Well, it has been awhile, and I have been kicking a few ideas around my head for awhile, and wanted to share it. So here goes:

I believe that there is problem with the v-set design/playtest process that is just generally the communities fault and no ones in particular. I believe the main problem is playtesting, it is very lacking. I have playtested around 5 of the v-sets and I for one feel like there is a lot of pieces that lacked enough playtesting to be fully considered done. I remember in the last set a piece was tested 2 times and was already considered done, to me that is just sad, now I know that this I most likely going to happen because of the lack of playtesters, and is not truly the designers fault. I also feel like the reason that there are not enough playtesters is because there is no real incentive to be a playtester, contrary to the popular belief that if you playtest enough you will move to designing, that is not the case in reality. There just seems to be a general lack of buzz around the game right now and that is sad because mechanically this is one of the best games I have ever played. The maps are awesome, rules are great, and it is Starwars.

Now that some of my complaints are out there here are some suggestions I have for maybe sparking some interest in playtesting and general buzz about the game:

1. Make it a requirement for a designer to be a playtester in one of the 2 preceding sets before they design. I know that recently a designed was called back to design, but hasn't really contributed to the game recently.

2.Allow a playtester with significant results and playtests to design a piece in a coming set. Maybe the designers of the set that they tested can pick 1 or 2 people from the playtesters that can design one piece in the following set, that way there is an incentive to spend the time doing QUALITY playtests.

3. I would do a set maybe set 10 called, V'Set Allstars! this would almost be like an anniversary set to celebrate the life of the game after Wizards drops it. This set would consist entirely of COMMUNITTY designed pieces. Now before anyone says that it would be impossible what I am suggesting is that the community votes on a group of people that go through the submitted customs on bloomilk and put them out to be playtested like a regular set of v-sets and when they are balanced boom there is your set. This rewards the ENTIRE community for sticking with the game, and how awesome would it be to rock a piece YOU designed at a regional, or even gencon!

Hopefully this does not come across as an attack, just trying to come up with a way to generate buzz/interest in the amazing game we all love. Thoughts?

Playtesting is hard... that is, it's hard to get it in. I've signed up for playtesting 3 or 4 times, but I have been a bad playtester. One time I signed up I didn't get around to playtesting anything. The other times I guess it did help... for example, that Ragnos Force Spirit initially had Renewal which would have been a big problem with Zannah... she became nigh unkillable. (Then again, I imagine the designers would have caught that without our playtest.) This time around I've been wanting to playtest, but haven't had a game with anyone but new players in close to a month. But - hey - new players. That's a wonderful problem to have.

I think the community designed pieces from about a year ago were a great idea and really helped to generate interest for a while at least. But then the playtesting was... not so much.

Taking pieces from the customs here on BlooMilk and making them into a real Vset would be a neat idea. Lots of them would require some tweaking, I'm sure, but I don't see why it couldn't happen. Other than the fact that the prep work is still a lot and it may be that people don't want to do that if they don't have a bigger say in the contents. Dunno. A lot of the tweaking would be dialing up the cost on pieces - in some cases dialing it up a lot, and that may bother the original designers. But I think anyone would get over that to see their ideas in a real set.

Here we go again.......

First off, I think we do plenty of playtesting for sets. I have playtested since Renegades and Rogues. Do I expect to be a designer some day? Heck no! I'm not nearly as good as the designers are when it comes to competitive play and understanding the meta as a whole when it comes to tournaments. Maybe some day I will be, but I don't feel you need to expect to become a designer in order to be a playtester. I playtest because I love this game and feel that helping out the designers with my play reports leads to a good product. Designers really do value playtest reports from playtesters and make changes accordingly. I've voiced my concerns before on many occasions and my playtests proved my point and my suggestions were noted. Because of playtests, designs have been changed. Now as for the peices that receive very few playtests and are considered finished, its for a reason. They were designed correctly in the first place and playtests didn't reveal any glaring issues as far as being overpowered. Now when I have playtested in the past, I do not have access to all the stats, just a handful, but I do playtest against others that do, so I do get a good feel for what is out there and what needs playtesting a lot. There have been a few pieces designed in the past that were admittedly mistakes (aka Poggle) but if there are pieces that maybe you think were underdesigned, then maybe the designers don't want to make every single piece competetive top tier pieces. In fact, I know they don't. Sometimes you get the crap rares that WotC produced, and thats what we get sometimes. I really hope that this forum won't turn into another "OMG Mace Windu is broken!" because we've had that discussion before and people jump to conclusions about stuff before actually seeing the counters to what they consider "broken".

