Press F to pay respects to people who put out videos and updated tactics.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/08/12/look-out-sir-for-an-faq-update/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=40kLookOutFAQ12Aug20&utm_content=40kLookOutFAQ12Aug20&fbclid=IwAR0B8PRj3uirqN-ugLcUvThwl8_wKXkS3qz7Vbo-CAiBkVTHtw1nqxmsB44

Frustrating that they're having such a hard time with what should be such a simple rule, but at least they fixed it. IMO this IS better than the way they had it.

You'd think they'd notice that their last change screwed over factions like drukhari and Harlequins before having to be told.

Most playtested edition, BTW.


That change works and fixes basically everything but god, its hard to take them seriously when they pull moves like that

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Most playtested edition, BTW.


That change works and fixes basically everything but god, its hard to take them seriously when they pull moves like that

So,I assume you are blaming the playtesters for not spotting this then?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Most playtested edition, BTW.


That change works and fixes basically everything but god, its hard to take them seriously when they pull moves like that

*shrug* As long as they take feedback and don't sit on it forever. 7th edition had glaring issues over years that never got touched. I'll take chaos over inaction.

It must feel really silly right now to be the people arguing that GW made this change because they deliberately wanted to stop 9 wound buggies from blocking LOS.

Chock up another one for "when GW does something that doesn't make any sense, 9/10 it just doesn't make sense."

At least they fixed it, but man, is it really so hard to think through what you're doing before you do it? It didn't take a genius to see the issue with what they did. When you make a change and within 30 seconds of seeing it most people are saying "uh, did you think about this at all?" it's probably a good sign you should have, well, thought about it.

 BroodSpawn wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Most playtested edition, BTW.


That change works and fixes basically everything but god, its hard to take them seriously when they pull moves like that

So,I assume you are blaming the playtesters for not spotting this then?

Nah, the blame is on GW, i'm just making a joke about 9th' "motto". I'm glad we didnt need to wait long to get it fixed, its just a shame that GW didn't get it right the first time.


(as an aside, didn't playtesters tell GW multiple things were broken yet GW just went with it? or was that a rumor only?)

Glad this doesn't completely murder my Ork mech list. The loss of the Warboss on Warbike is still a big gut-punch, but at least now we're not relegated to just taking foot-guys in our army.

Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Or at least the competitive-linked ones are the ones I've seen saying that...but given that those same playtesters can't always spot illegal lists, I'm not holding my breath.

Great job that GW reacted so quickly to community feedback

The last change wasn't playtested at all, so I dunno why people are talking about playtesting. GW was embarrassed by everyone laughing at them with the Daemon Prince Super Friends memes and decided they had to fix it, but whoever was tasked with doing it evidently had so little understanding of the game that they didn't realize what their change was going to do.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The last change wasn't playtested at all, so I dunno why people are talking about playtesting.

Well, characters screening for each other is something that should have come up during playtesting in the first place.

Not extensively playtesting the hotfix is understandable, it's more about why it's a problem to begin with.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The last change wasn't playtested at all, so I dunno why people are talking about playtesting. GW was embarrassed by everyone laughing at them with the Daemon Prince Super Friends memes and decided they had to fix it, but whoever was tasked with doing it evidently had so little understanding of the game that they didn't realize what their change was going to do.

I made a similar point in another thread, but... How do these people get to keep their jobs? There are hundreds of unpaid fans that have a much better understanding of the game their designers even do. If your job is to design rules for 40k, how could you mess this up? I'm surprised there isn't a line outside GW's door filled with people who would be happy to take over, even though I'd bet it doesn't pay too well.

It feels weird to compare to my own profession, but GW's employees are making a living designing a game. If I put out a project, then 2 days later said "Oh no, I didn't think about X. Let's change it again!", it would be a problem.

It's almost as if characters should be able to join units like they used to instead of making nonsensical rules.

 catbarf wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The last change wasn't playtested at all, so I dunno why people are talking about playtesting.

Well, characters screening for each other is something that should have come up during playtesting in the first place.

Not extensively playtesting the hotfix is understandable, it's more about why it's a problem to begin with.

I would be seriously shocked if it didn't, and GW didn't just ignore it. We know they have form for it in the past (Hi Iron Hands supplement!), and we know they ignored the feedback on how bad their points values for 9th edition were. So I dunno why it would surprise anyone that they ignored the playtesters on this too.

More importantly, foisting responsibility for game balance onto unpaid volunteers is deeply irresponsible. It's GW's job to create a balanced game, not unpaid volunteer playtesters.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's almost as if characters should be able to join units like they used to instead of making nonsensical rules.

Aww, pretending that that system wasn't a MUCH MUCH worse tangle of different rulings and abuses.

They could FAQ LoS twice a day, every day, and it still wouldn't be worse than that gak was.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's almost as if characters should be able to join units like they used to instead of making nonsensical rules.

Well said.

Aww, pretending that that system wasn't a MUCH MUCH worse tangle of different rulings and abuses.

They could FAQ LoS twice a day, every day, and it still wouldn't be worse than that gak was.

Nope. If you are complaining about death stars, look no further than 8th edition bubbles. Instead of 1 unit getting buffs we have almost entire armies of re-rolls now.

How is a character joining a unit a bad thing in any way? All they have to do is make their special rules only work on specific keywords. Special rules abuse is so much worse now than it used to be.

It's ok. I'm sure if GW came around and allowed characters to join units again in a future edition of the game you'd be extolling the virtues of such a smart rules set they've created.

ERJAK wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's almost as if characters should be able to join units like they used to instead of making nonsensical rules.

Aww, pretending that that system wasn't a MUCH MUCH worse tangle of different rulings and abuses.

They could FAQ LoS twice a day, every day, and it still wouldn't be worse than that gak was.

You know "characters join units" doesn't have to mean "roll back to 7e wound allocation", right?

I am just happy we are getting quick updates and fixes to clearly broken combos.

It really was not long ago that we got NO updates/FAQs, and went entire editions without certain armies getting codexes (codici?). You young people dont know how good you got it

 catbarf wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The last change wasn't playtested at all, so I dunno why people are talking about playtesting.

Well, characters screening for each other is something that should have come up during playtesting in the first place.

Not extensively playtesting the hotfix is understandable, it's more about why it's a problem to begin with.

Of the dozen or so games player so far it's really hard to keep characters together and still cover objectives. I can't envision many people willfully running multiple DPs and having that precise scenario come up. It also takes 3+ hours to play a game. It isn't like MtG where you could have a group play 10,000 games in a couple months or w/e.

