Why test Halifax using TripleA?
Basically because I don’t trust anecdotal evidence when it comes to Axis and Allies anymore. Especially when the issue concerns overall set-up and game balance. Before making a serious judgment about anything, I would want to see hard data, and the only data that is reliable for me right now is the data gathered during TripleA playtesting. Why?
Well, essentially what it comes down to is a complete lack of confidence, on my part, in the playtesting methods used for the Official A&A Games. Put simply, I am not convinced that the OOB games are being properly playtested before they are released.
I regard pretty much all playtesting evidence from Face to Face games as anecdotal. That’s not to say its irrelevant or that its not useful in other ways, but when it comes to actually breaking the set-up and finding out where it tilts one way or the other on balance, the issue is quantity as much as quality. An FtF game can still be a lot of fun and tell you whether a game can be entertaining, even a hopelessly unbalanced one, but they are also harder to organize. It takes longer to play FtF, and when you are playing everything happens in tunnel vision. You can’t step outside the game to really analyse a specific roll, or see why such and such a buy went wrong, or how exactly a single battle in the second round altered the course of everything. Because then your turn comes up and you have to roll, and who has time for all that analysis when the rolls are up? While you are inside the game, its the play that’s important, and the analysis often falls by the wayside. Even for people who write things down, and who approach it more analytically, while the game is going on its the flow that captures all the attention. That’s cool when you’re playing the game, but not as much for trying to parse it out and scrutinize it for balance. Here’s the hitch with FtF…
Not only is there no way to confirm that a game was actually played (unless you witness it firsthand), but there is also no strong way to verify or track what actually happened in that game, after the fact. Even with a really dedicated group of playtesters, taking diligent notes, with video or photographs, even then, the best FtF playtesters still can’t give us the level of detail that tripleA testing can, not at anything like the same speed at any rate. In tripleA each phase, of each turn, of each game round is tracked, and recorded in the game history.
This makes it possible to review each test game, to go back and look at what actually happened in exacting detail. So for example, if I tell you “The Axis are unstoppable for reasons X, Y, or Z!” or “The Allies always do A, B, and C!” you don’t have to take my word for it. You can actually go back and look at the gamesave, check the history and see for yourself. It would be impossible to overstate how valuable this is from a playtesting perspective. Not only can you track everything and review it after the fact, but you can also view critical statistics at a glance for every round of gameplay. You can check the odds on every first round battle, both under normal Dice and Low Luck conditions, and you can verify whether the game is actually being played at a high level of skill, (e.g. whether the buys and battles are expert, or middling, or beginner.) What’s more, you can test how any potential future set up change will effect the first round odds on any given battle or strat. And on top of all this, you can dramatically increase the number of games playtested in a given amount of time.
I have been trying since 2004 to persuade Larry and others of the merits of going digital for playtesting, using a platform like tripleA, for all the reasons listed above. To my knowledge this approach has not been adopted, and the result, so far as I can see, is a series of OOB games (rather poorly balanced by sides= bids or HRS necessary for balance) being released for sale to the general public before they are fully cooked.
I think if we are serious about creating a G40 mod that is “balanced”, then playtesting on the tripleA platform is the obvious way forward. Now that we have a gamefile for our set-up, it is time to invite our best players to try and break it against each other! If imbalances are discovered, and changes are made, at least we will have evidence to back them up. Make sense?