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Does anyone know how long after GW finalize a codex before it goes to printing? Are they play testing right up to the point it is sent to the printers? Or do they sit on a finalized codex for a time waiting for a good release date?

Also does anyone know how long they tend to play test a codex? Days? Weeks? Months?

It probably goes to printing the day they started the rough draft

As for playtest they probably finish printing the book and then playtest for WD

But all honestly I don't think anybody but the people working inside GW for those departments might even know...

There's something about it on Beasts of War, some of the playtesters pop up in the forums. Ask your question over there.

They are been tested and tested a long time before you have it in your hands

GW doesn't playtest.

I don't know how long they play test for but I did see them do it once at warhammer world.

One guy was using the new marines against chaos, they seemed to get quite offended when I told them that the codex was pretty much the same and still sucked lol

 Peregrine wrote:
GW doesn't playtest.

At least you aren't becoming predictable Peregrine....

brother marcus wrote:
I don't know how long they play test for but I did see them do it once at warhammer world.

One guy was using the new marines against chaos, they seemed to get quite offended when I told them that the codex was pretty much the same and still sucked lol

Did you tell that to the CSM player or the SM player.

Eldercaveman wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
GW doesn't playtest.

At least you aren't becoming predictable Peregrine....

Sorry, is this one of those threads where we're supposed to pretend, against all evidence, that GW does any kind of competent playtesting?

brother marcus wrote:
I don't know how long they play test for but I did see them do it once at warhammer world.

One guy was using the new marines against chaos, they seemed to get quite offended when I told them that the codex was pretty much the same and still sucked lol

That's not playtesting, that's just playing a random game in their free time.

The guy with the new marines and I doubt it was a random game when it was 3 months before the marine release and the codex was printed out on a4 paper.

I think they do play-test however obviously not nearly enough to get even fairly obvious bugs out of codexes.

Given GW's obsession with secrecy, they can't send out "beta" rules to a wide group of testers so they must rely on their own staff playing as many games as possible.

When you consider the huge complexity of changing one out of 15 codexes, with all the possible rules interactions, the human foibles of the players and the difficulty of analysing games, it isn't surprising that the results are poor.

What they ought to do is take a computer game like Dawn of War and strip out all the graphics so it runs just as mathematical code, and reprogram it as a UGOIGO system.

You then attach a module that sets up games and a module that analyses the results. The results module can also be designed to feed back into the set-up module, which would allow the system to make changes automatically to factors like the cost of units.

The objective is for the system to run millions of games on each codex pair, modifying the codex factors until any particular codex match-up gives a 50/50 result. This would mean the pair of codexes is now balanced, and the skill of players (plus luck) would be the determining factor in real life games.

This system would also allow designers to plug new units into the game and test the results very quickly.

Killkrazy, do you have any idea how much work that would be?

You can't just 'strip out' Dawn of War. DoW's game mechanics bear absolutely no resemblance to 40k's game mechanics!

You're looking at years worth of work just to get a working beta of such a computer program. Much, much more effective to just get your developers and some random CSAs to play games and report back problems.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Killkrazy, do you have any idea how much work that would be?

You can't just 'strip out' Dawn of War. DoW's game mechanics bear absolutely no resemblance to 40k's game mechanics!

You're looking at years worth of work just to get a working beta of such a computer program. Much, much more effective to just get your developers and some random CSAs to play games and report back problems.

Lol - I mis-read that - For a second I thought it said 'report back problems' so aches, pains etc...

It does looks like the play with some strange house rules and stuff that doesn't happen outside of their test games. And from time to time there is stuff like Kelly writing his own codex for his own army , missing the good old days of Falcons taking 60 lascanons hots per turn and ending up stuned and makes stuff like the serpent shield . You know for old times sake , the eldar players had to wait so long for a good dex. .

There are some things in the recent Tau codex that appear to have changed between when the flavor text was written and the rules were finalized (ie the Razorshark should have Vector Dancer from the sounds of it, the Cadre Fireblade should have a Target Lock instead of Split Fire but for a while in the FAQ Target Locks gave Split Fire).

