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Uh, no. They are not simply choosing to not do the FAQs.
The FAQs come about when the entire design team is in the office and can work on them and the the Pathfinder Design Team account posts it in the thread the FAQ originated from, it's not just one Designer rushing through them giving whatever answer popped into their head, and I wouldn't want it to be that way.
For the PRD they only have one person handling it right now (Chris), and she has a bunch of other stuff to do in front of that at the moment, though I believe they are close to getting it updated.
Paizo is a mature company staffed by several smart, capable people. If they wanted to do regular FAQs, PRD updates, etc., they could contrive a plan and devote the resources to make it happen. We don't have to disempower them by making excuses for them. I'd rather acknowledge they made a choice, and although I don't like it, I still respect their ability.
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I'm not making excuses, whereas you seem to set in your mind exactly how they work and that they do so exclusively in a negative fashion for no other reasons to be a villain you've come up with. That they're actively choosing not to do these things? Why? What purpose does that serve?
Yes Paizo is staffed by smart and competent people, but the things you're asking for, constant FAQs and PRD updates, take time and energy and cohesion, which all of their other products and projects do as well. Which have higher priority than those things that do not generate revenue.
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Considering all the hate thrown around every time they do release a FAQ, I wouldn't do them either.
As far as the PRD goes, that's a free service, crafted I believe almost entirely by staffers on their own time.
Also, just saying, if people want the PRD updated more quickly or in a more timely fashion, don't be a jerk or create posts that are cause for moderation, because the same person updating the PRD is also the moderator, so every time there's an argument you're taking away valuable resources that could've been working on the PRD.
If that's all you took away from it then my apologies.
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FAQs don't have to be posted by a named staff member, and they don't have to be posted in a messageboard thread.
If they wanted to do FAQs, errata, and PRD development, they would devote the resources. I trust Paizo is quite capable of achieving what it sets its (collective) mind to do.
There have been times when they got behind on the actual money making projects due to a lack of resources. It is not a simple matter of "setting your mind to it".
FAQ'S aren't easy to write either. They have to be worded in such a way that they don't generate another FAQ, and hopefully avoid any unintended abuse.
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As for errata it's only released when the current printing for a book sells out.
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Unfortunately, if their developer staff is growing, they may need to change the policy on requiring everyone to be present to do FAQs. They may need to allow one person to be absent, as long as that person is not closely concerned in that particular FAQ. By the current rules, I don't think they can do more often. If they change the rules too much, there may be a drop in quality.
I am not impatient for more frequent FAQs, I just think it would be nice. I definitely do not expect them to release on some specific schedule.
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First: it’s the design team that do FAQs on the rulebook line. That’s Jason, SRM, Logan, and Mark, and the team has been that size for many years. People conflate the developer team with the design team a lot, but the developers are not directly involved in every FAQ (which is not to say that they don’t provide input, it’s just not guaranteed to be required, unlike the design team, whose process for FAQs requires all of them).
Here’s my understanding of how FAQs work, based on many discussions, previous experience, and the odd PM with Mark:
Once we flag a post for FAQ it enters a list. The more clicks, the higher up the list it gets. Being high up the list is no guarantee in any way of a response.
Being people, the design team probably want to hit the high-click requests, because they’re the “burning issues”.
Anyway, Mark gets input from Logan and SRM, when they have the chance, and those 3 see if they can come to a consensus. If they do, that goes to Jason for his sign-off, and if he agrees, we get a pretty FAQ response. If they don’t agree, Jason becomes a combination of arbiter and team member, as all 4 of them try to hash out an answer. If they do, pretty FAQ response. If not, it goes back in the pile. And if it took a while to get to “we can’t agree”, it could sit there for a looooong time because there are easier FAQs to respond to.
The thing is, this requires all 4 of the team to be involved. It doesn’t earn the company any money. FAQs are something Paizo do because they’re nice and it does help keep the customers happy, but not because they have to.
So, if, for example, Jason is moving home (like he is at the moment), or people are heading off to conventions every weekend, there simply isn’t going to be time for the team to sit down and hash these things out to everyone’s satisfaction. That is actually a feature, not a bug: The team decide the answer, not one person, and if the whole team can’t do it, it simply doesn’t happen.
