Six months since the last Additional Resources update

[Abraham Z.]

On Friday it'll be six months since the last Additional Resources update, which means however many more months since the products that were not included in the last update were released. I think we all understand that it's been a very hectic time for everyone at paizo, especially with the release of the PF 2 playtest materials. Also, we all know that con season is especially busy for y'all. And we've all seen what a disaster it is when things are approved and have to be subsequently retconned due to shenanigans, so I understand that it's better to take your time than rush. But still, it's been six months.

I'd like to politely request: a) the team to prioritize making the next AR and CC releases a priority and b) the team to find a new way to do these updates in PF 2, so that we don't continue this same pattern.

The issue isn't simply that we PFS players are an impatient bunch, but that it is frustrating to have a new book come out, get excited for the new options that are revealed, and then find yourself waiting forever to see if you can actually use those options; when you've already paid for the product it feels disrespectful to not be able to use that product within a reasonable amount of time.

Personally, I tend to buy each new book immediately when it comes out, but I'm regretfully feeling that I will stop doing that and wait until it is published in AR, not because I only want to buy books that have options I care about, but because it seems as though the only way the AR process is going to be prioritized is if paizo has an economic incentive for it.

I hope that this post doesn't come across as whiny or unappreciative. I love Pathfinder and I think that the PFS team does an amazing job creating an organized play experience that I love being a part of. But I also think that the way that Additional Resources is being handled right now doesn't feel good to me as a player and a customer, and I don't think I'm alone in feeling that.

Thanks for listening.

[Belafon]

I too want to see an AR update. Pretty sure it’s not the PFS team that is the issue, but rather the web team.

Three weeks ago (August 24)

John Compton wrote:

We have a five months of Additional Resources updates we've been queuing for an upload this week. We'll be jumping to the next several months' products after that

I’d have to dig back farther but I think he’s posted similar updates a couple of other times in the months since the last AR update.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Extremely seconded/thirded. And I don't really care which sub-team of the Paizo is responsible.

I bought Potions and Poisons in December, and still can't use it. Let along the other pile of dead books since then.

[shaventalz]

Regardless of which person or group is most at fault, they still represent Paizo.

I haven't bought books when they came out for over a year now, because I was sick of these delay. Which means, for the most part, I never buy them. That's money Paizo doesn't get. Heck, I'd rather have gotten a boon at GenCon than the two splatbooks I won - at least I could use the boon.

[Preston Hudson]

I am right there with you all on the desire for a update to the Additional Resources and Campaign Clarifications. I do have to admit, the delay has caused me to want to play more home games on the side due to wanting to test character options that as not yet sanctioned for PFS play. I have two others in my house that play PFS as well as those in my area that are clamoring for an update.

I am theorizing that many of the delays have come from the recent site issues. Con Season and the Playtest are probably contributing factors prior to the site downtime.

My plan is trying to keep as patient as possible while we await this update, regardless of who has control of making the update live currently, and making sure my area is notified as soon as it launches. When it does, I will probably hear the sounds of rejoicing from anywhere in the world.

I am sure our continued patience will be rewarded at some point as I am sure there are things going on that we aren't even aware of causing delays in getting the hotly anticipated update to AR and CC posted to the site. Hang in there!!

[TwilightKnight]

shaventalz wrote:

I'd rather have gotten a boon at GenCon than the two splatbooks I won - at least I could use the boon.

I certainly do not want to detract from the importance of this discussion, but I did want to say that winners of physical product at Gen Con have always had the ability to select a boon instead and many players do take that option. I apologize if that was not made clear to you at the time.

[Wei Ji the Learner]

Bob Jonquet wrote:

shaventalz wrote:

I'd rather have gotten a boon at GenCon than the two splatbooks I won - at least I could use the boon.

I certainly do not want to detract from the importance of this discussion, but I did want to say that winners of physical product at Gen Con have always had the ability to select a boon instead and many players do take that option. I apologize if that was not made clear to you at the time.

...I was actually told at one point that was not an option, when I offered to ask for a Boon instead of the physical product which was less than appealing.

HOWEVER: Someone did correct that on the spot and it resolved very well. No complaints!

[Cyrad]

I have a character I haven't been able to play in 6 months because an archetype in Potions and Poisons hasn't been cleared yet. If he levels up anymore, it will double or triple the prestige cost to retrain.

