stonehorse wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Patch is better then no patch yes.
But the reliance of first day patches is nothing good. Neither in the video game industry nor in the TG one.

It shows serious lack in planning capabilities and abuses workers for last minute crunch time.

James Hewitt talked a bit about that in a response to a question about the FAQs:

Right, so, I've been expecting a question like this, and I've been mulling over the best way to answer it for a couple of days. Here's the best answer I can think of - apologies in advance if it rambles!

In a company the size of GW (which, I'll make clear, is not a big company by any means, but in terms of this industry it's monolithic) there are a lot of considerations. Everything that's done needs to be worthwhile, and needs to make a profit. When producing a game for GW, the sad truth is that quality of rules has very little impact on sales. Obviously you don't want the rules to be bad, but there's a real diminishing returns thing going on; the difference between a set of rules that's 60% perfect and one that's 70% perfect is going to be fairly significant, but the difference between 70% and 80% less so. And 80% to 90% even less.

So, as a designer, you're always pushing for more time. Any game design project has several stages - you do your R&D, your preparation, your grunt work (actually writing the thing), and your polish / testing / proofing. Management are always going to squeeze your deadlines, because they know that your instinct is to push for a good game, but they know that from a business point of view it only needs to be good enough to sell. Unfortunately, the grunt work is the bit that needs to happen, so the bits that get trimmed are R&D (which make things interesting and well-thought-out) and polish (which makes sure there are no mistakes).

That said, it's getting better. When I first started, playtesting was a bit of a dirty word; there was a real disdain for "balance" among the higher echelons of management. Silver Tower, for example, was playtested almost entirely in my own time, unpaid, using unpaid volunteers. But now, the are increasing numbers of external playtesters, and it's getting better. Thing is, no matter how rigorously the internal testing is, you're never going to find all the issues; it might seem shocking that a book comes out and the internet finds a dozen errata on day one, but remember that more people are seeing it in that one day than saw it throughout the entire production cycle. The only way to deal with it would be to have open playtesting, getting thousands of people to read the rules before they go to print, and sure enough that's what Forge World sometimes do - but it's not practical for main-range GW, because of their confidentiality rules and that kind of thing.

Hope that answers your question - sorry if it's a bit rambly!

The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

I have long suspected that GW's weekly release schedule is hitting into the available time for quality control and play testing. Back when releases were monthly it didn't feel as bad, but I guess then the gaps between releasing Codex/army books was months.

The above sort of confirms my suspicions. As long as GW keep to this frantic release schedule, we'll continue to see glaring errors in writing, and in balance.

Bharring wrote:
I love how all the bad things in the game are because GW is bad at making a game, and couldn't balance things if their life depended on it (and how anyone saying otherwise is apparently a battered wife).

But apparently they're so good that any army that's good is because it's GW's favorite army.

Isn't it much more likely the truth is somewhere in between? Sometimes they fanboi, and sometimes they're not great at ruleswriting.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Patch is better then no patch yes.
But the reliance of first day patches is nothing good. Neither in the video game industry nor in the TG one.

It shows serious lack in planning capabilities and abuses workers for last minute crunch time.

James Hewitt talked a bit about that in a response to a question about the FAQs:

Right, so, I've been expecting a question like this, and I've been mulling over the best way to answer it for a couple of days. Here's the best answer I can think of - apologies in advance if it rambles!

In a company the size of GW (which, I'll make clear, is not a big company by any means, but in terms of this industry it's monolithic) there are a lot of considerations. Everything that's done needs to be worthwhile, and needs to make a profit. When producing a game for GW, the sad truth is that quality of rules has very little impact on sales. Obviously you don't want the rules to be bad, but there's a real diminishing returns thing going on; the difference between a set of rules that's 60% perfect and one that's 70% perfect is going to be fairly significant, but the difference between 70% and 80% less so. And 80% to 90% even less.

So, as a designer, you're always pushing for more time. Any game design project has several stages - you do your R&D, your preparation, your grunt work (actually writing the thing), and your polish / testing / proofing. Management are always going to squeeze your deadlines, because they know that your instinct is to push for a good game, but they know that from a business point of view it only needs to be good enough to sell. Unfortunately, the grunt work is the bit that needs to happen, so the bits that get trimmed are R&D (which make things interesting and well-thought-out) and polish (which makes sure there are no mistakes).

