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Epic UK & testing processes

 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 11:38 am 
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MephistonAG wrote:
Glyn, there are 32 lists approved by Epic-UK. The only one that could be said to be 'missing' is the Squats.

To be honest a list would have to bring something pretty unique to add more variety to the tournament scene now.


There's nothing for the Inquisitorial factions, no Sisters, Knights or Deathwatch.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:21 pm 
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Scutarii wrote:
MephistonAG wrote:
Glyn, there are 32 lists approved by Epic-UK. The only one that could be said to be 'missing' is the Squats.

To be honest a list would have to bring something pretty unique to add more variety to the tournament scene now.


There's nothing for the Inquisitorial factions, no Sisters, Knights or Deathwatch.


I thought deathwatch were meant to be small 5-10 man kill teams, not entire armies? surely an army of deathwatch is just codex marines? same with grey knights, they're just another flavour of marines....

I believe knights and possibly SoB are being worked on currently....

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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:21 pm 
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MephistonAG wrote:
Glyn, there are 32 lists approved by Epic-UK. The only one that could be said to be 'missing' is the Squats.

To be honest a list would have to bring something pretty unique to add more variety to the tournament scene now.


I haven't seen the Squats lists on their website, so I wonder which list do they use in the UK and their tournaments. Or maybe nobody runs Squats.

I'm interested because one of my gaming groups uses UK lists for simplicity's sake.

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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:57 pm 
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lord-bruno wrote:
MephistonAG wrote:
Glyn, there are 32 lists approved by Epic-UK. The only one that could be said to be 'missing' is the Squats.

To be honest a list would have to bring something pretty unique to add more variety to the tournament scene now.


I haven't seen the Squats lists on their website, so I wonder which list do they use in the UK and their tournaments. Or maybe nobody runs Squats.

I'm interested because one of my gaming groups uses UK lists for simplicity's sake.


As no squat list has been approved they are not used at E-UK events yet.

Posted earlier by Tiny Tim, so as soon as the NetEA list is at a decent level we could see it soon after at E=UK events.
Quote:
& Squats are being worked upon as part of the NetEA list - would be nice to have another joint list.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 1:21 pm 
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kyussinchains wrote:
I believe knights and possibly SoB are being worked on currently....



Ooooh...will be keeping an eye out for them.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 4:47 pm 
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Thanks for the replies guys. Was wondering what NetEA could do differently to simplify the process.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 9:30 pm 
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From my PoV as an unenlightened outsider to the whole process the biggest difference seems to be in the sheer volume of what they are doing.

EUK is working on two lists. The other lists, if un/overpowered get worked on with tweaks and through general play as playtesting rather than as a concerted effort.

The netEA approach currently has about 7 space marine army lists under development, 3 different Sisters focused lists and any number of others. The playtesting each of those get is diluted by the sheer number of lists that need that playtesting. As some people have said, they get 1 game a week, their ability and interest in playtesting vs. just having a game is limited and I believe that as the process feels slow the enthusiasm/momentum to keep coming back week after week to playtest wanes.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:45 pm 
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Being somewhat tired of how the netEA works and list are developed i'm been looking more and more towards EpicUK.

But being a AdMech fan i'm missing the knights and the skitarii PDF. So thats great news that a knight list is in the works!

Even thought of doing epicUK lists only for the next tournament i host...

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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 11:33 pm 
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Good to hear about the SoB and Knights :)
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To be honest a list would have to bring something pretty unique to add more variety to the tournament scene now.

You guys have done really well in getting so many lists done! :) Personally I'd say the other missing core armies all still have distinctive elements and slant that would add variety though - Squats (all those distinctive war engines), Grey Knights (more powerful, all fearless SMs), SoB (army of 5+ armour and short ranged weapons with some kind of faith mechanic), Knights (horde of small WEs) and Chaos Daemons (a full army of manifesting daemons plus deamon engines with no mortals at all).

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The playtesting each of those get is diluted by the sheer number of lists that need that playtesting.