[TwilightKnight]

I think the thing most of us are struggling with is that the AR should drive sales. PFS is a marketing platform. By requiring players to own the books from which we take our game mechanics, it assures you (Paizo) that more books will sell. So, when the AR is delayed, sometimes significantly so, it makes us wonder what you (Paizo) are thinking. Sure there are some aspects of the website that have a higher necessity than updating the AR, but 6+ months is really hard to justify, "we are just too busy and don't have the time."

[eddv]

I have a Nagaji who was initially going to be the fighter class from that book now sitting around waiting for this. I then made him as a samurai, putting off taking the build options he exists to take as long as I could.... I even played him exclusively play by post so he wouldn't progress too fast.

He has now been sidelined for a couple months over Potions and Poisons not being sanctioned and my not wanting to have to retrain him.

[avagdu]

I see how frequently the SFS AR is updated, and I am happysad. Yes, it means my new Starfinder hotness can be utilized, but so much of the nifty stuff that's come out for Pathfinder just gets utilized in home games... which happen less frequently than our PFS games.

[technarken]

If the update already exists, why not just post it to the forums and sticky+lock the thread? The update does exist, right?

[Ascalaphus]

What irritates me most is that this is a "repeat crisis". This is at least the fifth time in the last couple of years that we get told that the AR update is ready but that it's somewhere in a pile on the IT desk.

That's absurd. We're not living in the '90s anymore, content management systems are a thing now. IT should not be involved in AR updates at all; they should have set up a system that lets the PFS team do that all by themselves. I've submitted a detailed proposal about this to the AR team before, and never heard back on it since.

I feel that Paizo spends too much time cleaning up crises, and not enough time putting in place mechanisms to prevent/handle them. We go through a cycle of "it's Con season", "we're recovering from Con season", "it's almost Christmas and we need product ready for sales", "we're on holiday" and "we're preparing for Con season". Add to that the occasional idiot who gets drunk and does something inappropriate and Paizo is never not in crisis mode.

[Cpt_kirstov]

especially if we are planning to transition to PF2 at release, and only play via PFS - never being able to use the books we subscribed to use is irritating. It is causing me to think about canceling my player companion subsciption.

[technarken]

Earl Gendron wrote:

especially if we are planning to transition to PF2 at release, and only play via PFS - never being able to use the books we subscribed to use is irritating. It is causing me to think about canceling my player companion subsciption.

It certainly took the sting out of canceling my subscriptions

[pauljathome]

For those of us who have already played almost everything that PFS offers the window to get ANY PFS play out of the new books is rapidly closing.

Starting a character 6 months late is one thing. Getting 6 months less play with a looming end date is far, far worse

There are currently 2 books I haven't bought ( Ultimate Wilderness and Distant Realms) because the only new character I'm interested in playing is the Adaptive Shifter. It's admittedly been only a few months since Distant Realms came out :-(

[John Compton]

I've been informed that the December–April update (Pathfinder #125–129, Potions & Poisons, Disciples' Doctrine, Merchant's Manifest, and Inner Sea Taverns) that we've sent up is slated for completion by the end of the week.

The next update we're working on is for the May–July products (Pathfinder #130–132, Blood of the Ancients, Distant Realms, and Planar Adventures). We're partway through that process.

[Isabelle Lee]

Hopefully I can play some of my more recent archetypes before Pathfinder First Edition play withers away. ^_^

[pauljathome]

Isabelle Lee wrote:

Hopefully I can play some of my more recent archetypes before Pathfinder First Edition play withers away. ^_^

Hopefully :-). I mean, I WANT to give Paizo my money if only they get things out in time

[Preston Hudson]

John Compton wrote:

I've been informed that the December–April update (Pathfinder #125–129, Potions & Poisons, Disciples' Doctrine, Merchant's Manifest, and Inner Sea Taverns) that we've sent up is slated for completion by the end of the week.

The next update we're working on is for the May–July products (Pathfinder #130–132, Blood of the Ancients, Distant Realms, and Planar Adventures). We're partway through that process.

Many thanks for the update, John!!

[World of Dim Light]

Based on my SFS experiences, I highly doubt that next August PFS1 will just drop dead. Our SFS group has reached the point where 'already played that' is the biggest barrier to selecting an offering each week. We have people playing for no credit to make a legal table for the one or two people who haven't done some of the earlier scenarios. And I seriously doubt that PFS will be more prolific. So if you want to play PFS1 characters, there will be table space to do so.

[technarken]

I wonder where the clog is on this mythical Additional Resources update?

