muzzyman1981 said:

Quite the opposite IME. Pick up a more amateur RPG and the copy is far more error-riddled.

Every RPG tends to be a mess. WoTC manage to put out a decent product, and GW can now apparently do so, but most companies are lacking. Look at the mess the original WFRP was, or CP21013.

There are mistakes, but these are soon fixed with house-rules, and the glory of the internet allows for errata to be easily distributed. Sure: It's a shame that it's bad at times, but better that than the publishing schedule be half as long due to huge lead times.

I have to agree - not proof reading a final product before going to press is simply not on.

It is a straightforward task that a single staff member could accomplish in a short amount of time for an inexpensive salary.

The books are a godsend but the mistakes are not - its simply unprofessional from a company such as FFG.

BrotherHostower said:

I completely disagree with the first statement. In Europe, FFG RPG books run from €40-€60, whereas most WotC books go from €20-€40, and don't suffer nearly as much from amateurish typos that you see in DW. Even the Pathfinder RPG Corebook, from Paizo, cost only €50 at my local store.

Don't mean to sound harsh, because I'm generally happy with my FFG products, but a little less mess for my 60 eurobucks would be nice.

Remember that FFG's RPG department is a lot smaller that WotC's and the difference in volume sold is a matter of magnitudes. I'd wager that 100 4e PHBs are sold for every copy of Deathwatch. A difference in prices is inevitable, especially compared to 'core' 4e books, which are probably loss-lead priced. I believe that WotC also flat-out bought a printing company (back before they even held the D&D license), and although I'm not sure if FFG out-source printing or manage to do it in-house, the normal route is for it to be done externally, which is more expensive.

I see 3 to 4 names in the Editors list of 40K RPGs and only 2 to 3 in D&D 3.5 , those might be professional editors with no knowledge of the gaming system whatsoever, in this case however i must say that the level of professionalism was higher on the WotC team in regards to unclear wording and grammar errors. However should the FFG RPG development team be really that small, than most of the members are probably not naive when it comes to the content and have already had the possibility to work on largely same or at least very similar content twice, before DW hit the shelves.

I however can comment on some of the playtesting, as I am a member of the DW playtest group and have been for almost all of the books (didn't test the GM kit or TEP).

My playtest group has gone through quite a bit of changes, however I wouldn't say that any of us are "powergamers" at all. We tend to focus much more on the fluff of the game, the setting, and the overall feel. Do we comment on mechanics? Sure we do. Do we test/check/verify every single word or rule? No. That is why there are multiple test groups (in theory).

However, every single member of my group have been fans of the 40k universe for many, many years. Most of us played a lot of WFRP 1.0 and RT-era 40k. All of us have played in at least one other 40kRPG campaign, with many of us having ran one in the past as well. We are always more loyal to the setting than to mechanics. As an example: I have a Space Wolf Assault Marine in my group who thinks jump packs are silly and refuses to use one. I also have a Salamander Devastator who took Signature Wargear and took a flamer (his personal, brought with him from his chapter). So no, we are not powergamers. I am not sure of the other test groups as I have no communication with them.

To comment on some examples given in this thread:

Deeds: Not every Deed is "OMG amazing!!!1111". They aren't supposed to be. A Deed should be selected because it fits your character background/concept, not because it nets you something amazing. Some will be good, some will be questionable. Some will be broken when combined with other advances.

Advanced Specialties: Again, and Advanced Speciality should be picked because it fits your character, plain and simple. I've seen people complain that the Chaplain is "only good for an Assault Marine" which is just silly. This is a roleplaying game. Its not a tournament game, its not a tabletop game, its not world of warcraft. Its a game where you play and tell a story. Are there some issues with the cost of things? Sure there are. Were all of those plainly visible during the testing? Not so much. I know personally I was only able to focus on two of the specialities during the testing: Watch Captain and Black Shield. The Black Shield went through quite a bit of changes through the testing phase.

Proofreading: A lot of RPG's have this issue. It should also be noted that the playtest groups are not responsible for proofreading. We don't comment on grammar/spelling/etc. during the course of our testing.

