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Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Lately I've been involved in discussions about how to address bad players in games. There are, for some reason, a large market segment of players whose enthusiasm for games is only matched by their ineptitude.

I'm not sure what it is about a game that makes me (a) want to learn it, and (b) keep playing it after being taken to the woodshed. Running demo-games is an art to itself, quite aside from this persistence in the face of being unlikely to win. People also tend to enjoy close games more. They don't seem to enjoy getting smacked in the face because they weren't paying attention, and didn't care enough to read the rules or pay attention during the introduction script.

From a commercial standpoint, "learn to play" is never a good answer to why your game doesn't work as advertised. How would you solve the problem of a bad player complaining about how your game allows them to make a bad move?

   
Made in ca
Junior Officer with Laspistol





London, Ontario

Board game, card game, computer game, mind game, game bird, bird brain, brain ball, ball game...

What kind of game are you working on? As a hunch, you might not be explaining the rules very clearly.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/08/30 03:56:32


 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






You can't solve the problem, except by telling the bad player to STFU and stop being a about it. A game can't remove the ability to make a bad move without ceasing to be a game, as long as there are meaningful choices to be made by the players it will be possible for them to make bad choices. This is especially true when you're talking about players who are bad because they don't bother to know the rules of the game they're "playing". The best thing you can do is encourage these people to go elsewhere before the frustration of dealing with them ruins the experience for everyone else.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





 greatbigtree wrote:
Board game, card game, computer game, mind game, game bird, bird brain, brain ball, ball game...

What kind of game are you working on? As a hunch, you might not be explaining the rules very clearly.

There is the notion that the game hasn't been explained correctly if players are making bad moves. "Explained correctly" means a lot of things though. Take Warhammer 40,000, for example. It's a pretty punishing game, and winning can be pretty abstracted from the moving and shooting that players actually do. I've noticed, particularly in tournaments (maybe because I'm concentrating on the winning conditions), that players will forget about winning the game and just try to destroy the opposing army. So maybe the rules can be explained, but there's too many steps in the game between players doing something and players scoring points.
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Well, I think you have started to answer your own question.

The relationship between what behaviors lead to victory and what activities you can complete must be clear and easy to see. If they are too subtle and nuanced a player may not realize what activities lead to victory.

For example, Candyland has very clear victory to behavior conditions. First to the end of the board wins. The more squares you can move at a time the faster you get to the end. Therefore, draw cards with colors that are the furthest away from your current position.

Now, some people will call such a game stupid and boring because what you need to do to "solve" the game is too obvious. This maybe true, but if the behaviors of victory are unclear, then the player will not know how to win accept by trial and error, which can also be boring and stupid.

The trick is making it so multiple behaviors can clearly allow you to win, the trick is would be for Players to know when to use which behaviors.

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Made in us
Infiltrating Prowler





Portland, OR

It can be complicated. Bad players in board games differ than bad players in miniatures games which also differs from bad players in TCGs. Bad players ultimately suffer from making poor decisions, usually because they were not taught properly.

For TCG Players new players suffer from not understanding how metagame works. They don't know how to properly identify a good card vs a bad card. Using draft as an example, they tend to focus on a cards "powers" instead of the value of the card. In TCG is a card costs 2, health 2, attack 2 then we'd consider that worth the 2 points or a decent base card. If it costs 2, health 1, attack 2 but has a cool ability, it is -1 so worth 1 point because situational and 1/1 kills it. If it costs 2, health 3, attack 1 it could be considered +1 and equivalent to a 3 point card. There is more to it than that but that is the basics.

From a 'newer player' point of view, they want to use a cards ability, use its power because they are cool. Why make a cool card that is unusable... that logic is hard to understand but unfortunately the way it is. No one really teaches though proper teaching because in a competitive environment the saying is, "learn to play". In competitive environment players tend to keep insider information on tactics for an edge, looking for how to abuse a card (until it gets errata) or a play.

