What is going on with the FAQ System?


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Sovereign Court

Hey everyone,

So, I was wondering what is going on with the FAQ system.

I may be a bit candid, but my understanding was that pathfinder was supposed to be a very consistent RPG, in such a way that there was as little ambiguity in the rules on whether anything was allowed or not. I take the existence of PFS as a strong commitment that this should be the case, since you can't have an understanding with the GM beforehand.

Of course, everything can't be taken account of beforehand, so we have this FAQing system that is supposed to disambiguate anything still unclear once it's reported back to Paizo.

However, in my experience, it seems that anytime I start looking into things, wondering if something is ok or not, what I can find is multiple threads from years ago, with people asking the same question and average of 20 FAQ requests. But official answer (or even unofficial dev answer) is very scarce.

In practice this means that, as a GM, I've to do more balancing work to determine if it's ok or not. As a PFS player, I can't have nice things because I can't reliably determine what is allowed.

I understand that devoting some time on promoting quality has maybe less of a return in sales for Paizo than creating new stuff. But would it really be that much of a struggle to have someone working full-time on answering issues?

What is going on? Was I mistaken in hoping for more than "We'll answer only the most problematic things and let other issues rot"?

Am I the only one feeling it's hurting the game to have so many rules questions ignored?


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Paizo makes the most money from selling books. I'm not sure the value proposition works out for hiring a full time game balance person. In other words, how many people will stop playing the game because of not enough FAQs? I agree that it's possible unanswered questions can hurt the game, but does that affect most tables out there?

This is essentially what brought about the "Paizo needs to get its house in order" thing that happened a few years back. After that, they adjusted how they do things and how their people speak publicly about rulings, which may be why you don't see many "unofficial" answers on rules.

Pathfinder is now a massive game. That's a gift and a curse. It's a lot of moving parts and interactions.

I don't think there is an easy answer to your concerns, unfortunately. Let's say you did have a full time game balance person answering questions and writing errata. Since this person is dealing with all the hotly contested and controversial aspects of the game, you'd probably want your best person doing this job. You don't throw your rules intern at that or you risk making things far worse. Except, wouldn't you want your best rules person designing new parts of the game? It's a tough problem.

(side note: I also suspect creating Starfinder has probably meant everyone is busier than usual)


Eltrai, my understanding is that the design team meet about once a month to review FAQ requests. They answer some with an FAQ, others get answered through errata and others a very convoluted so has multiple parts and cant be answered easily. Example the bardic masterpieces FAQ which has about 200 faq requests by the answer is still not forthcoming after about 2 years. Others could probably answer better on other factors.

EtG


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Just to add, I think they try to meet more like every week, which is why we get FAQ Fridays (when people are actually available and not off at conventions, at least).

And if you want a good example of how convoluted FAQs can get, take a look at the most FAQ'd FAQ that was ever FAQ'd which took 11 months to get an answer.

There are a number of factors which go into whether we get an answer on something, and number of FAQ clicks is only one of them. (Others include but are not limited to: Is it an easy answer? Does it actually require errata? Do we need to write a whole blog post? What else does this break? Has the collective wisdom of the message boards sufficiently answered this? Has Jason had enough Scotch to tackle this question?)

Further, I note the OP said (I paraphrase) "multiple threads with 20 FAQ clicks", which doesn't help - those are all separate FAQs and they don't get amalgamated, if one question has 5 threads each with 20 clicks, it's not as high up the count queue as a single thread with 21. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a minimum click threshold before it starts dropping alerts to PDT. And if there is, no, we're never going to be told what it is, and we shouldn't want to know because we shouldn't figure out how to game the system.

Sovereign Court

Chemlak wrote:

There are a number of factors which go into whether we get an answer on something, and number of FAQ clicks is only one of them. (Others include but are not limited to: Is it an easy answer? Does it actually require errata? Do we need to write a whole blog post? What else does this break? Has the collective wisdom of the message boards sufficiently answered this? Has Jason had enough Scotch to tackle this question?)

I agree that not everything is simple to answer and that some complex things with a broad scope may require time to consider everything.

But I'd like that whenever the answer is "easy" or if "the collective wisdom has sufficiently answered this", we get a response. Even they don't want to escalate to an official faq, a simple "this answer is the correct one", would do a lot in having a streamlined experience.

Chemlak wrote:
Further, I note the OP said (I paraphrase) "multiple threads with 20 FAQ clicks", which doesn't help - those are all separate FAQs and they don't get amalgamated, if one question has 5 threads each with 20 clicks, it's not as high up the count queue as a single thread with 21. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a minimum click threshold before it starts dropping alerts to PDT. And if there is, no, we're never going to be told what it is, and we shouldn't want to know because we shouldn't figure out how to game the system.

I agree having multiple FAQed threads is not optimal for the purpose of getting an answer, but that is the way it happens. My guess is that a first thread was started, got some momentum, then faded away with no answer. Then another was created (either because the author did not see the previous one or felt it was too old to have any chance at attracting attention), and the same happens.

Also, I'd like to quote the official topic on the FAQ System :

Jason Bulmahn wrote:
Every message that gets flagged in this way will be brought to our attention (although those with more flags will rise higher on the list).

Which means that, officially, there should be no threshold for consideration, even though it does seem that in practice if you don't have 40+ votes you have no chance of getting an answer.

Note that the same post seemed to imply that they will resolve all issues one way or another, which clearly does not happen.

Sovereign Court

Some issues get resolved...just because of the way the system works. Some books come out with new rules or clarification, making some faq obsolete.

Or when we get some massive errata (ACG errata being one of the biggest surprises).

Sovereign Court

And then the thread is discreetly moved to an hidden corner of the messageboard.

I'm not too sure that is an appropriate answer... This definitely is not really a "website" issue.

Shadow Lodge

eltrai wrote:
What is going on? Was I mistaken in hoping for more than "We'll answer only the most problematic things and let other issues rot"?

Yes.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Little boy walking with his hand in his father's hand, along the beach, "Daddy, does Paizo answer everyone's questions?"

Father pauses, stares out at the fading sunset as the faint sound of the mild ocean waves lapping on the shore come and go, turns to his small son, smiles and says, "Yes, son, they do, but sometimes the answer is no."

Sczarni

2 people marked this as a favorite.
eltrai wrote:

And then the thread is discreetly moved to an hidden corner of the messageboard.

I'm not too sure that is an appropriate answer... This definitely is not really a "website" issue.

You're asking how a function of the website - the FAQ button - works. Also the website thread is the second one from the top, one of the most visible message-boards on the page.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

It's actually third, Customer Service is first, then Products, then Website Feedback.

Is CS closed by default? I can't remember.

Dark Archive

Paizo's erratas are stuck in a chatch-22. New errata is only released when Paizo releases a new printing of a book. However, Paizo has gotten really good on their predictive production cycles and rarely need to make another print run. Thus, we probably won't see any new erratas. When was the last errata release for any book? That's why we are so hungry for our weekly FAQs (though they usually don't seem to answer what I see as hot topic issues on the forums).

Sczarni

ckdragons wrote:

When was the last errata release for any book?

Ultimate Equipment : May 2016

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