Yep, the lack of focus and direction costs us a lot in terms of getting playtesting done and lists approved. We are getting there veeeery slowly as the occasional new approved list shows but simple things could help.

There was some discussion about focussing playtesting some time ago and I was strongly encouraging Dobbsy to do so - a sticky locked thread at the top of the SM section saying "Space Marine platesters test X" with a quick explanation and link to that list would have helped but Dobbsy hasn't taken it up. It could stay that way till X was approved and then get switched to another list that was close. Also there's that sticky thread for posting SM links to SM battle reports but having an up-to-date summary in the first post could help too - listing the numbers of games played for each sub-list by each group so it's obvious how close a list is to being approved along with the the sub-list's overall win-draw-loss percentage to better judged how it's doing overall. It'd be a little extra book keeping for an army champion but not much considering the rate of games being played.

Reaching out to frequent players and/or army champions in other playtesting groups can be a winning method for getting playtests too - e.g. I made a pact with PFE100 and he did 6 playtests for my Black Templars list and in return I will be doing 6 Iyanden playtests (I'm holding back on my side at the moment to see what happens with someone new taking over the Eldar lists with the army champion being long AWOL).

Quote:
Even thought of doing epicUK lists only for the next tournament i host...

Consider just allowing either Epic-UK lists or approved Net-EA lists for their list depending on personal preference? It's what Aaron's doing with Cancon and worked well with the old Winter Warmer tournaments.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:00 am 
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GlynG wrote:

Quote:
The playtesting each of those get is diluted by the sheer number of lists that need that playtesting.

Yep, the lack of focus and direction costs us a lot in terms of getting playtesting done and lists approved. We are getting there veeeery slowly as the occasional new approved list shows but simple things could help.

To be fair, the amount of arguing and the massive amount of theory hammer that goes on are the two single biggest draw backs to any list that gets put forward IMO.

ACs can't seem to put forward lists without pages of posts telling them you can't do this or that without any actual facts documented in a playtest. People want to shout "That's wrong mathematically!" before ever having played the list in the first place. Don't get me wrong maths does play a part but I think it's far more important to actually play it then post than go on about it before you play it.
And yes, the arguing flies both ways in the two-way range of development and ACs can get it wrong too. Problem is with neither side backing down and just playing it we get an impasse or we get people abandoning the process altogether because their feelings get hurt or what have you.

GlynG wrote:

There was some discussion about focussing playtesting some time ago

You can try to focus all you want, but I've learnt that people will only actually playtest what they want to play. Anything else is drawing blood from a stone. There are great groups out there trying to push developed lists through and that's what we need, but not everyone has the luxury of a group. List development takes a long time. I'm starting to feel like there are too many games (18 by three different groups) required to push to Approved. It almost seems necessary to reduce that number and let it settle as Developmental for tournament play and see how it pans out, then give another small push to tweak for Approved as there's not a whole lot needed between the two given the tournaments allow developmental and they generally tend to be fine.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:56 am 
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Dobbsy wrote:
It almost seems necessary to reduce that number and let it settle as Developmental for tournament play and see how it pans out, then give another small push to tweak for Approved as there's not a whole lot needed between the two given the tournaments allow developmental and they generally tend to be fine.

Seems like a reasonable idea.

It would be nice to build up a similar online database to what epic UK has. Everyone organizing a tournament using netEA list could be asked to report (of course voluntarily) the games. We would then start to build up database that shows how different lists perform. Not experimental lists (if any) and perhaps only games between approved lists, that might be to limiting though.

Based on these stats after a while, when games start to accumulate, we could see what lists are overperforming if any.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:42 pm 
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I think a stage in between approved and developmental for the TP would be nice. That of Beta/Preview /[insert other name you like]. Approved can be kept the same but a list that is accepted for developmental and is settled down can be put forward to the ERC for "Beta" if the AC so desires and is accepted. This means inclusion in the TP (appropriately denoted) and tourny organizers (as they already have) the power to decide is Betas would be acceptable in their event.

