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If no one finds the original post, that should be considered fake. If it isn't fake, it should be easy to verify.

I will die of shock if that's real. It doesn't even read like something their Facebook team would write.

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

It's only not wrong if you accept that 10 playtesters is the absolute limit that is god-given and can't be changed for whatever reason, which is obviously stupid and an arbitrary decision made by GW in the first place.

On top of that, in-house playtesting is generally ineffective because these people have a fundamental problem: in most cases, they are game designers themselves, and in intimate contact with the people that write the rules, so they know, in many cases, what any given rule was meant to do, which need not be what the written rules actually state. That is a form of 'reality blindness' that is very hard to ditch, and as a consequence they overlook a lot of ambiguities, unclear or nonsensical formulations and wordings because it is all very clear in their mind, because they have additional information that the average player hasn't. If you want to do effective playtesting, you need to take steps to counteract this, and - at a minimum - bounce your written rules off of people that do not have that background information.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

It's only not wrong if you accept that 10 playtesters is the absolute limit that is god-given and can't be changed for whatever reason, which is obviously stupid and an arbitrary decision made by GW in the first place.

On top of that, in-house playtesting is generally ineffective because these people have a fundamental problem: in most cases, they are game designers themselves, and in intimate contact with the people that write the rules, so they know, in many cases, what any given rule was meant to do, which need not be what the written rules actually state. That is a form of 'reality blindness' that is very hard to ditch, and as a consequence they overlook a lot of ambiguities, unclear or nonsensical formulations and wordings because it is all very clear in their mind, because they have additional information that the average player hasn't. If you want to do effective playtesting, you need to take steps to counteract this, and - at a minimum - bounce your written rules off of people that do not have that background information.

It can still be correct within the confines of the limitations placed. Not saying its right, not saying that they can't do better because they can and it certainly won't be the fault of whoever is doing the playtesting in-house. But it's also not their choice to only have 10 staff etc. That's corpo dong heads.

Dudeface wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

It's only not wrong if you accept that 10 playtesters is the absolute limit that is god-given and can't be changed for whatever reason, which is obviously stupid and an arbitrary decision made by GW in the first place.

On top of that, in-house playtesting is generally ineffective because these people have a fundamental problem: in most cases, they are game designers themselves, and in intimate contact with the people that write the rules, so they know, in many cases, what any given rule was meant to do, which need not be what the written rules actually state. That is a form of 'reality blindness' that is very hard to ditch, and as a consequence they overlook a lot of ambiguities, unclear or nonsensical formulations and wordings because it is all very clear in their mind, because they have additional information that the average player hasn't. If you want to do effective playtesting, you need to take steps to counteract this, and - at a minimum - bounce your written rules off of people that do not have that background information.

It can still be correct within the confines of the limitations placed. Not saying its right, not saying that they can't do better because they can and it certainly won't be the fault of whoever is doing the playtesting in-house. But it's also not their choice to only have 10 staff etc. That's corpo dong heads.

Of course, i'm not saying it's the fault of the playtesters, they can only do so much. Ultimately, it's a question of quality control, and if GW (be it the design team, corporate or whichever level does the decisionmaking in that particular case) finds that level of effort and the resulting quality problems acceptable then that's a decision we have to live with for now. In my opinion they could do better with trivial additional effort, but they'd have to want to in the first place.

Unless you can confirm the post is even true, it seems futile to treat it as such. That's how you get pages of discussion based on a false premise.

 Trickstick wrote:
Unless you can confirm the post is even true, it seems futile to treat it as such. That's how you get pages of discussion based on a false premise.

It is an old post, I think it made itself a name some 2 or 3 years ago? Even then it was endlessly ridiculed because 4 games per week from full-job playtesters was pretty disheartening but also pretty funny (not even GW employees can play their game more than ~12 hours a week and such).

Tsagualsa wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

It's only not wrong if you accept that 10 playtesters is the absolute limit that is god-given and can't be changed for whatever reason, which is obviously stupid and an arbitrary decision made by GW in the first place.