Frankly the look out sir mess shows that the 40k design team are lacking in some straightforward engineering/science/technical know how. From a creative POV they know what they wanted, and it’s a fairly simple state machine type set of scenarios and events that they needed to close off, but they simply didn’t do it correctly despite several public attempts and who knows how many private attempts. Hence the holes.

Good rules design is about more than creative writing. Technical writing is important too. The trick is to encompass the second without making it read like a textbook.

Its almost like they forgot DE and harleys were armies..

 Argive wrote:
Its almost like they forgot DE and harleys were armies..

Of course, the fear is they won't be, and a Ynnari army will kick them into legends.

They certainly gave eldar an unwarranted stomping in the points book.

In fairness to GW, an issue arose and they addressed it quickly. Is it silly that the original wording made it through as is? Yeah, but they're addressing it quickly, and it's not like most of us are getting any play time to have been affected by it either way as is given the current state of world affairs.

Voss wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Its almost like they forgot DE and harleys were armies..

Of course, the fear is they won't be, and a Ynnari army will kick them into legends.

They certainly gave eldar an unwarranted stomping in the points book.

Those rangers were clearly too OP.

Just gonna quote myself quickly:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Hiding characters just got a whole lot tougher.

It's almost as if making sweeping changes to fix specific problems results in a lot of unforeseen consequences...

What a shock that they changed it.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Trust you to call the play-testers liars in order to protect poor defenceless GW.

yukishiro1 wrote:
... but whoever was tasked with doing it evidently had so little understanding of the game that they didn't realize what their change was going to do.

That would be most of the people writing their rules, I believe.

Credit where it is due, good on GW for fixing this. There remains plenty to criticize but I'll save it for another day and take some joy now that we got a fix when they could have done nothing.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Credit where it is due, good on GW for fixing this.

Credit for being agile, yes, but it was a problem of their own creation.

This is like praising someone for quickly applying a bandage after they shot themselves in the foot.

It must be awesome to have spent so many years lowering peoples' expectations that they are actually impressed and grateful when you fix the easily avoidable mistakes you made by not taking enough care the first time around.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Credit where it is due, good on GW for fixing this.

Credit for being agile, yes, but it was a problem of their own creation.

This is like praising someone for quickly applying a bandage after they shot themselves in the foot.

Yea I'm sure some people got whiplash on purchases they were planning, too.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Credit where it is due, good on GW for fixing this.

Credit for being agile, yes, but it was a problem of their own creation.

This is like praising someone for quickly applying a bandage after they shot themselves in the foot.

Yes, because it was an effective bandage application and I give them credit for that. One might note my very next words are "there remains plenty to criticize". One might also note that they have a long history of faulty bandaging and trench foot. One might also note that giving them -no- credit for this would be saying it is equal to them doing nothing at all; personally I feel that having someone make a mistake then fix it is better than someone making a mistake and not fixing it. And a little 'hey, thanks for fixing that mistake you made' is great for encouraging people to keep doing it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It must be awesome to have spent so many years lowering peoples' expectations that they are actually impressed and grateful when you fix the easily avoidable mistakes you made by not taking enough care the first time around.

Is it OK with you if I make up ridiculous fictional posts then respond to you as if you wrote them? Because I could have a lot of fun with that.

You can do whatever you want, but I have no idea what prompted such a strange and apparently hostile reaction to a pretty anodyne observation about how in pretty much any other industry, "we fixed our own dumb mistake" wouldn't be the occasion for floods of praise. It says a lot about how low all our expectations are for GW rules.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You can do whatever you want, but I have no idea what prompted such a strange and apparently hostile reaction to a pretty anodyne observation about how in pretty much any other industry, "we fixed our own dumb mistake" wouldn't be the occasion for floods of praise. It says a lot about how low all our expectations are for GW rules.

They get praise from me, because they owned the issue and made a correction in a timely manner. They could have waited for whatever bi-annual update they've been doing, but didn't.

If my employees make mistakes the ones that fix them and own it get recognized. I dont belittle them and say, "well good job fixing the mistake, you screw up". Why? Because that's gak management and gakky human behavior that neither promotes growth nor solves problems.

People make mistakes and being a bitter expletive helps no one. Yes, we pay GW for their work. I also continue to pay my employees, too - screw ups and all.

I agree, the important thing is that they responded, and the issue was fixed.

This kind of thing isn't limited to GW, RPGs are released all the time that end up with pages of errata upon errata...."how could the game designer not see the problem?!"

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
You can do whatever you want, but I have no idea what prompted such a strange and apparently hostile reaction to a pretty anodyne observation about how in pretty much any other industry, "we fixed our own dumb mistake" wouldn't be the occasion for floods of praise. It says a lot about how low all our expectations are for GW rules.

They get praise from me, because they owned the issue and made a correction in a timely manner. They could have waited for whatever bi-annual update they've been doing, but didn't.

If my employees make mistakes the ones that fix them and own it get recognized. I dont belittle them and say, "well good job fixing the mistake, you screw up". Why? Because that's gak management and gakky human behavior that neither promotes growth nor solves problems.

People make mistakes and being a bitter expletive helps no one. Yes, we pay GW for their work. I also continue to pay my employees, too - screw ups and all.

This. Quickly responding to and fixing mistakes is worth of praise.

I like this and the bunch of FAQs that come alongside of it. The GK one is actualy funny, as long as you own a PA book and played through 8th ed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Trust you to call the play-testers liars in order to protect poor defenceless GW.

Erm - Kan's post never touched on GW.

It's very easy for these playtesters to claim, once the community has seen the results of what they were testing, that they warned GW about problems that crop up. It isn't like they can prove that they did, thanks to NDAs, and it isn't like GW are going to respond publicly to their claims.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You can do whatever you want

Oh good, because I feel the need to call you out for such plainly abusive language; advocating that players should be verbally attacked when they make mistakes is quite hostile!

Where was anything I said abusive? I honestly think you may have misread what I wrote, your reaction makes absolutely no sense. Where did I "attack" any "players" in any way? Where did I put any words in anybody's mouth? I am honestly stumped here.

 Dysartes wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Trust you to call the play-testers liars in order to protect poor defenceless GW.

Erm - Kan's post never touched on GW.

It's very easy for these playtesters to claim, once the community has seen the results of what they were testing, that they warned GW about problems that crop up. It isn't like they can prove that they did, thanks to NDAs, and it isn't like GW are going to respond publicly to their claims.

Having done actual playtesting myself for Playstation games at SCEA, as well as user testing on various business/data systems, I can tell you that playtesters and users report gargantuan volumes of stuff that developers never touch (for reasons both good and bad). I think trying to imply that the playtesters are lying is a wee bit silly.