That said, it's getting better. When I first started, playtesting was a bit of a dirty word; there was a real disdain for "balance" among the higher echelons of management. Silver Tower, for example, was playtested almost entirely in my own time, unpaid, using unpaid volunteers. But now, the are increasing numbers of external playtesters, and it's getting better. Thing is, no matter how rigorously the internal testing is, you're never going to find all the issues; it might seem shocking that a book comes out and the internet finds a dozen errata on day one, but remember that more people are seeing it in that one day than saw it throughout the entire production cycle. The only way to deal with it would be to have open playtesting, getting thousands of people to read the rules before they go to print, and sure enough that's what Forge World sometimes do - but it's not practical for main-range GW, because of their confidentiality rules and that kind of thing.

Hope that answers your question - sorry if it's a bit rambly!

The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

The Newman wrote:

Bharring wrote:
I love how all the bad things in the game are because GW is bad at making a game, and couldn't balance things if their life depended on it (and how anyone saying otherwise is apparently a battered wife).

But apparently they're so good that any army that's good is because it's GW's favorite army.

Isn't it much more likely the truth is somewhere in between? Sometimes they fanboi, and sometimes they're not great at ruleswriting.

The bolded part is ... wrong, not to put too fine a point on it.

All the bad things are bad because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. The good things being good is not because GW is good, it's also because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. Those things aren't contradictory at all, there is no "somewhere in between" for the truth to be.

The Newman 781553 10606017 wrote:

The bolded part is ... wrong, not to put too fine a point on it.

All the bad things are bad because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. The good things being good is not because GW is good, it's also because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. Those things aren't contradictory at all, there is no "somewhere in between" for the truth to be.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

The Newman wrote:

Bharring wrote:
I love how all the bad things in the game are because GW is bad at making a game, and couldn't balance things if their life depended on it (and how anyone saying otherwise is apparently a battered wife).

But apparently they're so good that any army that's good is because it's GW's favorite army.

Isn't it much more likely the truth is somewhere in between? Sometimes they fanboi, and sometimes they're not great at ruleswriting.

The bolded part is ... wrong, not to put too fine a point on it.

All the bad things are bad because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. The good things being good is not because GW is good, it's also because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. Those things aren't contradictory at all, there is no "somewhere in between" for the truth to be.

This. It's a piece of piss to make an unit/army powerful. Even someone who has no idea how the game works could probably do it by just throw a metric fethton of special rules onto some base profiles and chances are at least a couple will end up brokenly powerful.

For an example of this in practice, see Iron Hands space marines

But in seriousness, they did with the Iron Hands the exact same mistake they made with Riptides, just across an entire army. A unit can be tough. A unit can be mobile. A unit can pack a lot of firepower. But when you combine any of those together, you are massively increasing their power far beyond what you might expect. A unit with high firepower which is tough lasts longer to shoot more, a unit which has firepower and mobile can more easily avoid units which threaten it and also more easily get into position to use that firepower, a unit with toughness and mobility is excellent at board control as it is difficult to remove and can easily claim objectives etc. The Riptide was terribly designed ruleswise because it combined all three of those. It had JSJ for mobility (with option to buff up to even more mobility), it had a 2+/5++ with possibility for a 5+++ and 3++ and it had a S8 AP2 pie plate weapon at will. That was one unit. The Iron Hands got toughness and mobility army wide at no extra cost on the units. Some of those units already had high firepower and so ended up with all three.

Karol wrote:

The Newman 781553 10606017 wrote:

The bolded part is ... wrong, not to put too fine a point on it.

All the bad things are bad because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. The good things being good is not because GW is good, it's also because GW isn't good at balancing units/factions. Those things aren't contradictory at all, there is no "somewhere in between" for the truth to be.

okey but at some point it stops to matter, if they do something for the Nth time, because they don't know how to do something, or because they don't like or like something.

Marine got the GK ammo stratagem in their doctrins as a flat buff they get for free, for the entire army, that is before any supplement or codex special rule. In game terms it doesn't matter at all if this was done, because GW doesn't know how to write balanced rules, dislikes GK, likes marines very much or they didn't have enough time to test.

To be fair - marines probably needed ap -1 on all their small guns and that GK stratagem is very overcosted and also gives +1 str. It gives me hope that all GK units will get psybolt ammo as a flat upgrade across the army.

Karol wrote:

To be fair - marines probably needed ap -1 on all their small guns and that GK stratagem is very overcosted and also gives +1 str. It gives me hope that all GK units will get psybolt ammo as a flat upgrade across the army.