On top of that, in-house playtesting is generally ineffective because these people have a fundamental problem: in most cases, they are game designers themselves, and in intimate contact with the people that write the rules, so they know, in many cases, what any given rule was meant to do, which need not be what the written rules actually state. That is a form of 'reality blindness' that is very hard to ditch, and as a consequence they overlook a lot of ambiguities, unclear or nonsensical formulations and wordings because it is all very clear in their mind, because they have additional information that the average player hasn't. If you want to do effective playtesting, you need to take steps to counteract this, and - at a minimum - bounce your written rules off of people that do not have that background information.

It also assumes that the ONLY way to catch mistakes is to actually play games (the question wasn't "Why don't you playtest?"). I doubt anyone in this thread needed to play a single game of 10e to spot the DW interaction, you just need a basic level of reading comprehension.

It was exactly the same with the Votann codex, you don't have to PLAY a game to see that "Rule that states something counts as an unmodified wound roll of 6" might possibly trigger the rule two paragraphs later that activated on "an unmodified wound roll of 6". That doesn't take 50,000 hours of playtesting, it doesn't take a team of a hundred playtesters from across the world air-gapped from the design team, it takes one person who graduated high school and has a level of object permeance greater than a goldfish, something GW are consistently proving they do not have access to.

Your point on in-house playtesting is valid, and why I generally pour scorn on RAI arguments, a Game Designer's job is to translate their intent for how something should work into a set of mechanical effects that, when reproduced, replicate that outcome. If you need to try and divine the intent of a rule for it to generate the desired effect, then the designers are not doing their jobs. If you follow a recipe for chocolate cake and it ends up making flaming hot chilli, that's because the person writing the recipe didn't do their damn job and nobody else that recipe passed through caught the glaringly obvious mistake either.

These are not emergent effects that only become apparent when you have tens of thousands of eyes on the rules, they aren't wacky unintended consequences of two obscure rules interactions, these are not failures of playtesting, they're failures of basic reading, and regardless of whether the post itself is genuine or not, these are failures that keep happening regardless of the amount of playtesting that is allegedly done beforehand

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Unless you can confirm the post is even true, it seems futile to treat it as such. That's how you get pages of discussion based on a false premise.

It is an old post, I think it made itself a name some 2 or 3 years ago? Even then it was endlessly ridiculed because 4 games per week from full-job playtesters was pretty disheartening but also pretty funny (not even GW employees can play their game more than ~12 hours a week and such).

More than 12 hours a week with that book* you assume they only work on 1 set at a time, which they likely do cover multiple and this largely will incur further risk and quality sacrifices.

On top of that, there's also the issue of poor proofreading and copy-editing (i.e. units missing the option to actually take equipment listed on their card, different-language units having different profiles, wrong/flipped weapon and other profiles, missing keywords and so on) - these are somewhat more understandable given the sheer amount of cards, but sill a lot of them could be prevented by using modern-day productivity/versioning systems and professional proofreaders and editors.

We already have a decent primary source in what GW do in terms of playtesting at least up until pretty recently - this video where Peachy interviews James Hewitt about it.

https://youtu.be/GAsX9W2GDTY

I thought it was interesting that some of GW's games that are generally considered to be pretty balanced were not playtested that widely.

 The Phazer wrote:
We already have a decent primary source in what GW do in terms of playtesting at least up until pretty recently - this video where Peachy interviews James Hewitt about it.

https://youtu.be/GAsX9W2GDTY

I thought it was interesting that some of GW's games that are generally considered to be pretty balanced were not playtested that widely.

It's probably a question of where you're starting from - games like BFG or Warmaster were pretty much written in one go, for all factions, and were thus pretty balanced on the outset (let's just not mention Eldar and Necrons for BFG, thank you), while other games like e.g. Bloodbowl have a rather restricted set of things 'units' can do and are thus inherently easier to balance.

