7 minutes ago, Wiredin said:

I agree. There is a stronger possibility of a negative result of all of this than a positive. Some seem to be worried that the house of mouse may even get their gloved fingers involved in this mess...

Seems unlikely. The game sells and is very fun. It's not like there's another game company who seems competent at this genre right now.

No reason for the mouse to get involved... Nothing dealing with any new Star Wars release, so not important.

Open source playtesting would be amazing, but FFG would have to be cautious to do it in a way that does not violate NDA's they signed with Disney/LFL.

Just now, jmswood said:

Open source playtesting would be amazing, but FFG would have to be caustious to do it in a way that does not violate NDA's they signed with Disney/LFL.

I think that would be the biggest reason open playtesting is probably not on the table.

but it would be cool. They could even just do it in Vassal or TTS....

3 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

This sort of paranoid nonsense isn't useful. Very, very few games are getting decided because a playtester knew the rough idea of a mechanic a few months in advance.

Im not convinced any of the supposed playtesting is useful either.

When developers say they want to see what the meta does before doing anything,then there's no point to playtesting anyways.

When it takes six months to a year of public play for adjustments to be made,there REALLY doesn't seem to be any point to having secret playtesters sharing secrets with their podcast buddies and Facebook groups.

8 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

This sort of paranoid nonsense isn't useful. Very, very few games are getting decided because a playtester knew the rough idea of a mechanic a few months in advance.

I'm not so sure about that.

3 minutes ago, jmswood said:

Open source playtesting would be amazing, but FFG would have to be cautious to do it in a way that does not violate NDA's they signed with Disney/LFL.

Should be extremely simple and I'm shocked they don't do it already. Don't give out any ability names. Every pilot and upgrade has an alphanumeric designation with no art. You test the ships and abilities without a model on the flight stand. Testers will know the various iteration on an ability and what factions it can be used with, but no names or ships or anything fluff needs to be revealed to testers ever.

10 minutes ago, Velvetelvis said:

Im not convinced any of the supposed playtesting is useful either.

When developers say they want to see what the meta does before doing anything,then there's no point to playtesting anyways.

When it takes six months to a year of public play for adjustments to be made,there REALLY doesn't seem to be any point to having secret playtesters sharing secrets with their podcast buddies and Facebook groups.

Classic "if it doesn't 100% fix a problem it isn't useful" thinking. It's as productive here as it is outside of a miniatures game.

2 hours ago, Crit Happens said:

Although I've been thoroughly entertained by the events, and outrage of the last 20 or so hours, it's been increasingly evident for a while now that there are major issues with the playtesting for our favourite hobby, and it's become quite troubling. Other, more known and respected members of the community have raised these concerns in the past (MajorJuggler, Sozin, the Carolina Krayts podcast, as well as others), so I won't re-hash all the gory details here, but wanted to give my observations.

The current method of playtesting is completely broken. Then, yesterday someone looked at the broken pieces on the ground, and bashed them with a hammer. Too many clearly over-powered elements have been introduced to the game in the last few waves. The entire jumpmaster expansion being the biggest offender - until wave 11... This has happened for one of three four reasons:

1) the playtesters are missing very obvious broken combos

2) the playtesters are finding these combos, and not reporting them

3) the playtesters are finding and reporting these combos, but FFG is not taking their advice

4) the combos are spotted and FFG responds, but changes are made at the last minute and not playtested before publication. - brought up by @thespaceinvader

It really doesn't matter which scenario is happening, because they all point to a system that is/was broken. Now, FFG is likely not very trusting of their current pool of playtesters, and quite frankly, they shouldn't be. I've seen dozens of people express outrage about this leak for a variety of reasons, but to me, the most troubling are the humble brags.

If you're not sure what I mean, it looks like this: "I'm so mad this guy broke the trust of FFG! I knew about this a while ago, but didn't go spreading it around." -guy who is impressed with himself for being in-the-know

There have been so many of these that it's clearly obvious there is a lot more than just one guy breaking his NDA. There are multiple playtesters spreading this stuff around. We should be happy that this only happened for an FAQ rather than a ship with episode 8 spoilers.