From a board game, some things are more intuitive than others. I find that the falls of the rules not making things easily understandable. Board games can adjust for bad players the easiest and often do. They tend to do it in a means where a bad decision can be harmful, but not game ending... unlike a competitive game where one wrong move means you lost the whole game period.

In miniatures games, there is some of that competitiveness similar to TCG but not as cutthroat. It also has a bit of bloat, there are things that are cool but aren't useful for most matches. It depends on what other players play, rocks, paper, scissors. Objectives are introduced in a means to make bad decisions less harmful as dying doesn't necessarily translate to losing.

TLDR: In order to improve playability for bad players, there needs to be a better way for them to learn and to teach them. It shouldn't be expected for players to go forward and search the internet to learn. Although that is a good start, everyone learns different ways and there are way too many nuances that are affected by players local playgroups for people to learn why a decision is bad. Often they are told "this is a mistake or don't do this" but not the why it is a bad decision.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

 Nurglitch wrote:
There is the notion that the game hasn't been explained correctly if players are making bad moves. "Explained correctly" means a lot of things though.


If players are making incorrect, illegal moves, then the rules are unclear.

If players are making sub-optimal, inefficient moves, then the objectives, strategy and/or tactics are unclear.

Both can be explained and clarified to improve the level of play. Rules can nearly always be streamlined to reduce the number of possible errors and mistakes. Objectives can be called out clearly and succinctly to keep the player focused, while limiting to meaningful actions and options with clear results will generally help tactics and strategy development.

If players are not happy with the results of poor play, then you can always take a page from GW's playbook, and add more random elements to reduce the effect of skill and experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Dark Severance wrote:
For TCG Players new players suffer from not understanding how metagame works. They don't know how to properly identify a good card vs a bad card.

From a 'newer player' point of view, they want to use a cards ability, use its power because they are cool. Why make a cool card that is unusable...


Stasis is a VERY cool card, with an exceedingly strong power, but it's almost unusable outside a very specific build, where the bulk of the cards are built around it...

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/08/30 22:47:53


   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Something I noticed about Into the Breach (and FTL: Faster Than Light), to borrow from videogames, is that while they're pretty punishing they're also fast. I suppose it helps combat applications of the sunk-cost fallacy.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






If you want to reduce the impact of poor decisions, you need to increase the speed of play and reduce the impact of each decision.

Having a bad turn in a game like 40k, where there are only 7 turns, can be crippling. Having a bad turn in a game such as roborally, for example, can be generally be recovered from because the game lasts so many turns.

The aim is to let people learn from their mistakes in time to have a chance, rather than having to learn from them for the next game. Try to avoid making a game where you can put yourself on the path to losing without hope of recovery too early. it'll turn the rest of the game into a drag for the player who can't climb back up.

example: change "you walked into an ambush, so you died" into "you walked into an ambush, you dart behind cover, how will you get out of this?". you still made the mistake, and can learn for next game, but it hasn't ended your chances. just hurt them a bit.

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Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

There are, as identified, two key areas to this.

The mechanics of the game and the tactics/strategy/choices in the game.


The first one, mechanics, is easy to fix. You make sure the rules are clear; you make sure that they are concise and you make sure that you use sensible language that remains fixed through the entirety of the rules. You basically rules-lawyer the rules whilst also making them accessible to read.
You might also show examples during the rules to show how some specific combinations of rules add up in a different situations; this is so that you can show people hwo common situations are supposed to be resolved in the game itself and can help some identify with the rules more so than just giving them the bare bones details of the rules themselves.


The latter part you can encourage but cannot fix. You can release guides, videos, training aids, you can start local game support groups (eg Privateer Press had their Pressgangers whilst GW has their own paid staff and local stores). You can do all that to encourage people to learn better play; but you can't force them.

Some people never will "get gud" because they don't take it seriously enough; they don't get enough practice; they don't experiment; they don't even pay full attention during the game etc... For them the playing experience might be more hte social side than the actual competitive and mechanic side of the game.



