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 NurglesR0T wrote:
Reminds me of 4th Ed CSM - when one of the developers was questioned several years later, what the hell they were thinking when they wrote Lash of Submission they replied with "huh... well we hadn't actually thought people would take more than one!" (paraphrasing)

From what I have gathered, this has not changed much since then. GW usually uses the studio armies to test with so they rarely include multiples of units. The surest way to test whether something is overpowered is to spam it to the maximum amount allowable under the system and see what effect it has. This is something GW definitely do not do and it shows in the kind of army lists that have been dominating the top tables over the last 9 months.

GW basically only test their "sunny day" scenario where players only take 1 or 2 of each unit and field what the Devs consider a balanced and fluffy army. They do not conduct anything remotely approaching destructive testing. To be fair, I am not sure they have the resources to do so. Tournaments tend to find these broken units and then FAQs/CA will fix them.

It is not an ideal situation but it is probably about the best we can realistically hope for.

 meleti wrote:
Here's a clear example of GW playtesting: GW added a restriction on Tau Coldstar Commanders, specifically banning them from taking Cyclic Ion Blasters. The kit actually has an Ion Blaster included, so that's not an issue here.

It's pretty clear GW realized at some late stage of the Tau codex that Coldstars with Ion Blasters were too strong, so they included a rule at the last minute banning them from taking any.

I am bad with sarcasim but this seems like sarcasim. Certainly possible that's how it went. My guess is they randomly decided to create a restriction to prevent coldstars for being the auto included over enforcers.


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 Karhedron wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Reminds me of 4th Ed CSM - when one of the developers was questioned several years later, what the hell they were thinking when they wrote Lash of Submission they replied with "huh... well we hadn't actually thought people would take more than one!" (paraphrasing)

From what I have gathered, this has not changed much since then. GW usually uses the studio armies to test with so they rarely include multiples of units. The surest way to test whether something is overpowered is to spam it to the maximum amount allowable under the system and see what effect it has. This is something GW definitely do not do and it shows in the kind of army lists that have been dominating the top tables over the last 9 months.

GW basically only test their "sunny day" scenario where players only take 1 or 2 of each unit and field what the Devs consider a balanced and fluffy army. They do not conduct anything remotely approaching destructive testing. To be fair, I am not sure they have the resources to do so. Tournaments tend to find these broken units and then FAQs/CA will fix them.

It is not an ideal situation but it is probably about the best we can realistically hope for.

They could pay a single person with a highschool education to math things out and present problem units and combos. It would cost them almost nothing to do it if they wanted. Have any of you considered the value to GW of the game being unbalanced? It ensures more models get purchased. They can't be this incompetent - it has to be intentional.

 Karhedron wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Reminds me of 4th Ed CSM - when one of the developers was questioned several years later, what the hell they were thinking when they wrote Lash of Submission they replied with "huh... well we hadn't actually thought people would take more than one!" (paraphrasing)

From what I have gathered, this has not changed much since then. GW usually uses the studio armies to test with so they rarely include multiples of units. The surest way to test whether something is overpowered is to spam it to the maximum amount allowable under the system and see what effect it has. This is something GW definitely do not do and it shows in the kind of army lists that have been dominating the top tables over the last 9 months.

GW basically only test their "sunny day" scenario where players only take 1 or 2 of each unit and field what the Devs consider a balanced and fluffy army. They do not conduct anything remotely approaching destructive testing. To be fair, I am not sure they have the resources to do so. Tournaments tend to find these broken units and then FAQs/CA will fix them.

It is not an ideal situation but it is probably about the best we can realistically hope for.

Considering they don't own 4k points of most of their own own factions then this would explain a lot!

I'd say very minimally, with the caveat that a finely tuned, balance game isn't the goal. The goal is a game just "good enough" to keep generating interest and model/book purchases. You could argue that extra in-depth playtesting would be a financial waste in many instances. I don't mean this as a critique, but an honest observation.