Oh I am not claiming the changes or rules are bad. Am all in for all armies getting good rules. Am just saying that with a new company and unexpiriance company saying that they did this or that, because of this or that different thing maybe makes sense. For an established one it does not really matter that much. What matter is what GW does. For example if all future codex get supplements like that, then it would be awesome. Problems may start if after those, IMO, really good supplements, we got a necron codex with a really bad one, would be really bad. And what ever such a thing would be because of some ultra necron eternal hate or incompetance wouldn't matter much.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Honest question:

Has anyone ever met a Rules Tester for 40k? I always assumed it was the Devs just "testing" their own rules. There is no squad of 8 pro players that get tossed codexes and then in a windowed room GW watches their play and judges if the codex is worthy, right?

TlR - DO testers even exist? Because I'm saying the evidence points to no, and GW has never actually demonstrated they actually exist.

Karol wrote:

I am not very good with math, but I can draw analogy from sports. There is no chance to get a team or a sportsman dominate for 30 years, unless they are helped in some way or start from an unequal footing to begin with. Now I know w40k isn't considered to be a sport by people here. But I think the chance of eldar being great every edition on and on, is a bit strange to say the least.

The same goes for reverse situations, when armies are bad. And even more strange is the fact, that it is the same people writing and testing the books. If it was something like, eldar and marines are done by the Nothingam HQ, and ending up awesome, but NPC or background faction being done by some small sub studio in Canada, being hit or miss, and another one being done In San Paulo and always ending up really under powered, I could understand it. But codex like necron or GK, were writen and tested, by the same people that just did marines, or eldar or Inari, or the knight books. And it is not even the time difference. Take the DG book and place it next to GK. They came out at the same time. GK feel as if they weren't even writen for 8th ed.

Karol wrote:
People at my store claimed that the IH rules looked and felt, pre errata, as old grey knight rules. Am not sure how much of that was true, but all the older players agreed on that.

To be honest if GK rules felt like IH rules, I can imagine why people still dislike GK players.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Honest question:

Has anyone ever met a Rules Tester for 40k? I always assumed it was the Devs just "testing" their own rules. There is no squad of 8 pro players that get tossed codexes and then in a windowed room GW watches their play and judges if the codex is worthy, right?

TlR - DO testers even exist? Because I'm saying the evidence points to no, and GW has never actually demonstrated they actually exist.

 stonehorse wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Patch is better then no patch yes.
But the reliance of first day patches is nothing good. Neither in the video game industry nor in the TG one.

It shows serious lack in planning capabilities and abuses workers for last minute crunch time.

James Hewitt talked a bit about that in a response to a question about the FAQs:

Right, so, I've been expecting a question like this, and I've been mulling over the best way to answer it for a couple of days. Here's the best answer I can think of - apologies in advance if it rambles!

In a company the size of GW (which, I'll make clear, is not a big company by any means, but in terms of this industry it's monolithic) there are a lot of considerations. Everything that's done needs to be worthwhile, and needs to make a profit. When producing a game for GW, the sad truth is that quality of rules has very little impact on sales. Obviously you don't want the rules to be bad, but there's a real diminishing returns thing going on; the difference between a set of rules that's 60% perfect and one that's 70% perfect is going to be fairly significant, but the difference between 70% and 80% less so. And 80% to 90% even less.

So, as a designer, you're always pushing for more time. Any game design project has several stages - you do your R&D, your preparation, your grunt work (actually writing the thing), and your polish / testing / proofing. Management are always going to squeeze your deadlines, because they know that your instinct is to push for a good game, but they know that from a business point of view it only needs to be good enough to sell. Unfortunately, the grunt work is the bit that needs to happen, so the bits that get trimmed are R&D (which make things interesting and well-thought-out) and polish (which makes sure there are no mistakes).

That said, it's getting better. When I first started, playtesting was a bit of a dirty word; there was a real disdain for "balance" among the higher echelons of management. Silver Tower, for example, was playtested almost entirely in my own time, unpaid, using unpaid volunteers. But now, the are increasing numbers of external playtesters, and it's getting better. Thing is, no matter how rigorously the internal testing is, you're never going to find all the issues; it might seem shocking that a book comes out and the internet finds a dozen errata on day one, but remember that more people are seeing it in that one day than saw it throughout the entire production cycle. The only way to deal with it would be to have open playtesting, getting thousands of people to read the rules before they go to print, and sure enough that's what Forge World sometimes do - but it's not practical for main-range GW, because of their confidentiality rules and that kind of thing.

Hope that answers your question - sorry if it's a bit rambly!

