steve0105's page

Goilveig wrote:

One of the surprising things about your blog post, to me, was that you're spending a lot of effort on DMCAing people who use your art. While of course you have the legal right to do so, this really seems like it is not an effective use of your resources, especially if these are noncommercial uses of your art.

I'm going to say this as someone who does not necessarily agree that cutting such support for Archives is a good idea, but I think we have to think of legal matters with a sobered point of view. A sad fact about Intellectual Property is that, like it or not, you are obligated to protect your IP when it is used outside of acceptable levels. When you don't defend your IP for lesser infringements, the courts are gonna be less likely to defend you when it comes time for a major infringement. It's a sad reality about the space of law. And when failing to do so actively hurts you in future litigation, it becomes less a legal right, and more a legal obligation. Think of it like buying insurance. You pay your regular upkeep for qualified minor infractions, and when a major crash happens, all is normal and if you're in the right, the problem resolves easily. It's about as much of an ineffective use of resources as having to pay for car repair when your engine starts making weird sounds. It's simply an inconvenient upkeep you'll regret ignoring when your car malfunctions on the road.

The upkeep for such litigation is mandatory, for Paizo's legal safety. To shirk it is something they cannot do lightly, and idealisms of free intellectual property are not an answer that will win. We have to be pragmatic.

That's why I said in the other. The question should not be whether Paizo should be defending their property. The question should be if the legal upkeep for litigation as it comes, and it's a reality that it will come, is so heavy that it outshines the benefits of fuller support of Archives of Nethys. The math is easy to overlook, because these benefits are indirect, as it pays to...

Well-worded.

Over the last few days I’ve been reading through a lot of your posts, emails, and customer service messages. It’s clear how much Archives of Nethys means to many of you, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to share their thoughts.

Our conversations with Archives of Nethys are still ongoing, and we’re planning to meet next week. If we’re able to find a path forward together, we’ll share that update jointly so everyone gets the full picture at the same time.

Thanks again for your passion and for speaking up. I hear you.

-Jim

Take care of yourself too, Jim.

At the end, everyone wants Pathfinder to flourish.

Maya is awesome, three cheers for them.

steve0105 wrote:

Pardon the reply, just directly addressing.

Hope you are doing ok in the deluge of , well, comments.
Admire the way you are communicating and handling things overall.
Please do take care of yourself.

Oh, no worries on the reply! I didn't do it directly because there were two people in the discussion who asked, so I figured I'd just drop the reply for all to accept and see!

It's been a very long week, and I will sleeping a lot this weekend, but I'm still happy to be here to help everyone make sure their voices are heard to the best of my ability! I'm doing my best, and I'll keep doing that! You can always ask why I removed something, and I'll always answer, whether here or in DMs too. Please also take care of YOURself!

Oh, I wasn't the person whose comment was removed, or who was involved. I just wanted to leave a thank you note to you personally, replied on the last thing I saw your name on.

Either way, take care. And yes, put this out of your mind for 2 days and please get some well deserved rest.

Rysky wrote:

Multiple meaning you and one other, you know exactly why your posts were removed while other posts criticizing Paizo remained.

Lorkmir wrote:

While it had a snarky "rip bozo"

Lorkmir wrote:

nor did I insult or "bait" anyone in particular

…

(I admit it was a bit quippy) I would argue that paraphrasing how some people might respond to Paizo's choice of actions in this situation, and a metaphorical example for it, would not count as directly "insulting". But if that is the case determined by Paizo's community manager, that's fine and fair enough. I'm not demanding my comment be restored or anything. The point of my question is it would be good to clearly know why and when a comment is removed. Cause it isn't just mine, others are also asking the same question about comments being removed in a thread that is probably going to be inherently a bit more emotional than usual given the community love for AoN.

As I addressed, whether or not it is appropriate for a comment to be removed, it should be documented why so the person in question knows why—for one, how will they know to do better if they don't know what caused a prior "infraction" for lack of a better term—and for transparency.

Please admit you were a bit rude... justifying it doesn't make sense.

In a situation caused by bad communication let's not continue that.