 Karhedron wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Reminds me of 4th Ed CSM - when one of the developers was questioned several years later, what the hell they were thinking when they wrote Lash of Submission they replied with "huh... well we hadn't actually thought people would take more than one!" (paraphrasing)

From what I have gathered, this has not changed much since then. GW usually uses the studio armies to test with so they rarely include multiples of units. The surest way to test whether something is overpowered is to spam it to the maximum amount allowable under the system and see what effect it has. This is something GW definitely do not do and it shows in the kind of army lists that have been dominating the top tables over the last 9 months.

GW basically only test their "sunny day" scenario where players only take 1 or 2 of each unit and field what the Devs consider a balanced and fluffy army. They do not conduct anything remotely approaching destructive testing. To be fair, I am not sure they have the resources to do so. Tournaments tend to find these broken units and then FAQs/CA will fix them.

It is not an ideal situation but it is probably about the best we can realistically hope for.

This sounds like it to me. Studio armies and non-spamming reflect what a casual player MIGHT go for, but when you're trying to make the rules fit a competitive scene too, you need to test competitive min-max and spam for efficiency armies too. It's found in every competitive miniatures scene: "What's the most points efficient unit that I can fill my army with for a quality and quantity combo?". Since 2nd edition, they've always seemed to ignore this side of things in testing and battle reports, and the rules reflect that. They must know by now that people will take spammed and min-maxed options, especially for a tournament, so assuming everyone's a casual player isn't really an excuse. It still seems like they don't test for it though, and are happy to bandage it after the fact in sweeping knee-jerks, which comes across as a lack of playtesting. All speculation of course.

The games are currently being tested by ITC people and such. Chances are they're not flying over to the UK to use the studio armies, but they will use their own.

 Elbows wrote:
I'd say very minimally, with the caveat that a finely tuned, balance game isn't the goal. The goal is a game just "good enough" to keep generating interest and model/book purchases. You could argue that extra in-depth playtesting would be a financial waste in many instances. I don't mean this as a critique, but an honest observation.

Man i lost the link to it but yeah that is how they do it according some one of the designers ama (i forgot who)

often times the design time wants to test more or will use their own personal time to test but get blocked by the bean counters.

it make sense business wise considering books arent just magically printed instantly. it takes a lot of planning to get those books printed on time for release. if it gets delayed it screws up a ton of stuff down the line.

and if it isnt being sold then it isnt making money.

GW is first and foremost a company.

A bad company considering their quality control.

pm713 wrote:
A bad company considering their quality control.

Their models dont seem to have many issues.

The books come with a hand full of typos or errors on occasion but almost no one is free from the occasional error.

If you are talking about game balance.. well if that is what you are looking for in a game then gw games might not be for you.

hell even mtg wizard cards, the paragon of CCGs cant get it right. especially lately with its pretty substantial bans. especially in their standard rotation.

I mean the last book I got had 55 midway through a word, their Assault Marine description has a glaring grammatical error, the last two codices I got had errors like spacing midway through words, last time I looked for an Eldar unit by using the faction checkbox on the site it didn't exist. Basic stuff you can check just through copy-pasting into Word or just by looking.

Game balance can be bad but I look past pretty much all of it. Except the scatbikes which were so obviously unbalanced I don't think anyone checked them.

Just a silly thought,

But has GW considered, [And this is hersey I know] but Proxying when testing their armies for balencing issue? Rather than stictly WYSIWYGing they're tiny propainted offical armies, they could experiment? Heck, even just using pieces of paper, or figures from other games...

 Xenomancers wrote:
Have any of you considered the value to GW of the game being unbalanced? It ensures more models get purchased. They can't be this incompetent - it has to be intentional.

Well that depends on how you look at it. I guess there's always people wanting the latest and greatest, but on the other hand you end up with junk units that just can't sell that well. I wonder how many Pyrovores they sold during 6th / 7th edition, or DE Wyches...?

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Just a silly thought,

But has GW considered, [And this is hersey I know] but Proxying when testing their armies for balencing issue? Rather than stictly WYSIWYGing they're tiny propainted offical armies, they could experiment? Heck, even just using pieces of paper, or figures from other games...