Overall: It should also be known that not ever suggestion made by testers gets changed. We are not game designers. Though we are allowed input, ultimately it is up to FFG to make the final call. There have been changes that I don't agree with to be sure. One prime example is I really dislike that they used the name "Kill Marine" in RoB. It was not called this in the test manuscript, had it been, I would have commented that its kind of a silly name.

For the OP, really your only option if you are that dissatisfied with the product is to simply not buy it. Though to be honest I find it hard to believe that anybody would be that upset with some spelling/chart issues.

kenshin138 said:

It is by far not about spelling/chart issues only, unclear wording, wrong statements, confusing statements, conflicting statements and so on. Before i decide to turn my back on a product i prefer to try and bring the issues i have with it to those responsible. That is the purpose of this thread , collect opinions and impressions to formulate on open letter to Christian Petersen based on those. To simply not buy is the easy way out, to try and improve the situation is the way which helps both sides.

A question to you as a playtester though, as you state having tested the watch captain, have you ever noticed the discrepancy between the prerequisites and the advancements table ?

kenshin138 said:

I think we've hit a problem with the playtesters-as-beta-readers thing, here.

Surely it's every test-team's job to pick out each and every single problem that they can find, no matter how small? Was that not communicated to you, or FFG's intent?

Siranui said:

As a friend of mine who used to work for EA as a beta-tester used to explain, testing and error-finding is a matter of priority - you look for the big stuff, the things that'll make a game fall apart at the seams every single time, first and foremost, and then the next most important things, and so on, until you run out of time. It is no different when playtesting an RPG or miniatures wargame - you start with the big stuff, and deal with the little stuff if there's still time later.

Beyond that, in RPGs, sometimes things get changed at the point between playtesting an layout - I've seen errors creep into books because the layout incorporates parts of an older draft of the manuscript, because something fell on the wrong side of a page margin or simply didn't arrange things properly (the career path table for the Adepta Sororitas career path in The Inquisitor's Handbook was like this, in the BI version of the book - it was right in the playtest, but had been messed up in layout)... in short, there is only so much that playtesters can do, particularly as they're volunteers, doing this off their own backs and still subject to the whims of real life (back when I was testing for BI, I had an entire book's playtest hinge on a single session because most of my players had gotten caught up in a whole heap of much more important things and couldn't spare the time for more than that... needless to say, the ability to provide practical feedback was curtailed).

It's all very well making such statements, but real life and deadlines are seldom so kind as to allow a book's contents to be tested to absolute destruction and back to find every single flaw and error.

I know that plenty of errors tend to creep in long after the manuscript has been proofed, care of the printers. But that aside, I'd be pretty annoyed if one of my beta readers didn't flag something because 'there's more than one beta reader'.

Yea, its simply a matter of time. You can only catch so much in the given time. Anything found is flagged for sure, but even well after a product comes out you realize that you missed something, or wish you had noticed something when you had a chance to bring it up. So its not a matter of "not bringing stuff up", more a matter of simply not having enough time to find every single error. That is why you have multiple groups.

This is not to say that our reports are small by any means. To put some numbers behind it, I submitted a report for my group a few weeks ago for a product we are testing. That report was 10 pages (10pt font), 5500 words. This was for a two week testing period (products have multiple periods).

Also, as mentioned, there are changes that go live between the final testing manuscript and the published book.

tkis said:

As far as what exactly? I'd have to dig up my feedback for the Watch Captain and check what I said (its been awhile so I totally forget).

by having command +20 as prerequisite and having command skilled and up to +20 on his advancement list, i have seen notions in various threads that some feedback was just not integrated by FFG, would just like to know if it was the same in this particular case, as you have tested it

I assume(d) that it was like that the same way that all the skills a DW character comes with are listed in their Rank 1 advancements as well. IIRC it was not something I commented on. I do remember that early on the requirements for the Speciality were, IMHO, far too low. I made several suggestions that it needed to be higher.

