There is a reason for the "personalizing" thing, and its not just a DRM thing.
I would note that other providers of gaming PDFs .also personalize
I've had no luck today trying the above methods, downloading the bundle info, or another non bundle purchase I made. Any estimate on when traffic will get back to normal?
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And that's not even counting the fact that this site straight up doesn't work in Chrome, which is already mind-bogglingly stupid.
I've used Chrome on this site for five years. This is the first time timing out during a download has ever been an issue.
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Meh, no one is being "screwed". People are being mildly inconvenienced, along the lines of a broken nail or stubbed toe.
It did work with chrome before the humble bundle masses hit in five times the numbers expected. The entire company employs 50 people, so their IT department is probably only 2 or 3 people and you are getting stuff at 5-10% of retail, most of which you could give to charity. Is the situation ideal? obviously not, but being angry that your super discounted product isn't ready right now is ridiculous.
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There is a reason for the "personalizing" thing, and its not just a DRM thing.This is starting to be ridiculous. I am at 6 days trying to download this. You guys should have removed that stupid "personalizing" thing. If people are going to copy the books they can get them all they want off bit torrent so get rid of the "personalizing" step so people who decided to purchase the items can get them. (they purchased it cheaply but it was legit) Otherwise, people are just going to get irritated and just go get them from other sources.I've been unable to download my PDFs for at least three days now.
I've tried in both Chrome and Firefox and I have tried from two different computers and networks, one running Windows 10 and the other running Windows 7. I've never had problems on either machine or network before.
I am unable to find any outage notifications, and I do not get any error messages. What the heck is going on?
(Yes, I have cleared my cache and restarted my browser in both Firefox and Chrome.)
Care to elaborate on what those are?
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Sorry, referring to a different post of hers. Its because of the rules of the Pathfinder Society, not a big deal to those of who will never play in one of those events. If you want to play in one of those events you either need to have the hard copy book, or the watermarked PDF.
Those watermarks are put on at the time of download, every time you go to download the file. That's is what is overloaded. Since they are a small company and they host their own stuff locally to protect their IP they have never had to deal with this kind of queue demand. A process that normally only take a second or two in any browser is suddenly unable to keep up with demand.
If someone keeps refreshing the download link it sends another watermark request to the server...thus continuing the overload.
And who, pray tell, makes the rules for Pathfinder Society organized play?
And don't defend it as a reasonable anti-piracy measure. There is no such thing. Every study on the topic has always shown that piracy does not actually cut into a company's profits because it does more to expand fanbases than to remove individual sales.
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Tabbymouse explained it in the post right after that one.No he didn't. Like, he didn't even approach the topic of why that feature is there."He" is a "she" and yes I did. The watermarking is to prove you have a legit copy of the books, and not a pirated one, if you want to play in official Pathfinder Society games.
Gaming with your friends? doesn't matter about the watermark.
Happen to be at a convention or event and there's a pathfinder game? You might want to show you have "legal" copies of the books, or you can't play.
I don't think it's so much piracy, since I;m not that techno-fluent and even I know it's easy to remove such a small watermark, plus even I admitted to having a non-legit copy of the books.
I;m sure there's a good chunk of players who just want to game with friends and won't ever need to have a "verified" copy. Hell, I have friends who pooled together to buy the bundle, and planning on sharing the books.
But here's the thing: IF Paizo stopped the watermark temporarily, there would be 30K+ unverifiable legit copies of the books. How would you feel if you bought the bundle, then wanted to join a game only to find out it was a Society game and you had no way to show your PDF was legal and not pirated?
Even if, lets say they gave Humble a set of the books with the generic watermark "Humble Bundle 2016" that humble could give to people who bought the bundle...well, now we have 30K+ generic watermarks, that can easily be copied and pirated, and again, no way to prove it's a "legal" copy for offical games.
This isn't a hard concept. You have a physical book, or you have a PDF with YOUR name on it. Either way you have proof YOU bought the book.
He claimed that there were reasons other than it being an anti-piracy measure. That's what I meant to say you didn't touch on.
Ignoring the fact that you could just start watermarking the copies again for that special 1% of players once things died down, Paizo decides whether or not to enforce any kind of anti-piracy policy at all. Given that there is no reason to think piracy actually cuts into the profits of companies, it's quite frankly their fault for being irrational and paranoid.