There's no way to know if they're only using studio armies to playtest - most of the designers have armies so they may also be using those.

pm713 wrote:
I mean the last book I got had 55 midway through a word, their Assault Marine description has a glaring grammatical error, the last two codices I got had errors like spacing midway through words, last time I looked for an Eldar unit by using the faction checkbox on the site it didn't exist. Basic stuff you can check just through copy-pasting into Word or just by looking.

Game balance can be bad but I look past pretty much all of it. Except the scatbikes which were so obviously unbalanced I don't think anyone checked them.

Is that the new C:SM book? i will need to go take a look at that sillyness.

Scat bikes... i forget it became bonkers when the new kit came out right? because from that ama they stated that when the wraithknight was being tested they had its point costs muuuch higher then kirby or some other bean counter came by and significantly lowered it. could be the same case for the scats.

SO wait, has anybody looked into anything yet? Any differences between the Beta and Codex?

 Desubot wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I mean the last book I got had 55 midway through a word, their Assault Marine description has a glaring grammatical error, the last two codices I got had errors like spacing midway through words, last time I looked for an Eldar unit by using the faction checkbox on the site it didn't exist. Basic stuff you can check just through copy-pasting into Word or just by looking.

Game balance can be bad but I look past pretty much all of it. Except the scatbikes which were so obviously unbalanced I don't think anyone checked them.

Is that the new C:SM book? i will need to go take a look at that sillyness.

Scat bikes... i forget it became bonkers when the new kit came out right? because from that ama they stated that when the wraithknight was being tested they had its point costs muuuch higher then kirby or some other bean counter came by and significantly lowered it. could be the same case for the scats.

Ashes of Prospero had the 55 typo.

They did get a new kit at the time. Although that's not consistently made new things OP e.g. Land Speeder Vengeance.

Mostly the "they set point costs to get people to buy specific models" thing doesn't seem all that plausible when you look holistically at what's been super-good at one point or another.

Let's take the most complained-about unit right now: Dark Reapers. They're an ancient model. Even at 27 points a pop they're some of the cheapest (in $) points in their codex. They cost about the same as other infantry Aspects -- even plastic Dire Avengers are only a little cheaper. They're more dollar-efficient than Shining Spears or Wave Serpents with modest upgrades. They seem like a terrible unit to try to get people to buy, from a business perspective. Now, if the codex had put Dire Avengers down to 8 points we'd have something to talk about.

Further, are many people actually going out and spending lots of money on the fotm? If you're plugged-in enough to know that Dark Reapers are really good right now you're plugged-in enough to know that everyone expects them to get nerfed soon.

And we see this over and over. It is very often the case that units you'd expect GW to want to push are lackluster while units they'd probably rather just retire are overpowered. Probably the two most overpowered units in the history of 8th are Razorwing Flocks and Malefic Lords. People weren't even buying their Razorwing Flocks from GW! Malefic Lords are probably mostly kitbashed. Meanwhile the whole Primaris Marine line was generally pretty unimpressive on release, and they aren't overpowered currently.

Incompetence seems like a much better explanation.

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 lolman1c wrote:
SO wait, has anybody looked into anything yet? Any differences between the Beta and Codex?

The leak so far appears to match exactly what we know is in the final codex, but of course this doesn't mean there was no playtesting.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Mostly the "they set point costs to get people to buy specific models" thing doesn't seem all that plausible when you look holistically at what's been super-good at one point or another.

Let's take the most complained-about unit right now: Dark Reapers. They're an ancient model. Even at 27 points a pop they're some of the cheapest (in $) points in their codex. They cost about the same as other infantry Aspects -- even plastic Dire Avengers are only a little cheaper. They're more dollar-efficient than Shining Spears or Wave Serpents with modest upgrades. They seem like a terrible unit to try to get people to buy, from a business perspective. Now, if the codex had put Dire Avengers down to 8 points we'd have something to talk about.

Further, are many people actually going out and spending lots of money on the fotm? If you're plugged-in enough to know that Dark Reapers are really good right now you're plugged-in enough to know that everyone expects them to get nerfed soon.