The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

I have long suspected that GW's weekly release schedule is hitting into the available time for quality control and play testing. Back when releases were monthly it didn't feel as bad, but I guess then the gaps between releasing Codex/army books was months.

The above sort of confirms my suspicions. As long as GW keep to this frantic release schedule, we'll continue to see glaring errors in writing, and in balance.

 Ordana wrote:
The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Honest question:

Has anyone ever met a Rules Tester for 40k? I always assumed it was the Devs just "testing" their own rules. There is no squad of 8 pro players that get tossed codexes and then in a windowed room GW watches their play and judges if the codex is worthy, right?

TlR - DO testers even exist? Because I'm saying the evidence points to no, and GW has never actually demonstrated they actually exist.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All the evidence I've been shown points to there are "infrequent" at best play-testers, but nothing consistent. And the releases show it. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

The releases indicate multiple groups of testers not in harmony. Why release a codex only to have it be completely invalidated by a different codex a month later?

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All the evidence I've been shown points to there are "infrequent" at best play-testers, but nothing consistent. And the releases show it. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

The releases indicate multiple groups of testers not in harmony. Why release a codex only to have it be completely invalidated by a different codex a month later?

They've outlined that they use both narrative and competetive playtesters on every book. Just because you have this conspiracy theory that they don't playtest the way you've decided is "correct" doesn't mean they're actually doing it wrong.

People who don't think games are playtested don't understand they're only seeing the little stuff that got through, not the real problems that would destroy the game if they were published.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All the evidence I've been shown points to there are "infrequent" at best play-testers, but nothing consistent. And the releases show it. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

The releases indicate multiple groups of testers not in harmony. Why release a codex only to have it be completely invalidated by a different codex a month later?

They've outlined that they use both narrative and competetive playtesters on every book. Just because you have this conspiracy theory that they don't playtest the way you've decided is "correct" doesn't mean they're actually doing it wrong.

People who don't think games are playtested don't understand they're only seeing the little stuff that got through, not the real problems that would destroy the game if they were published.

Just because they say they playtest does not mean they actually play test. "Little stuff that got through"...You honestly telling me that I am better at finding broken combos than the people who Run ITC? I find these typically in the first read through of the book in a casual 15 minute review.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All the evidence I've been shown points to there are "infrequent" at best play-testers, but nothing consistent. And the releases show it. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

The releases indicate multiple groups of testers not in harmony. Why release a codex only to have it be completely invalidated by a different codex a month later?

They've outlined that they use both narrative and competetive playtesters on every book. Just because you have this conspiracy theory that they don't playtest the way you've decided is "correct" doesn't mean they're actually doing it wrong.

People who don't think games are playtested don't understand they're only seeing the little stuff that got through, not the real problems that would destroy the game if they were published.

Just because they say they playtest does not mean they actually play test. "Little stuff that got through"...You honestly telling me that I am better at finding broken combos than the people who Run ITC? I find these typically in the first read through of the book in a casual 15 minute review.

By that logic, just because people claim they don't play test doesn't mean they don't playtest. I'd take the word of the people involved in a given project over the word of some random person on the internet anyday to be quite honest.

Heck, James Hewitt flat out mentions playtesting in his free time in the past, and how they were actively employing third party playtesters when he left GW. But sure, they don't playtest and it's all smoke and mirrors.

 Xenomancers wrote:

The evidence is in the quality of the rules being produced. Actual play testing can not be taking place if such power disparity exists. It is actually quite obvious without actually playing how most of these new rules in the supplements are not well internally balanced even. It would be super obvious at the point of actually playing. Like I think it's possible they actually print the rules before any actual play testing goes on. Then they ship the product to play testers to use and point out any issues they have so they can make a quick 2 week FAQ or errata. It's literally the only way such egregious errors in balance could make it to a printer. This way they aren't actually lying when they say play testing occurs. It's just happening at the wrong time.

 Xenomancers wrote:

The evidence is in the quality of the rules being produced. Actual play testing can not be taking place if such power disparity exists. It is actually quite obvious without actually playing how most of these new rules in the supplements are not well internally balanced even. It would be super obvious at the point of actually playing. Like I think it's possible they actually print the rules before any actual play testing goes on. Then they ship the product to play testers to use and point out any issues they have so they can make a quick 2 week FAQ or errata. It's literally the only way such egregious errors in balance could make it to a printer. This way they aren't actually lying when they say play testing occurs. It's just happening at the wrong time.

 vict0988 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Honest question:

Has anyone ever met a Rules Tester for 40k? I always assumed it was the Devs just "testing" their own rules. There is no squad of 8 pro players that get tossed codexes and then in a windowed room GW watches their play and judges if the codex is worthy, right?