Not sure if this is an appropriate place to put this. But I'd give playtesting a shot, I have a serious group that meets about once a week to play. Would definitely get some play.

hopefuly not here we go again. not the point of this thread. And I do know for a fact that there has been a problem with play testing. i am just throwing out ideas to get buzz going and keep the game alive a little longer.

+1 to this.

I remember on the first couple of suggestions threads someone tallied how many requests there were for each character. I think all the top requests from then have been done by now. Does someone still do the tallies? I haven't seen them posted recently if so. A few people seem to post the entire library of characters from one source or another... 50+ suggestions. Not sure how well that works, and it would certainly make tallying a tougher job.

Woah, stop right there! I have always considered THE LOVE OF THE GAME to be all the incentive I need to playtest, or to update the Vassal module, or to organize tournaments, or to play SWM for 4 days non-stop at Gencon....

If people want to walk away from the game, then I'm always sad to see them go. But it is not my job, nor the job of anyone else, to create incentive for them to stay. They're not customers...they're players. Players play games that they love, and when they no longer love a game, they stop playing it. No problem. I wish them well, and I'll always be glad to see them again in the future if they want to come back. I recently walked away from playing SWTOR, and it wasn't because there weren't enough incentives for me in it anymore...rather, I just found that I no longer loved the game as I once did. But IMHO, if people are playing a game (or playtesting or hosting a website or whatever) with the hope that they will "get" something from it, then they're mixed up. They've turned a game/hobby/recreation into something else...either a tool to help them realize their ambitions, or else an unhealthy way of life that will only twist the game into something that it was never intended to be. As much as we like to joke about it, SWM is not a way of life...it's a game--IMO it's the best game ever made, but still just a game. Play it because you want to, not because you have to.

Now back to the presenting problem of this whole discussion: we have a decreasing playtester base simply because we have a decreasing player base. It goes much deeper than playtester rewards. What was it, 24 people in the Gencon CHAMPIONSHIP this year? There is less testing going on because there are fewer people to test with. I've done a lot of playtesting over the years (always on Vassal), but recently it's been extremely hard to even get a playtest in, and that's simply because there are so few people on Vassal. And from what I'm hearing, that is the case for local playgroups all over the place. Sadly, people are leaving the game. Offering incentives will not get them to stay.

That being said, I do like the 2nd idea in the original post (prolific playtesters get to design a piece), though as Sithborg has mentioned, it is very difficult to fit extraneous pieces into a setlist. There is already discussion of a community-designed Epic Minis set, so maybe we should see how that goes before jumping in with the 3rd idea (a Community All-Stars Set).

I am glad the love of the game keeps you going, but sadly that is not the case for everyone. I am being realistic with my opinions here. People are walking sure, but maybe some of these people will stick around if they have a DIRECT impact on the game they love so much. Why is it that some of you that do design fight so hard against allowing some other people in the loop, or allowing the community to have more say in what happens?

maybe the epic mini set is just the test the community needs to see if we are ready for more responsibilities.

And I am glad you like one of my ideas, that's what this is all about anyways ideas.

+1

I think a community project piece per set like the Trandoshan Hunt Master and Sarlacc would be a great way to get the community more involved, and even a decent spring board for future designers that don't have the time or perhaps ability to properly play test. Afterall a good playtester does not necessarily make a good designer and a good designer does not necessarily make a good playtester.

Plus it offers insight into the design process which is always a good thing.

Edit: that said continuing the Community pieces would likely require 1 person to become the project lead to help keep the project organized and on schedule (initially the project lead would likely be a good candidate for a future designer, unless they've already been a designer then one of the most active participants would).