Something needs to change. I love what Sozin suggested, making playtesting an open, community driven project, where you would need to provide data to back up your findings. The only other option is hiring people to do the job, but I don't get the impression that FFG is willing to pony up any extra cash to have people do a proper job of it.

Anyways, these are my early morning, can't get back to sleep thoughts on the matter. I'm hoping we can have an insightful conversation about this.

IMO the best solution would be to playtest like Blizzard does for their video games. All the changes are annouced before the tests even start. Everyone can participate when the changes concern already existing product. Beta testing future releases is done on invitation only to prevent spoilers.

During the process the developper are constantly communicating with the player base, explaining the logics behing the modifications, listening to the feedbacks and taking them into account.

If FFG want to change for the better the # 1 thing they need to improve is communication and they should start by their own forum. Players have been complaining about powercreeps for quite some time now and it just keep increasing. Despite that they have not made 1 single post on their forum to adress the concerns.

How hard is it to create 1 small post: "we are aware of X, Y, Z situations and are working on solutions"?

12 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

Classic "if it doesn't 100% fix a problem it isn't useful" thinking. It's as productive here as it is outside of a miniatures game.

I think what he was saying is that FFG need to be faster with those fixes. It's possible, Wizards can do it for MTG.... Jumpmasters have been having a negative effect on the game since their release. With long reaction times like that, when new power creeps get released, they just pile on each other and amplify the problem.

I look at all the posters who want to be amateur designers, with a self inflated sense of how good they are at it, and I don't see how anyone can say open playtesting would be a good idea with a straight face. It would be a freaking disaster. First of all, there reaches a point where too much information is detrimental. You have to sift through a 100 times more data, and a whole lot more will be worthless data. And I am convinced that a whole lot more would be worthless, with people trying to push their crappy designs onto them, rather than actually providing feedback.

And people really don't understand the playtesting process. Changes can happen after the playtest data. And playtesters have no real power. They just give feedback. I don't see how expanding that would help.

As for the designers on the forums, FFG's policy prevents them from posting on the forums. For really good reasons. That has been the policy for years, no reason to expect that to change. And I don't expect that to be a net positive for them to give themselves a public forum to be abused, as is the wont of the internet bold guy.

And remember, even FAQs have to go through LFL. So there are issues with them talking about stuff ahead of time.

If you pay your playtesters, then they will care and put in the effort. If you "pay" them like crap, then you get situations like this. I put the blame on FFG for the leaks. No one is going to take their NDA seriously under the current playtesting set up.

As as far as the reasons you stated it's a little of everything. For instance, take a look at the back side of the box on the Jumpmaster and take a look at the playtester names.

4 minutes ago, Tbetts94 said:

As as far as the reasons you stated it's a little of everything. For instance, take a look at the back side of the box on the Jumpmaster and take a look at the playtester names.

I know that there are some well known names attached to that expansion, because people always say to look at the names. I'm not really interested in dragging anyone through the mud though.

1 minute ago, Tbetts94 said:

No one is going to take their NDA seriously under the current playtesting set up.

Already nobody takes their OP rules seriously as cheaters aren't immediately thrown out of elite events.

Already nobody takes their NDA seriously as all of this #humblebrag proved.

The majority of players just want fair competition and a diverse meta. There are apparently some major organizational issues to be dealt with in order to achieve that.

4 minutes ago, Tbetts94 said:

I put the blame on FFG for the leaks. No one is going to take their NDA seriously under the current playtesting set up.

Lots of playtesters take the NDA seriously. Just for a current example, I was a playtester up to Wave 9, and this change was not revealed to me by the remaining playtesters in my former group, and we're still tight when it comes to X-Wing. I saw it on Reddit, like (almost) everybody else.

The leak is not FFG's fault.

kinda wish i could become a playtester. Not because i want advanced knowledge of whats coming but as my friend put it:
"You always find these incredibly weird and oddly functional combos with every release!"

(note: he actually suggested i try to be a tester i didnt even give it a thought)

No idea how i would go about that though or where i'd even do it. I kinda live in the middle of nowhere Nebraska

getting around spoiling new star wars material isn't hard.

"Hey playtesters. We're testing SHIP A which has these stats."

Just don't name the ship.

2 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

kinda wish i could become a playtester. Not because i want advanced knowledge of whats coming but as my friend put it:
"You always find these incredibly weird and oddly functional combos with every release!"