When I worked for a business that made automotive repair shop software (years ago), they went to launch knowing full well that the program would fail and require a complete full manual uninstall/reinstall any time Windows date/time settings were changed and Windows XP machines (when WinXP was still the most popular OS even after Vista/7 were out) would have the same issue after a simple restart (fixed a month after release with a script that Tech Support had to manually remote into each machine and install) and all sorts of other similar issues all related to the Licensing system they put in. The QA and Dev teams threw themselves an office party for making the release on time while Tech Support was working mandatory overtime with hour long hold times on a product with a customer base in the low 5 digits.

Even if the playtesters didn't find something, it's still GW's fault, not the playtesters. Blaming unpaid volunteers for not fixing GW's game for them is such a weird hot-take, I've never understood it.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Even if the playtesters didn't find something, it's still GW's fault, not the playtesters. Blaming unpaid volunteers for not fixing GW's game for them is such a weird hot-take, I've never understood it.

This. The rule was a failure in the design phase because it wasn't some random fringe case rules interaction which causes the rule to break which was the issue. The rule worked fine, mechanically. It just completely failed to match the intent of the designers.

First step to making changes to this kind of rule should be to draw up a list of the units which would be affected by the change.
Next step is to go through all of those units, applying the new rule and seeing what the result is. As soon as they got to Harlequins they would have found the disconnect from their intent and what they wrote.

QA is testing to see if the rules work, not if they meet the design spec.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Having done actual playtesting myself for Playstation games at SCEA, as well as user testing on various business/data systems, I can tell you that playtesters and users report gargantuan volumes of stuff that developers never touch (for reasons both good and bad). I think trying to imply that the playtesters are lying is a wee bit silly.

See, but there's the rub: That stuff's documented and the playtesters are usually part of the QA team. Playtesters on video games are wildly underappreciated and it's an actual job (or at least a part of their job) for them in many cases.

The people involved with playtesting 40k aren't that. They might get compensated, but it's not their full-time job. They get a 'bonus' though by being able to say they are playtesters as it lends a weight to what they say/do that most people don't get.

Maybe they really did say something. But given how some people claimed last edition that Stompas were going to be huge, Conscripts were a big problem, etc...I think they are more interested in the attention they garner than actually playtesting things.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Where was anything I said abusive? I honestly think you may have misread what I wrote, your reaction makes absolutely no sense. Where did I "attack" any "players" in any way? Where did I put any words in anybody's mouth? I am honestly stumped here.

I thought I was pretty clear about making it all up! At any rate just poking fun at you mischaracterizing other's responses. Unless you can quote me where people were "flooding GW with praise" you pretty much blasted the original sentiment straight into hyperbolic nonsense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Having done actual playtesting myself for Playstation games at SCEA, as well as user testing on various business/data systems, I can tell you that playtesters and users report gargantuan volumes of stuff that developers never touch (for reasons both good and bad). I think trying to imply that the playtesters are lying is a wee bit silly.

See, but there's the rub: That stuff's documented and the playtesters are usually part of the QA team. Playtesters on video games are wildly underappreciated and it's an actual job (or at least a part of their job) for them in many cases.

The people involved with playtesting 40k aren't that. They might get compensated, but it's not their full-time job. They get a 'bonus' though by being able to say they are playtesters as it lends a weight to what they say/do that most people don't get.

Maybe they really did say something. But given how some people claimed last edition that Stompas were going to be huge, Conscripts were a big problem, etc...I think they are more interested in the attention they garner than actually playtesting things.

I think we can only speculate given what we have.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think we can only speculate given what we have.

Correct, which is why I said what I initially did.

GW is unlikely to outright say "Suchandsuch is lying and here's all their feedback to show it" and I'm sure that most of the people involved in playtesting are just as unlikely to go against a potential NDA and lack of access to playtesting stuff in the future to show their feedback.

If anyone's lying, I doubt it is to be malicious. I also don't think it really worth a witch hunt over or anything. But if they are lying in a public manner and GW gets flak over it? I find it kinda likely they won't be involved in playtesting going forward.

At this point, I'm just treating it as no different to when GW says "they take all feedback into account"...because clearly they don't, what with how my Wild Riders still have no workable shields in AoS.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Most playtested edition, BTW.


That change works and fixes basically everything but god, its hard to take them seriously when they pull moves like that

We all knew how the rule was supposed to work and it was playtested like that.
Its not playtesters fault that GW rule team cant write rule correctly 2 times.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think we can only speculate given what we have.

Correct, which is why I said what I initially did.

GW is unlikely to outright say "Suchandsuch is lying and here's all their feedback to show it" and I'm sure that most of the people involved in playtesting are just as unlikely to go against a potential NDA and lack of access to playtesting stuff in the future to show their feedback.

If anyone's lying, I doubt it is to be malicious. I also don't think it really worth a witch hunt over or anything. But if they are lying in a public manner and GW gets flak over it? I find it kinda likely they won't be involved in playtesting going forward.

At this point, I'm just treating it as no different to when GW says "they take all feedback into account"...because clearly they don't, what with how my Wild Riders still have no workable shields in AoS.

I can't fault this logic because if I played Wild Riders I would be pretty irked too!

 Kanluwen wrote:
If anyone's lying, I doubt it is to be malicious. I also don't think it really worth a witch hunt over or anything. But if they are lying in a public manner and GW gets flak over it? I find it kinda likely they won't be involved in playtesting going forward.

Such weasel words Kan.

You're claiming that the playtesters lied. Stop that.

Having worked multiple customer service jobs in my time, I can tell you that the phrase "all feedback is taken into consideration" is right up there with "your call is important to us" and "we apologise for any inconvenience".
Not just from GW, but from pretty much any company whatsoever - it means little, it's never true but people would get mad as all hell if they said something slightly more honest.

In this case, it'd probably be a mix of:
"We'll consider repeated feedback but we'll ignore lots of individual one-off cases in the name of saving time."
Or:
"We're going to ignore feedback that would impact what we're trying to do with the edition to increase profits."
And of course, the never-stated-but-should-be-bleeding-obvious:
"We'll outright ignore completely stupid feedback, no you can't have 5-wound Intercessors, stop asking."

The flipside to this, of course, is that the playtesting and feedback has to be rolled up and cut off at some point, in order for the edition to actually be sent to the printers - and I can virtually guarantee you that some changes made their way into the rules after this cut-off period, as a result of previous playtesting being processed, resulting in some changes that didn't actually get tested before release. It's entirely possible the LOS wording was one of these.