Now, whether you agree with the process or not (and I’ve probably made some errors in interpretation along the way), it is functional and robust, but not very flexible. And Paizo does not have a good reason to change it, because while the schedule may be slower than we might prefer, it works, it’s effective, and it is rare (though not unheard of) for an FAQ response to need amendment after it is issued.
As for errata it's only released when the current printing for a book sells out.
And this sorely needs to change. It causes two things(that I can tell) that potentially angers customers.
1)They got the first copy and, for a year or more, got to use the options as written. They go invested in the option and now those options have been made, at best, much less useful
2) Someone buys a copy and finds out later it's invalidated, at least partially. Now to use their book they need to print out something that may or may change what they wanted from it.
This, of course, is for those that actually use errata. For PFS, Paizo's own little pseudo-errata playtest group, though you must. Free rebuilds, if you get them, don't always save a character you might have played for a very long time.
So, if, for example, Jason is moving home (like he is at the moment)Wait ... moving home? As in, Milwaukee??
I actually hold the belief that Jason’s home is like Baba Yaga’s hut and moves on its own, but I could be wrong about that.
(Actually, I just didn’t want to use the term “moving house”, since a house might not be involved at all, and “moving home” avoided any assumptions about the nature of his accommodation.)
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I don't care about FAQs, I'm a free thinking person, I can make decisions on my own.
I do appreciate all the hard work they put into them though, so high fives to the team that does them.
And kudos to Mark for working on a Saturday. :-)
This.
It's that I believe they've stated before that they "do try to do these weekly" and "that we stockpile answer to post on weeks we couldn't do a bigger one" and thus the expectation is weekly. If they changed to First Tuesday of the month FAQ day then our expectations would be getting at least 1 FAQ a month.
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So, if, for example, Jason is moving home (like he is at the moment)Wait ... moving home? As in, Milwaukee??I actually hold the belief that Jason’s home is like Baba Yaga’s hut and moves on its own, but I could be wrong about that.
(Actually, I just didn’t want to use the term “moving house”, since a house might not be involved at all, and “moving home” avoided any assumptions about the nature of his accommodation.)
Ah! "Moving home" has such a specific meaning, I though Jason was leaving or something! Commencing sigh of relief ...
Somelike like 'Jason is moving to a new home' or maybe 'Jason is in the middle of moving' would probably have been better ...
Anyway, back to the thread! :)
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It's that I believe they've stated before that they "do try to do these weekly" and "that we stockpile answer to post on weeks we couldn't do a bigger one" and thus the expectation is weekly. If they changed to First Tuesday of the month FAQ day then our expectations would be getting at least 1 FAQ a month.
Do you have a source on the “stockpile” comment?
It's that I believe they've stated before that they "do try to do these weekly" and "that we stockpile answer to post on weeks we couldn't do a bigger one" and thus the expectation is weekly. If they changed to First Tuesday of the month FAQ day then our expectations would be getting at least 1 FAQ a month.Do you have a source on the “stockpile” comment?
Of course I don't off hand, sorry. :) But you can do the searching that I'd do if I wanted to find it. It'd be from a comment Mark gave. And its not be a direct quote but what I gathered from what he said. It might have been something like "we have a list of FAQs we think are super simple, so if we can't get a bigger one out we'll just quickly agree to one of the simple ones just to get something out".
I believe Mark has actually in the past stated an intention or desire to “stockpile” FAQ responses, but I don’t think it actually worked out the way he wanted, so I have to agree with ChessPwn than it’s something that’s been said, but I don’t think it was a promise, more “I really want”.
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Of course I don't off hand, sorry. :) But you can do the searching that I'd do if I wanted to find it. It'd be from a comment Mark gave. And its not be a direct quote but what I gathered from what he said. It might have been something like "we have a list of FAQs we think are super simple, so if we can't get a bigger one out we'll just quickly agree to one of the simple ones just to get something out".It's that I believe they've stated before that they "do try to do these weekly" and "that we stockpile answer to post on weeks we couldn't do a bigger one" and thus the expectation is weekly. If they changed to First Tuesday of the month FAQ day then our expectations would be getting at least 1 FAQ a month.Do you have a source on the “stockpile” comment?