How thorough it is is debatable, but honestly there is no real way for them to predict the broken combinations that seem obvious to the Evil Geniuses of the Internet.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Killkrazy, do you have any idea how much work that would be?

You can't just 'strip out' Dawn of War. DoW's game mechanics bear absolutely no resemblance to 40k's game mechanics!

You're looking at years worth of work just to get a working beta of such a computer program. Much, much more effective to just get your developers and some random CSAs to play games and report back problems.

Since I am a video game producer I do have an idea. DoW has a database, a state machine, and a set of behaviour drives which likely can be used in my system. None of the graphics engine is needed.

I don't have any specific numbers, however, I can tell you they don't play test as much as I think they should. First of all, they are a company that sells models, that just happen to have rules for a game.

Unlike MTG, who playtests years in advance and has a pretty good size play test group. MTG even has what was once called the "future future league" or something to that effect. WotC plans, developes, play tests and builds a whole block of cards three years ahead of current production, therefore, enabling a great product that has yet to go over crazy like their "black summer".

Im not a big MTG player any more, just, different crowd I wasn't in the mood to be around. I do like 40k, have enough invested into it, and therefore, I keep playing.

Malifaux did do a massive beta test for M2e, and, that was pretty good. Complete with free rules on line.

You know, I think they do playtest. They probably just don't care about the game imbalances.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
You're looking at years worth of work just to get a working beta of such a computer program. Much, much more effective to just get your developers and some random CSAs to play games and report back problems.

Such a system would not take years worth of work to make. Just a committed effort to make it happen, and better testing than GW currently does. I've worked on far more complicated concepts in systems for far more regulated and significant industries than game designing and seen it done in less than a years time. That is for systems that can have impact on human drug interactions which could cause someone's death if they don't work correctly in some instances. A system that pits codecies against each other in a hidden simulation and spits out the results isn't going to be a risk to anyone's life or health and doesn't need to be perfect, just usable and close enough.

The volume of actual game playing needed to truly test a new codex, especially against every existing codex in the system is staggering for a small development staff to even consider performing which is why we get the codecies we get.

Skriker

 Peregrine wrote:
GW doesn't playtest.

this is factually incorrect, to the extent that it makes me think you're flame baiting.

I would guess that the devs test things out as they develop rules. It seems to be an informal process, i'd guess that entire special rules have been created because of a single instance in one of the devs' battles where something cool happened.

Honestly i'd prefer this process to a mechanical grind of playtesting, which would create a bland equality between everything.

Okay, I'll stick for Peregrine here. Given the final products, GW might as well do 0 playtesting. If this is the best they can do, their heads are full of rocks.

You certainly get something that has been tested somewhat.

People who think that there is no testing whatsoever aren't nearly creative enough. You think GW stuff is bad, but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as it could possibly be.

xruslanx wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
GW doesn't playtest.

this is factually incorrect, to the extent that it makes me think you're flame baiting.

I would guess that the devs test things out as they develop rules. It seems to be an informal process, i'd guess that entire special rules have been created because of a single instance in one of the devs' battles where something cool happened.

Honestly i'd prefer this process to a mechanical grind of playtesting, which would create a bland equality between everything.

Yes because starcraft brood war, arguable the most balanced rts and longest running competitive video game, was bland and boring. That is why tens of thousands in korea and hundreds of thousands across the world watched it and went to live television events for it. Making billions of dollars in profits. The game also provided an amazingly high skill cap and yet was fun for the masses to mess around with and not worry about the competitive side. And how was this acheived you may ask? By taking the thousands of games played at the highest level by the most skilled and adjusting things that were too weak or too strong yet still allowing for a skilled player to overcome a disadvantage through good decision making and tactics. (Fanboy rant over )

Now to be fair this is not the same we have 15 races to try and balance. I feel that is far to many and has far to much complexity to truly balance. We are not an rts, we have turns in which a player has no way to counteract the tactics and choices of their opponent. A properly balanced game is not boring or bland it is a better measure of the skill of each player and leads to outside the box thinking (read as: not using op combos that slip through codex writing) and tactics that allows the use of all units within a codex equally. Now will some units see more table time? Of course, it was the same in brood war however each unit in each of the 3 races did have a purpose (however frequent or rare) and could be used with the proper decisions.

