I’m a lawyer who spends his days fighting over government regulations. I’ve noticed a similarity in the problems that seem to beset card games such as this and regulatory law - poor language templating, unforseen consequences realized once put into the wild, balance issues, vague definitions, rule structures that are logical in theory but comically silly in practice, etc.
The reason that I mention this is because one thing that practitioners always find interesting, illuminating, and often cathartic is seeing how the sausage was made (which often happens). I have always wished that FFG’s nondisclosure agreements with the play testers expired after the conclusion of each cycle (with the appropriate provisions to protect the next one). Maybe they do and they don’t want to talk, I dunno. Or, maybe, an open retrospective from more than just the lead designer on how/if some of these now-recognized balance/rule challenges were identified and tested. I’ve found the lead designer interviews to be very cagey and too reticent to admit internal debate and structural problems.
I can see the many reasons why FFG wouldn’t do such a thing, but I think that it would be very interesting for us Stimhack nerds. An example, from memory, would be the debate over the Anarch MWL targets a while back that Damon referenced in an interview (datasucker? yog? parasite?). I have my ideas as to what it would reveal, but this meandering post has gone long enough.
I will say that I think that the balance task is extremely tough given the asymmetric, multiple fraction, LCG, color-pie game FFG made, that FFG knows it, and that they knowingly release cards expecting issues. Because doing otherwise is very hard given the above constraints. The “rush” aspect you allude to likely accentuates the problem and, well, I can only imagine the hilarity (…) that would ensue if a new pack of regulations had to be released monthly.