 Super Ready wrote:
Having worked multiple customer service jobs in my time, I can tell you that the phrase "all feedback is taken into consideration" is right up there with "your call is important to us" and "we apologise for any inconvenience".
Not just from GW, but from pretty much any company whatsoever - it means little, it's never true but people would get mad as all hell if they said something slightly more honest.

In this case, it'd probably be a mix of:
"We'll consider repeated feedback but we'll ignore lots of individual one-off cases in the name of saving time."
Or:
"We're going to ignore feedback that would impact what we're trying to do with the edition to increase profits."
And of course, the never-stated-but-should-be-bleeding-obvious:
"We'll outright ignore completely stupid feedback, no you can't have 5-wound Intercessors, stop asking."

The flipside to this, of course, is that the playtesting and feedback has to be rolled up and cut off at some point, in order for the edition to actually be sent to the printers - and I can virtually guarantee you that some changes made their way into the rules after this cut-off period, as a result of previous playtesting being processed, resulting in some changes that didn't actually get tested before release. It's entirely possible the LOS wording was one of these.

This is really important and I think people fail to understand this a lot of the time. The process of idea-design-testing-production-release takes a long long time. I'm really glad that GW so quickly amended it so that it can be properly RAI and not the gimmicks pulled off by RAW. This is very unlike previous editions where it seemed like they couldn't care less.

But what about... 4 wound Intercessors!? Eh? Eh?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
(as an aside, didn't playtesters tell GW multiple things were broken yet GW just went with it? or was that a rumor only?)

Here's a dirty secret about playtesters:

They tell GW what they think GW wants to hear, because most of those playtesters wanted the exclusivity deals for their Youtube channels or to get their hands on the materials first- and you don't bite the hand that feeds.

There's definitely an element of that. But there's also documented cases of GW simply ignoring playtester feedback and then having to nerf stuff quickly because the playtesters were right and GW was wrong.

But the bottom line is that it's GW that relies on unpaid, volunteer playtesters, and that says everything about the lack of seriousness with which GW approaches game balance. If they were serious about it, they'd pay people. They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

FFG was good about play testing.

We once hammered them so much about a thematically confused Deathwatch book that entire sections got removed and placed in a whole other book over a year later.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
FFG was good about play testing.

We once hammered them so much about a thematically confused Deathwatch book that entire sections got removed and placed in a whole other book over a year later.

I really enjoyed playing Deathwatch, thanks for your work on it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
FFG was good about play testing.

We once hammered them so much about a thematically confused Deathwatch book that entire sections got removed and placed in a whole other book over a year later.

Good job sir!

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Credit where it is due, good on GW for fixing this. There remains plenty to criticize but I'll save it for another day and take some joy now that we got a fix when they could have done nothing.

Agreed. In 5th this problem would have lasted years not days. GW is not perfect far from it. However 8/9th they have really stepped it up on fixing issues.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Trust you to call the play-testers liars in order to protect poor defenceless GW.

There must be an odd definition of lie down under, cos what he said was merely a statement of fact. Some people claimed to have said something, for which we have no clear evidence either way; that is not even remotely the same as calling them liars.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

The value of a publicly traded company is not its revenue, it is the price of a share multiplied by how many shares there are.

GW has a market value of ~$3.9B

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

People, let's not get into the semantics of whether GW is or isn't a billion-dollar company, what their value or revenue is or isn't... it's not really relevant to yukishiro's point. A reminder:

But the bottom line is that it's GW that relies on unpaid, volunteer playtesters, and that says everything about the lack of seriousness with which GW approaches game balance. If they were serious about it, they'd pay people. They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Knowing what I know of GW, they certainly can afford playtesters. Moreover, though, I'm reasonably sure as hinted at through community articles and so on, that they do in fact have internal playtesters as well as volunteers. To me, that's the best approach possible - test things yourself, when you think you're in a good spot, do some limited public testing to dip a toe in the water, and make further changes as necessary.

The real question here, is how many internal testers there are, and how competent they are. That's not something I have an answer to, and I doubt anyone else here that doesn't work in Nottingham HQ knows either.

I have also heard through the grapevine that playtesters commonly do identify problems we see, and are not listened to. Just one bit of second hand info though, nothing I would assign importance to on its own.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Nope. If you are complaining about death stars, look no further than 8th edition bubbles.

lmao. The absolute worst, cheesiest and most brokenly powerful lists in all of 8th edition were absolutely tame compared to your generic screamerstar.

Imagine trying to convince yourself and others that a 12'' 17% damage increase bubble is comparable to flying around the map with a re-rollable 2+ invulnerable save, in an edition where mortal wounds did not exist.

I talked with someone who is very involved in both playtesting and organizing some of the larger 40k tournaments. He was really annoyed by GW and had a very long rant about this subject.

Its not only that the playtesters are doing all of this testing without getting compensated but that quite a lot of them go far and beyond what you would expect unpaid testers would do. They dont just give yes or no feedback if a rule/unit works but they also try to give examples of how to rewrite the rules with minimum changes to make them work like the design team likely intended to. They write complete FAQs that would fix armies like IH if GW just would publish it in full. Instead they see GW take one fix they proposed and then change something that really didnt need change and the playtesters/FAQ writers just get frustrated by the lack of effort from GW. There are untold manhours spent to improve the game by people who got asked to do just that that in the end just gets ignored.

The largest culprit though is those who buy the gakky rules according to him. As long as people do that GW dont feel forced to improve and all this fantastic work from the people involved will just get ignored. People pay insane prices for really bad products and enforcers this bad behaviour by GW. As long as they rake in record profits from their gakky rules nothing will change. If people stopped buying codecies and only used BS, shared pdfs, russian sites etc while continuing to buy models and play at events GW could see that the quality of writing mattered. But until then we should be happy if anything improves.

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

So someone, who puts in huge hours unpaid 'working' for them, is complaining about people encouraging GW behaviour. Maybe he should look in a mirror first?

Maybe if the playtesters didn't do things unpaid and did not provide 'preview' marketing etc then maybe GW would not act like that?

Or more likely, playtesters, like customers, are invested in their hobby and want to put the time in or spend money on what they enjoy. Clearly not everyone views the rules to the same extreme as this playtester. Blaming the other group for not having his own view on value or perception of the product is sad. As with pretty much all (non essential) hobby activities there will be a huge range of views on value and quality and the reasons people buy, and many will not agree with him.

Putting in effort to recommend something only to see it not acted upon is normal in a company, it happens all the time to me. I even get paid a lot for that, go figure.