Your post was removed for baiting and calling us bozos. Calling us bozos would be using an insult. That's kind of it! I read it and wanted to keep it since a lot of it was valid criticism, and I considered just getting rid of the insult, but it seemed the insult was also part of your point, and paraphrasing feels like a gross over-management. For those reasons, it had to be removed as per our Community Guidelines. I'll keep these comments since we're just having a transparent discussion about it!

Pardon the reply, just directly addressing.

Hope you are doing ok in the deluge of , well, comments.
Admire the way you are communicating and handling things overall.
Please do take care of yourself.

Furthermore I am not sure how the grace period was worded... if it was a to allow you enough time we are giving you 6 month to conlude the removal of all the artwork not covered under CUP... using the whole 6 months and doing nothing until the last day where you rip it out in an hour... I am not sure that was going to work out either.

But without access to the various emails and texts kind of hard to say.

I think a major part of the problem is this. We don't have access to how talks were, what were the exact terms, or access to the complete story.

AON gets the advantage of being a non-business entity whereas Paizo really can't say things as easily or can take the risk of sounding anti-anything. And I don't think a business will, for any reason, release internal communication to the public for whatever reason.

No one is giving anyone time, it's all "I heard this, so my reaction immediately will be this, past behaviour and goodwill be damned."

And I had someone tell me I am a corporate shill, say what you want... this particular company has earned my trust many times in the period I have been their consumer.

That feels a bit dismissive. It might not be your play style, but it's an important resource for me and for lots of other people. To be clear, I love physical books. I mostly don't buy PDF books if I can't also get a physical copy because I love flipping through them. I don't use PDFs at the table. But there are just a lot of books to flip through. I only get maybe 2.5 hours of game time per session at a time. There already isn't that much time to play, let alone spend time flipping through books.

Let's just agree to disagree that the "convenience" is a valid thing. It is to you, it isn't to me. Fair.

About me being dismissive,I get your point, though, didn't mean to sound dismissive. It's hard enough getting to be in a table and with handling most players being like herding cats, I can see how it's easier for you.

I already have the PDFs, getting access isn't the problem. I don't think it'd be fair for me to complain about access to the art if I didn't already have a copy of it available. It's the impact on browsing and looking it up quickly.

Currently, you can hover over creatures in the table and see the art, getting a feel for a creature without clicking through to the page. And you can easily pull it up at the table while GMing. Both of those use-cases are gone with creature art being removed from AoN.

I, personally, don't feel this to be an issue. At all.

The sheer amount of art you can find online is enough.

As an aside, the whole digital thing clearly has done a number on new players/GMs. Taking a pause and looking in books use to be (or still is) a thing.

I'm more or less new to Paizo and PF2e so I don't really know their track record, however it seems to me that the overwhelming opinion is that this was a terrible call by Paizo because it adversely affects the community.

I think that's part of the problem here.

I'm not saying their track record is blameless, but comparatively, they have been very good to players and GMs. Foundry licenses grant access to all the content with free updates, free SRDs, and many other tools (pf2easy), etc. I honestly don't know other TTRPGs that have this ease of entry.
Yes, AON is a big part of it, not going to disagree. But again, it is still up, and will continue to function.

If you are going to judge them by virtue of this one thing, and the reactions of people to it ( also, it's been roughly 1-2 days since this thing happened and everyone's emotions are heightened - traditionally not a good time for decision making) , I would say you are doing yourself a disservice.

Unless I misunderstood your words, you are basing your decision on the overwhelming opinion of others. I'm not going to debate if this opinion is right or wrong, but form your own opinion first off experience is all I would say.

I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.

Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.

I've seen many "fan" communities go rabid at minor things, and I am very sure appeasing any section of so-called fans is a bad idea. A lot of angry, entitled people nowadays hide behind the term "community" and can make absolutely irrational demands that are not conducive to a business.

Level headed people are calmer and don't go off at the drop of a hat, that's the community that should be heard and fostered.

At this point this thread has become the same 5-6 people complaining, 5-6 people defending, going around in circles.

I don’t disagree with anything you quoted though. That’s not some spooky out of control anger, that’s me being reasonably upset and disappointed with how they’ve handled this and why. And I still am. The negotiations, to the minor extent they even turned out to be real, weren’t conducted in a fair or sincere manner and the situation everyone is in is still a direct result of Paizo rushing to pull the plug on volunteers out of nowhere. The only thing in there I’d state differently is that they had more time to deal with the fallout of the firestorm they set than we’d known.

