Guns & Gear Playtest Ending Soon

@Michael Sayre: I disagree that I misrepresented what you said. It feels pretty much the same to me. I’m not going to harp on about it. You’ve always been awesome, well considered and insightful and it felt like here, during the playtest you...weren’t, or at least seemed missing, (as was Mark in my opinion) so likely there’s some bias for me.

I also take issue that you didn’t have time to stop circular arguments you admittedly asked folks not to get into, but having participated in a bunch of threads where great data and discussions were being slowed to treacle by back and forths about minutiae that a simple “that isn’t a concern for us” or “we are watching this, but not that” could have stopped. To allow those threads to continue with what was useful.

Now maybe that did happen, and maybe even if you had done what I proposed folks could have argued further about why you were or weren’t concerned etc... My point was merely that I didn’t see hardly any feedback from you or Mark across multiple threads in both Inventor or Gunslinger; the sticky threads were poorly updated with few notes giving the impression that not much was being...noted.

So, maybe this is just a matter of you receiving harsh customer feedback from a recidivist terse forumite. Or there is something to what I’m saying. Or both. Or...nothing. Anyway, I’m sorry you felt misrepresented, and I should have directly quoted you. My bad. But I probably would have still gone onto misrepresent you in a different way based on the argument I was trying to make based on my experience and presented as an opinion. Which I guess is what we all do. Again, apologies.

... I’m not going to harp on about it.

Gah. I’d hate to see you really let loose...

I don't think the amount devs post on forums is related to how much they value the feedback of posters. It has been pointed out many times on the forums how staff used to post a lot more on the forums, but stopped after people start picking apart what they say (you promised this, a dev said that, etc). So they are very careful about what they post. Breaking up arguments isn't something I would think is a good use of time, nor is responding to everyone who directly asks them a question.

The devs were really great on this one. They (you) answered the few quick obvious confusion issues that popped up really quickly, but when it was a question of something more nuanced than "this is supposed to work this way" and they needed to see how people read a feat or ability, it makes no sense for them to step in and say so right away because it is so easy to unintentionally reveal bias.

I never felt like I was left hanging about anything that I couldn't provide my feedback on based upon how I read an ability.

I think the glaring counter example to that from the secrets of magic playtest might have been the question of whether or not staves and wands worked for magi and summoners based up on the spell progression of both classes, but even then I am sypathetic of the fact that the wording for the playtest classes was still being worked out and making some kind of ruling about the wording of staves and wands that folks might read over into the game rules at large, over a playtest mechanic that might be completely dropped and the reading of the staves and wands ruling would need to be reversed would have created a complicated mess in the future.

Overall, I think it is just important to remember that our purpose on playtest forums is to reveal play experience and dig into aspects of the classes that might have questions about how they are supposed to work, and what the consequences of reading them one way or another are. For the most part, that seems like what happened with the gunslinger playtest at least. The surveys are for establishing the consensus about how much people liked the various mechanics, the forum is for discussing how those mechanics operate and what the consequences of them operating that way are, as well as what alternatives might be possible.

I don't think the amount devs post on forums is related to how much they value the feedback of posters. It has been pointed out many times on the forums how staff used to post a lot more on the forums, but stopped after people start picking apart what they say (you promised this, a dev said that, etc).

I'm sure this has been a general rule for a while. I've been on and off here since 2010 and they really didn't post all that often in regards to things outside of JJ who is kind of an exception.

It's all about respect. Like, I respect the heck out of Mark even though I'm sure he had a strong voice in the nerf to finesse weapons a while back in the errata (I believe he posted about it before it was released).

I got a little irate about it, but Mark was super cool and was like "hey so one of the devs said it worked that way during the PT, they shouldn't have".

And he didn't have to do that, it was a really nice thing for him to come in and make those of us that were upset by the change feel a little better about feeling upset.

I slip up all the time, but as long as we remain respectful to each other, they might feel like they can post more, but it was never a lot of posting to begin with that I remember.

Maybe since we followed directions so well in the recent playtest, they'll come out and play once they can talk about the feedback :)

I just hope we get a clearer idea of what the Inventor and Gunslinger will look like going forward. I'm just not a fan of Gunslinger as it is (it doesn't feel like it brings anything new to the table besides the guns themselves and would be better served as an archetype with a smattering of feats for other classes) and that it could be pushed to a more thematic bent sort of how Swashbuckler is not just "duelist fighter" but "flashy, mobile fighter" with unique mechanics to back the themes up.

As for Inventor, I just want to know what new things it will get. It feels rather limited in the utility department, and many of the invention innovations feel incredibly plain, with the armor innovations being the biggest offenders in this regard.

You’ve always been awesome, well considered and insightful and it felt like here, during the playtest you...weren’t, or at least seemed missing, (as was Mark in my opinion) so likely there’s some bias for me.

I also take issue that you didn’t have time to stop circular arguments you admittedly asked folks not to get into, but having participated in a bunch of threads where great data and discussions were being slowed to treacle by back and forths about minutiae that a simple “that isn’t a concern for us” or “we are watching this, but not that” could have stopped. To allow those threads to continue with what was useful.

A thing to keep in mind is where those discussions were happening. They were generally contained to a few threads and revolved around things there might not have been clear answers for.