Just for conversations sake, I also said that I didn't think Dreadnought should be a PC option. I still don't. Many will disagree.

I agree that the lack of proof reading is somewhat bad.

The size of the faq and the rules changed are pretty bad IMO.

kenshin138 said:

Just for conversations sake, I also said that I didn't think Dreadnought should be a PC option. I still don't. Many will disagree.

I agree on that one as well. It just doesn't seem to mesh well with a KT, especially from a social point of view.

As a one-shot mission once in a blue moon where one of the players get to play a dreadnought? That I can see.

tkis said:

After the Core Rulebook came out, I posted here that if RoB had the same quality in those aspects, it would tarnish the image of Deathwatch. Apparently it does have the same quality and apparently it does tarnish the image.

FFG has to know how they run their business. They are certainly listening to what is being said to the forum, they know that they have problems there. If they can't fix it or don't want to, that is their business.

I don't think writing an open letter makes sense. Ross and the others are already reading what is being said here.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Things like this take a while, though - Rites of Battle was probably entering develop 9-12 months ago (about typical in my experiences), which means that feedback on products can only really be taken into account on books being produced after the feedback is provided. Producing a rulebook or supplement is a long, often arduous and complicated process, where all sorts of things can (and unfortunately do) go wrong. Deathwatch has suffered particularly badly from this, it seems - with every problem or complication comes a cost in time, time which might otherwise be better spent developing and testing.

Price, Quality and Speed are the three variables in making anything... and you can have any two of those you your advantage, but never all three. You want something good and cheap, you have to wait... you want it good, and right now, you'll have to pay... you want it now and you want it cheap, then quality suffers...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Well, I'm not disputing any of this. Microsoft had enormous success with occupying the market with a product first and publishing updates later. And while what you said is true abour development times, it cannot be doubted that from all I have heard RoB has been picking up on debates in this forum (helmets?) from at least last September, I think (which is great).

The bottom line is that it's their business and they have to make their own decisions. Sometimes making the customer perfectly happy doesn't pay off, sometimes not making the customer perfectly happy backfires.

I think the many errors are tarnishing the image of DW and 40K Roleplay but personally errors wrt formalities don't bug me, it's content errors (game-imbalancing stuff, maps that don't fit the fluff text and such) that are bad because they take work by the customer to fix.

Alex

tbh, i am one who will not buy DW book because of multiple errors and spelling "checks". I have RT and DH, but enough is enough. I do not want rulebook with such errors in rules. I can live with errors in fluf, bad papers and glue, but not in rules. And 3 pages long errata with fixes that can be easily proofreaded - no.

I will buy errated version of DH & RT & DW if they become available even only in electronic format. But it looks like no obi van in future.

Three pages of errata is nothing new. I'd like to cite WFRP 1e, which missed a page or two out entirely, a few skills, and quite a few vital table errors. There are always 3 or more pages of errors in every RPG ever printed. The problem is in DW/DH that three pages is only the tip of the iceberg!

Aye, 3-4 page errata is small compared to the majority of RPGs. Plus, half of those are simple clarifications in rules, rather than correcting incorrect rules or typos.

Plus, you seem to be under the belief that proofreaders for RPG books are into RPGs themselves, which is often far from the case, which means that incorrect rules or unclear rules are always gonna happen to one degree or another.

If you want to spite yourself because of the issue, that's fine. I'll be happy playing Deathwatch instead

I was hoping for 10+ pages in the errata. There's so many things it was missing.

It's a living errata, it'll be updated again in the future. It takes time to find what people think are problems, find out if they are problems, and then test out alternatives rather than make it more broken.

MILLANDSON said:

And I was refering to the starting count.

We've submitted errors etc since the launch. The errata contained perhaps at most 5% of all the things this forum has pointed out. That's after a couple of months. There's more or less a list, although spread out in one thread. And do you really need to find out if errors, typos, blantant copy&paste-failures are problems, and then test them? Probably not.

I bet no one even looked in the thread for issues, considering that the forum wasn't mentioned in the errata as a contributor.