Starfinder Tech Class Playtest

Ningasak wrote:

When will the foundry vtt play-test module be updated with the new classes?

Unsure, but we'll update you!!

Also, to everyone leaving notes here about errors you've found and things you like as well as dislike, first of all, thank you for telling us at all because they're things we need to know! Secondly, please remember this is what the surveys are for! The comment section here is actually not the best way to get that info to the dev team. Since playtests have so much interaction with the community and will of course garner lots of feedback (which we want), we try to make sure that feedback goes to a central place so the devs can get it all, and that place is the playtest survey! Please put the errors you find there rather than here! Thank you!

Where exactly on the survey are we supposed to provide this feedback? The survey has no spot to provide errors or such that are found only 1-5 ratings of different things and a question about feats with an Other option that seems like the wrong place to go on a tangent about errors. Tried to continue on through the survey to see if it was further along and then now it says completed with no way to take it again.

I'm quite surprised there's not a section on the survey dedicated to errors that are found.

Will there be an errata on the Playtest? There are some things that need clarification, to make sure we are using them correctly in playtest.

There will be more blogs about the playtest with communication from the team to clarify things, yes! That's all I know right now!

Yes, I seem to recall that past playtests had two different response documents, once the fixed survey and one for more open ended comments. There's no way to write open ended comments right now.

Thanks Mx. Coleman! I really appreciate you continuing to be here with us while we enjoy (and nitpick) the playtest!

Where exactly on the survey are we supposed to provide this feedback? The survey has no spot to provide errors or such that are found only 1-5 ratings of different things and a question about feats with an Other option that seems like the wrong place to go on a tangent about errors. Tried to continue on through the survey to see if it was further along and then now it says completed with no way to take it again.

I'm quite surprised there's not a section on the survey dedicated to errors that are found.

I brought this to Jenny, and we found this was a mistake on our part! There should have been a free response question at the end. Thank you for catching the error, and the team has now added question 11, which is a is a free response to collect comments. Please put any errata you find and the general feedback in there!

Thanks Mx. Coleman! I really appreciate you continuing to be here with us while we enjoy (and nitpick) the playtest!

You're very welcome as always, Zoken!

burlybuns wrote:

Where exactly on the survey are we supposed to provide this feedback? The survey has no spot to provide errors or such that are found only 1-5 ratings of different things and a question about feats with an Other option that seems like the wrong place to go on a tangent about errors. Tried to continue on through the survey to see if it was further along and then now it says completed with no way to take it again.

I'm quite surprised there's not a section on the survey dedicated to errors that are found.

I brought this to Jenny, and we found this was a mistake on our part! There should have been a free response question at the end. Thank you for catching the error, and the team has now added question 11, which is a is a free response to collect comments. Please put any errata you find and the general feedback in there!

Awesome! Glad to be of help.

Edit: Just a heads up, the question only appears on the Technomancer portion of the questions. So if someone only played the Mechanic and only wants to leave feedback about the Mechanic, and so skips the Technomancer feedback, they do not receive the question to provide feedback on the Mechanic.

Awesome! Glad to be of help.

Edit: Just a heads up, the question only appears on the Technomancer portion of the questions. So if someone only played the Mechanic and only wants to leave feedback about the Mechanic, and so skips the Technomancer feedback, they do not receive the question to provide feedback on the Mechanic.

I've brought this to the team as well! Will update!

Mx Coleman, is there a way to update my survey? I had input that I wanted to put for the free response question, but I had completed the survey already as it auto-completed when I pressed next on the technomancer page last night. Now when I revisit the survey, it says I already took the survey, so I cannot leave my input.

Mx Coleman, is there a way to update my survey? I had input that I wanted to put for the free response question, but I had completed the survey already as it auto-completed when I pressed next on the technomancer page last night. Now when I revisit the survey, it says I already took the survey, so I cannot leave my input.

I've brought this to the team too! We're going to adjust this so that people who took the survey can edit their responses, but we have a lot we're working on. We'll get this done as soon as we're able! In the meantime, you can access the survey again by opening the link in a new browser or in icognito mode in the browser you already used!

No worries, plenty of time. Thank you for forwarding the info!

The problem with waiting for dev responses to “problems and issues” brought up in the surveys is that *functional* problems present in the playtest doc don’t get addressed for people to “playtest as intended”. It seems obvious from reading the threads that there are at least a few more…glaring issues that might need attention before playtesters take the survey so they can give feedback on something functioning the way it is intended.

For the forums to be a place for playtesters to (in addition to provide opinions and playtest results) commune and attempt to clarify without any way of knowing if they are correct is…not ideal.

despite always hating int class and mad class this playtest does look good

poor little innovator never had a chance

but now mechanic will have some

RE: Errata,
If nobody has done so yet, I would recommend starting an errata thread for each of the classes.

