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Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?
Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?
The people who manage the website are not the same who design the game tho.
Yes, mistakes from the technical department CAN of course impact sales, but this tells us nothing about the quality of design choices themselves.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The people who manage the website are not the same who design the game tho.
Yes, mistakes from the technical department CAN of course impact sales, but this tells us nothing about the quality of design choices themselves.
This part of the discussion started because a poster stated that he had confidence in how well Paizo runs their business. This was not a discussion of the quality of the game design.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?The people who manage the website are not the same who design the game tho.
Yes, mistakes from the technical department CAN of course impact sales, but this tells us nothing about the quality of design choices themselves.
The ability of Paizo's senior management to handle the rollout of a big new revision to their web platform, including it's coordination with other business activities and choice of technology and personnel implementing it, does have implications for their ability to hand the rollout of a big new revision to their flagship product, including its coordination with other business activities and choice of rules structure/goals and personnel implementing it.
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The fact that insofar Paizo didn't address some of the critique which was frequent on the boards (eg. the "it isn't PF1" one, the "monsters should be built like PCs" or the "casters are too weak" one and of course the "wrought treadmill, verily" one) while tackled other comments that were frequent (ancestries, out-of-combat healing, signature skills, untrained being too low) tells me that they are unwilling to change some very specific things about the game, no matter how unpopular
Or it means those things would require very large scale changes that either need more time (because Paizo does not have infinite staff) or would make an update document so huge as to be unwieldy (rebalancing every spell in the game).
Changing -2 to -4 is a MUCH easier thing to change in an update than "casters are too weak", even if they do agree that's the case.
See, we can come up with all kinds of wild speculation as to why they changed one thing but not another, in order to fit whatever preconceived bias we want. Factually, we don't know why they haven't changed these things already, nor do we know if they've decided to change them in the future or not.
Trying to speculate on that is just an invitation to a flame war and not really constructive feedback at all.
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Actually Tridus just hit on something I hadn't thought of before.
Even if Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, I doubt they would make that change during the playtest because such a change would invalidate the entirely of the rest of the playtest.
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Actually Tridus just hit on something I hadn't thought of before.
Even if Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, I doubt they would make that change during the playtest because such a change would invalidate the entirely of the rest of the playtest.
When would they make that type of change then? Changing core mechanics of the game after it went live would be a poor choice.
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Actually Tridus just hit on something I hadn't thought of before.
Even if Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, I doubt they would make that change during the playtest because such a change would invalidate the entirely of the rest of the playtest.
That’s still a concern because it is effectively the same as saying
“Trust us you’ll like what comes next we’re certain we can fix and replace things without making any mistakes”I’m not being sarcastic either if that happens and they nail it then sweet but I think a lot of people’s anxiety is that they keep saying they have issue with certain things (Spell casters, resonance, the inclusion or exclusion of particular ancestries) and they are worried they aren’t being heard.
Again I’m not saying people are being ignored but there is a percentage of players who have had problems with one or more of the examples I listed in brackets that have recieved little to no PUBLIC attention from paizo, again these issues could be receiving heaps of attention behind closed doors.
In short I think a lot of dissatisfied playtesters just want confirmation that their concerns are heard.
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Well technically they *can* change the fundamentals of the system during the playtest, but I'm worried that people who gave them money to get the playtest book believing it would be used for about 1 year wouldn't be very happy to learn that it's no longer the case
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Well technically they *can* change the fundamentals of the system during the playtest, but I'm worried that people who gave them money to get the playtest book believing it would be used for about 1 year wouldn't be very happy to learn that it's no longer the case
I fully agree with you I bought a book but would be fine with an overhaul, but I can easily understand a lot of people not wanting to learn a revamped sytem and only have PDF’s it’s a tricky balance.
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Actually Tridus just hit on something I hadn't thought of before.
Even if Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, I doubt they would make that change during the playtest because such a change would invalidate the entirely of the rest of the playtest.
If Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, *why would they continue to collect data on a system they will no longer be implementing*? What would be the point of 'valid playtest data' on something that is destined for the scrapbin?
It is far more reasonable to assume that the continued inclusion of something in the playtest means that either a) it's still a planned feature of the upcoming edition, or that b) they know there's an issue but haven't got an alternative option ready to deploy. And I only lean towards b) if they've said something to that effect.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?
If Paizo.com goes down on launch day due to the sheer number of people trying to spend money on their products, I'd call that the opposite of a problem.
But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests?
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I think if you don't trust Paizo to take your feedback and turn it into a workable ruleset without you looking over their shoulder, why would you have any faith in their published products going forward? The vast majority of those will not be playtested, after all.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?If Paizo.com goes down on launch day due to the sheer number of people trying to spend money on their products, I'd call that the opposite of a problem.
But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests?
The misstep was them being unable to get the site back up and keep it up. Make no mistake, that was a professional embarrassment.
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I think if you don't trust Paizo to take your feedback and turn it into a workable ruleset without you looking over their shoulder, why would you have any faith in their published products going forward? The vast majority of those will not be playtested, after all.
