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So GW came out of the gate claming this was the most playtested edition ever, and a line up "top" 40k gamers and groups shown off to prove both during the lead up and recently as part of the release.

But then its claimed that only part of the rules was tested, or that all concerns, amendments and suggestions were ignored.
The pts cost debarcle is patentlly not tested and seems tobe produced by a simple formula on a spreadsheet.
FAQs come and go to sort out basic and easily noticed issues with the rules or the wording
Obviously broken units emerge like the new Melta Rifle Primaris

So what was actually playtested - was anything??

And if so was anything actually listened to?

Where do we see the positive influence of the playtesting?

I believe everything given to the playtesters was tested to the best of their ability. GW just ignored it to do what they wanted to anyway.

Short answer: we will never know.

Long answer: reading between some lines from what people have said, it seems that a lot of profiles and codex have been designed and tested against the core rules. The current points and rules for factions appear to be becoming a go-between.

If their vision was a full set of re-profiled armies and weapons, then that's what they'll have tested against. We can't find out unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise though.

When you have a bad and limited ruleset there aint much you can do with it.
Garbage in, garbage out.

If Wizard's can miss a two-card, low-cost, infinite combo printed within a single set, GW can miss an obvious interaction for Characters.

The thing is, with Wizard's, they ban a problem card. GW tries to errata their way out of a problem. I think the rules they're going with for Characters will put them into a situation where they'll have to accept that players WILL game their system, and they have to choose which silly method players will do rather than try to stringently control it with complicated rules.

I think Close Combat is a good example of this. 8th edition close combat felt awesome because it was FREEING after multiple editions where GW kept restricting how it worked. The rules for close combat in 3rd edition were loose, but then they kept adding things to force you to play close combat a specific way, to the point that once you got into close combat, you were totally at the whims of the dice gods because you couldn't control anything from that point on. It was horrible. 8th edition close combat just felt better because it gave you the choice again. Some of those choices allow you to do silly/broken sounding things, but by accepting those as just being a thing that happens, it allowed combat to feel good. 9th edition has once again started moving towards loss of control to try and force your close combats to play a certain way, but it still leagues better than some other editions.

Well, I feel Character Targeting is going this way, and I don't like it. GW seems to have a picture in their mind of what a player should do with their characters, and they're trying to layer rules to force players to use characters in those ways. While this may result in more story-appropriate situations, it also removes choices from the players. While I like this final(?) version of the rule best, and I do think it's better than the previous rules, the method they are taking to do this is showing me a peak behind the curtain that they do seem to think in these terms of "make rules to force players to play the way a story should play out", which I think is the wrong way to make rules, and I think results in a lot of small decisions that result in unfun rules.

Dudeface wrote:
Short answer: we will never know.

Long answer: reading between some lines from what people have said, it seems that a lot of profiles and codex have been designed and tested against the core rules. The current points and rules for factions appear to be becoming a go-between.

If their vision was a full set of re-profiled armies and weapons, then that's what they'll have tested against. We can't find out unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise though.

Actually the reactions of the playtesters where thouroughly disapointed? they played accodringly to them with all the finished dexes.
Which were well balanced torwards each other.
What they were not likeing was what gw did with the field manual, and i firmly believe we can say that the pts in there are pretty close to absolutely nonsense.

The core issue then comes from GW releasing dexes staggered, in order to spread sales, which then leads for those at the end of the cycle, aka last time GSC and orkz to really gakky gameing experience.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Short answer: we will never know.

Long answer: reading between some lines from what people have said, it seems that a lot of profiles and codex have been designed and tested against the core rules. The current points and rules for factions appear to be becoming a go-between.

If their vision was a full set of re-profiled armies and weapons, then that's what they'll have tested against. We can't find out unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise though.

Actually the reactions of the playtesters where thouroughly disapointed? they played accodringly to them with all the finished dexes.
Which were well balanced torwards each other.
What they were not likeing was what gw did with the field manual, and i firmly believe we can say that the pts in there are pretty close to absolutely nonsense.

The core issue then comes from GW releasing dexes staggered, in order to spread sales, which then leads for those at the end of the cycle, aka last time GSC and orkz to really gakky gameing experience.

That's the impression I got as well, that they have a full suite of tested books ready to go but don't want to flood/overwhelm people so have this weird transitional period.

Dudeface wrote:
Short answer: we will never know.