This whole mess could have been avoided, to the extent they ever had to do it at all (which still isn’t clear), had Paizo communicated properly with anyone at AON before ending the contract and ghosting them. There’s no secret info we haven’t got that can possibly justify Paizo’s botched handling of whatever they’re trying to do here. All it can do is help explain it.

So I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove with that post.

I'm just saying, hundreds of angry posts from everyone involved calling for any kind of extreme action like boycotts, canceling subscriptions etc without even knowing the entire picture, within 24 hours of any issue occurring is not a good thing, no matter who you support.

Ypu aren't personally doing it, fine, but there are people who see any post, take it the wrong way, and pour vitriol out.

https://www.patreon.com/nethys/posts/partnership-faq-163964893

AON just put out a video statement with clarifications and the like. It sounds like a complete clusterfuss of bad communication and decision making. Mostly from Paizo, but AON was given 6 months change the website as leeway, didn’t want to use any of it, and made it sound like they truly had 10 days to strip everything down for CUP in their initial announcement.

Giving them 6 months of leeway to comply is no excuse for weeks of ghosting questions and concerns after springing the end of the contract by the end of July without any prior indication this was coming or how it could be avoided though.

Quoting you here-

The whole "we were still negotiating!" argument is not the defense Paizo seems to think it is given they're the ones who set the deadline to strip the site, they've not responded to AON for weeks by their account, and they need to start stripping the site to meet the deadline now. That's not a fair negotiation, that's letting the fire (that they set) claim most of the building before being willing to haggle for firefighting services.

Nothing against you personally, but everyone is getting WAY too angry without knowing the entire picture, and IMO this is a snippet of that.

Koganei wrote:

What I'm trying to say is, systems are systems, and people are people. Sometimes all you need is a well substantiated point, and to have interests aligned with people you're talking to, and they may listen, and change. There's not only no need to Ready a Twin Takedown, but it's actively harmful to do so because that places you on the opposite side from the person you're talking to.

And recently, it seems that's less and less understood. Like the only way anyone can ever change someone's mind is by force.

I understand the point you're attempting to make, but don't you feel it's a bit disingenuous to compare someone pulling their financial support from a corporation to threatening someone's life with a weapon? Especially when later you admit that "systems are systems, people are people"?

I am not pulling a knife out on a poor Paizo employee's throat when I pull my subscription. No violence is committed to a person.

What I am doing is speaking the only language a company - not the PEOPLE WITHIN, but the faceless conglomerate entity of Paizo itself - understands. I am telling the company as a whole "I do not like this situation, and will resume channeling my cash through you when it is resolved".

The employees within Paizo understand English, which I speak here in the forums. I pull no weapons against people.

With all due respect, for a smaller company, loss of revenue means job losses.

Vote with your wallet, sure, but don't act as if it doesn't mean losses of jobs in case of medium sized companies. If you don't care about the individuals, and consider them an "entity" that's fine, but IMO it's not without consequences beyond what you're saying.

Even though AoN is free—featuring images and receiving rules updates relatively quickly, yet being neither a physical book nor a PDF—it drives sales for the system's actual books, supports games for players who don't own the full library, expands Pathfinder's reach, and attracts new customers to Paizo.

Please give me some non-anecdotal evidence. I am not being dismissive, I have not seen any proof of this apart from "Oh, my table and everyone I know says this".

I could be completely wrong about this, I just want something that is concrete and in numbers.

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

it is non-remarkable that this decision was made and no-one thought to get ahead of it.

That's okay. As I noted when I first began posting, I have FRIENDS at Paizo who are, right now, being buried under emails from angry fans, getting posts in DMS on social media, and generally having a crap time of it. Maybe I am too protective of the people I like. maybe...

It's ok, I am the same way. But at one point it feels like banging one's head against a loud, angry wall that doesn't want to hear the reason why you are being loud, and is convinced it has the higher moral ground. In reality your head and the wall are both hurting and bleeding, just angry enough not to feel it at the present.

Take care of yourself, Owen. And anyone would be glad to have a friend like you.

