Steve496 wrote:
Granted. Nor does it make me any money to volunteer my services to set up a playtest server and do the necessary coding to add new mechanics. If we want to make this purely about money, I'll be happy to send you my hourly rates for such work.
In short: if they want labor to help refine their game to make them more money, then they should hire people to do that labor. If they want people to volunteer to spend time for no financial benefit, perhaps they should consider how to make the work more appealing to said volunteers. And having seen a print + play for one of the proposed expansions, I gotta say: I'm way more interested in fixing the existing factions than balancing that expansion - and its also likely to be considerably less work.
In short: if they want labor to help refine their game to make them more money, then they should hire people to do that labor. If they want people to volunteer to spend time for no financial benefit, perhaps they should consider how to make the work more appealing to said volunteers. And having seen a print + play for one of the proposed expansions, I gotta say: I'm way more interested in fixing the existing factions than balancing that expansion - and its also likely to be considerably less work.
There are basically 2 companies in the board game world that do not have to rely on a bunch of volunteers. Many others have to also rely on crowdfunding to even start game projects. Notice that there was a Crowdfunding Board that was put into every game's forum. I put in a lot of volunteer time myself for Gaia Project, the Terra Mystica app (but not anymore though), and also Scythe's Rise of Fenris. We do it because it's fun to see others enjoy our hobby work.
You have an Alpha version proposal of my Print and Play. Of course I don't even have stuff for all of the factions yet because I depended on Grovast volunteering his time to make most of that stuff. Everyone that has played it so far has enjoyed it. There was one f2f playtest I did, where I was severely disappointed at what was happening during R3. The game didn't seem to be working at all for any of the players, but by the end of R5, the game had clicked together. Everyone was pretty happy that the mechanics and investment that caused a seeming slog in R3 actually created an explosive economy that by the end of R6 had reached a game level comparable to game that did not have the mechanic. i.e. I looked at some similar games on Snellman to compare. I've had several games where players completely ignored the new mechanic and players that focused on it were competitive at the end and finished within 5-10vp in a scoring range that would be expected without it.
Have you even played it yet?
I have one other person that privately contacted me about doing the playtesting dev, but wants some time to think about it.