I’m not sure if this is aimed at me but the fact is certain topics and what some players consider to be problems have been addressed while others haven’t, I do all the surveys and want to believe it’s going to help, but there are others who are wondering why some issues have been publicly addressed while others have not, I don’t want to hover I was merely saying why I think some people are unhappy no need to get prickly
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But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests?
Are you serious? I’m honestly not sure. I’m going to assume you are. What they did wrong is have a business that relies on their website to deliver PDF while not having or being unwilling to pay for IT support that can allow their website to handle peak traffic. Whatever precautions they took were not adequate and to argue that a business having their web portal shuttered for 2 weeks shortly after their play test goes live isa good thing is frankly absurd.
If it crashes again at the 2E launch are you going to argue its a good thing that so many people want the download? Every minute that website is down is a loss for Paizo and they are accountable for it. If you don’t see that as being 100% crystal clear, you don’t have a very good idea of how businesses work.
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I’m not sure if this is aimed at me but the fact is certain topics and what some players consider to be problems have been addressed while others haven’t, I do all the surveys and want to believe it’s going to help, but there are others who are wondering why some issues have been publicly addressed while others have not, I don’t want to hover I was merely saying why I think some people are unhappy no need to get prickly
I think the most obvious answer to why some topics get more attention than others is that some topics are widely considered to be problematic (like resonance), while others might only be problematic to some (like spells seem to be for some hardcore PF1 acolytes).
If you only form your opinion on what is considered to be consensus about the Playtest by reading the boards, than you might think the system is terrible, but from my experience outside these boards, people have been rather content with the Playtest. We obviously don't have the data like Paizo does, but the boards might consider some topics as problematic that rest of the players doesn't. In my groups, no one has complained about spells being to weak, at least yet.
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What they did wrong is have a business that relies on their website to deliver PDF while not having or being unwilling to pay for IT support that can allow their website to handle peak traffic.
Going off the numbers and load of their original Humble Bundle offering they took measures for numbers exceeding that. The actual number come release obscenely exceeded even that.
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I’m not sure if this is aimed at me but the fact is certain topics and what some players consider to be problems have been addressed while others haven’t, I do all the surveys and want to believe it’s going to help, but there are others who are wondering why some issues have been publicly addressed while others have not, I don’t want to hover I was merely saying why I think some people are unhappy no need to get pricklyI think the most obvious answer to why some topics get more attention than others is that some topics are widely considered to be problematic (like resonance), while others might only be problematic to some (like spells seem to be for some hardcore PF1).
If you only form your opinion on what is considered to be consensus about the Playtest by reading the boards, than you might think the system is terrible, but from my experience outside these boards, people have been rather content with the Playtest. We obviously don't have the data like Paizo does, but the boards might consider some topics as problematic that rest of the players doesn't. In my groups, no one has complained about spells being to weak, at least yet.
Thank you for a calm response I agree some people go a touch overboard on both sides, I myself am not a fan of the current state of spellcasters, however while I have not been happy with the playtest there is a lot here in the current framework I do like, I also understand what you’re saying everyone’s experience is different I was simply stating why I think some are unhappy.
Thanks for the response I’m glad you’re having fun :)
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If it crashes again at the 2E launch are you going to argue its a good thing that so many people want the download? Every minute that website is down is a loss for Paizo and they are accountable for it. If you don’t see that as being 100% crystal clear, you don’t have a very good idea of how businesses work.
Hey, if it works for EA...
Because some talk of it is happening here...
I don't think it's fair to blame Design Team and Web Team for the actions of each other, or tie successes together because they both work for Paizo
That said... I did just get a "Maintenance" page not to long ago.
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Because some talk of it is happening here...
I don't think it's fair to blame Design Team and Web Team for the actions of each other, or tie successes together because they both work for Paizo
That said... I did just get a "Maintenance" page not to long ago.
As an off-topic FYI, few days ago they announced ahead of time about 30 minutes of system downtime to apply a system update. They had that planned outage, and fixed some things (you'll note the favorites are working again for one thing). I expect that's what you ran into, and I wouldn't exactly count that as a bad thing that happened.
On topic, the OP has some good feedback. I'll be interested to see if they get a tapering off of playtest feedback as some groups stop testing (I've been struggling to schedule the playtest so we had to just hiatus for the time being. The response/survey schedule, while it is what it has to be, is not friendly to middle aged gamers with over-full schedules. But I doubt it's middle aged gamers they are trying to recruit with the system--although we are the ones teaching games to our kids and younger friends and mentees).
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Tezmick, I wasn't talking to you specifically, more expressing general confusion at what seemed to me to be contradictory opinions. I appreciate your response, though.
I mostly agree with Gratz. I suspect that Paizo has changed the things for which there was broad consensus, and held off on changing the things for which there is more debate.
