10 minutes ago, Rapture said:

Why? Although the stakes are radically different, should an NFL quarterback be given a free first down because he volunteered at a soup kitchen every weekend for the proceeding year?

That's a quality metaphor you've got there, hoss.

I mean, other than you brushing over that "stakes are radically different" thing, the fact that (as others have pointed out) being a playtester doesn't offer anything like the clear-cut advantage you're making out and that volunteering free time to help make the game under discussion better for everyone is different to doing unrelated charity work. Other than those trifling details it's A+ work.

7 minutes ago, Rodafowa said:

That's a quality metaphor you've got there, hoss.

I mean, other than you brushing over that "stakes are radically different" thing, the fact that (as others have pointed out) being a playtester doesn't offer anything like the clear-cut advantage you're making out and that volunteering free time to help make the game under discussion better for everyone is different to doing unrelated charity work. Other than those trifling details it's A+ work.

First, that is an analogy - not a metaphor. Hoss.

The stakes are largely irrelevant to the question of whether it is right or wrong. Whether intentionally throwing a rock would cause $1 of damage or $1,000,000.00 of damage, throwing rocks that results in property damage is still wrong, hoss.

Is getting information about the future of the rule in advance of other player an advantage? What do you think, hoss?

Is it fair that the controlling body of a competitive game gives an advantage to one of two otherwise equal players who sign up to participate in what is supposed to be a level competition? What do you think, hoss?

Again, the real question is the magnitude of the advantage. The fact that you are perceiving altruism does not justify giving an advantage in a competitive game of X-Wing. Maybe the advantage is so slight that it really has no impact whatsoever, but that is a completely different argument.

It does give a small advantage to the play testers however with this being a dice game, even the best player can suffer from a terrible roll which results in a match loss in a high level torny. No matter the knowledge or skill bad dice will doom you. That being said I believe the amount of people that are preparing for tourneys effected two weeks prior is so minimal. Torny players that are top 32 in the world home in their flying and predictions of opponents much more then relay on a combo. I don't see they changed in the faq having that much of an impact because the new ships most likely will be in the finals not repeats. X7 might be their and same with palp but there is no way we will see a repeat of manoroo and I highly doubt defenders will make a showing. Palp is still an Amazing card and can be an effective tool. its really more of the same each year the new is there and the old finishes below top 8. In a sense I don't think this matters at all against the skill of the players that earned their spot regaurdless of when they heard news.

15 minutes ago, Rapture said:

Hoss.

hoss.

hoss?

hoss?

Anyone else reminded of Bonanza? Or am I just an old man, with outdated references?

58 minutes ago, atr127 said:

i keep seeing this phrase "it's their job". no it's not their job, its something they do on their own time, and it's often a thankless and massively underwhelming experience. it can be a lot of fun as well, but often it is a chore, pure and simple. it's not about finding out whats coming and laughing at all the scrubs who don't know, its about playing the same broken or terribad stuff and over and over until it gets changed. play-testers do it because they love the game and they want it to be as balanced and fun as possible when the final product comes out.

Most of the posts in this very topic were actually saying that the community is and should be grateful of the unpaid time spent by testers into trying stuff

Quote

given this time investment and effort, is it really too much to ask to grant these people an (arguable) advantage for a maximum of a week or two, on the very few occasions an FAQ drops in the middle of a season?

I do think that testers should get some kind of compensation.

But I definitly don't think that such compensation should be at the expanse of fellow players or at the cost of, even slightly, give them advantages in tournaments .

You are also underselling testers advantage: they went to worlds knowing for literally months of advance that Deadeye 3 Jumpers wouldn't have been playable. This is much bigger than "a week or two"

Threads like this make me glad I stopped playing competitively months ago.

I think in an ideal world, for the sake of fairness and the appearance of fairness, playtesters would not be allowed to participate in tournaments, but then maybe no one would want to do it, and we'd have no playtesting. As others have said, for the sake of the game, playtesters need to be allowed to participate in tournaments.

