What print-on-demand COULD mean

@direwolf:

The current playtesting structure is effectively:

- Cards get designed
- Playtesters see the cards and comment in forums. Some of these comments can include editing suggestions, typos, revisions, rewrites, etc.
- Playtesters get the chance to play games with them and provide example decklists and game reports.
- Hugh sends out a detailed scoring/survey. A few numeric criteria and space for commentary.
- Survey results get compiled and sent back to DT.
- Go to the first step.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@direwolf:

The current playtesting structure is effectively:

- Cards get designed
- Playtesters see the cards and comment in forums. Some of these comments can include editing suggestions, typos, revisions, rewrites, etc.
- Playtesters get the chance to play games with them and provide example decklists and game reports.
- Hugh sends out a detailed scoring/survey. A few numeric criteria and space for commentary.
- Survey results get compiled and sent back to DT.
- Go to the first step.

sooooo what you are telling me is that it would be no different if it were open?

Except it wouldn't require an organizer on the local level...

And players who are play-testing could bring play-test decks to their normal games, where you will find a mix of play-test and non-playtest decks.

What I'm trying to say to you Direwolf, is that the additional information may not be worth the additional effort. If you choose a suitably large playtest sample, then you don't need to have an open playtest.

I have a strong feeling that going all open would mean huge amounts of nont-that-useful noise being generated which would hamper the harvesting of the useful data.

Therefore I think that keeping to the current system would work best. If you're interested you can, AFAIK, always jump aboard and become a playterster with your playtest group.

If you had ever read Feynman book review story you will know why more is not necessarily better...

I rather have a play test group that consistently uses the new cards and evaluate them, than having random people saying that a card is wallpaper or to broken without even trying to use it. Small play test groups are easy to control and to gather reliable data.

Lets say a play group claims that a card is wallpaper. The design team might contact the play group and say to test the card with the cost reduced or with an additional feature. That's not feasible in a large community were you might reach or not reach everyone.