This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
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By Orbin (James Monsebroten)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#564890
Playtersters are an important piece to releasing new cards. They play with cards in development and provide feedback that helps to refine and shape those cards prior to release. Having the cards pass through many hands/eyes helps to make sure that the cards we release are of high quality.

The first edition playtest team could benefit from additional members, so my question for this week is:

Does the idea of playtesting for First Edition interest you? If so, is there anything that is preventing you from volunteering as a playtester OR is there anything you could use more information about before volunteering?

Thank you,
James M
First Edition Playtest Manager
 
By Se7enofMine (ChadC)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#564901
Mostly cause I suck.

I see some of the ideas that you all come up with for deck ideas and most of them would never even occur to me. Playing games with some of you, y'all making moves that would never occur to me.

Being a playtester, I suspect, needs the ability to think outside the box and see things that cards werent intended to do. I have no faith in my ability to do that haha
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#564906
Ensign Q wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:55 am i volunteered twice and got ignored/rejected
And this is the sort of thing that should have been handled in a PM.
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#564907
Professor Scott wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 10:03 am
Ensign Q wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:55 am i volunteered twice and got ignored/rejected
And this is the sort of thing that should have been handled in a PM.
i already wrote countless pms about it.
my opinion about the cc isnt coming from nowhere.
game is mismanaged and earlier it breaks, the more is to salvage
Last edited by Ensign Q on Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By Iron Prime (Dan Van Kampen)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#564908
I'd say it's mostly a time issue. At the end of the day I have precious little time to devote to a hobby*. I'm also in Se7enofMine's boat; I'm bad at breaking cards. I am a 'spirt of the law' guy and not a 'letter of the law guy'. So when Continuing Mission says only [1E-TNG] personnel I'm find with that. Using persona swap to get around that and play in a non- [1E-TNG] personnel card doesn't even occur to me until it' used against me or I see it in a tournament report...

*modding and actually playing is already more than my time budget allows for.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#564914
I would say that about 80% of playtesting is finding out whether the cards work the way Design expects them to -- and whether that way is actually fun.

Spoiler alert: in the first version that reaches playtesters, no matter how much pre-work Design has done, almost none of the mechanics work as expected... nor are they fun. They need tweaks to pacing, and they need to deal with common problems Design didn't think of, like, "I don't have enough Archaeology to pass Quantum Leap".

Staging Ground, as released, is tons of fun. Staging Ground Version A had the same basic idea, but it had a lonnnnnng road of calibration ahead. The ideal Staging Ground Version A deck turned out to be spamming shuttlecraft and one-icon ships, with a heavy bias toward a single affiliation (instead of a rainbow), just because of how it was originally worded. Playtesters, playing the card as Design intended, revealed that and got it revised to match up better with Design's vision of a true rainbow deck filled with big ships. No tricks required.

Using cards in unexpected ways is maybe 20% of testing. I was always very bad at that part, because, yeah, my brain doesn't work that way. But other players whose brains do work that way picked up the slack for me, and testing didn't need too many of those sorts of brains anyway -- there was plenty of work for the 80%ers like me who just dumbly played the cards the way Design "wanted" us to play them.

Bottom line: you'd both be fine playtesters, playtesting is mostly about doing your due diligence, trying out every card, explaining things to Design in detail -- not cleverness -- and I encourage you to playtest if you can find the time and a partner.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#564928
KazonPADD wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 12:11 pm Finding a regular slot with another tester was always my issue. I now have a regular playtest partner which makes it much easier.

As opposed to all these one-night-tests… ;-)
I agree: making the time is the actual hard part.

Ultimately, the only way I ever found to make it work was to have a partner and one hour set aside on the calendar every week where we got together to test. (Of course, stuff came up and we only managed to test every two weeks or so. But Playtesting only asks for each group to produce one report every three weeks, so we were still doing fine.) Back when trying to get a whole group together, it was too hard, too intermittent, too much effort.

The other hard part for me was avoiding burnout. I failed, and now I am not a tester anymore.

On the other hand, people who enjoy playing goofy, unbalanced games of half-baked Trek more than I do may actually come to enjoy testing more than "real" games. After all, only in playtesting can you say to your partner, "Look, I drew a card, but I wanted to draw a different card, so do you mind if I just go find that card and put it in my hand and pretend I drew it?" Then you add the magic words: "It'll make for a better test." And your partner will say "yeah, go for it" and you can enact CHAOS. And you get all the silly pre-Creative lore and titles Design puts on their cards. ("100 Tribbles - Fuckitybye" and "Federation Flagship: Gangnam Style" are both real card titles in the dev archives.)

And there's sincerely no easier way in the CC to get borderless promos than the Playtest Reward store. I think I got 4 when I cashed out? Plus a bunch of other promos?

Really, guys, playtesting has tons of perks, you should apply! :D
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#564942
For me, it was despite being a lurker since the CC started, not feeling like I was paying enough attention to the game to give a good, worthwhile opinion.

Also not having people to physically play with.

__________________

Side note/testing feedback: In a thread where the intent is clearly to help motivate/recruit play testers - a link to signing up to be one might be a good idea. (Unless you are using that as a filter. If someone can't go find the link, they aren't interested enough?)

:wink:
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#564943
For me it's about what a test is I think. As I work in the gaming industry (and have in the gambling industry as well) we have both QA and Testing and they are both needed. The QA sees to that the game does not break and that it does what it says on the lable as well as look for all the strange interactions. This is something that is more of a job than something fun nowadays. This was something I would galdly do back when I didn't run 2 companies as well as caring for a family.
The Testing part is more about if it's fun or on theme. This is easier and seldom needs a whole lot of actual deckbuilding or grinding. Unfortunately this is more something that you use new players or potential players for as they are the right target for such a job.

So for me it's about time and that I feel that what I want out of the game is not there most of the time.
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By Orbin (James Monsebroten)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#564957
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:18 pm Side note/testing feedback: In a thread where the intent is clearly to help motivate/recruit play testers - a link to signing up to be one might be a good idea. (Unless you are using that as a filter. If someone can't go find the link, they aren't interested enough?)

:wink:
That's a great point! I could have sworn that it was under the Volunteer section but cannot find it at the moment. I'll have to check into why this is. In the mean time, anyone who is interested can feel free to send me a direct message

Thank you,
James M
First Edition Playtest Manager
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