Long answer: reading between some lines from what people have said, it seems that a lot of profiles and codex have been designed and tested against the core rules. The current points and rules for factions appear to be becoming a go-between.

If their vision was a full set of re-profiled armies and weapons, then that's what they'll have tested against. We can't find out unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise though.

This. this this this.

GW have designed a new edition of the game. They can't push out a fully updated set of rules at once, the core rules changed first. This went hand in hand with an algorithmic points change that really benefited some armies way more than others- this is because they are a 'go between'.

From what I see/hear from playtesters, they played the core rules of 9th with 8ed points. The playtesters gave GW feedback on how 9th would play- and how much the core rules worked and made sense. What they did not do is supply GW with a full idea in their heads of a balanced set of points values/tell them how to acutely balance the competitive meta.

Space marines were already too powerful when used in a tournament before 9th dropped- they then had an algorithmic points change (and a targeted one on the units that were too good) which turns out to not have been enough in reference to other factions, as the core rules lend themselves to the types of units marines generally want to run.

In reference to loopholes and mistakes: shockingly, playtesters get their copy of the new rules and missions, then test the game as it is intended to be played- and try to highlight where they do see mistakes or possibilities to game the system. GW listen to this. I mean how many FAQs have been put out, and how many have been needed compared to the start of 8th. the beginning of 8th or even 7th was just an absolute shitshow with glaring problems that weren't fixed for a good length of time. with 9th, not only has the edition needed less faqs/problems to be fixed, GW has tried to address them by quickly putting out FAQs that amend these problems- why do people bitch and moan about them? the problem is getting fixed so that it is no longer a problem. One cannot berate the rules writers for an oversight or a stupid interpretation of the RAW. It is impossible to create a balanced and perfect ruleset in a game so complicated- https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790489.page most people here seem to think GW is not a rules company first. And theres no way they can be in such a huge and complicated system.

Finally, have you guys played 9th? Its fun. It is really really fun. The missions are super interesting, terrain gives the game enriching character, smaller armies and board size makes each interaction more interesting. It feels tested and it feels like a good game to play. And for me it is far more important to have a good game with my mates every week than to worry about what is OP broken.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Short answer: we will never know.

Long answer: reading between some lines from what people have said, it seems that a lot of profiles and codex have been designed and tested against the core rules. The current points and rules for factions appear to be becoming a go-between.

If their vision was a full set of re-profiled armies and weapons, then that's what they'll have tested against. We can't find out unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise though.

Actually the reactions of the playtesters where thouroughly disapointed? they played accodringly to them with all the finished dexes.
Which were well balanced torwards each other.
What they were not likeing was what gw did with the field manual, and i firmly believe we can say that the pts in there are pretty close to absolutely nonsense.

The core issue then comes from GW releasing dexes staggered, in order to spread sales, which then leads for those at the end of the cycle, aka last time GSC and orkz to really gakky gameing experience.

I agree. if it is the case that playtesters were using marines/crons/other dexes that may be coming early then it is a release problem and not a rules one.

I have heard that rules were already printed when playtesting was done

Just be clear where the responsibility for rules lies, which is always with GW and their design team, and for 40K is ultimately Stu Black. Not the playtesters themselves. Never blame playtesters for a bad ruleset. They inform the design team of what they find. They do not see the final product, they do not usually see everything that is being developed, and they do not decide what does and does not make it into the final document.

 p5freak wrote:
I have heard that rules were already printed when playtesting was done

IF true, why even hire playtester, except of course gw want's to shift the blame.

 Yarium wrote:
If Wizard's can miss a two-card, low-cost, infinite combo printed within a single set, GW can miss an obvious interaction for Characters.

The thing is, with Wizard's, they ban a problem card.

I stoped believing that Wizards misses stuff. They very well know what they do printing something like Oko, and they don't nerf it ASAP, they first wait for people to kill themselfs trying to buy those full arts, foils etc Then when the market is saturated they nerf it. they do do same thing with cards that warp the meta, but first "trying" to nerf the cards around it. It sometimes takes them months to finaly decide to nerfs something. And by that time they generaly have "missed" something else.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
I have heard that rules were already printed when playtesting was done

IF true, why even hire playtester, except of course gw want's to shift the blame.

FAQs and future updates.

PP got nailed to the same cross. Seems like a good spot for the First Time? meme.