And there is nothing wrong with that approach; the only time its an issue is really when you've small player pools and a big divide in skill levels within the player pool where you often end up with the good and bad playing each other too often.




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Regular Dakkanaut





Besides the movement and distance aspect, 40k turns actually play a lot like TCG turns, except it's like a TCG that requires a huge amount of time and space to get started, where each player's turn is some kind of grueling, 30-minute-to-1-hour long cheesy combo where you're sitting there watching as your army gets brutalized. It's always painful to get wrecked in any 1v1 multiplayer game but 40k takes it to a whole new level because the game requires so much investment and because the turns are so long. 40k is one of the few games I've played where it seems really common for games to end right after T1 due to how crippling a bad matchup or severe misplay can be.

As a result, being bad in 40k is substantially more off-putting for new players than being bad in a game like MtG where the rounds are relatively short and the setup time is basically non-existent.

The only way to really address this is to start with smaller games that require less time/energy investment. Unless they're already pretty committed to "git gud", destroying a new player over and over again isn't a great way to teach them the game.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/09/03 15:43:50


 
   
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Posts with Authority





 Nurglitch wrote:
From a commercial standpoint, "learn to play" is never a good answer to why your game doesn't work as advertised. How would you solve the problem of a bad player complaining about how your game allows them to make a bad move?


The thing I'm working with right now is a Co-op game, and players have to work together to formulate their team's actions during a 'tactical phase' of play. This is a point where everyone comes together to decide who they're targeting and what they're going to do (the team is supposed to be highly-trained operatives that know what one another will do in a tactical situation, and their actual 'turn' is a simultaneous event).

To make 'bad players' go from suck to skilled, well- that takes time. Learning the game. That's why one of the main things is "Your guy will probably 'die', but that doesn't mean 'game over' for that character". If someone just doesn't get it, well... sadly, the product isn't for them. And there are games I'm terrible at myself, I can't expect them to incentivize me to keep playing if all I do is lose.

Mob Rule is not a rule. 
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

 Overread wrote:
You basically rules-lawyer the rules whilst also making them accessible to read.


Quite a bit easier said than done, a fair bit harder than it sounds...

If only every game had airtight rules that were easy to understand!

   
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Norn Queen






 JohnHwangDD wrote:
 Overread wrote:
You basically rules-lawyer the rules whilst also making them accessible to read.


Quite a bit easier said than done, a fair bit harder than it sounds...

If only every game had airtight rules that were easy to understand!


The VAST majority do. In my experience it's primarily GW as a company that regularly fails t have clear functional rules. Sure, some other companies have occasional slip ups. But only GW has built a brand out of it.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

 Lance845 wrote:
 JohnHwangDD wrote:
 Overread wrote:
You basically rules-lawyer the rules whilst also making them accessible to read.


Quite a bit easier said than done, a fair bit harder than it sounds...

If only every game had airtight rules that were easy to understand!


The VAST majority do. In my experience it's primarily GW as a company that regularly fails t have clear functional rules. Sure, some other companies have occasional slip ups. But only GW has built a brand out of it.


Actually, no. The vast majority of games aren't played nearly as much as GW, and don't have nearly the contingent of TFGs. or, at least, didn't until Warmahordes came to take them away, ha ha! But now that Warmahordes is dead, they're crawling back.

   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





I'm actually kind of interested how GW has done that. It's kind of amazing. Everything else being equal it's probably worth trying to understand how they're so successful doing something that seems, on the face of it, 'wrong.'

I suppose Warmahordes is dead, since everything else wasn't equal (there's a thread on it in Dakka Discussions if anyone doesn't know the consensus on that), but stuff like Infinity is alive and growing in my area. I think it's in part because the game is explicitly designed to have the players co-operate as well as compete. From what I've seen it really makes the social contract for play explicit. That said I haven't played it, or really taken a read of the rules for it.
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






 JohnHwangDD wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
 JohnHwangDD wrote:
 Overread wrote:
You basically rules-lawyer the rules whilst also making them accessible to read.


