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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.


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 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.