Tabletop Tactics explicitly said when they were brought in to start playtesting (they can't say exactly when, but you can read between the lines and it was in late 2019) the points values for 9th were already fixed and GW made it clear they were not interested in further feedback on those points values.

So we know for a fact that as of the end of 2019, 9th had fixed, finished points values that GW was not interested in modifying based on further playtesting.

If this seems mental, it is, but it's also very much in keeping with GW's past attitudes to playtesting. For example, GW famously admitted although that the IH Supplement was flagged by playtesters as completely off the wall overpowered, they simply ignored that feedback and released it anyway because they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.

Also, people need to remember that GW playtesters are unpaid volunteers whose "compensation" is in the inside access and feeling of being VIPs. In that environment, there is a strong incentive not to rock the boat too much, because you want to be invited back next time.

If you don't pay people and you don't treat their job as a real job, it isn't fair to expect real results.

Karol wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
If Wizard's can miss a two-card, low-cost, infinite combo printed within a single set, GW can miss an obvious interaction for Characters.

The thing is, with Wizard's, they ban a problem card.

I stoped believing that Wizards misses stuff. They very well know what they do printing something like Oko, and they don't nerf it ASAP, they first wait for people to kill themselfs trying to buy those full arts, foils etc Then when the market is saturated they nerf it. they do do same thing with cards that warp the meta, but first "trying" to nerf the cards around it. It sometimes takes them months to finaly decide to nerfs something. And by that time they generaly have "missed" something else.

Wizards doesn't nerf anything, they ban it straight out. This is why it takes them longer than it should to ban cards, the feeling of a unit in 40k being nerfed doesnt feel as bad as cards being banned in MTG since you can still play with your units.

WotC waits a bit to see if the meta settles and people figure out answers to problematic cards to make them less present in a metagame.

Sadly theyve made OP cards with no real answers more and more which is one of the main reasons i stopped playing MTG completely (the price of cards being the other big one)

Not Online!!! wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
I have heard that rules were already printed when playtesting was done

IF true, why even hire playtester, except of course gw want's to shift the blame.

I think its much like films who hire history consultants, then promptly ignore them as the corrections cost too much time/money but will point out they had them when asked about say a missing bridge or malefic smite-bots

Back when I did playetesting for SCEA, first thing we learned was that just because we found something and reported it, doesn't mean the devs did anything with it (for a variety of reasons, both good and bad).

 Vaktathi wrote:
Back when I did playetesting for SCEA, first thing we learned was that just because we found something and reported it, doesn't mean the devs did anything with it (for a variety of reasons, both good and bad).

Can confirm that from the development side as well. Sometimes it's time, sometimes it's disagreement about value, sometimes it's politics.

 Mr Morden wrote:


1.So what was actually playtested - was anything??

2.And if so was anything actually listened to?

3.Where do we see the positive influence of the playtesting?

1.marketing focus groups
2.sales department
3.the sycophantic praise of the new edition by the you tube groups/channels who got early access

That pretty well sums it up.

In a way i am sad to see the game i once loved turn this mess, but at the same time i am sitting back enjoying the spectacle of the train wreck in slow motion.

At least this debacle isn't affecting my ability to go back and play previous editions i enjoy. they can't screw them up anymore.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Back when I did playetesting for SCEA, first thing we learned was that just because we found something and reported it, doesn't mean the devs did anything with it (for a variety of reasons, both good and bad).

Can confirm that from the development side as well. Sometimes it's time, sometimes it's disagreement about value, sometimes it's politics.

And sometimes it's because the customer wants something dumb. [edit] That's a general observation, it doesn't apply here. I've just seen it happen and not get reported back to QA properly. [/edit]

At this point I think the community outside of maybe Marines should probably just ignore the Munitorum Field Manual, what it looks like GW did there is baffling.

yukishiro1 wrote:
For example, GW famously admitted although that the IH Supplement was flagged by playtesters as completely off the wall overpowered, they simply ignored that feedback and released it anyway because they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.

[Citation required] - I've heard people say that the playtesters claimed that, but I've never seen a first-party source from GW stating that.

Watch the first Tabletop Tactics bat-rep with Orks, they keep saying "it's bad, we know it's bad, we know what's coming and you'll be happy when it gets here, but we can't tell you about it now".

Technically, it IS the most playtested edition if you include all the playtesting that was done in prior editions that leads up to 9th...

 aphyon wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


1.So what was actually playtested - was anything??

2.And if so was anything actually listened to?

