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As we await the arrival of the Pathfinder RPG beta, what do you think of 1) the Alphas and 2) the open playing testing and feedback?
For #1, I like Pathfinder better than 3.x, finding it almost bridging the gap between 3.x's sheer flexibility and familiarity and 4E's fun at lower levels. (I play in four campaigns a month: two 3.x games, one Pathfinder game, and one 4E game.)
As for #2, I'd like to see more playtest examples and less "from my read of the rules, I'd change this" opinion posts. Or houserules. I read somewhere that Paizo plans to take a more active role querying exactly what they're looking for, and believe this will help focus the upcoming beta forums.
As we await the arrival of the Pathfinder RPG beta, what do you think of 1) the Alphas and 2) the open playing testing and feedback?
For #1, I like Pathfinder better than 3.x, finding it almost bridging the gap between 3.x's sheer flexibility and familiarity and 4E's fun at lower levels. (I play in four campaigns a month: two 3.x games, one Pathfinder game, and one 4E game.)
As for #2, I'd like to see more playtest examples and less "from my read of the rules, I'd change this" opinion posts. Or houserules. I read somewhere that Paizo plans to take a more active role querying exactly what they're looking for, and believe this will help focus the upcoming beta forums.
To avoid people like me cluttering the forum with house rules:
The playtesting feedback forums should stay, but the actual playtesting feedback should be collected in a more formalized manner. Give people the means to record actual game data from sessions easily. Ask for specific results in a form. Encourage people to playtest with existing adventure paths, so that different playtest results are comparable.
"New Rules" forums (or better yet "house rules") are a good lightning rod for troublemakers like myself who think they can solve the game's problems. But in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, you really need to ask specific questions, and collect a huge amount of data on the answers divorced in some measure from the context.
If one person thinks the monk is unfair, that could be because the monk is actually unfair, but it could also be the wrong player, the wrong GM, the wrong adventure, or just plain bad luck. The only way to assess necessary changes is to collect a great deal of data and find out what is actually going on on average.
A playtest data checklist is in order. And it would make sense to use the existing adventure paths for this checklist.
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As we await the arrival of the Pathfinder RPG beta, what do you think of 1) the Alphas and 2) the open playing testing and feedback?
As for #2, I'd like to see more playtest examples and less "from my read of the rules, I'd change this" opinion posts. Or houserules. I read somewhere that Paizo plans to take a more active role querying exactly what they're looking for, and believe this will help focus the upcoming beta forums.
The problem is that most any rules change suggested is going to come from a situation where someone has house ruled something that they don't like. I agree that there should be some inclusion and discussion of how this rule or that has changed or smoothed out game play, but at the same time almost anything someone is going to suggest is something they are already doing in their own game, which is the very essence of a house rule.
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I am very satisfied with the Alpha rules, and looking forward to the Beta rules. My group has been playtesting them extensively, and we've yet to find anything we don't like.
I agree the open-playtest is suffering from a lot of people who are read-testing and not play-testing. And I've noticed an irritating creep towards identifying the same non-problems in 3.5 that the 4E designers did, and I don't want to see those problems "fixed."
Specifically, I mean the "I'm so weak at first level." problem and the "Once I get too high in level, dungeons aren't a challenge anymore." problem.