case abuses without nerfing otherwise reasonable options. That's stuff that could be well identified there.

To circle back, I'd buy more 4e books if they went through a beta first.

As a tangent, I'd absolutely buy digital copies of 4e books if they would be updated with errata, and I could access them without the internet. (Don't mind the internet to verify them once)

 

[Blue]

It's three years after the PHBI was released and they are still "updating" the classes from that book. That seems to indicate that something is terribly wrong with whatever process they are using to "playtest' the material.

Hmm, for me it's that they were still learning 4e when they made all the material for PHB1. Look sat PHB2 or 3 and see if they have the same level of errata.

PHB1 (and MM1) having gobs of errata is more sign that they should be a minor edition bump to put everything on the same baseline and clean up the cruft.

You mention PF - having an open beta (what the OP is talking about) was good for Piazo and may be good for 4e as well, plus they built on long existing d20 SRD rules. That's not a direct comparison in terms of needed errata for early 4e with a brand new system.