Does session zero count as play testing?

[master_marshmallow]

This is a serious question because this happened:

Vic Wertz wrote:

• Tell us about your actual game play. Theory is all well and good, but everybody’s got theories, and we’ve probably heard most of them already. Tell us how things are actually working in play, not how you think things will work.

And I'm seeing it used as an excuse to silence the concerns of some posters on here, even with legitimate concerns or questions.

For example, yesterday I had a session zero with one of my players who wanted to go over making characters for the play test. He really wanted to play a paladin, and he wanted his paladin to be the tank/damage dealer for the four-man group, which seemed fairly reasonable. Then we read the class and realized the options for it were terrible, took way too long to come online, and were ultimately worse than not investing into those options and just swinging a sword multiple times. He then decided to build a barbarian with fighter multiclassing to get Double Slice.

He did this independently of me, and now I will have no data on the paladin for the play test (which I really wanted).

So does this count as play test information? If after reading a class and trying to decide how to build a character he gave up on the class, is that not valuable information? This isn't about theory crafting different ideas for making the class better, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's run into problems with this kind of thing. Is it really fair to say that these opinions don;t matter because we didn't want to play a class that can't fulfill the desires of the player(s)?

I mean, to be able to play a class you have to at least read it first, or at least the feats you want to take and potentially build towards since so many of them have prerequisites from earlier in the class. Are we playing the game wrong? Should we ignore our desire to read first before we play? I'm sorry, but I don't find this specific bit of advice helpful and I feel like I'm being told to just accept the play test the way it is because that's Paizo's decision and I feel alienated and disrespected, not by Vic, but by the vitriol of posters using this guideline as a means of flaming, spamming, or otherwise insulting other testers who have similar gateway issues to playing the game.

[Moro]

If your playtest feedback (on this forum, anyway) is less than glowing praise for the greatness of Paizo, there are some posters lurking around who will take personal offense and will reply with some pretty dismissive stuff, no matter how relevant your points.

Best to just ignore them, but please try not to get them confused with other posters who might just be trying to offer legitimate rebuttal, or even attempting to perhaps correct a misunderstanding of a new mechanic.

[CrystalSeas]

One of the questions on the Player Tracking sheet is "How long did it take to create your character?"

They also say they're going to ask other questions on the survey that don't require this kind of precise tracking.

I'll bet that when you fill out the first survey (which includes character creation) that there will be a way for you to give that feedback directly on the survey.

"How long" certainly can include starting one character, giving up, and switching to another character.

[FitzTheRuke]

While the post you quote comes off somewhat dismissive of your playtest experience, I don't think that was the intent.

I think the poster was trying (and perhaps failing) to suggest that your player's knee-jerk reaction to the paladin might not have held up, had he actually tried playing the paladin, instead of dismissing it.

I've played with a paladin in the party. I'm not sure what your player's problem with it is. I think this might be what the poster was talking about regarding Theory vs Actual Play.

[Laik]

I would say that does not definitely count as play testing.

I actually played a sword-and-board paladin, they work great as tanks for the groups, they have lovely abilities with unexpected effects you do not understand until you try.

Reactive reading is not playtesting at all.