The irony here is that I may well be forced to pirate a bunch of books that I legally bought just so I can get access to them.
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How is one "forced" to pirate something?
Oh right, you aren't. You are impatient and making the usual internet threatening comments because you feel that you are being unfairly treated for having to wait.
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Hi all. New here, joined up with the humble bundle. With regards to the please wait 10 seconds. The best way I have found to get passed it. Click all the links so they say please wait 10 seconds. Once all showing go have a cuppa grab some food. basically allow the Paizo servers to process your "customise"
Then when you come back you will have to sign in again. Return to the downloads section. Now click them and bam. they start downloading.
To the new comers with the humble bundle like myself. I would ask please consider the other members of this site. Download 2 at once rather than try download all. I suspect the servers are getting hammered second to none. Humble Bundle was a much greater success than Paizo expected I suspect.
Patience is key me thinks.
Looking forward to having a go at this game.
That was essentially what I did... I'd click to personalize, and it would never get done personalizing. But if I left it and came back a while later, the file that had been personalized before would now download.
For the most part, I was able to download three or four files before it stopped working, though the last attempt was nine files (two at a time, starting the next one as soon as one was done).
It took me about 48 hours, but I got all my files, and I did it in Chrome.
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I told you where to go look for the info if you wanted. Its more about ensuring that everyone that is playing in the organized event is playing on a level playing field. Along with the book or the marked pdf you have to bring ALL of adventure chronicles (logs) to every event for the character being played. It proves to the other players and gm where your character got the items he/she has, what adventures they have been on in the past.
I'm sorry, what? Making people buy a book (despite its rules being legally available online) is ensuring a level playing field?
Charging for access to additional abilities is the opposite of a level playing field. Now, that's not a criticism, because when you're not competing against other players it doesn't matter if the playing field is level, but the way to ensure a level playing field would be to disregard whether or not the person has bought anything and let them use it so long as it exists and has been approved.
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Doesn't really seem to bother any of the thousands of people that play in the events.
If it bothers "you" that much it probably isn't for you.
Read my posts. I explicitly said it was not intended as a criticism. What it shows is that Paizo isn't concerned about creating a level playing field, and, and this bit is important, I don't really think they need to be. What it does, though, is blow the lid off of your excuse.
Hey folks, please respect that we're exhausted and each respectively resetting for the week ahead. Sniping at each other and debating our watermarks really doesn't belong in this thread either. Again, we understand how frustrating this is, and the reports about downloads not performing are valid.
If you're new to our community, please take a quick look over our Community Guidelines . Thanks!
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You're luckier than I am then. I've gotten 2 of them so far, out of dozens. I am not currently using Chrome, but IE, (as firefox worked no better.)
Also, they didn't say not to use Chrome in any place visible to everyone, or on the problems thread the downloads page currently links to.
I think that requiring the PDFs to be watermarked at all is a bad idea. As I have said more than once, anti-piracy measures in general are dumb because piracy enlarges fanbases and boosts sales more than it siphons them off.
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Somehow I don't think a corporate storefront and writer's forum is the best place to go around advocating piracy.
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Why does all the watermarking discussion have to be aruond piracy which is against the community standrds to really adovacate. Making a modified pdf and not correctly identifying the content as part of the ogl could end up in a ogl violation lawsuit which would create a cloud of fear uncertainty and doubt over the legal status of pathfinder. A world without paizo would be a worse one.
I on linux am getting a foss browser called qupzilla to download the files which is based on qtwebkit and is cross platform.
1)Would you be okay with owning "non/generic" watermarked copies that were not legal for official games?
OK, how about:
* Give us the option to download non-watermarked copies now. You can still get watermarked copies if you wish.
* Somehow make sure the downloader understands they are illegal in organized play.
* Remove this option of non-watermarked copies in a few weeks.
That would be something worth considering, no?
Staff have already asked that this subject be dropped. This is not the time, nor place. This is also not the only online store to watermark PDFs.
My comment pertains more to a possibility of speeding up the process rather than whether watermarked PDFs should exist or not. I'm assuming that they should exist is a given.