The problem with waiting for dev responses to “problems and issues” brought up in the surveys is that *functional* problems present in the playtest doc don’t get addressed for people to “playtest as intended”. It seems obvious from reading the threads that there are at least a few more…glaring issues that might need attention before playtesters take the survey so they can give feedback on something functioning the way it is intended.

For the forums to be a place for playtesters to (in addition to provide opinions and playtest results) commune and attempt to clarify without any way of knowing if they are correct is…not ideal.

The forums are of course and have always been a good place to discuss the things you find! When I said to make sure to use the survey to get those errors across to the devs, I wasn't saying you can't discuss them here with the community. That's always something you can and are encouraged to do! However, for those who are going through the playtest now, if you run into issues you want to make sure the devs see so that they can be reviewed and possibly added to a potential errata, those errors need to be listed in the playtest survey for devs eyes to see. It does not at all take away from how useful it is for fellow members of the community to see those things here! They just won't get to the dev team as quickly!

And, as stated before, there will be more blogs of correspondence from the dev team as they review your feedback that they've already received and are continuing to receive throughout the whole playtest, so please be on the lookout for those!

Thank you for clarifying, Maya!

I'm still pretty new to the Paizo forums, but I have lurked before. I felt as if I used to see a lot more ambient posts from other developers and Paizo employees- offering clarification, sharing behind the scenes stories, etc.

However, if making posts on the Paizo forums is now mostly for interacting with the community and not good for getting feedback or input with developers, then that's good to know.

Surveys are macro data through the question system with (maybe, but don't know for sure) key word or phrase tagging in the open response section. It's a lot more useful than devs (maybe) combing through hundreds of thread responses and (possibly) picking up general trends from a less than representative, vocal, and invested minority of the player base. At least, that's why I assume survey data is valued so much more.

Thank you for clarifying, Maya!

I'm still pretty new to the Paizo forums, but I have lurked before. I felt as if I used to see a lot more ambient posts from other developers and Paizo employees- offering clarification, sharing behind the scenes stories, etc.

However, if making posts on the Paizo forums is now mostly for interacting with the community and not good for getting feedback or input with developers, then that's good to know.

You're very welcome! The devs do still read the forums to pick up on what could be added to errata in main releases, and they even still comment when they're able, but because they're working hard on making great content, they don't have as much time to interact as much as they'd like. I come in as a middle person and bring as many questions as I can to them either just to look at for fun or to resolve, but the forum is vast! Since this playtest has a limited time window, it's way faster and preferred to get concerns to the devs via the playtest survey. If you have any other questions, just let me know!

And, as WWHsmackdown said, it's more efficient and more organized, which helps everybody!

These are really cool, especially the technomancer! Although something that's bugging me is the level 18 technomancer feat, Sudo Spell.

Sudo is short for "substitute user do"; it's a command you use to run other commands at a different privilege level (typically root). It has nothing to do with precision or duplication.

I agree with this point, and was going to reply with some ideas on alternate names for some of the technomancer feat/ability names that don't quite land; but it got big enough that I figured I'd just make a thread for it.

Since the Venn diagram of "Starfinder enjoyers" and "computer programmers" has loads of overlap, I'm sure others have lots of awesome suggestions, too!

However, for those who are going through the playtest now, if you run into issues you want to make sure the devs see so that they can be reviewed and possibly added to a potential errata, those errors need to be listed in the playtest survey for devs eyes to see.

Sorry Maya, maybe I’m not making myself clear, and I may be missing something obvious.

If there are problems with the playtest, that will make playtesting those problems essentially pointless because the resultant data will be compromised, therefore before players get to taking the survey, it would be useful for those problems to be “fixed”.

Rather than waiting for the devs to trawl through the surveys and then make changes, the devs can see what playtesters are posting in realtime, adjust the playtest and allow the playtesters to playtest what is intended, rather than what is in error.

I know this all supposes endless person hours of availability etc…but given the playtest period is also finite, time does seem to be of the essence to get the most effective data. So to me, devs waiting for survey results seems counterintuitive.

I believe I've heard it said that this site is only one source of many from where Paizo gets their input, as a lot of input is performed in person at cons and whatnot, instead of with our independent games, and that we're a pretty small proportion of the information they get.

They still need to get survey data from people who are not posting actively on this site, as our point of view on it might not always coincide with the point of view of the actual majority of players.

I just looked through this playtest material for the first time... Is the internal AI thing that the 1E Mechanic could do no longer an option? I'm not saying that the drone/turret/mine option is bad, but I really liked that internal AI that the 1E Mechanic could have.

I believe I've heard it said that this site is only one source of many from where Paizo gets their input, as a lot of input is performed in person at cons and whatnot, instead of with our independent games, and that we're a pretty small proportion of the information they get.

They still need to get survey data from people who are not posting actively on this site, as our point of view on it might not always coincide with the point of view of the actual majority of players.