Quite a bit easier said than done, a fair bit harder than it sounds...

If only every game had airtight rules that were easy to understand!


The VAST majority do. In my experience it's primarily GW as a company that regularly fails t have clear functional rules. Sure, some other companies have occasional slip ups. But only GW has built a brand out of it.


Actually, no. The vast majority of games aren't played nearly as much as GW, and don't have nearly the contingent of TFGs. or, at least, didn't until Warmahordes came to take them away, ha ha! But now that Warmahordes is dead, they're crawling back.


No. I wasn't saying miniature war games. I was saying games. As in all of them. The vast majority are played by a much larger portion of the game playing community (miniature war games is still a relatively small niche) with tighter rules and being easy to read. GW is the exception in that they have lots of poorly written rules that have lots of logical errors and often just don't actually work.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

Except, that isn't true at all. GW's rules are no worse than any other ruleset of comparable complexity.

   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I think there are two aspects to consider

1) The rules themselves

2) The wording and layout of the rules.

GW rules are not the issue so often as it is the way they are written and the way they are laid out in the books. Furthermore the current lack of an index further hides things. AoS has several rules that are dotted around in semi-random places where you can easily miss them.

An example is Endless Spells in Matched Play. If you look at the big Endless spell page in the main rules or in the Malign Sorcery book then that page suggests that you may cast an Endless spell (that you've paid points for) as many times as you want so long as you've a model for it to put on the table.

However in the Army building section of Matched Play (many pages away) there is a short paragraph which outlines that in Matched Play you may only use 1 of any Endless spell that you've paid for at a time.



It is lots of little things like this that make GW rules harder because the information is not where you expect it to be and there are no leaders or notations to guide to you further key bits of information. This has often been the issue.

Another issue (which they have improved on significantly with the new editions of both 40K and AoS) was how they'd roll out codex haphazardly after a new rules edition; which would result in players using old rules (sometimes two editions old) with new core rules which sometimes would result in odd situations of things not working as they should.

The third issue is often when two codex rules change a core rule and happen at the same time; it can be unclear (at times) which rule is suppose to be superior to the other.



Again the core rules of 40K games are not vastly complex, its always been their layout and writing and structure that has often resulted in unneeded confusion.

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Norn Queen






 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Except, that isn't true at all. GW's rules are no worse than any other ruleset of comparable complexity.


Yeah? Find me another games whos shooting rules just don't work as written. Find me another game with 8 pages of core rules and another 10 in FaQs and errata to make them functional. Find me another game that requires, for clarity of the players, other 30 pages of faq and errata in addition to 3 army books and 1 core book in order to play a single faction.

By comparison, dungeons and dragons PHB has over 300 pages of rules and no FAQ errata and just works while allowing the player significantly more freedom of action within the game. That 1 300 page book is all that required (along with paper and pencils and dice) to have a group of any size play the game.

Or hey, Beyond the Gates of Antares where the rules are written clearly and concisely and don't require a small novela of faqs and errata to play.


If it's not true, provide me some more examples.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/09/05 12:42:23



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

In fairness DnD works a lot of the time because its filtered through a DM. If the rule doesn't work or the DM/players can't find the right reference then the DM fixes it for the game. They don't even have to use all the rules and can pick and choose what fits them and their player team.

40K rules are supposed to run without a DM and to be unfiltered; even though in practice they have to be.


Honestly the stripping down to only 8 pages or so I find has simplified things but also leaves issues. There are oddities - eg right now in AoS its possible to shoot through walls so long as you can see a bit of one model from around the edge of the wall. There is some mention that you should check the terrains warscroll to repair this issue but that assumes the terrain you've got has a warscroll and still doesn't fix the underlaying gap in the games mechanics.


I think AoS gets a bit of leeway as people think/hope that the stripdown will slowly be built back up again.