And we see this over and over. It is very often the case that units you'd expect GW to want to push are lackluster while units they'd probably rather just retire are overpowered. Probably the two most overpowered units in the history of 8th are Razorwing Flocks and Malefic Lords. People weren't even buying their Razorwing Flocks from GW! Malefic Lords are probably mostly kitbashed. Meanwhile the whole Primaris Marine line was generally pretty unimpressive on release, and they aren't overpowered currently.

Incompetence seems like a much better explanation.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lolman1c wrote:
SO wait, has anybody looked into anything yet? Any differences between the Beta and Codex?

The leak so far appears to match exactly what we know is in the final codex, but of course this doesn't mean there was no playtesting.

I was looking for something different to prove GW does actually play test... I know it can't prove with no changes but with changes it could.

Nothing bedsides the word of both GW itself and some others (like FLG).

I do believe Gw is trying.
I don't think they've succeeded perfectly.
I don't think a high school lvl math guy could do better.

No.
Otherwise we would not have Tzeentch Daemon Princes with 3++ INV

Ashes of Prospero had the 55 typo.

Professional corrections for fiction count as acceptable at 1 error per 6000 characters, that's roughly 3.5 standard pages or 1200 standard words. If that book has more than 193 pages, it's acceptable. Not great, though. A second correction would filter out some more, but every pass costs money. An outside corrector charges about 30 Euros an hour, at 8 pages an hour (which is quick) the regular 300 page book takes 37 hours to correct properly. That's 1100 Euros per pass. That is also the reason why so many self-publishers tend to have error-riddled books. If they spend 2 grand on the correction alone, chances are that the book will never make any money.
That said, you probably didn't find all of them. Nobody does, and that's why no legitimate corrector will ever promise you a book that's free of errors. If he does, he's a charlatan. (And that's only the manuscript, the typesetting in the final layout tends to cause errors as well).

pm713 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I mean the last book I got had 55 midway through a word, their Assault Marine description has a glaring grammatical error, the last two codices I got had errors like spacing midway through words, last time I looked for an Eldar unit by using the faction checkbox on the site it didn't exist. Basic stuff you can check just through copy-pasting into Word or just by looking.

Game balance can be bad but I look past pretty much all of it. Except the scatbikes which were so obviously unbalanced I don't think anyone checked them.

Is that the new C:SM book? i will need to go take a look at that sillyness.

Scat bikes... i forget it became bonkers when the new kit came out right? because from that ama they stated that when the wraithknight was being tested they had its point costs muuuch higher then kirby or some other bean counter came by and significantly lowered it. could be the same case for the scats.

Ashes of Prospero had the 55 typo.

They did get a new kit at the time. Although that's not consistently made new things OP e.g. Land Speeder Vengeance.

Ah the land speeder vengeance, pretty much killed itself every game I used it in

Still can't understand why it wasn't a twin linked weapon.

Yes GW is playtesting
BUT, they haven't done it for a long time and prior 8th it was not done in house but by some designers private at home (we can now guess were some of the leaks came from) as it was a no go for GW

The result is that they are now still learning what playtesting means and just because they do it doesn't mean they do it right or the result is that great.
It all depends on how the process works, for example if the ITC reports anything else than just the plain battle report back to the designer, it would be biased and the designer would adjust the game to an opinion (worst case would be if they just report back what units are good and bad)

Than it also depends what games are actually played, because if the test results are based in ITC tournament rules, playing anything else would be not balanced as the units were not made for it.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Mostly the "they set point costs to get people to buy specific models" thing doesn't seem all that plausible when you look holistically at what's been super-good at one point or another.

We just know that it was done the previous edition that the board adjusted point costs so that the amount of models they wanted to sell per player would fit inside the standard point sized army.
for example GW wanted that each Eldar player had 3 Wraithknights and they points were set so that you could fit 3 without a problem

It had begun to sound with the Indexes that they were doing a greater amount of playtesting before release. After some time with them now, it's pretty clear they did only Ivory Tower sort of playtesting, only checking things how the designers themselves would build an army, lore first.

The codexes are coming out so quickly with so many new stratagems, I can't see how they are doing more than minimal playtesting - if at all.

That's a pretty poor way of doing it. I get playing for lore because that's how I do things but you can't ignore people who don't.