3.Where do we see the positive influence of the playtesting?

1.marketing focus groups
2.sales department
3.the sycophantic praise of the new edition by the you tube groups/channels who got early access

That pretty well sums it up.

In a way i am sad to see the game i once loved turn this mess, but at the same time i am sitting back enjoying the spectacle of the train wreck in slow motion.

At least this debacle isn't affecting my ability to go back and play previous editions i enjoy. they can't screw them up anymore.

My fingers are getting calloused from all the songs I'm playing for you on the world's smallest violin.

What marketing focus groups? This hobby is a niche within a niche within a niche. Dakka and B&C are the closest thing to a marketing focus group that likely exists for 40k proper.

And just because you don't know the difference between 'syncophant' and optimistic, or even 'just genuinely enjoy the game' doesn't mean there isn't one.

Your maudlin 'woe is me' attitude is sad enough without nostalgic reminiscing on editions that were just as feth-y or worse. 6th and 7th were a garbage fire, 3rd and 4th were decidely mediocre, and 5th was fine but equally as flawed. There are no greener pastures to go to.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:
Technically, it IS the most playtested edition if you include all the playtesting that was done in prior editions that leads up to 9th...

They never playtested any of the other editions. That's why 3rd through 7th were a progressively grosser gakshow of broken rules interactions and bloat.

You think needing to carry a Core book, a codex, a CA, and a supplement book is bad? That's still less than the number of pages you had to have perfectly memorized to even put miniatures on a table in past editions.

 Dysartes wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
For example, GW famously admitted although that the IH Supplement was flagged by playtesters as completely off the wall overpowered, they simply ignored that feedback and released it anyway because they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.

[Citation required] - I've heard people say that the playtesters claimed that, but I've never seen a first-party source from GW stating that.

Uh it's in their own FAQ. That's why it's so famous - GW actually admitted that playtesters said it was broken, but they decided to release it anyway. GW said it was because they didn't believe their own playtesters, so make of that what you will I guess. Everyone knows it's because they didn't want to delay the release.

While we always strive to incorporate every scrap of
feedback we can into our rules, whilst working on Codex
Supplement: Iron Hands, we received some additional
feedback after we had gone to print. We have waited
before releasing this errata to see whether the feedback
received bore out – it is quite evident that it has and,
as a result, we felt it was important to implement that
feedback as part of this errata rather than wait for the
next online balance change. This is not something
we do lightly, but given the nature of the feedback, is
something we feel is important.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/warhammer_40000_iron_hands_en-1.pdf

we received some additional
feedback after we had gone to print

We have waited
before releasing this errata to see whether the feedback
received bore out

Sure, sure. That's what it said.

Did you actually read what it says or what you wanted it to say?

ERJAK wrote:
They never playtested any of the other editions. That's why 3rd through 7th were a progressively grosser gakshow of broken rules interactions and bloat.

Yeah. It only goes to prove that 9th edition is the most playtested edition since even 1 playtest is more playtests than 0 playtest.

The Newman wrote:
Watch the first Tabletop Tactics bat-rep with Orks, they keep saying "it's bad, we know it's bad, we know what's coming and you'll be happy when it gets here, but we can't tell you about it now".

stopped listening to anything Mr B says as the shift to outright shillage as nearly as tedious as 3hr battle reps

 Kanluwen wrote:

we received some additional
feedback after we had gone to print

We have waited
before releasing this errata to see whether the feedback
received bore out

Sure, sure. That's what it said.

Did you actually read what it says or what you wanted it to say?

Who exactly do you think they received feedback from before release, if not playtesters? I salute your ability to try to find a way to avoid blaming GW even when they are literally blaming themselves, but this is taking to quite remarkable levels.

The Newman wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Back when I did playetesting for SCEA, first thing we learned was that just because we found something and reported it, doesn't mean the devs did anything with it (for a variety of reasons, both good and bad).

Can confirm that from the development side as well. Sometimes it's time, sometimes it's disagreement about value, sometimes it's politics.

And sometimes it's because the customer wants something dumb. [edit] That's a general observation, it doesn't apply here. I've just seen it happen and not get reported back to QA properly. [/edit]

Yeah, I meant that when I typed "disagreement about value" but what I wrote is pretty unclear. I mean disagreement between tester/customer and Devs about the value of the proposed feedback/changes, etc. Customers are definitely not always right, but a lot of the time the devs aren't right too.