The closest I found was one talking about how they have a list of ones they haven’t been able to decide on yet and another mentioning that he had a (at the time) current short list of FAQs he felt that would be easy to answer, but that was from his POV, not the design team as a whole, I could find nothing referencing a list/stockpile of already answered FAQs.
The closest I found was one talking about how they have a list of ones they haven’t been able to decide on yet and another mentioning that he had a (at the time) current short list of FAQs he felt that would be easy to answer, but that was from his POV, not the design team as a whole, I could find nothing referencing a list/stockpile of already answered FAQs.Of course I don't off hand, sorry. :) But you can do the searching that I'd do if I wanted to find it. It'd be from a comment Mark gave. And its not be a direct quote but what I gathered from what he said. It might have been something like "we have a list of FAQs we think are super simple, so if we can't get a bigger one out we'll just quickly agree to one of the simple ones just to get something out".It's that I believe they've stated before that they "do try to do these weekly" and "that we stockpile answer to post on weeks we couldn't do a bigger one" and thus the expectation is weekly. If they changed to First Tuesday of the month FAQ day then our expectations would be getting at least 1 FAQ a month.Do you have a source on the “stockpile” comment?
Then that's probably the post I'm thinking of, so it's saying he has a list of what he thinks are easy FAQs to pop out quickly to get one done to maintain the weekly goal. But the point is, they've done a lot and have stated that they WANT it to be weekly, and so we come to expect weekly, since they were batting like 80% there for a time. So now when it drops to 20% we notice that it's really not weekly and have expectation unmet.
Director of Game Design
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Hey there all,
Just thought I would pop in to post a couple of points and cool things down a bit.
1. I am moving, although just to a new apartment here in Seattle. This has no bearing on my work at Paizo, other than to put more stress on me.
2. FAQs are important to me and the design team as a whole. We want to give you the best game that we can, and that means regular updates and clarifications. We are not changing this goal.
3. Stressful times happen. Deadline crunch affects us like any other team here at Paizo and while I do my best to manage the work flow so that it is minimized, that is not always possible. This is one of those times. We are really swamped with work.
So... The FAQ process will keep moving along, as regularly as we can on Tuesdays, but there may be some irregularities in the next few weeks as we continue to jam on some things.
We appreciate your patience and understanding.
Thanks, Jason!
Hope I didn’t misrepresent things too badly.
Hey there all,
Just thought I would pop in to post a couple of points and cool things down a bit.
1. I am moving, although just to a new apartment here in Seattle. This has no bearing on my work at Paizo, other than to put more stress on me.
2. FAQs are important to me and the design team as a whole. We want to give you the best game that we can, and that means regular updates and clarifications. We are not changing this goal.
3. Stressful times happen. Deadline crunch affects us like any other team here at Paizo and while I do my best to manage the work flow so that it is minimized, that is not always possible. This is one of those times. We are really swamped with work.
So... The FAQ process will keep moving along, as regularly as we can on Tuesdays, but there may be some irregularities in the next few weeks as we continue to jam on some things.
We appreciate your patience and understanding.
We know the real reason you guys have been slacking off on Tuesdays is tacos.
First: it’s the design team that do FAQs on the rulebook line. That’s Jason, SRM, Logan, and Mark, and the team has been that size for many years. People conflate the developer team with the design team a lot, but the developers are not directly involved in every FAQ (which is not to say that they don’t provide input, it’s just not guaranteed to be required, unlike the design team, whose process for FAQs requires all of them).
Anyway, Mark gets input from Logan and SRM, when they have the chance, and those 3 see if they can come to a consensus. If they do, that goes to Jason for his sign-off, and if he agrees, we get a pretty FAQ response. If they don’t agree, Jason becomes a combination of arbiter and team member, as all 4 of them try to hash out an answer. If they do, pretty FAQ response. If not, it goes back in the pile. And if it took a while to get to “we can’t agree”, it could sit there for a looooong time because there are easier FAQs to respond to.
The thing is, this requires all 4 of the team to be involved. It doesn’t earn the company any money. FAQs are something Paizo do because they’re nice and it does help keep the customers happy, but not because they have to.
It would be very easy to change this to three if one is having life issues.
And, it does earn the company money. Older products sell.
Not to mention Paizo is getting the rep that it doesnt support it's products, and that rep costs sales.