Playtesting is supposed to be the safety net. IMO it is the most important aspect of designing. Anyone can make a figure and stats that look reasonable but its incredibly rare for figs to hit the mark first time and in a theoretical sense you can argue until you are blue in the face about what its going to do.

Showing it though is hard data that designers can't, or at least shouldn't, ignore.

I think that last point is the most important aspect. Playtesting needs to be done correctly pushing the limits of the fig to its most extreme to see what breaks. You aren't necessarily trying to play a game but break the figure and so you need to perhaps ignore that 20 that gave the game to the side that was gonna lose and make a fig look worse than it is. After all, this is a game of probabilities and you need to be able to see the common aspects of the figure and not judge it on outliers. If that is done and something is exposed the designers MUST react and stifle their pride and intent for the good of the game.

Most mistakes have come from over ambitious stats that had little or poor playtests followed by eager designers ready to sign off with little change in stats (Pong is a fantastic example, great ideas but overzealous and without attention to the important details, but a 60 figure set coming up rapidly to deadlines means pushing out figs that needed more attention).

I'll also point out that in some cases past dialogues between designers and play testers have been full of animosity and friction as ideas were challenged by playtests and designers become reluctant to bend based on theoretical boundaries. This should not happen. Designers should see their initial design as a ball of clay and should be receptive to the feedback and HAPPY to change it from comments by people who are essentially doing them a favor. I believe these past interactions have had a detrimental impact on the vsets design as a whole with reluctance from people to playtest that generally reduces the quality of the end result.

Anyone who has designed can attest to the emotional rollercoaster it is as people contest for ideas but in the end you have to be willing to compromise and this is most important when assessing playtest feedback. In a perfect situation figures go back and fore multiple times. However, in reality this is the exception not the rule due to time and figure numbers.

As the game grows in size, things become more complex and figs deserve further scrutiny. Playtesting is now at its most important and unfortunately at its most minimal.

If you guys have signed up to, playtest I salute you. Its often thankless but so, so necessary (you also get a leg up on those who might not see the stats before you know how the pieces play).

That really is good to hear

Shmi15 where are you... calling shmi15.... he'll be here in a sec.

It is a great idea in my opinion, but playtesting and future design becomes hard because it is hard to correctly predict what will dominate in that time frame and design for what you need to counter/add to each faction.

I'm still for this idea, or just an overhaul of a lot of stuff and I mean a lot.

I don't see GenCon being changed to phase things out. It's just not what the majority wants.

But people like new formats. It just takes someone to step up and organize it/advertise it.