No, I would expect most unpaid playtesters to do exactly what he says (put in hours making suggestions), there is nothing unexpected in that at all. The opposite is true. The sort of people who will get into playtesting mini wargames are in that position because they love it; it's a very niche area. If he wasn't doing that I'd be asking why he is doing it at all.

I've done (unpaid) playtesting before for miniature wargaming, and the first thing I learnt was that each playtester has very different views; and each is recommending a range of things which are collectively mutually exclusive. E.g. One person will be arguing for more detail in one area, another for more abstraction, or one person will prefer certain mechanics that another doesn't. There will be debates over designer intent etc (playtesters guessing intent is as funny as customers doing it). One person's 'improvement' is another persons 'made worse'. Having your views rejected is not the same as ignored (though that is a possibility as well).


Is GW expensive, yes. But any other replacement hobby I can think of would be as well. I'm sure my uncle would be flabbergasted at what I spent on toy soldiers, just as my mind boggles at the thousands of pounds he spends on camera lenses. So, no GW isn't insane pricing IMHO; it's 'hobby pricing'. Are the rules really bad, no not really IMHO. There are some minor issues, but they've never been a problem with anyone I play with; I've seen bigger arguments in games like DBA.

I don't really get why each time GW as a hobby is mentioned, people jump to comparing it to collecting cameras, cars or guns. All of those here are done by milioners only, or their children.
GW is a table top and should be compared to other table top games, and comparing to games like infinity or warmachine, it does cost a lot more . It costs more, even if you settle on downloading rules and buying only recasts and second hand models.

And as minor issues go. I am not sure if waiting years for a rules fix should be considered a minor one. If, to use those rich people examples, someone from a yach making company told a yacht owner that they will fix the problem of the yacht sinking as soon as it is in water, after 2 years, they would have their company torched under 48h.

 Super Ready wrote:

The real question here, is how many internal testers there are, and how competent they are. That's not something I have an answer to, and I doubt anyone else here that doesn't work in Nottingham HQ knows either.

14, it's the janitorial staff's job on sundays. Fits with GWs estimate of how many playtests they get in and the quality of balance delivered.

Playtesters jobs is to provide feedback based on parameters given by GW for the test. That's it. Ultimately, GW decides if they are going to incorporate their feedback into a rule or not. Simple. Playtesters from different regions may all have different results and input. I'm not sure if the various GW playtesters have a forum for open discussion regarding their results.

Karol wrote:
I don't really get why each time GW as a hobby is mentioned, people jump to comparing it to collecting cameras, cars or guns. All of those here are done by milioners only, or their children.

Ludicrously false statement. They are hobbies that all sorts do, just like wargaming.

My father spent nearly his time fixing up old classic cars, he was just a working class person who had a hobby he spent his spare money on. I know several people into photography from a wide range of backgrounds. I spend at least as much as most of them on my hobbies. I can spend a couple of hundred a month on smaller stuff whilst they save a few months and spend a thousand on more expensive stuff, but we probably all spend not hugely differently over time. All of us work hard to earn money, none of us are millionaires.

GW is a hobby that is all. Like all leisure activities they tend to be expensive because they are what people 'want' to spend money on vs what they 'have' to spend money on. Most people gain no pleasure from what they have to spend on so they often look to economise, but when it comes to our hobby we are much more invested and prepared to spend our spare money. Some will have less spare money than others, so may spend less or look for 2nd hand stuff, others will be more comfortable and spend more on what they enjoy.

And as minor issues go. I am not sure if waiting years for a rules fix should be considered a minor one. If, to use those rich people examples, someone from a yach making company told a yacht owner that they will fix the problem of the yacht sinking as soon as it is in water, after 2 years, they would have their company torched under 48h.

Is a yacht sinking a minor issue? Is a rule wording a minor issue? You may see it different but if the people I play with have no issue over a rule then it is at best a minor issue hence it doesn't bother me how long to fix. The rule wording issue doesn't in anyway make the game unplayable.

Apparently my group only reads the 10+ wounds requirement as applying to monsters, not vehicles.

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

Of course we were talking about how much money GW has. Daedalus then came running in to attack me for allegedly overstating GW's "revenue," because he, like you, didn't understand how the value of a company is measured.

It absolutely doesn't matter to the overall point whether we measure GW's resources by value or revenue - they have tons of both, and plenty of money to employ real playtesters no matter how you assess their resources. But the difference between value and revenue absolutely does matter to Daedalus' bizarre personal attack on me, because that difference is what makes the attack so ridiculous and wrong, in addition to being entirely irrelevant. I wasn't the one misrepresenting things; he was. I wasn't the one "insisting on semantics," he was. You can't accuse someone of misrepresenting something and then turn around and say "oh well it doesn't matter, stop getting semantic!"

Don't personally attack people, but especially don't do it and be totally wrong on the basis for your attack.

I don't know what you expect. GW has been known for providing whatever pseudo-rules you may need to go pew-pew with your friends using fantasy/s-f miniatures. They are not really that far from having shooting resolved with rubber band cannons. That's their style.

Looking for concise, unambiguous, well-written rules, play some other game. Try Warmachine or some modern board games, espiecally euro-style ones.

Btw, was the critique of a more precisely written GW rule on the same forums ? When it was accused of being incomprehensible lawyering jargon ?

yukishiro1 wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

Of course we were talking about how much money GW has. Daedalus then came running in to attack me for allegedly overstating GW's "revenue," because he, like you, didn't understand how the value of a company is measured.

It absolutely doesn't matter to the overall point whether we measure GW's resources by value or revenue - they have tons of both, and plenty of money to employ real playtesters no matter how you assess their resources. But the difference between value and revenue absolutely does matter to Daedalus' bizarre personal attack on me, because that difference is what makes the attack so ridiculous and wrong, in addition to being entirely irrelevant. I wasn't the one misrepresenting things; he was. I wasn't the one "insisting on semantics," he was. You can't accuse someone of misrepresenting something and then turn around and say "oh well it doesn't matter, stop getting semantic!"

Don't personally attack people, but especially don't do it and be totally wrong on the basis for your attack.

And you dont understand how a market valuation has literally nothing to do with how a business funds operations.

Just because Tesla is worth a ton doesn't mean they're cash positive.

And while GW is, throwing money at a problem often is not the best way to solve it. Or do you think theyd hire more than two people? Wow they could play two games a day with two armies. Was it Crusade? Or Incursion? If a book comes each month they wouldn't even have time to play the updated army more than a couple times versus each other army. And then you'll just accuse them of bias anyway.

It's stupid and a waste of time. Open community testing - then you'll actually make a dent, but with the judgement I see here...I'm not so sure sometimes.