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As I have said more than once, anti-piracy measures in general are dumb because piracy enlarges fanbases and boosts sales more than it siphons them off.
Paizo has that covered.
See the Rules Archive (PRD) towards the top of the left hand column on this page? There isn't much need to 'pirate' the rules when they're freely available. The open game license... another way to enlarge fanbases and boost sales.
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1)Would you be okay with owning "non/generic" watermarked copies that were not legal for official games?
OK, how about:
* Give us the option to download non-watermarked copies now. You can still get watermarked copies if you wish.
* Somehow make sure the downloader understands they are illegal in organized play.
* Remove this option of non-watermarked copies in a few weeks.That would be something worth considering, no?
Although paizo are very transparent, they don't share absolutely everything. I'm sure this kind of thing has been considered, even if it hasn't been implemented.
One possibility is that changing their software would take more work than expanding their hardware - their forums/website/personaliser/webstore were all developed in-house and "on the go" when paizo was much smaller than it is currently. I wouldn't be surprised if those things put severe limitations on what can be easily "switched on" or off - features (especially those from the early days, when they didn't dream of these kinds of numbers and were predominantly publishing and distributing other people's IP) could well be integrated into multiple areas of their system. Changing one thing could be very risky to the integrity of other, apparently unrelated things.
The issue of IP protection and watermarking as one means of assisting with that has come up before and has appeared to be a non-negotiable. I don't mean to present that as an argument - but it's worth knowing (imo) that paizo derive value from the watermarking. It's not some random thing they've imposed without thought - it's existence has been useful in eradicating some instances of piracy in the past (regardless of our personal views as to its usefulness overall).
It's also worth bearing in mind that this will all be over in a month or so. I don't want to trivialise the legitimate complaints of new users, but in the big picture a delay of a week or two in downloading such a bargain is something that paizo have to weigh against the potentially more serious damage that would be done by accidentally releasing a bunch of unwatermarked PDFs or even worse, crashing the site trying to jury rig some software workaround.
Paizo will be more frustrated by these delays than anyone else - each of us may have lost a bit of time and a bit of money. Paizo are reaching out to a whole new audience whose first experience is one of excitement swiftly morphing into frustration. That's a big deal and you can bet they're doing all they can to rectify the situation.
There are just probably a whole bunch of constraints, unrelated to this one issue, which will limit exactly how they can respond. We're not in possession of all of those constraints.
And that's not even counting the fact that this site straight up doesn't work in Chrome, which is already mind-bogglingly stupid.I've used Chrome on this site for five years. This is the first time timing out during a download has ever been an issue.
Same - not a problem with Chrome in... ever.
Wait, you're still around, Shifty? I haven't seen you post in so long, I assumed you must have gotten eaten by a dingo or something.
Hey guys,
The first link I click every sort of hour or two after waiting the prerequisite 10 seconds pops up the download box and makes it seem like the download will start and then I get an 'Error connection timed out' issue instead.
Is this still the same issue? if it is I'll continue to wait patiently, just wanted to see if other people were getting the same issue or if it was an issue only I was having
Sam
Seems to be working for me now. I am using Ice Dragon browser (varient of firefox). I had tried the inner sea primer and character folio a few days ago and had the personalising click in 10 sec message. Clicked on them today and they went to the download screen. I have to wait there. If I click the "click here if it doesn't start in 5 secs" link that'll fail (timeout) but after 20-30 seconds up pops the download.
I have then click the GM screen, that straight to the download screen, waited 20-30 secs and it download and then I did the strategy guide,up pops the personalising message,gave it a few minutes and clicked again, went to download screen and waited the 20-secs or so and download started.
So obviously still a bit slower than normal and I haven't tried any of the big core books yet but it seems to be playing ball
Used, 3 browsers, nothing work... cannot download pdf. Personalizing till eternity. I begin to regret i bought it, could understand issues 1-3 days but now its... 5-6? Nothing changed at all.
We really want to help, please don't give up yet. To see if we (rather than Paizo themselves) can do so, please let us know the following:
Which browsers?
How long do you wait with it personalising?
Have you ever seen the "download will start in 5 seconds" message?
What book are you trying this with?
There are a lot of possible factors, and while the situation is less than ideal, we might be able to come up with a combination of methods to get you going.