The idea is that
1. There's smaller milestones that can be reached that help with seeing forward progress
2. By opening to a wider use, lists have more reason to be used as they will statistically get more play. Many people have just enough time to play for their own tournament practice that they don't get to test as much. Relaxing that means more of those people will be able to try out more lists.
3. Why not try it? The 18 batbreps is starting to turn into gospel instead of being a good benchmark. I will fully go on the record that I am strong opposed to something like a 25point cost tweak meaning the play test counter gets reset to 0. I know that not everyone else agrees with that, however.

Basically the type of things that are going to be factored in by the ERC would be the time/age the list has been in Dev, number of recent play tests, the agreement from the AC that structure is set unless imbalance is found from testing (marking it for removal), no adds or removes to units formations rules etc

Not sure if I'm explaining it clearly but hopefully it makes sense. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:58 pm 
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jimmyzimms wrote:
I think a stage in between approved and developmental for the TP would be nice. That of Beta/Preview /[insert other name you like]. Approved can be kept the same but a list that is accepted for developmental and is settled down can be put forward to the ERC for "Beta" if the AC so desires and is accepted. This means inclusion in the TP (appropriately denoted) and tourny organizers (as they already have) the power to decide is Betas would be acceptable in their event.

The idea is that
1. There's smaller milestones that can be reached that help with seeing forward progress
2. By opening to a wider use, lists have more reason to be used as they will statistically get more play. Many people have just enough time to play for their own tournament practice that they don't get to test as much. Relaxing that means more of those people will be able to try out more lists.
3. Why not try it? The 18 batbreps is starting to turn into gospel instead of being a good benchmark. I will fully go on the record that I am strong opposed to something like a 25point cost tweak meaning the play test counter gets reset to 0. I know that not everyone else agrees with that, however.


TBH, I'm not sure we need a Beta system added in. Developmental is a sort of Beta already.

IMO, if it's already at Developmental and being used in Tournaments anyway (without any major broken bits) there isn't a whole lot that needs to be done.

At the present time, if an Approved list needs tweaking it gets a sort of "re-testing phase" for people to trial and then gets slotted into the Approved list once accepted. I think once a list hits enough play testing in Experimental (where the larger number of tests should happen) it could be made Approved and only sent back to "Developmental" if tournament play etc finds things wonting. Basically, if people play against it in a tournament and feel there's some broken bits it can be put forward to be reviewed by the ERC or what have you.


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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:59 pm 
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Let me give a real-life example to #2 above
Kyuss gets a game a week or so in. Much of the time though he is practicing for an upcoming tournament. Because only "approved" lists can be taken there (lets side step the whole epic -UK bit :) ) he's generally going to be taking codex Marines. If a very close to approved list like say, Space Wolves, was Beta and in the TP perhaps he'd be taking that instead and so he'd get a lot of plays in and we'd get many more tests.

Basically the testing catch-22 is that until it's approved, lists don't get as much play. In order to get approved, tests need a lot of play.

An example of a list that would be in developmental but not appropriate to be put forth as beta would be Blood Angels. Not because it isn't a good list but that there's a high probability a new formation is going to be added and knowing that, it needs more time betting used to calm down first

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 Post subject: Re: Epic UK & testing processes
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:02 pm 
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Cross post for Dobbsy:
Yeah I get you. I'm thinking that adjustment to the whole Developmental-Approved-Tournament pack is going to end up being contentious than allowing a vetted subset of Development lists be in the TP denoted.

I disagree with Developmental being the same as they are not in the Tournament pack nor will be until they're approved. I think the 18 play tests approach has merit but somehow that's become synonymous with the TP.

The strength of the Epic-UK process is that the tournament selection isn't open to every tom dick and harry's input so things move along faster. The risk is that more things could slip by. The ERC can act as a similar function with a huge caveat in the list in the TP denoting it is not full approved but believed ready for general use aka not going to cause warp rifts :)

Regardless I am glad you're discussing this

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