GW is worth a ton, and is also hugely cash positive, as a quick glance at their financials would show. There is no possible way to argue they can't afford to pay playtesters for their labor. There is just no argument that GW needs to rely on unpaid volunteers to balance its game rules, it's a company with massive profit margins, huge revenues and immense value relative to its industry. None of these factors are out of step with any of the others.

For that matter, paying people to test 40k doesn't even involve putting them on the full-time payroll, it just involves compensating them for their time instead of paying them in "perks" like inside access instead. The perk model encourages playtesters not to rock the boat and not to say anything GW doesn't like because GW is doing them a favor by letting them playtest their product. When you start paying people for the service they provide, you send the message that you actually value what they are doing and expect them to provide you value in return. You don't get professional results from unpaid volunteers, and it's unfair to expect it.

But I accept your apology and admission I wasn't misrepresenting anything.

 mokoshkana wrote:
Apparently my group only reads the 10+ wounds requirement as applying to monsters, not vehicles.

If they're reading the WHC post, the important thing is that the 10+ Wound aspect only applies to Character VEHICLE or MONSTER models, as the second bullet covers non-character models.

There's an argument that the summary is possibly clearer here, given it says:

...a friendly unit that contains 1 MONSTER, 1 VEHICLE or 3+ other models (excluding CHARACTER models with 9 or less wounds)...

The Designer's Commentary in the same post makes it really clear what they're trying to prevent, so if your group is trying to argue counter to that, they may need a refresher on at least one of the 3 R's...

What units are they trying to claim are oddly affected by this rule, anyway?

yukishiro1 wrote:


When you start paying people for the service they provide, you send the message that you actually value what they are doing and expect them to provide you value in return. You don't get professional results from unpaid volunteers, and it's unfair to expect it.

Excellent. I look forward to you and others ceasing claims that GW manipulates rules to garner sales. They are paid after all.

You can't reverse a logical proposition. That's a really basic error. All cats are mammals, but that doesn't mean all mammals are cats. It's unfair to expect professional results from unpaid volunteers; that doesn't mean that results from professionals are always uniformly excellent.

Moreover, even if you could reverse logical propositions, the people who think GW deliberately overpower things (if you were keeping track instead of making assumptions, you'd see I'm more in the "they don't know what they're doing" and the "they're evil geniuses" camp) presumably would say that that *is* GW acting in its professional capacity to boost sales, so there'd be nothing contradictory about it anyway.

Straw men are marginally better than personal attacks I guess, but they're still a waste of everyone's time.

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

No. That's a false dilemma, another really basic logical error. It's perfectly compatible to believe that GW generally has trouble with creating competent rules, and that them investing in a paid playtesting staff could help improve their competence. In fact it would be a really weird worldview under which those two believes were incompatible. You'd have to assume that GW's incompetence is so great that no amount of help could ever improve it. Which I certainly don't believe, as again you'd know if you had bothered to read some of my posts instead of making inaccurate assumptions about what I think in order to make it easier to attack me.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

And that's another straw man. You're projecting something on to me in order to shoot it down, and moreover something I've already specifically refuted. Please stop wasting everybody's time by trying to make the discussion about me instead of about the topic.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

Those are not the only logical possibilities. It is possible that GW tries to make new things powerful to drive sales but their rules department is incompetent, hence the reality that sometimes things are OP and other times they are not. This incompetent rules team can also ignore feedback from playtesters or listen to that feedback but then fail to implement solutions to the problems raised.

yukishiro1 wrote:

No. That's a false dilemma, another really basic logical error. It's perfectly compatible to believe that GW generally has trouble with creating competent rules, and that them investing in a paid playtesting staff could help improve their competence. In fact it would be a really weird worldview under which those two believes were incompatible. You'd have to assume that GW's incompetence is so great that no amount of help could ever improve it. Which I certainly don't believe, as again you'd know if you had bothered to read some of my posts instead of making inaccurate assumptions about what I think in order to make it easier to attack me.

I think in-house playtesting would never play enough games to ever make a significant difference - and people would still attack them regardless of the outcome. What do you think would happen if they had such a team and several flaws came to light? Based on your reaction to W2 First Born it seems like you're not willing to lend the benefit of doubt. People jumped down their throat for it and before anyone has looked at any official document its "GW is stupid" / "GW is doing the worst possible thing for balance"/ "I'm not playing anymore" / "where's my handout?".

A handful of people who communicate well would do more for the game. And to me, it looks like they gained something to that effect, because they've done a lot better than in the past. That doesn't mean they can't do more, but I'm pretty much over the constant gak posting.

Reading this nonsense has brought me to a basic conclusion.
Too many of you think that GW is in the business of making you happy. When in fact they are in the business of making money.
They care not for tears of sorrow or joy.

 DeffDred wrote:
Reading this nonsense has brought me to a basic conclusion.
Too many of you think that GW is in the business of making you happy. When in fact they are in the business of making money.
They care not for tears of sorrow or joy.

They do want to keep me (and the broad playerbase) happy so I keep buying their stuff. Which they've broadly managed.

I used to think a dedicated team of playtesters would help, but realistically 20 odd people wouldn't get many games done, and they would have varied views on what is and what isn't balanced (never mind more axiomatic questions of "how should the game play").

Much like every forum discussing 40k ever.

If they had 20 full-time playtesters (which you'll note I specifically said was not the only option) on the payroll whose feedback they actually paid attention to that would make a TREMENDOUS difference to the quality of the rules they came up with. Would it cure all balance problems? No, obviously not. But the idea that it wouldn't make any difference itself relies on the assumption that GW is so bad at doing rules that no amount of help would improve their product, and I just don't think that true. GW does make good rules now and then, so they clearly have it in them. The SoB codex is a great example of this. That book is really well done: reasonably balanced, interesting, unique, the rules reflect the fluff, they didn't need a bajillion FAQs to iron out terribly drafted rules, there were no patently broken interactions, etc etc.

The problem is just that they don't make the good rules often enough. A team of paid playtesters who were integrated into the development process could go a long way towards boosting the ratio of SoB codexes to IH supplements. In fact I feel confident saying that GW would never release another IH supplement again with a team of paid playtesters, unless they deliberately and knowingly set out to do so. It would therefore be a good test for the theory people have that GW deliberately releases broken stuff to sell models.

20 playtesters playing a game a day is 300 games a month. That's a very significant sample size to draw conclusions from, especially if you had a professional playtesting approach where all the data from every match is getting fed into a database, instead of just asking random people to play a few games and say what they thought.

yukishiro1 wrote:

20 playtesters playing a game a day is 300 games a month. That's a very significant sample size to draw conclusions from, especially if you had a professional playtesting approach where all the data from every match is getting fed into a database, instead of just asking random people to play a few games and say what they thought.