The main culprits that have consistent balancing problems are the mainline games that have accumulated cruft over half-a-dozen editions and more, and that want to cover a lot of things at the same time (Warhammer covering everything from quasi-medieval human armies to all-monsters armies, magic-heavy summoning forces or hyper-elite daemon legions, while 40k spans the range from an individual sniper rifle's ammunition choice being important up to Titans, Airplanes and Orbital Bombardments) and have a lot of historical baggage about how they should 'feel' and play and how individual units should behave.

leopard wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I'll bet that the variable sizes are accurate, but they're taking the Power Level model of forcing you to round up to the higher cost.

Which would mean that all their talk of "Power Level is dead, points is the future!" was a load of nonsense.

yup, they have filed off the name "power level" and grabbed a marker pen and written "points" instead


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Losing a lot of upgrades does sound like 40K losing something its had for a long time, at the same time GW has bafflingly, been unable to write a good codex format since around 3-4th edition. Their formatting for the last few editions has been so page flippingly confusing that I bet they got a LOT of complaints about how its hard to build just 1 model when stats are on one page; costs on another; upgrades on another; weapons on another - all making it way way harder to actually just build 1 unit let alone an army.

WYSIWYG is also something GW is pushing harder, which is overall a good thing, but upgrades were never really part of that. You could do it (and do a lot of converting); but often it was just not sensible because one game you might drop a 1 point upgrade on a unit for a few more points to add another model into another unit and so-forth. So modelling and requiring them was just beyond most peoples sane approach to modelling.



IT seems that GW is adopting a lot of the AoS systems into 40K. Just cross your fingers the double-turn person doesn't get their fingers on the 40K rules and brings that over. Though honestly considering shooting is way more deadly in 40K, I don't think it would work one bit.

double turn could work, but only if they also bring over the split turn from LotR so you will always get to move before an enemy fires

It doesn't work in AoS
An alternate army activation game giving 2 turns to one side is always going to utterly break any semblance of game balance

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

well, it would confirm that there is no playtesting done
as testing is done during development of the codex but not of the final product

if this is true GW proudly announces that they are only doing Alpha Tests during a 6 week period but no Beta Tests or pre-release tests of the final product

not understanding that playtesting is done after the development of the codex with point costs

would be funny if a game dev stands on steam that they have done a 10 people alpha test for their FPS shooter and it is impossible to spot all bugs on the final product as the extensive alpha testing still cannot find what 25k users find on release day


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Phazer wrote:
I thought it was interesting that some of GW's games that are generally considered to be pretty balanced were not playtested that widely.

James also confirmed that the did the testing private in home as he did not want a game to be released before he at least played it once

so if the better balanced games are played by the designer at home tells us a lot what could be done of they would just play a single game with the final version of a Codex

 kodos wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Taken from 4chan so it may be fake or not.

I mean real or fake it's not wrong.

well, it would confirm that there is no playtesting done
as testing is done during development of the codex but not of the final product

if this is true GW proudly announces that they are only doing Alpha Tests during a 6 week period but no Beta Tests or pre-release tests of the final product

not understanding that playtesting is done after the development of the codex with point costs

would be funny if a game dev stands on steam that they have done a 10 people alpha test for their FPS shooter and it is impossible to spot all bugs on the final product as the extensive alpha testing still cannot find what 25k users find on release day


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Phazer wrote:
I thought it was interesting that some of GW's games that are generally considered to be pretty balanced were not playtested that widely.

James also confirmed that the did the testing private in home as he did not want a game to be released before he at least played it once

so if the better balanced games are played by the designer at home tells us a lot what could be done of they would just play a single game with the final version of a Codex

Then it wouldn't be the final version, as you're suggesting they should be... play testing them before release with a view to develop and change them. If you want to treat it like software you also have to acknowledge a continuous development cycle. Likewise you do draw a line in the sand and have to regression test to ensure there's no extra problems before release, but even then you have the option to release or return to develop more. Beta testing isn't mandatory for any product or even viable in some fields, you might have some UAT or SAT testing, which the equivalent here would be a closed doors tournament by some bigwig names. But that's still before the trigger is pulled on it being final and printed.

for printed products, of course final testing is not done before release but before it goes to the printer

but if software is not comparable, lets take a printed book
saying that proof reading was done during the 6 week writing process and it was impossible to spot that chapter 11-19 was put in between chapter 1 and 2 as this can only be found when thousands of people read it on release day

Can the general discussion of proofreading and testing go to a different thread and stop clogging up the more specific 10th Ed one?

