Moved Conversation from forum Vset 6 play testers.

I'm not saying to take over design or whatever you guys think I'm sayin. I'm just sayin some pieces designed by the fans would be cool.

This.

The problem is that "design" includes a first draft, playtesting, an updated draft, more playtesting, a final draft, then QC. We opened up 2 Fringe pieces to be designed by the community. Whoever wanted to help could help (except no V-set designers), and the community could organize it all and do it how they saw fit. They were given months to work on it, from October to January.

Do you know how far into that process they got?

A first draft, and a VERY small amount of playtesting.

So it took 3 months to do about 20% of designing 2 pieces. I know you're not suggesting that the community design all 144 pieces per year that we make, but they wouldn't have even completed 2 pieces given a full year at that rate!

I don't see any better way for us to include "pieces designed by fans". Do we pick specific people to help design some pieces? Uh, that's exactly what we do now. We have included at least 1 new member into the design process on EVERY set. Do you mean that we take ideas out of the customs threads and/or custom creator her on Bloomilk and incorporate those things into our designs? We already do that, too.

We do include the community in the design process. We use customs that people make. We introduce new people into the process. We even gave the community as a whole to design 2 pieces from start to finish.

That experiment of having the community design those pieces proved beyond a doubt that involving too many people slows things down to a crawl. We can have a design team of 3 or 4 people whip out 2 high quality first drafts in an afternoon, but it took the community 2 months to pick 2 names and make 2 first drafts. It's just not reasonable to do much of the process open to the community. It was suggested in the other thread that there be a forum where some pieces can be discussed and every playgroup interested gets one candidate there. That would be dozens of candidates and decisions would take far, far too long to work. That was proven by the community piece project.

Now, I think that overall the community project was a success. There are 2 cool pieces coming out (I'll go ahead and spoil that one of them is coming out in set 6, the other should be in set 7. Not saying which is coming when, though) that the community had a heavy hand in designing. It's cool that we got to do that. We might even do it again sometime, maybe this fall. But so little got done given the very large amount of time that was given that there is no way we could do more than one or two pieces like that. I also think that doing a unique piece, or even a non-Fringe piece, would be a lot more difficult to get done.



I'll say that we appreciate your concern. We continually strive to involve the community in the design process. That's why we have community playtesters. But we only do it as much as we can while still releasing 72 high quality pieces every 6 months. Getting too many people involved in a project invariably slows it down significantly, so we have to balance community involvement with quality product. If you have any suggestions as to how we could involve the community more, I for one would be very happy to hear them. They just have to be reasonable suggestions and take into account all these things (time, quality, etc.).

Hmm, ok. This is actually pretty reasonable, and maybe a better way to go about a community design project than the last one. Honestly, it's kind of what we already do, but we just don't tell anyone about it, lol. If I'm designing a piece, especially if I don't already have a really strong idea for what I want it to do, I'll get on the custom creator here and search for that character to see what other people have done. I get a lot of inspiration from that. Having it be more of a contest where everyone gives their best ideas and then we pick one might be cool. Like you mention we would still tweak it, especially after playtesting (everything gets tweaked after some playtesting!), but we can keep it as close as possible to the original intent, and could even keep in touch with the person who designed the winning stat block.

Really, it's basically the same thing we do with the GenCon winner's piece. I designed one for R&R, Ian Gordon designed one for S&V, and Trevor Payton is designing one with us for CotG. Having another contest like this to do a piece for the non-GenCon set is, I think, a good idea. I think it's actually been brought up once or twice before. I'll try to keep it in mind and float it to the set 7 designers once that team is established, but you could also bring it up again around July, since that's when the set list for 7 will be getting more finalized.

Ooh, is that an intentional spoiler?
CotG: Champions of the Galaxy?

Huh? Wha?

Actually on the Facebook SWM Group a bit ago Les said Command of the Galaxy might be a good set name.

I'm talking about the kind of stuff that Echo is talking about above, luke Ian Gordon's Jango Fett or Echo's rebel Kyle. It good beca contest for let's say, Pong Krell, everyone submits their own design and the design team would chose one and make minor edits

That's why the design team would the final say, and then still it would be playtested, but trying to stay as similar as possible To feel of the character design that won. If a design is not good enough or too good, it would not be chosen. The community itself would just submit their character ideas.

I personally have a huge appreciation for the designers, playtesters and all of the people active in the community that help continue this game. I honestly wish I could do more but that just hasn't worked out.

The people actively involved obviously spend a great deal of time on the game and these projects and I am fairly certain the majority of them have families too. In other words they sacrifice a lot to do what they do.

From all of the discussions about the design process and how to get involved it seems clear to me (even as someone who has never taken that step to playtest) that the people doing the majority of the work on these sets are in no way closing the process off to the community but instead have continued to solicit help for what has been described as a very important aspect of the design process: playtesting. It seems logical to me that if you get involved in playtesting and prove yourself throughout that process that you are going to develop more trust with the people currently doing the heavy lifting on these projects.

Another thing I have noticed is that certain individuals have steadfastly refused to listen to explanations from designers and some of the elite players in this game. It seems some people make up their mind that a certain character/ability/CE etc. is overpowered and will not listen to anyone saying otherwise. That wouldn't seem to be a good way of developing any trust from the people who in large part have done a tremendous job with these sets.

Now I'm not trying to say that designers are infallible. There are obviously some things that made it through that most people would probably want to at least modify a little. This is a tough job though and those things happen.

I do like the suggestion made by knappskirata. That process seems better than the previous community project that is/was taking place. Of course you know there would be people upset about that too, lol. There always are.

That's why the design team would have the final say... [quote knappskirata]

Yeah, if you were to run a contest, make it known before hand that the designers would have the final input (though would try to keep in touch with the original designer) on what abilities/stats get boosted/cut for the sake of balance of the game itself after playtesting. Adding stipulations such as this could make a smoother contest-format fan design challenge.

Just an idea