Point of view and opinion do not matter when things are broken. There's several parts of the mechanic that can make it unplayable beyond basic shooting guns everyone can do. Lack of info makes multiple abilities complete guesswork to how they are actually supposed to work.

Kishmo wrote:

Oh man, hat's off to whoever came up with the Technomancer programming langauges' names & write-ups :D

...that said, I really hope the final version explicitly allows people to re-flavour those names (but keep the same mechanics, of course) just for funsies. "Choose a programming language from the options" implies you must use the names are presented, but c'mon, we all know the children yearn for the mines dumb puns and arch japes of made-up sci-fant progamming langauges.
inb4 COBOLd

Captain, I desire the scifi language of garage door opener violence ray and enemies with the Plunger of EX and Singular Electric Hand Mixer Beater of TERMINATE XD

Now I want to see JawaScript . . . .

Point of view and opinion do not matter when things are broken. There's several parts of the mechanic that can make it unplayable beyond basic shooting guns everyone can do. Lack of info makes multiple abilities complete guesswork to how they are actually supposed to work.

We don’t expect to release any changes during the playtest itself, only in the final book.

Far as I can tell, I think the best you can do is report that the abilities are broken, and that you (or if you are the player, your GM) had to make a call on what to do in your survey. They'll handle it from there. I almost never see staff coming in to make these clarifications outside of official errata, so if an errata is not planned, I don't anticipate any of that being given until the book is released.

I already reported a bunch of errors and impasses I found in the survey itself. Bout all I can do. They're not gonna be able to get back to us with an answer until they go back to the drawing board and reconfirm what the actual plan is anyway, not a with-your-GM kind of situation where they can get you a ruling without consulting the rest of the team.

Maya Coleman wrote:

However, for those who are going through the playtest now, if you run into issues you want to make sure the devs see so that they can be reviewed and possibly added to a potential errata, those errors need to be listed in the playtest survey for devs eyes to see.

Sorry Maya, maybe I’m not making myself clear, and I may be missing something obvious.

If there are problems with the playtest, that will make playtesting those problems essentially pointless because the resultant data will be compromised, therefore before players get to taking the survey, it would be useful for those problems to be “fixed”.

Rather than waiting for the devs to trawl through the surveys and then make changes, the devs can see what playtesters are posting in realtime, adjust the playtest and allow the playtesters to playtest what is intended, rather than what is in error.

I know this all supposes endless person hours of availability etc…but given the playtest period is also finite, time does seem to be of the essence to get the most effective data. So to me, devs waiting for survey results seems counterintuitive.

Yeah I see the problem with this in some ways, like on Servoshell. It just completely doesn't function currently. How do players play test something that is completely nonfunctional at this point other than to make up changes to the subclass at which point their testing is really just not worth much beyond pointing out it is just completely broken currently.

I know this all supposes endless person hours of availability etc…but given the playtest period is also finite, time does seem to be of the essence to get the most effective data. So to me, devs waiting for survey results seems counterintuitive.

All I can really say about this is that the devs have chosen the survey as the best place for them to receive this info, and they are planning to adjust the playtest based on errors they are pointed to. It seems to me just like a process that works best for someone might not work so well for someone else. They told me they want it in the survey, so I'm just letting you know what is preferred for our team!

Far as I can tell, I think the best you can do is report that the abilities are broken, and that you (or if you are the player, your GM) had to make a call on what to do in your survey. They'll handle it from there. I almost never see staff coming in to make these clarifications outside of official errata, so if an errata is not planned, I don't anticipate any of that being given until the book is released.

While that does seem to be the only option currently, both in APG and Secrets of magic we had errata and clarifications during the test.

While that does seem to be the only option currently, both in APG and Secrets of magic we had errata and clarifications during the test.

This will be happening this time around as well!

I know I'm currently unsure whether to playtest currently because I feel the data I provide won't be especially useful or representative.

I know I'm currently unsure whether to playtest currently because I feel the data I provide won't be especially useful or representative.

Everyone's opinion is useful!

This will be happening this time around as well!

I hope so, there's a few aspects that desperately need it to get solid data from people. I know your trying to push for more communication, there's plenty here who are grateful and others that don't understand what a task that is for all those involved. Hopefully things will continue to improve.

I hope so, there's a few aspects that desperately need it to get solid data from people. I know your trying to push for more communication, there's plenty here who are grateful and others that don't understand what a task that is for all those involved. Hopefully things will continue to improve.

It's my duty to make sure they do! Thanks for the feedback here, OrochiFuror!

As always, thank you for your hard work Mx. Coleman!

As always, thank you for your hard work Mx. Coleman!

You're very welcome, DMurnett! I'm doing my best to be the best community bridge I can be!

Are there Mechanic and Technomancer pregen characters?