The 10 playtester thing is one thing... the 6 week Codex development time is far more frightening.

What's supposed to be frightening about a six week dev period on a Codex?

 His Master's Voice wrote:
What's supposed to be frightening about a six week dev period on a Codex?

Mainly the fact that people believe ragebait from 4chan

 xttz wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
What's supposed to be frightening about a six week dev period on a Codex?

Mainly the fact that people believe ragebait from 4chan

I find 6 weeks of 'design' not unbelievable - it's not software that needs to be written in millions of lines of code and interacting modules, much of the rules side is already given by the model design side of things, and they don't really do testing. Obviously there are other steps of the design process that don't fall under these six weeks, but for making up some rules and fluff it sounds about right.

Andykp wrote:

It’s how they have done age of sigmar points for ages, and according to a bunch of folk who disliked power levels intensely in another thread, points done like this is still way better than power levels.

the thing is AoS' squad options are actually tradeoffs unlike 40k.

lets say my squad can take swords or spears

Swords get 1" range, 2 attacks that hit on 3's
Spears get 2" range, 2 attacks that hit on 4's

In 40k, it's a no brainer to upgrade from a boltgun to a lascannon in a tactical squad for example

thing is though you could easily limit how many upgrades you have in a unit, one way that springs to mind is assigning a value to the upgrades and then say requiring you to not have more than a total value of them over your force, some sort of points based system, with values assigned maybe?

and sarcasm aside you could note a maximum percentage of your force for "upgrades"

expect thats not how GW will go, they will say "all upgrades are free!" which saying they have in theory costed either the most expensive or some "average" amount rolled in

Xenos downloads https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/15/free-xenos-index-cards-the-battle-for-the-galaxy-rages-on-all-sides/

Xenos rules are up; just skimming through the Tau and looks like we got shafted.

Ok, so, the Xenos data sheets are out. Let's see how I did with a prediction:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Wait 'til we see the Autarch sheet, or sheets. I fully expect them to reverse the current Autarch entry and give us two different types: Autarch, and Autarch with Swooping Hawk Wings. The former will have a Wargear option for a Warp Jump Pack, giving it Flicker Jump, and wargear options that match the newer kit. The Wings Autarch will just have the weapons that specific kit comes with.

Well... I was mostly right. Really hoping I wouldn't be.

What we have are three Autarch sheets. One of them is the Jetbike Autarch - I was completely wrong about that; I thought that one was a goner, but I guess not - but that leaves us with, as expected, a foot and wing Autarch sheet.

Unfortunately, they've fethed with the weapon options for no apparent reason. You have to take the Furion Pistol, Power Sword and Mandiblasters as a set. All the others can be mixed'n'matched, but these three options can only be taken as a package deal. There's also no Warp Jump Generator, despite the model having one.

This isn't as bad as I thought it'd be, but somehow makes even less sense.

 Valkyrie wrote:
Xenos rules are up; just skimming through the Tau and looks like we got shafted.

Dark Eldar got it worse. No Harlequins, no Corsairs... Aeldari can take them, but Dark Eldar can't.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:
Xenos rules are up; just skimming through the Tau and looks like we got shafted.

Dark Eldar got it worse. No Harlequins, no Corsairs... Aeldari can take them, but Dark Eldar can't.

Confusingly, yes Dark Eldar can take them, but the rules to do so are included on the Aeldari sheets, not the Drukhari sheets. 2nd page of the detachment rules.

Spiritseers can join Wraithlords. Well there ya go...

I guess they've solidified on the decision that Avengers shouldn't be troops-equivalent anymore? They're OC 1 now and aren't battleline.

EDIT: also holy feth, the spirit seer can revive a body-guard on the command phase, which means one wraithguard, blade, or lord revived a turn.