[Dustin Knight]

Looks like they were prioritizing the archives of nethys migration, which may have been a thing in the pipeline for who knows how many months.

The website crash also clearly caused some problems.

At this point it'd be pretty cool if they just released the pdf on the Facebook page or give it to Thursty to upload it on discord... I hope we get the update in time for tpkon.

[technarken]

I am curious as to why they don't just do that. If the document exists (which I'm not entirely 100% on) just slapping it somewhere else should be not only possible, but almost obligatory by this point.

PFS ostensibly exists to spur on book sales, and it's not doing its job with a 9 month backlog of unsupported content. I know a couple years back I bought the books because of the combination of early access and PFS. Neither one is worth it on its own.

[Dustin Knight]

I kind of get it. It would come off as sort of unprofessional to change their methodology, and there is a good chance it would cause confusion at lodges that don't have much of a web-presence, perhaps even arguments as to whether or not the PDF was official. Making it decentralized also means someone could produce fake AR PDFs for reasons I'd rather not divuldge.

I've also met people who enjoy the AR backlog because they feel instant updates leads to people making characters using new material without first considering whether or not they would play the character in the long term. Though this is a minority opinion, in my experiences.

Of course I'm such a PFS addict that I wish everything published was already 100% PFS legal, but I also understand why that would never be and there are plenty of pathfinder players who don't play PFS!

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Another round of kicking the can down the road.

John, I don't think you realize how big a deal this is for Paizo, the company certainly is not acting like you think it's important. I've already canceled my subscriptions because of this. At this point, I'm giving up on buying any Paizo product except scenarios I'm needed to run. In particular, Pathfinder 2 is a non-starter to me until I see some acknowledgement of the problem here and a commitment to addressing it.

[Zero the Nothing]

I've been saying this for over a year now. I love Pathfinder and PFS, but I'm about done with getting excited for new options and waiting months to find out if they are playable. I had to wait months for Ultimate Wilderness to get added to see if I could make my Arrow Champion/Wildstrider. Now I'm waiting to find out about Heroes from the Fringe's Warrior Poet. Ultimate Wilderness is a major book, there's just no reason for customers that spent their hard earned money on it to wait to use it. I don't have access to a lot of home games, so most of my PF time is in PFS.

[shaventalz]

Dustin Knight wrote:

It would come off as sort of unprofessional to change their methodology, and there is a good chance it would cause confusion at lodges that don't have much of a web-presence, perhaps even arguments as to whether or not the PDF was official.

More unprofessional than the current situation? More unprofessional than "end of the week", followed by another "end of the week" nearly three weeks later, followed by almost another week of nothing so far?

Dustin Knight wrote:

I've also met people who enjoy the AR backlog because they feel instant updates leads to people making characters using new material without first considering whether or not they would play the character in the long term. Though this is a minority opinion, in my experiences.

That's an... interesting view. I think I need to point out, though, that there is no long-term play anymore. Not for many of us.

Dustin Knight wrote:

...and there are plenty of pathfinder players who don't play PFS!

And they aren't affected one way or the other by this situation.

Markov Spiked Chain wrote:

Another round of kicking the can down the road.

John, I don't think you realize how big a deal this is for Paizo, the company certainly is not acting like you think it's important. I've already canceled my subscriptions because of this. At this point, I'm giving up on buying any Paizo product except scenarios I'm needed to run. In particular, Pathfinder 2 is a non-starter to me until I see some acknowledgement of the problem here and a commitment to addressing it.

All of this. Paizo's behavior within the last couple years has been such that I cannot trust them with PF2's organized play. Since PFS is the only way I play Pathfinder, I just won't be joining PF2. Even if it was a good system by itself, a system is only as good as the games you can play with it.

[GM Hills]

Update went up...just saying...

[technarken]

Huzzah, now they're only half a year behind!

[Craig Logan 597]

GM Hills wrote:

Update went up...just saying...

Still no Planar Adventures though.

[KingOfAnything]

John Compton said as much last week.

John Compton wrote:

I've been informed that the December–April update (Pathfinder #125–129, Potions & Poisons, Disciples' Doctrine, Merchant's Manifest, and Inner Sea Taverns) that we've sent up is slated for completion by the end of the week.

The next update we're working on is for the May–July products (Pathfinder #130–132, Blood of the Ancients, Distant Realms, and Planar Adventures). We're partway through that process.

[Zero the Nothing]

Any word on when the next additional resources update is coming, I wanna know if I can use my Warrior Poet samurai at SCARAB in January