For example, the most contentious topic re: gunslinger was reloads. The span of opinions on reloads covered a broad swath of ideas, including:
1) Gunslingers need more reload activities
2) Gunslingers should be THE reload class
3) Gunslingers are great as they are
4) Guns should take longer to reload (this one I did address because I had a clear answer that existed within our developing lore and which didn't conflict with other ideas. I also talked about it a bit in our mid-playtest interview with Know Direction.)
5) Reload shouldn't be a thing for gunslingers at all and revolvers should be the baseline
6) Gunslingers should need to reload but the reload rules themselves should be fundamentally re-evaluated
7) Risky Reload should be baseline because it's so good that every gunslinger will take it
8) Risky Reload is terrible and I shouldn't have a misfire chance just to free action reload
9) Reloading shouldn't require a free hand (we addressed this a bit by noting that options for free hand reloads were definitely being looked at, though the best execution thereof is a thing it was helpful to give proper contextualized consideration to rather than a knee-jerk response that maybe wouldn't hold through development)

And a few more opinions that are mostly variations on a theme. While some of those might be more feasible and/or popular than others, there's kernels of possibility in all of them and letting the diamonds polish each other to see what's quality gem and what's just rough mineral means we're more likely to find the best answer. And in some cases, we just didn't have an answer because helping determine that answer was something we were empowering all of you as our playtesters to help decide. We really do mean it when we say the community's voice can help shape literally any part of the playtest. We certainly try to make the thing that we think will have the broadest appeal, but occasionally we're wrong and we're willing to be so for the good of the game.

And as has been previously mentioned, the community was amazing in this playtest. Compared to prior playtests even the most contentious and circular topic was more focused and productive and we got tons of the best kind of data a playtest can provide: actual play experience using published adventures.

I won't beat around the bush at all when I say: this was a phenomenal playtest with high levels of productive community engagement and relatively little unproductive discussion. People's care and specificity really came through and allowed us to create some exciting development road maps for both classes. Even when people were going down the rabbit hole a bit, that occasionally led to some insights that are helpful to keep tucked away for future reference, and it also occasionally revealed members of our community who have a unique insight into the game or the way people engage with it that were pretty enlightening.

I guess what I'm getting at is that when the team (being the community in this instance) is achieving record productivity levels, you don't kick over the water cooler just because a couple programmers are going a bit over their break time discussing a line of code they have different visions for. Especially when everyone is volunteering their time, energy, and passion.

Wow. Michael Sayre mentioned an idea for reload that I strongly upheld.

(Not saying which of the 9).

Now I can die happy (and gloating )

;-D

I'm glad to hear that the design team is aware of what people feel the major pain points are.

And compared to the Summoner playtest... yeah, nothing came close to as heated I think. It probably helped in part that reload is a much simpler thing to discuss than all the possible permutations of eidolon implementations, but still. I hope future playtests continue to have this level of engagement and workshopping ideas on the forum, even if most (or all) of them can't actually make the final product.

@Michael - thanks for the considered and lengthy reply - I know you have a lot on your plate.

And compared to the Summoner playtest... yeah, nothing came close to as heated I think.

Where you at Rysky? We went back and forth pretty hard during the Witch playtest.

I think ultimately both sides had good points in that debate, but even the Devs in the follow up video were like "witch debate got pretty intense".

Dubious Scholar wrote:

And compared to the Summoner playtest... yeah, nothing came close to as heated I think.

Where you at Rysky? We went back and forth pretty hard during the Witch playtest.

I think ultimately both sides had good points in that debate, but even the Devs in the follow up video were like "witch debate got pretty intense".

Yeah, that one was the worst. I had a lot of opinions and concerns about the witch and I remember feeling very much like the conversation kept spiraling into intense granularity. I don't remember anyone being a particular problem or anything, but it definitely was the roughest playtest discussion I've been in on.

Hell, I still want to argue about the witch. Maybe that one will never button up.

Yeah, that one was the worst. I had a lot of opinions and concerns about the witch and I remember feeling very much like the conversation kept spiraling into intense granularity. I don't remember anyone being a particular problem or anything, but it definitely was the roughest playtest discussion I've been in on.

Hell, I still want to argue about the witch. Maybe that one will never button up.

ELPHABA IS A PRIMAL WITCH AND MELLISANDRE IS A DIVINE WITCH!!!!

I kind of do want to hear from people who have incredibly strong opinions on playtest classes once the classes are released. Not sure this is the place for it, but are the members here who were gunning for a broader, less specific witch happy with the result? I wonder how I'll feel about the final magus or inventor.

This would deserve its own thread in the General Discussion of PF2 forum IMO.

Or people like AnimatedPaper who I'm pretty sure has our computers tapped to see what we're working on so they can turn around and ask the community what they think the most exciting versions of those ideas are before we've even finished sorting them out ourselves.

Not going to lie, I cracked up pretty hard reading this.

I want to echo that most of the discussion really did feel productive. I'll cop to being a participant of one of the less productive discussions, but even there I really felt like a lot of interesting points were brought up on both sides, and having all sides as fully laid out as possible might be useful for the developers.

I think Michael and Mark participated just the right amount as well. Things didn't get so heated or repetitive that the moderators needed to step in, and so letting us bounce ideas off each other (rather than pestering the developers directly) probably helped us all develop more interesting feedback for them to use.

I kind of do want to hear from people who have incredibly strong opinions on playtest classes once the classes are released. Not sure this is the place for it, but are the members here who were gunning for a broader, less specific witch happy with the result? I wonder how I'll feel about the final magus or inventor.

Not a bad topic of discussion at all, once SoM releases.