That's a silly amount of money. Well over 1/3 of £1M in wages alone. Then there is payroll taxes and benefits. You're looking at £600K annually for a job with minimum wage employees with little advancement opportunity - so, burn out. Not to mention needing a manager or two to oversee that many people. For them to be worthwhile they'd need to increase sales by more than that. For a game that encompasses several facets not at all interested in precise balance it'd be a terrible investment - especially when perfect balance isn't obtainable anyway.

A couple of people organizing the communications would benefit them more. And behold -- in the past we'd never see them answer questions like this - it would have remained an open item until the next edition, if even that :

Now you're moving the goalposts. If you want to say an investment of much less than 1% of yearly gross revenues wouldn't be worth it to substantially improve game balance fine, make that argument, it's a subjective opinion you're welcome to have. That's not the same argument as saying they "could never play enough games to ever make a significant difference." That's just empirically false.

You also ignored the bit where I specifically said that a full-time playtesting staff wasn't my suggestion. Personally, I think it'd be better to just pay the people they have playtesting now, in return for upping the expectations and making it into an actual professional program where they track data professionally and analyze it meaningfully instead of just giving out books to people with youtube channels in tacit return for hyping the game. I know for a fact that several of the most famous and successful 40k players around have turned down the "opportunity" to playtest precisely because they disagree with giving their labor unpaid in order to pad GW's profits.

If you don't pay people, you can't expect professional results. The GW playtesting program as currently constituted isn't a serious thing, it's mainly just a PR and marketing execise. Don't get me wrong, individual playtesters are mostly giving a good faith effort to do what they're asked, it's just that they aren't being used in a useful way and it is not reasonable to expect that to change without acknowledging that they are providing a service and compensating them for it.

If you don't pay people, you can't expect professional results.

For that matter, paying people to test 40k doesn't even involve putting them on the full-time payroll, it just involves compensating them for their time instead of paying them in "perks" like inside access instead. The perk model encourages playtesters not to rock the boat and not to say anything GW doesn't like because GW is doing them a favor by letting them playtest their product. When you start paying people for the service they provide, you send the message that you actually value what they are doing and expect them to provide you value in return. You don't get professional results from unpaid volunteers, and it's unfair to expect it.

You keep using the word 'professional'. What are you actually trying to get at? (and no that's not an attack etc, I am actually struggling with your choice of wording)

A professional is by definition someone paid, but it has no real bearing on quality. Amateurs are by definition unpaid, but can be and indeed often are superior to professionals. As (a maybe rather gross) generalisation Professionals do it for the money, Amateurs do it for the love. (I'm ignoring the idea of 'professional' in the highly educated sense as that seems way out of left field for playtesting 40k, and you do seem focused on pay)

In the context of playtesting toy soldiers I'd argue you have it backwards. The people who playtest something like 40k for free are effectively self selecting to those who are really dedicated and steeped in the game, you probably can expect a significant portion of them to provide high quality feedback. If you went professional you are getting people who are in it for the money with no real filter on those who will do it well, or do no more than the absolute barest minimum to meet some contract.

Money is simply a convenient proxy for value. From a value point of view perks may actually be far more valuable to playtesters than mere money and hence compensation. E.g. I'd playtest for 40k, and whilst I'd accept money I'd rather have certain perks which money can't readily buy, some perks may have no value to me and other certainly would. The idea that perks encourages a 'company line' and money doesn't is bizarre - in both cases the person playtesting stands to lose out on the 'value' they do it for if they 'lose the job'. Indeed to think that is the case you are in essence accepting that perks are far more valuable than money in order to have that hold on the tester that money wouldn't. When you give perks not readily available for money you also give a signal you value what that person is doing, indeed one could argue more - you have something that others can't and rarity is often value.

Seems GW is doing, or maybe even did it before, the gaming industry. they often don't test their games, or test them get feed back and ignore it anyway, because the assumption is that maybe the game is going to be fixed after people pre order or buy it.

GW is the same 8th seems to be just a phase to get to 9th, and I have a feeling that 7th, 6th etc were the same. They are always working on the next rules and next edition. I mean mid edition they are starting to work on testing rules for next edition, they don't have the time or men power to test and check stuff. I think they assume that if something really bad happens, they will let it stay for anywhere between few weeks to 9 months, and then change it.

I don't think anyone who played any game or sports doesn't imagine how bad two back to back activation phases are. Specialy in a IGUG game. Yet GW let Inari be a thing for years. They only react fast if there is a chance that something they missed may endager the sells they have at the moment. If other marines may not be buying a new codex and models because IH are "too strong", then GW reacts fast. Castellans making other vehicles, which don't fly, worthless is on the other hand okey for almost a year.

When you use unpaid labor, you can't put the same conditions on it you can with paid labor. The way the playtesting program is set up right now is the perfect example of this. They select people not based on their ability to playtest according to a structured, uniform method, but their willingness to donate their time for free in order to pad GW's profits, or, as is increasingly common these days, their willingness to trade their labor for access that will help them with their social media business. The people involved definitely mostly do their best, but they're limited by the amateurish way the program is set up.

GW doesn't do what's necessary to get good, valuable feedback, because doing so would transform playtesting into a job, and people wouldn't want to do it for free any more. It's a lot less fun to play a game where you're logging every interaction for the database, and where you're given strict parameters about what to test with what, in what conditions. So they're stuck giving out books to youtubers, having them play random games based on the stuff they happen to have access to, and then having them fill out basic feedback forms, sometimes even after the thing in question has gone to print, with everyone involved knowing perfectly well that the playtesters involved are placed in the weird position of being unpaid volunteers working completely on sufferance.

Volunteers are great for some things, but they're absolutely not good for running structured, rigorous testing.

Using your logic that volunteers are likely to produce better material than professionals, GW should probably fire its rules development staff instead and have volunteers do it, shouldn't they? Because right now they're just in it for the money.

yukishiro1 wrote:
20 playtesters playing a game a day is 300 games a month. That's a very significant sample size to draw conclusions from, especially if you had a professional playtesting approach where all the data from every match is getting fed into a database, instead of just asking random people to play a few games and say what they thought.

20 playtesters playing a game a day would be about 210 games a day. You only get 1 game per two playtesters since they need an opponent. And they only work 5 days a week, which averages to 21 days a month with variance due to the exact placement of weekends and holidays. And that is before you factor in vacations

Not that you need to play full games to playtests most rules. Serious tournament players often play partial games to gather much of the information they need. Sorta like how chess players often setup end game scenarios to refine their skills. So they could get a lot of information from dedicated playtesters.