In an ideal world, I think playtesters would be employees, not volunteers (and then they definitely wouldn't be allowed to participate in events, but would be compensated). I know X-Wing is very successful, but maybe it's just not quite popular enough to be able to support all those additional hires.

For comparison, Wizards of the Coast often hires highly-performing tournament players to join its Magic the Gathering testing team, which is called the 'Development' department, as opposed to the 'Design' department. Development is the equal of Design and shepherds the broad mechanical and thematic outlines created by Design into their final, precise form and balance.

But Magic is a much bigger game that X-Wing, and their paid developers still get it wrong sometimes.

Whoever they are, I do appreciate the work of playtesters.

11 minutes ago, Arrow said:

Threads like this make me glad I stopped playing competitively months ago.

Threads like this are why I don't make any effort for anything above a store level tournament.

13 minutes ago, Arrow said:

Threads like this make me glad I stopped playing competitively months ago.

Comments like yours make me wish this forum didn't have such a vocal casual-elitist demographic, and that people who make such comments should realise that this game is what you make of it. I enjoy playing tournaments, you don't; but you aren't a better person than I am based on that fact alone.

Any advantage gained from early knowledge drops off quickly as time passes, so it really depends on the timing of the errata. If they decide to make a change a week before Worlds... yeah, that's a pretty big boon, but even a 2 week head start gives players a significant chance to catch up.

I'm still mystified that this is a controversial issue to the community when most other games don't allow playtesters/employees in competitive events.

Whoa whoa whoa ... you're telling me the FFG is getting THE BEST PLAYERS to check their math?

LITERALLY SHAKING. THE HORROR. SHOCK. EBAY SOON.

My goodness, surely a playtester won worlds. A person on FFG's team who knew of the deadeye change.

Hold up....

35 minutes ago, chervorlovesu said:

Whoa whoa whoa ... you're telling me the FFG is getting THE BEST PLAYERS to check their math?

LITERALLY SHAKING. THE HORROR. SHOCK. EBAY SOON.

My goodness, surely a playtester won worlds. A person on FFG's team who knew of the deadeye change.

Hold up....

I feel like you didn't read the OP.

1 hour ago, Rapture said:

What do you think, hoss?

I think I can't bring myself to give the remotest flying toss whether people who're doing vital work to shape the game and improve it for everyone are gaining a fractional advantage in a tournament that has within-a-rounding-error-of zero stakes, and no amount of hilariously melodramatic analogies or you launching your toys out of the playpen is likely to change that.

Seeing as you ask, and all!

Airfare and hotel fees aren't exactly chump change.

I'd hesitate to get too worked up about this without knowing more about what play testers know, when they know it, and what the context of the information they are given is.

It's not really actionable information if you know that something might happen sometime and that a lot of the things you see never end up happening at all or happen in a different way that what you had seen.

If on the other hand, it was "Hey guys, we need to you test this stuff that's going into the 3/17 FAQ", I'd consider that to be a bit on the shady side.

2 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

There's pretty much no prize in X-Wing worth the effort of winning, IMHO.

And thank goodness for that. Due to the non-deterministic nature of actually placing physical ships cheating would be rampant if thousands of dollars was on the line.

Oh good this again.

Does being a play tester give you some level of competitive advantage? Almost certainly.

How much of a competitive advantage does it give you? This is unquantifiable.

The fact is, if you disallow play-testers from competition, you make them make a choice. That choice results in either unqualified people guiding the balance of the game (which is problematic), or the people who aren't the best at X-wing winning premier events, which doesn't seem right.

I'd prefer the best X-wingers to win events, as that is the goal of competition. I'd also prefer the best minds in X-wing helping guide the balance for the good of the game.

So if we're debating whether or not FFG should change their policies to solve a problem that we can't even determine how much of a problem it actually is, my answer is emphatically NO.

33 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

I feel like you didn't read the OP.

