I got to thinking about the feedback on these boards, and how I had, from time to time, gotten frustrated because I didn't have the time to respond to a given thread that liked or disliked an aspect of Pathfinder that I wanted to make my feelings known about.
And I also thought about how quickly threads could get burried, and how the opinions in those threads might not make it into a "bigger" thread on the same subject.
Finally, I was thinking about how there has been a bit of trying to discredit other posters, almost in the hopes that their "vote" on a given topic wouldn't count if someone else got in a really good "zinger" or managed to make them seem as if their opinions shouldn't count.
And then it occurred to me, perhaps some of the feedback on the Alpha release should be handled by polls. As long as the polls are tied to an account, and especially if there is some way of keeping votes from the same IP address from counting again, this might not be a bad idea.
To take an example of one thread in the Alpha area, the Design Focus: Skills thread . . . Initially, there were several options listed in the thread, but yet, many people ignored those options entirely and launched into theorecial work on their own skill systems. While it may still be helpful to see where people are coming from, it may have been much more helpful for people to see if the existing options might have some kind of traction as well.
Also, a poll might let people know where everyone's thoughts are on a particular issue. Sometimes, very vocal and passionate posters can skew a topic to seem as if its more of an issue than it might otherwise be. There is nothing wrong with their opinions, but at the same time, this isn't an accurate representation of the people that are prospective customers.
Obviously these polls can still have an "other" option that would allow posters to give their opinion if they did not care for the options presented, but I think even people that might support the "standard" option get sidetracked by larger arguments in many threads rather than just letting their simple opinion be known.
My final argument for why polls on various new or altered aspects of the game is that I'm better there are many, many gamers that just don't usually post on message boards. They don't want to argue in public, and aren't inclined to write long tracts to support their opinions, but they DO have them. While it may be more helpful for Paizo to see the reasons behind an opinion, at the same time, getting some opinion from a large number of people that might buy the product but may not actively participate in the boards might not be a bad idea.
While some topics might automatically prompt polls, other topics that "blow up" on the forums might be good cause to go back through and create new polls. For example, a poll measuring the degree to which a fixed set of School Powers for wizards is a problem might be warrented.
Just a suggestion, and one that I think might make it a little easier for both Paizo and the people on the boards to get a handle on what others here in the community think about given topics.
Kind of against this.
Too many opinions swaying back and forth, Id rather let paizo do the books their way with as little outside influences as possible.
The too many chiefs, not enough indians thing.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Kind of against this.
Too many opinions swaying back and forth, Id rather let paizo do the books their way with as little outside influences as possible.
The too many chiefs, not enough indians thing.
I think that they are wise to open the playtest to the public, as they will be able to better gauge how the system will be received. I can think of another large gaming company that didn't do this which is going to have a big backlash when people see how terrible and unfun the new system is. While I agree that there can be too much backseat design going on on these forums, I am not adverse to Paizo's openness in terms of the design process. A fine balance needs to be reached, and I think that we have yet to attain the goal of them putting out material and us responding. At this point, it's more fans than Paizo putting stuff out there, but that will change once they get the full Alpha release out. I am sure that we will then see a lot more direct feedback from Jason and others regarding our concerns and suggestions.
Too many opinions swaying back and forth, Id rather let paizo do the books their way with as little outside influences as possible.The too many chiefs, not enough indians thing.
That's exactly what I would hope to eliminate with the polls. As it stands now, if I (or the guys here at Paizo) want to know what people think about a given topic, they have to wade through a ton of "I'm not going to tell you if your idea will work, instead, I'll present a houserule from my own campaign" posts.
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Chief Technical Officer
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It is a problem that a lot of folks seem to miss the distinction between "playtest," which is what this is, and "design by democracy," which it's not.
We're not really interested in what percentage of people generally like or dislike a particular idea—we're interested in the specific experiences that people have when they use that idea in their game. "I think this rule is good" or "I think this rule is bad" isn't nearly as useful to us as "this rule works well with my fighter but not so much with my barbarian, and here's why."
That said, if Jason ever thinks a poll would be useful to him, we'll set one up.
Point taken.
That should make the PFRPG Necromancers and Universalists interesting.
In some games they will get to control 8 HD of undead from level one like all the other specialist wizard abilities work from level 1 and the class will rock possibly overpoweringly so.
In the games where they don't control 8 HD of undead from level one Necromancers don't work. Compared to other specialist wizards they will be quite weak receiving a bogus class benefit that doesn't really work in game.
In our high level game the universalist rocks because he was able to create magic items without crafting feats or experience cost since Wish is a spell like ability although our DM limited it to +25,000 gp a day so it took 6 down days to make that Tome of Leadership +5. Of course we needed to take a short time out to power everyone up since it wasn't fair to the group for only the wizard to benefit.