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Regular Dakkanaut





What's an example of a "competitive"-ish game comparable in scope/complexity to 40k that has really airtight rules?
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Computer games? We could throw those into such a comparison as the rules in those have to work otherwise the game crashes/breaks/glitches.


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Regular Dakkanaut





Apples and oranges.

The big limiting factor with designing something like 40k is testing your design at scale. Computer games (especially the big, complex ones) don't suffer from this problem. With 40k you can't really effectively run simulations, closed alpha, public betas at scale in short time frames. Not only that but collecting good data from things like the Matched Play beta rules is a much slower and arduous process compared to collecting data from a video game. Outside of the VERY limited handful of highly controlled internal test scenarios you have, the data you collect from public sources and things like tournaments is subject to a lot more variables and potential bias. Unlike digital games, tabletop games aren't very good at keeping a thorough/organized record of player input.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/09/05 13:06:14


 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

True but GW has had 30+ years of running their games and whilst their rules have changed every so often they still run on very similar fundamental components.

I agree that a game can collect far more data and organise it far quicker than a tabletop game can; but over 30 years GW has had the potential to harvest vast bodies of data and should be able to produce a testing system for their rules that at least looks at basic situations and functionality in different ways.

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Regular Dakkanaut





That's why I'm asking if there is another tabletop company that does it better.

Because you can't just say "well video games are more complicated and have less bugs" when the dev tools associated with them are clearly far more powerful and efficient.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I was under the impression that Warmachine/Hordes managed it quite well - at least the MK2 rules stuck around for a long while and whilst they had some oddities (eg it was better to declare a failed charge than it was to run) the rules "worked" for the most part at a functional level. The greater issue there was more adjusting balance of models around the rules rather than addressing the core rules themselves.

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 Overread wrote:
In fairness DnD works a lot of the time because its filtered through a DM. If the rule doesn't work or the DM/players can't find the right reference then the DM fixes it for the game. They don't even have to use all the rules and can pick and choose what fits them and their player team.

40K rules are supposed to run without a DM and to be unfiltered; even though in practice they have to be.


To be even more fair, the rules don't NEED to be filtered through the DM. Players DO make their own house rules to suit their own style in the same way that the players do for 40k. But just because a game can and does have house rules it doesn't mean anything about the product as sold to the customer. The DnD PHB just works. GWs products don't.


Honestly the stripping down to only 8 pages or so I find has simplified things but also leaves issues. There are oddities - eg right now in AoS its possible to shoot through walls so long as you can see a bit of one model from around the edge of the wall. There is some mention that you should check the terrains warscroll to repair this issue but that assumes the terrain you've got has a warscroll and still doesn't fix the underlaying gap in the games mechanics.


I think AoS gets a bit of leeway as people think/hope that the stripdown will slowly be built back up again.


Those are the LEAST troublesome issues with GWs products. Rules wonkyness is odd and whatever but the real issue is when the logical errors crop up that leave the players with nothing but house rules to keep on playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
barboggo wrote:
Apples and oranges.

The big limiting factor with designing something like 40k is testing your design at scale. Computer games (especially the big, complex ones) don't suffer from this problem. With 40k you can't really effectively run simulations, closed alpha, public betas at scale in short time frames. Not only that but collecting good data from things like the Matched Play beta rules is a much slower and arduous process compared to collecting data from a video game. Outside of the VERY limited handful of highly controlled internal test scenarios you have, the data you collect from public sources and things like tournaments is subject to a lot more variables and potential bias. Unlike digital games, tabletop games aren't very good at keeping a thorough/organized record of player input.


What?

Computer game companies hire a small army of game testers who play the game none stop over years hunting for bugs and fixing them. GW maybe had a couple dozen guys doing it for maybe 6 months without it being their 9-5 job.

GW COULD run extensive play testing and have editors and actual game rules writers working on their products to ensure quality control. They just don't. This isn't a question of limitations of one medium to the other. It's just what GW is willing to do to make a product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
barboggo wrote:
That's why I'm asking if there is another tabletop company that does it better.