(note: he actually suggested i try to be a tester i didnt even give it a thought)

No idea how i would go about that though or where i'd even do it. I kinda live in the middle of nowhere Nebraska

If you're not already in-the-know, you never will be...

I really like the idea of making faq changes public and then having people play with them for a couple months before it hits and decide BEFORE they make it official if it works. They can still work solely with their play testers on changes but get public feedback, not changing ideas just feedback, making it more like a videogame scenario.

Before some people have cows on public involvement, FFG can and should hire a small handful of people to screen public response and only present designers with useful info. It really isn't that hard and if legal agreements are the problem then those need renogiated and changed. More and more people are playing homebrew or quitting and this poor playtesting is not the only but a direct cause.

If designers still end up making the game they want and ignore public response then the game deserves to fail and it may head that way. Don't agree, don't care, this system doesn't work and the past couple waves have proved it. I want good play testers to be proud of their involvement not ridiculed or laughed at. Something needs to change and that is indisputable.

2 hours ago, LordBlades said:

This is the one that bothers me the most in the aftermath of these leaks...there seems to be an 'underground' network of people 'in the know'.

More likely a larger group of people who want to LOOK as if they were in the know...

Just now, Rat of Vengence said:

More likely a larger group of people who want to LOOK as if they were in the know...

This is certainly a possibility, though the motivation to do such a thing is baffling to me. But then again, a lot of what gets posted here is baffling.

...

Why am I here again?

I would not trust 90% of you with balance.

Open testing are you guys mad? Only a few days ago someone played against a nym list twice and list one of those games so made a post demanding everyone involved be fired.

**** I wouldn't trust myself, I think drastically differently about what is good and what is not compared to most of the people constantly complaining on here.

@Icelom

agreed, if I was play testing I'd probably lobby for bombs to be twice as expensive.

16 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

I really like the idea of making faq changes public and then having people play with them for a couple months before it hits and decide BEFORE they make it official if it works. They can still work solely with their play testers on changes but get public feedback, not changing ideas just feedback, making it more like a videogame scenario.

Before some people have cows on public involvement, FFG can and should hire a small handful of people to screen public response and only present designers with useful info. It really isn't that hard and if legal agreements are the problem then those need renogiated and changed. More and more people are playing homebrew or quitting and this poor playtesting is not the only but a direct cause.

If designers still end up making the game they want and ignore public response then the game desearves to fail and it may head that way. Don't agree, don't care, this system doesn't work and the past couple waves have proved it. I want good play testers to be proud of their involvement not ridiculed or laughed at. Something needs to change and that is indisputable.

They don't have much room, though. Everything they publish, has to go through LFL. There is no renegotiating that, especially since the contract for the license is still good for a few years. So, any public playtesting has to go through LFL EVERY TIME they make a change and want to be playtested. With the SW license, it is just not practical in any sense. And make no doubt about it, FFG is NOT in the position to dictate any terms. I have followed the SW license through 3 different game companies. And very few things have changed in how LFL handles licensees.

8 minutes ago, SaltMaster 5000 said:

To all the people saying that open play testing is a bad idea because, "Look at all the *** ideas everyone has", that's why closed play testing is so awful.

What makes you think that the problem gets worse when it's out in the open? More eyes will weed out more bugs.

This community is almost universally utter garbage. Most players suck at the game and most players opinions on game balance are awful. Better to widen the pool of people that way one of the few people with a non-trash opinion can shine the light of reason on the problem. I know that a bunch of forum idiots will jump down my throat for this, but you know it's true.

The play testers seem to be composed of 2 groups: ******* idiots with bad ideas that don't care if the game is balanced because they're casual players that should have no business play testing, and competitive players that don't care how broken the game is because, "You just need to get good".

FFG gives them broken stuff to play test. The casual idiots like it because it does something cool or is thematic or some other bull, and the competitive players think that it's balanced when it's absolutely, 100% not-at-all balanced.

Either, "That card isn't broken, just don't be a **** and don't fly 4 of them" or, "That card isn't broken just get good". NEITHER OF THESE ATTITUDES ARE HELPFUL.

If you were in charge salt, we would just sit across from each other with no ships, after you removed all the "npe" stuff.