Proper and extensive playtesting is a good things for games. Even 40k that does not sell itself as a competitive game could benefit from more playtesting by skilled players. It would lead to a YMDC section that was less argumentative and more explanitory. Rules would make sense and not be put in the game simply to put rules in the game. More of the models would be used adding to vareity and thus more strategy and tactics in games instead of: pick unit A. Why? Because unit B sucks and you will lose if you take it.

Just my two cents on the matter.

xruslanx wrote:

this is factually incorrect, to the extent that it makes me think you're flame baiting.

GW do playtesting, just not very good playtesting.

xruslanx wrote:

I would guess that the devs test things out as they develop rules. It seems to be an informal process, i'd guess that entire special rules have been created because of a single instance in one of the devs' battles where something cool happened.

Honestly i'd prefer this process to a mechanical grind of playtesting, which would create a bland equality between everything.

equality doesnt equal bland. it just makes things equal, and doesnt punish a player because he likes codex x, or build y. And funnily enough, other companies have introduced rules because of something cool, or because of fluff, and integrate things in a well balanced and careful manner.

GWs system of playtesting isnt so much "informal", but rather is something they dont care too much about. it causes the unfortunate effect of creating a whole host of problems. And thats when they actually listen to their playtesters in the first place.

Back in the day, GW did external playtesting. Some of my friends were involved. And yes, i have friends whose names do actually appear in that big beast of a rule book, and in some of the "special thanks" sections at the start of the codices. GW have not done external playtesting since fifth edition (when a playtester, after signing an NDA leaked the damned thing). Since then, theyve been playtesting themselves, as they wanted to to it (the abomination of codex grey knights got something like 2 dozen practice games in from what i heard)

The sad fact was while some the playtesters contributed nothing but white noise (moaning and complaining, and little constructive feedback - typical of the 40k community if you ask me), others were quite professional about it (like i said, the guys i know in the special thanks section) and ran a very tight, very focused ship. It didnt do any good though. Plenty times, they did see problems in the pre released codices (i remember sneakily getting to rifle through the 4th ed eldar and tau codices). And GW quite happily ignored them. I remember back in the day with the fourth edition space marine codex, for example (the assault cannon spam edition) where they quite accurately pointed out the potential for OP asault cannon combos. As the lads related it to me, they reported back to GW "either assault 3 and rending, or assault 4. both is ridiculous". What did GW do? THey ignored them anyway, and did what they wanted, and let a glaring fault emerge into the codex that really unbalanced the space marine armies of that edition to the extent that marines became all about one thing.

that right there is the attitude. GW simply dont care. they do what they want, and ignore what they want, and simply do not really care about the consequences. folks brought up the shield guard issue in PP games (it didnt work, essentially) and after one forum poster put up a very in depth and detailed account of the failings of the mechanism, and how/why it failed, PP jumped on it at the next errata and fixed it with no hassles.

 Ailaros wrote:
You certainly get something that has been tested somewhat.

People who think that there is no testing whatsoever aren't nearly creative enough. You think GW stuff is bad, but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as it could possibly be.

I'll put a dartboard up against GW any day. Because that's where they seem to get their points values from.

I think codex's are well written and each should have those broken units ok not to the point of unstoppable but hey should it Ives every gamer the chance to play competitive with competitive units I think gw are good at what they do

Maybe my expectations are too high after Starcraft, but GW seems to put ZERO thought into the codices.

They do play test as i know 1 person who has done this for GW - not sure if they still do tbh. (just read dreadknights post - guess they dont then)

The issue is not the play testing its more how they then use this to feedback into the rules. Gw are more about the 'feel' of it and if it is 'cool' rather then any imbalance issues it will cause.

That's not play testing, then.

 Peregrine wrote:
GW doesn't playtest.

Then who are these people creditted as play testers on the back of the C: AS book?