Because you can't just say "well video games are more complicated and have less bugs" when the dev tools associated with them are clearly far more powerful and efficient.


The dev tools are NOT more powerful and effecient. It's far easier to change a few words around in a word doc then it is to hunt down lines of code and rewrite everything in the string of codes that it might be referencing and might be referencing it.

The more abstract the game the easier it is and less expensive, to make sweeping changes.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/09/05 13:32:45



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





 Lance845 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
barboggo wrote:
Apples and oranges.

The big limiting factor with designing something like 40k is testing your design at scale. Computer games (especially the big, complex ones) don't suffer from this problem. With 40k you can't really effectively run simulations, closed alpha, public betas at scale in short time frames. Not only that but collecting good data from things like the Matched Play beta rules is a much slower and arduous process compared to collecting data from a video game. Outside of the VERY limited handful of highly controlled internal test scenarios you have, the data you collect from public sources and things like tournaments is subject to a lot more variables and potential bias. Unlike digital games, tabletop games aren't very good at keeping a thorough/organized record of player input.


What?

Computer game companies hire a small army of game testers who play the game none stop over years hunting for bugs and fixing them. GW maybe had a couple dozen guys doing it for maybe 6 months without it being their 9-5 job.

GW COULD run extensive play testing and have editors and actual game rules writers working on their products to ensure quality control. They just don't. This isn't a question of limitations of one medium to the other. It's just what GW is willing to do to make a product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
barboggo wrote:
That's why I'm asking if there is another tabletop company that does it better.

Because you can't just say "well video games are more complicated and have less bugs" when the dev tools associated with them are clearly far more powerful and efficient.


The dev tools are NOT more powerful and effecient. It's far easier to change a few words around in a word doc then it is to hunt down lines of code and rewrite everything in the string of codes that it might be referencing and might be referencing it.

The more abstract the game the easier it is and less expensive, to make sweeping changes.


Obviously it's perfectly simple and straightforward to change words in a word doc and spend money to hire testers to play your game and provide you with detailed feedback. The difference is the quality of feedback you get when doing those things digitally vs non-digitally is not even close to being comparable.

With a video game, you can literally change some code, hit compile, and within a few seconds know if your code is broken or not. You can run a public beta over a weekend and collect the precise input and player experience data of thousands or tens of thousands of users in just a few days, with all of the relevant information organized and compartmentalized for your needs.

With tabletop games that's simply not possible. When you change the specific phrasing in a core rule, you literally have to manually cross check it against every other rule in every other possible scenario that it could possibly relate to. Do you understand how having a script do this or having thousands of beta testers do this over a weekend is easier than doing it manually? That digital feedback is a lot more reliable, sortable, and easy to interpret than things like written testimonials?

It doesn't matter how many people GW hires for their internal QA team, it will never be as robust or thorough as a single day of public beta testing for an online video game. Testing a complex tabletop game system at scale is never going to be as efficient or effective as is the norm for PC games. The two are not even remotely comparable.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/09/05 14:24:30


 
   
Made in ca
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Maybe it's because I work in banking software rather than gaming software, but I think you're underselling the amount of QA involved in software development. From a tabletop game standpoint it's an incredibly demanding and expensive thing, but it's easier in the sense that players can fix things on the fly by being sensible rather than executing errors in code. One of the best games I've seen for that was Pulp Alley where the designer/developer developed it in tandem with his teenaged daughter's RPG group, so it's pretty munchkin-proof as well as being a damn good game.

With my technical writing hat on, people read manuals when they're frustrated and annoyed because your product isn't intuitive-enough to figure out. But in gaming people read rulebooks to figure out how to play the game in the first place, and for fun(!). I think you need a hook or unified mechanic or something to get players into the rhythm of the game; that's where stuff with cards has an advantage because then you don't have to rely on players trying to remember things as well as cogitate strategies and stuff.
   
 
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