And you know the worst part? The fans are right! It is the company's responsibility to ensure that black box functions smoothly and to prevent issues from reaching the fans as much as possible. Trying to justify a problem to others by opening up a sliver of that black box and saying, "Look, it’s actually much harder and more complicated than it seems," doesn't solve the issue. The fan will simply reply: "I didn't know that because you never told me before, and telling me now won't fix my problems or meet my expectations."

I don't agree that "fans" are right. Nobody owes me anything.

Just because someone is poor, or chooses not to like your product, or just doesn’t buy it doesn’t mean they don’t have a valid opinion.

So... people won't buy the product, experience it for free continuously, not contribute to its making in any way but can criticize it freely?

I get it for other things, but if you play something which you got access to for free, and then throw a fit when it isn't free anymore (It still is, only with certain caveats), and proceed to upend the makers of said product, I am really sorry, I don't see anything constructive there at all.

steve0105 wrote:

So what's your opinions on Free Archetypes so far?

I'm going to run a game where the kineticist won't have any combat benefits from the rule, since it barely ties in with anything. Two new players feel it's choice paralysis.
As for the barb he's going the decay route with dual weapon warrior with necksplitters which basically lets him go nuts on damage. (2 actions, if they hit it's a 12 flat damage anyhow from rage, not counting the weapon damage itself) with No Escape at Level 3 which also grants movement as a reaction.
This was an issue in my previous games as well where the barb (who used more or less this same combo but with Vicious Strike) and fighter was the only one doing crazy numbers in damage while the others took flavorful archetypes and felt left behind in combat at least, which let's be honest, is a big aspect.
It's the most accepted variant,, but would limiting it be a good idea? Would saying something like limiting the archetypes available be a good idea.... Any experienced GMs please help me!

I don't know how they are getting a class feat at level 3, because they only get a general feat, which can only get them a level 1 class feat if they are human ancestry via Natural Ambition, of which No Escape does not qualify. Free Archetype only gives you additional dedication/archetype feats at the same levels you would normally gain class feats (besides 1st level of course), so I'm confused how they are getting this option by 3rd level.

As for limiting it, our group only allows the free 2nd level dedication feat, which means players can either just take it for a free benefit (Acrobat dedication comes to mind; free scaling Acrobatics as a 2nd level class feat is pretty bonkers), or they can take an option and pick class feats/skill feats for levels where they feel like their original options are garbage. You can restrict it further and have it be based off of a profession (like Herbalist, or the aforementioned Acrobat), or limit it specifically to character...

i meant it as by this level they have all these feats, my mistake, not that specific feat at that level.

I just read in the rules themselves that state:
You might restrict the free feats to those of a single archetype each character in the group has (for a shared backstory), those of archetypes fitting a certain theme (such as only ones from magical archetypes in a game set in a magic school)
But I think it's "me as a GM who can't say no" issue than the system.

So what's your opinions on Free Archetypes so far?
I'm going to run a game where the kineticist won't have any combat benefits from the rule, since it barely ties in with anything. Two new players feel it's choice paralysis.
As for the barb he's going the decay route with dual weapon warrior with necksplitters which basically lets him go nuts on damage. (2 actions, if they hit it's a 12 flat damage anyhow from rage, not counting the weapon damage itself) with No Escape at Level 3 which also grants movement as a reaction.
This was an issue in my previous games as well where the barb (who used more or less this same combo but with Vicious Strike) and fighter was the only one doing crazy numbers in damage while the others took flavorful archetypes and felt left behind in combat at least, which let's be honest, is a big aspect.
It's the most accepted variant,, but would limiting it be a good idea? Would saying something like limiting the archetypes available be a good idea.... Any experienced GMs please help me!

I'm completely apathetic about this. I'm supposed to want this instead of Diablo, or Path of Exile, or Grim Dawn? Because of Pathfinder in the title and some icon skins?

Give me something that actually uses the PF2e ruleset instead of just branding. Like the Owlcat games, but without the janky min-max complexity that came with PF1e. I'll throw lots of money at it.

Okay.

Hello!
My PDF downloads are stuck on the personalizing stage, stuck in a loop of the file showing up as ready in 60 seconds and switching back to personalizing.
I've cleared cookies and tried on a different browser but isn't resolving.