Delta Breaks Down, and the Rebuild

More play-testing reports today from Project Delta, and we hit the game pretty hard last night. We nicknamed our play-test exploiter group 'The Gank Squad' and they really dug into breaking rules. We had an exploit with a reaction-charge power that allowed one player to activate, and zig-zag zip around the map attacking enemy after enemy. It was perfectly legal, and supremely horrible to watch. We ended up putting triggering conditions on the reaction powers to limit when they could activate, and that helped a lot. Now the power allows a charge on enemy move, and this brought the power back to its intended use, and also eliminated the exploit.

We also had a situation come up with figures subject to fear that gave us a heated argument, and made me have to time-out and walk around the room to thiunk about it. We had a mechanic where feared figures were controlled by the referee during a special phase, and by design, when a figure 'activates' (by the GM) special activation-only resources for the figure reset. I said they should, since the referee is 'activating' the figure during the GM phase to move it under the fear effect, George said it was an exploit since this would essentially reset resources for the figure after fear broke.

We came to a compromise moving the figure activation out of the GM phase, and a side must check for fear break and move their feared figures first, without formally activating them. I got what I wanted was to not break the resource reset on activation rule, the last thing I wanted to have happen is have special cases for activation: where some resources don't reset, and in other cases they do. The
'sanctity of activation' resource resets were kept, and George got his 'feared figures do not gain a benefit' ruling, so it all worked out.

We had another situation where a side could basically shut down the other side's turn with the use of sleep or stun powers, given careful resource management by your team. We are modifying the activation rules to account for this, and there is still some heavy thinking going on here. General challenge is being addressed too, if you are skilled enough, it is easy to blow-out the other side. While masterful and a hoot to watch; it is not fun in the long-term, and we need to have more balanced fights to keep the game exciting and interesting.

Play-testing is hard, and having professional experience as a QA person under your belt helps too. Play-testing should not be fun or pleasant; you are exploiting, breaking, twisting the intent, finding cheats, arguing hard for obvious loopholes, and generally trying your best to be an ass in regards to the rules. You then have to be able to remove your feelings from the process, and then step back, take notes, and be objective despite having just fought tooth-and-mail with each other. The process is hard and sometimes exhausting, but it really produces superior, battle-tested, and well-thought-out rules.