The only really impossible core change would be eliminating the modularity of the game. Other than that, the modularity itself makes lots of pieces interchangeable. If, for instance, they wanted there to be a more pronounced difference in the effectiveness of types of attacks against a creature, they could expand the amount of proficiency tiers and give them at more regular intervals creating a greater gap between TAC and AC. Or they could do the opposite, decide that the difference was too great, and remove TAC baking the additional to-hit into proficiency or item bonuses given for touch AC. Even the modularity is fairly flexible, they could decide that the one for one comparison between feats was too strict and give feats a feat point cost allowing for greater variance, or they could give fewer feats while including automatic feat line progression if they felt that selecting individual feats was making each feat's output unreliable.
I'm not saying I expect big sweeping changes, but the system isn't rigid enough to preclude them either.
Whats the DC to dispel an item? (everyone - we still don't know)Don't fire into melee - I don't want to have to look that up in the book (GM)
I don't have the kit to do that because I forgot to get it (everyone at least once).
Does that bonus stack? I dunno lets just say it does we've already spent too much time looking stuff up tonight (multiple times - GM).
I sort of share some of your concerns but I think these three in particular will be the sorts of things you run into whenever you are learning a new game with a meaty rule set.
A possible counter to that is "well, the rules don't need to be so meaty!", but I dunno.
The misstep was them being unable to get the site back up and keep it up. Make no mistake, that was a professional embarrassment.Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now?Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?If Paizo.com goes down on launch day due to the sheer number of people trying to spend money on their products, I'd call that the opposite of a problem.
But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests?
Why don't people like you ever think about the people on the Titanic who didn't die? smdh
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But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests?Are you serious? I’m honestly not sure. I’m going to assume you are. What they did wrong is have a business that relies on their website to deliver PDF while not having or being unwilling to pay for IT support that can allow their website to handle peak traffic. Whatever precautions they took were not adequate and to argue that a business having their web portal shuttered for 2 weeks shortly after their play test goes live isa good thing is frankly absurd.
If it crashes again at the 2E launch are you going to argue its a good thing that so many people want the download? Every minute that website is down is a loss for Paizo and they are accountable for it. If you don’t see that as being 100% crystal clear, you don’t have a very good idea of how businesses work.
Software developer here, but not one with any particular insight on Paizo's code. That said, the issue to me looks like it's scaling on the PDF generation/distribution end. Customizing PDFs on the backend is fairly resource intensive compared to just serving up files.
It's a reasonable assumption that since this system isn't new, it was built for the needs of what was at the time a smaller company with less demand. Scaling up those types of systems is hard. Sometimes it's impossible without a rewrite. Like, if they realize they can't just throw hardware at it for periods of burst demand and want to switch the personalizer to a cloud based job (which CAN rapidly scale), there would be major backend work required to change the systems in question to work in that new environment.
They could have decided to make that switch months ago and not been ready yet, because it takes time. It's certainly not a good thing, but it's the reality of complex infrastructure and software that gets pushed beyond it's design intent.
There's very few growing companies on the planet that haven't faced those challenges at some point. It doesn't mean anything in regards to their ability to run a business unless they stick their head in the sand and ignore it... and the reality is that we have no way of knowing what they are doing to improve the situation.
To me, it's an interesting discussion because my day job is in this stuff, but it has little to do with their ability to design and run a game well.
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Actually Tridus just hit on something I hadn't thought of before.
Even if Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, I doubt they would make that change during the playtest because such a change would invalidate the entirely of the rest of the playtest.
If Paizo has been convinced that a major core system needs a systematic overhaul, *why would they continue to collect data on a system they will no longer be implementing*? What would be the point of 'valid playtest data' on something that is destined for the scrapbin?
It is far more reasonable to assume that the continued inclusion of something in the playtest means that either a) it's still a planned feature of the upcoming edition, or that b) they know there's an issue but haven't got an alternative option ready to deploy. And I only lean towards b) if they've said something to that effect.
There's several possibilities.
A) It's still a planned feature of the upcoming system.B) They know it's an issue but haven't got an alternative option ready to deploy.
C) They know it's an issue, have got an alternative version, but aren't sure how to deploy it in a practical way (this is why I would have preferred a rules wiki over rulebooks/book formatted PDF, because you can rapidly deploy huge changes on a wiki whereas a huge update PDF would become increasingly unplayable and an updated book isn't a practical option).
D) They know it's an issue and are planning something separate to test changes (Resonance, IIRC).
E) They aren't sure if it's an issue or not and want more data before poisoning the discussion by wading into it. Developers often get better discussion based feedback if they are not in those discussions because their voice carries so much more weight.
It's entirely possible 2e will wind up being a game some of us don't want to play at release, but I think we should be in this with the belief that everyone has the intent of making the best game possible. If you truly believe they aren't interested in your feedback because they have sacred cows, then I'm not sure what the point of participation is?
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Well technically they *can* change the fundamentals of the system during the playtest, but I'm worried that people who gave them money to get the playtest book believing it would be used for about 1 year wouldn't be very happy to learn that it's no longer the case
To be honest, I find the book incredibly dated already and we're only two months into the playtest.
I'd rather they just get on with fixing everything and let the book we all bought for novelty "look what I got" reasons to be just that, a novelty to say we helped support them during the playtest.
I do wish they'd update the PDF though