Probably not that closely. I'm sure it was reasonable and well thought out. I on the other hand am not.

30 minutes ago, Sekac said:

So if we're debating whether or not FFG should change their policies to solve a problem that we can't even determine how much of a problem it actually is, my answer is emphatically NO.

Well it really depends on how much effort the change would make and what impact it has.

I think any major change like the recent Palp and other nerfs with 2 weeks lead time is a bit short. But as was pointed out above and as I said, it can tricky to give much more lead time.

Changing the policy so that people get 3-4 weeks before the change goes into effect wouldn't likely hurt anything, and would IMO be better, the issue of how much and when a play tester knows quite frankly doesn't factor into it. Because there may be cases where they know what's going to happen and others where they may only know something going to happen but not exactly what, but most people here have a pretty good idea of what is likely to be changed down the road.

1 minute ago, VanorDM said:

Well it really depends on how much effort the change would make and what impact it has.

I think any major change like the recent Palp and other nerfs with 2 weeks lead time is a bit short. But as was pointed out above and as I said, it can tricky to give much more lead time.

Changing the policy so that people get 3-4 weeks before the change goes into effect wouldn't likely hurt anything, and would IMO be better, the issue of how much and when a play tester knows quite frankly doesn't factor into it. Because there may be cases where they know what's going to happen and others where they may only know something going to happen but not exactly what, but most people here have a pretty good idea of what is likely to be changed down the road.

I don't disagree with you. I'm fairly sure we all knew there was a change coming to Palpatine, but a much smaller number of people knew exactly what the change was going to be. We all knew Paratanni and Dengaroo were strong and that there was probably a change coming, but a very small number of people knew that at some point in the near future, Manaroo's ability would only work at Range 1.

Like I said, I highly doubt that any competitors who are also playtesters knew that the FAQ would be announced when it was and that it would take effect on the date it did. They did know a change was coming, however.

Player A has been practicing with Paratanni for the past few months. They know it's good and that a change may or may not be coming to it. They have no idea what that change would be and when it would take effect.

Player B knows that at some point relatively soon (maybe a few weeks, maybe a month or two) Manaroo is going to be Range 1 only, Palpatine is going to change so that it's no longer completely reactionary, x7 won't work if the Defender has stress or bumps, and Zuckuss will have a sane effect for a card that only costs 1 point.

Two weeks before a major event, the changes are announced.

I find it hard to believe that people are going to argue that Player B's knowledge and practice doesn't give them a significant advantage in this scenario.

Just now, mightyspacepope said:

but a much smaller number of people knew exactly what the change was going to be.

But we have no way of knowing who actually knew what the change would be. Did any play tester actually know what the change would be, or did they know it was going to change but knew of 5-6 possible things it could end up being?

Unless you can show that the people playing at the most recent Open knew exactly what the changes would be before we all found out about them, then you don't know how much if any advantage a play tester had.

I'll agree that two weeks wasn't enough time, but this is one of only a few times such a major change has come out in a FAQ, so it's not all that common. Anything more than two weeks and any advantage in foreknowledge by the play testers is largely meaningless.

Do player testers have an advantage? YES.
Does playtesting have it's disadvantages? Yes.
Is the "advantage" of playtesting long lasting? No.
Is the "advantage" of playtesting so great that we really need to ban playtesters from any kind of Tournaments? Almost always NO.

If X-Wing were MtG where they supposedly try to keep a lot of information about a massive release of cards secret until release day then I'd certainly say the playtests have enough of an advantage that they probably shouldn't be playing in those release events. Is there a large (granted that varies person to person) reward for winning a tournament close (?) to a new release then maybe playtesters shouldn't participate although if there is the reward is that big there should be other benefits to being a playtester.

If there is a time that playtesters should be prevented from tournament participation it is when there is suddenly a lot of new material available AND the reward for winning is significant enough that it should probably be reported to the IRS/taxman. I can think of few X-Wing tournaments where the reward for winning is that significant.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for banning playtesters from major events.