TlR - DO testers even exist? Because I'm saying the evidence points to no, and GW has never actually demonstrated they actually exist.

A couple of the guys at Frontline Gaming (the guys that host the biggest tournament in the world and run the most popular mission format for tournaments) playtest, I believe one of the guys at another podcast is a playtester as well, I think he has some tournament tops under his belt. Some people don't really want balance, they just want something interesting, for GW to shake up the meta to avoid the game ever getting stale and figured out. Frankie and Reece from FLG are outside playtesters, but I believe GW claims they have a seperate group of people that playtest in-house. According to playtesters and GW there was a miscommunication about the IH supplement, proving again that communication is important.

But IH weren't unbalanced, they were totally balanced for Maelstrom, 70% win-rate just like it was supposed to be, it was only op in ITC where they had an 80% win-rate. Now with the nerfs I'm sure they're going to be trash, 35% win-rate confirmed. /s

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

The evidence is in the quality of the rules being produced. Actual play testing can not be taking place if such power disparity exists. It is actually quite obvious without actually playing how most of these new rules in the supplements are not well internally balanced even. It would be super obvious at the point of actually playing. Like I think it's possible they actually print the rules before any actual play testing goes on. Then they ship the product to play testers to use and point out any issues they have so they can make a quick 2 week FAQ or errata. It's literally the only way such egregious errors in balance could make it to a printer. This way they aren't actually lying when they say play testing occurs. It's just happening at the wrong time.

That's not evidence, it's a belief. There is a difference that you clearly don't understand and it's resulted in you pretending to know more than you actually do.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

The evidence is in the quality of the rules being produced. Actual play testing can not be taking place if such power disparity exists. It is actually quite obvious without actually playing how most of these new rules in the supplements are not well internally balanced even. It would be super obvious at the point of actually playing. Like I think it's possible they actually print the rules before any actual play testing goes on. Then they ship the product to play testers to use and point out any issues they have so they can make a quick 2 week FAQ or errata. It's literally the only way such egregious errors in balance could make it to a printer. This way they aren't actually lying when they say play testing occurs. It's just happening at the wrong time.

That's not evidence, it's a belief. There is a difference that you clearly don't understand and it's resulted in you pretending to know more than you actually do.

You'd have to believe REALLY hard in the power of benefit of the doubt for something like Super Doctrines to be released in the first place.

Ice_can 781553 10606546 wrote:
Wait on what planet is 70% win ratio balanced?
Perfect balance is 50%, realistic expectations are 40-60%.
70% is like Castellen pre nerf and look how that worked out now it now a narative/casual play only mono army.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Nah. I believe it's just the first ripple of what they plan for 8.5 though and Marines are going to pull away for a bit before the game catches up again just like when they were the first codex while everything else was in the indices.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
All the evidence I've been shown points to there are "infrequent" at best play-testers, but nothing consistent. And the releases show it. The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

The releases indicate multiple groups of testers not in harmony. Why release a codex only to have it be completely invalidated by a different codex a month later?

They've outlined that they use both narrative and competetive playtesters on every book. Just because you have this conspiracy theory that they don't playtest the way you've decided is "correct" doesn't mean they're actually doing it wrong.

People who don't think games are playtested don't understand they're only seeing the little stuff that got through, not the real problems that would destroy the game if they were published.

Just because they say they playtest does not mean they actually play test. "Little stuff that got through"...You honestly telling me that I am better at finding broken combos than the people who Run ITC? I find these typically in the first read through of the book in a casual 15 minute review.

By that logic, just because people claim they don't play test doesn't mean they don't playtest. I'd take the word of the people involved in a given project over the word of some random person on the internet anyday to be quite honest.

Heck, James Hewitt flat out mentions playtesting in his free time in the past, and how they were actively employing third party playtesters when he left GW. But sure, they don't playtest and it's all smoke and mirrors.

The evidence is in the quality of the rules being produced. Actual play testing can not be taking place if such power disparity exists. It is actually quite obvious without actually playing how most of these new rules in the supplements are not well internally balanced even. It would be super obvious at the point of actually playing. Like I think it's possible they actually print the rules before any actual play testing goes on. Then they ship the product to play testers to use and point out any issues they have so they can make a quick 2 week FAQ or errata. It's literally the only way such egregious errors in balance could make it to a printer. This way they aren't actually lying when they say play testing occurs. It's just happening at the wrong time.