That being said, why do that when you can outsource the labor for free. They just need to do a good job of directing those players, gather data, and utilizing that data. Hopefully, they have learned something from the whole Space Marine debacle.

I assume you meant 210 games a month, but that's fine, we can use those numbers instead if you prefer (full-time playtesters could also obviously play more than one game per day, if they were actually full-time). 210 games a month is a hugely significant number, just like 300 is. The point was just to illustrate that even a single game played per day per two playtesters adds up to a very significant number per month.

The reason they shouldn't outsource the labor for free is (1) that it's wrong and (2) that it produces bad or at least mediocre results, as we've seen. GW obviously doesn't give a fig about the first except in their PR marketing, but they should care about the second. As I said, I know for a fact some players that do have the rigorous approach required to playtest systematically have turned them down precisely because they don't believe in working for free to pad GW's profits. If you rely on unpaid labor, by definition you're relying on people who don't value their own labor.

Now maybe GW can't run a good playtesting program period because it can't get it together to do so, whether people are paid or not. But it certainly isn't going to be able to do so as long as it doesn't consider the work playtesters do serious enough to deserve payment.

Well things like open source software exists written by those who volunteer time and I think there are a couple of community based games (wasn't there an old WFB done via some community after AOS).

However, play testing does not need play testers to collaborate; each group of play testers just needs to play/test what they've been asked to and report back.

Game designers do need to collaborate a lot more and agree to a shared long term vision probably for many years over multi versions, which adds a degree of structure/control as you put it that playtesters do not need. Play testing needs structure and control, but that has to come from the company/person in charge of that and not the testers for the most part. It isn't necessary for the testers to share some group vision etc, they just need to test the rules for ambiguity/balance etc.

It is that collaboration and group goal/shared focus that is the weakness of community based stuff; a group of highly talented and motivated individuals can achieve nothing as a group due to disagreement. Anecdote, but I was briefly involved in an open source computer game years ago, it was quickly obvious that most of the time was spent debating how thing should work and rewriting code etc. The game was a few years old when I got involved and was clearly never going to be completed (it wasn't).

That is not an issue for play testing. As I noted earlier, I've play tested mini games before and there are plenty of debates and arguments about the rules and balance and intent etc etc - but it doesn't matter so long as each tester reports back their data and opinions to the person/designer/company who will actually make the decisions.

PS In the sense you talk of you can put exactly the same conditions on testers even if paid for through 'perks'. Money is not needed to form a contract which stipulates said conditions, only consideration is needed and that can be pretty nominal so long as something is offered in return. The tester is no more working under sufferance than the paid person then - they are working under a contract. Whether you'd want to do that is another matter.

Equally if the program is amateurish then that has nothing to do with the testers - and applies no matter whether they pay people or not.

Tyel wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
Reading this nonsense has brought me to a basic conclusion.
Too many of you think that GW is in the business of making you happy. When in fact they are in the business of making money.
They care not for tears of sorrow or joy.

They do want to keep me (and the broad playerbase) happy so I keep buying their stuff. Which they've broadly managed.

I used to think a dedicated team of playtesters would help, but realistically 20 odd people wouldn't get many games done, and they would have varied views on what is and what isn't balanced (never mind more axiomatic questions of "how should the game play").

Much like every forum discussing 40k ever.

Eh 20 people would do plenty if their opinions was listened rather than ignored.

40k balance issues aren't subtle or hard to spot. Put in semi active player(99.9% posters here　sufficient level) read through codex and he will spot pretty much all glaring　issues.

It's not it would be hard to make more balanced 40k. It's gw doesn"t want to do so that's issue.

The truth is that GW doesn't set out to create an unbalanced game, but it also doesn't really set out to create a balanced game either. It's agnostic on game balance. It's just not a big priority one way or the other. If the game happens to be balanced in a given moment that's fine; if it isn't, that's fine too, unless the balance is so egregiously bad that it causes people to stop playing.

The fact that they don't pay playtesters is a symptom and sign of this. A company that did care deeply about game balance would have paid playtesters (along with a bunch of other things - not suggesting paid playtesters is the be all end all or most important thing they'd change if they cared more about balance).

The reason they shouldn't outsource the labor for free is (1) that it's wrong

No it's not.

That's fine if you think that. We can disagree. It's not a discussion that's going to lead anywhere useful, so let's not start.

As I've said I've playtested for free before for a game I enjoyed and I could see myself doing it again, there is nothing wrong in that - it is for me to decide and volunteer. As people like me exist there is nothing wrong with GW asking. I'm stumped as to why anyone would think it is wrong. We aren't talking about some crappy company exploiting poverty stricken children for less than minimum wage in dangerous conditions or something (that I'm aware of anyway ).

I don't mind you telling me I may not or have done a good job, or questioning whether there are better methods, but questioning the morality of it!?

See, that's what I meant: this discussion is not going to lead anywhere useful. Discussing the morality of for-profit corporations utilizing free labor is not something that's ever going to be useful here. I probably shouldn't have brought it up, I should have known it would produce that sort of reaction. It's not really important to the point anyway, which is that GW doesn't think playtesting is worth paying money for.

Hi. Did playtesting for years at FFG.

The only payment we received was store credit to buy the book when it came out. Didn't really bother us.

We liked getting to see stuff early and help shape products into something better.

Yeah, and that's fine, and it makes sense for companies without the resources to employ professionals. And I'm not necessarily saying having a wider, unpaid playtesting group is a terrible thing either, for that matter. I think it can be part of a good playtesting program. But it's not the same as a program that pays people for their labor, and in return expects a more rigorous approach. The fact that GW doesn't think running a more rigorous playtesting program is a good use of money is telling re: how much they value balance.

...you're trying to claim, with a straight face, that Fantasy Flight Games didn't have the resources to hire playtesters, but GW does?

OK, now I know this tangent is extracting the urine.

 Dysartes wrote:
...you're trying to claim, with a straight face, that Fantasy Flight Games didn't have the resources to hire playtesters, but GW does?

OK, now I know this tangent is extracting the urine.

Ermm, well, FFG is only like 1/10 the size of GW isn't it? They don't operate B&M so there's less overhead, but last I knew they were struggling.

I didn't say anything about FFG specifically. I have no idea what their circumstances were like when HBMC was playtesting for them. I don't see what it has to do with the point here, every single person in this thread surely agrees that GW could afford to pay playtesters if it wanted to.