|
I think there's a lot that still needs setting up behind the scenes - FAQ/ratta, information dissemination, additional resources (to name the big ones). Without those it looks like running before you can walk and I don't want to see a trip.Okay, but having read this argument now for the umpteen billionth time since the Playtest (not counting the myriad restatements of it related to PF1)... who does have all of these things in place? Wizards doesn’t. Modiphius doesn’t. Fantasy Flight doesn’t. Onyx Path doesn’t.
So why do you and others have the expectation that Paizo meet a standard they never needed to meet before, and that almost no one else in this industry meets currently?
Because we love them and we love the game and they produce high quality works?
The pace of release is fitting IMO.
The pace of FAQ is not.
|
|
*NECRO'ED HARD CORE*
I'm going to change my vote to "yes" at this point... In the first couple months, I understood things being slow. At this point though:
* We've gotten one Errata that has left a bunch of stuff unresolved. Perhaps one day Battle Medicine or Shifting Runes will have an answer :-P.
* We have no FAQ system and don't seem to have developers answering questions on the forums either, leaving everything unaddressed for people to wonder (and debate fiercely) about.
* PFS hasn't gotten any of the new material sanctioned, and clarifications on that front have been hard as well. They've blown past their previous "3 week" announcement by about double that now with no statement on where things are in the process.
* There seems to be no consistent way to tell people about what's going on outside of the occasional blog post and some of their Paizo Friday videos. I like the videos, but not as a substitute for informing the community what's going on or clarifying rules.I understand there are kinks to work out in the process, but burying themselves in technical debt just to get the next book printed just seems like a bad idea... That may not be what's happening, but in that case, I'm curious why there's been so much radio silence.
We're at, what, 4.5 months or so now... I don't expect things to be perfect, but I expected things to be moving towards better, rather than kinda stagnating...
5E has no FAQ system, no forum, the last errata of any sort is from November 2018, no dedicated developer-playerbase interaction channel (save for some devs using Twitter, but let's face it - real dev-fans comms is Usenet...I mean, forums). From your perspective, it's agonizingly failing at addressing any burning concerns of invested community members. And it's doing so despite being much larger than Paizo, having a crapload of money and a snail's pace of product release which should guarantee plenty of time to Get Things Right and Respect The Community.
And yet it's eating Paizo's lunch five times over. There's a lesson to be drawn from this.
I do not believe anyone can beat WotC at their own game. Better to find another way and thrive.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Because we love them and we love the game and they produce high quality works?
I mean sure, but put that in a sentence.
“Dear Paizo, we love you and we love your game and want it to remain high quality. To that end, please slow down your pace of creating for profit works and work harder to create and the kind of free customer engagement tools that no other company utilizes.”
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Person A: There aren't as many options in second edition as first, so I cannot play my character! Release books faster damn you!
Person B: The pace of book releases is too fast! Slow down Paizo!
Person C: Wizards have been nerfed into oblivion, you ruined the game!
Person D: Fighters are useless because they cannot do 200 points of damage per round! Fix it!
Never change, internet.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So why do you and others have the expectation that Paizo meet a standard they never needed to meet before
Weekly FAQs and regular Society updates was the standard Paizo set for themselves back in PF1. When the game had a much faster content development cycle.
While I don't agree that Paizo needs to slow down or that it's that big of a deal what they're doing, I don't think it's that weird that some people would expect similar support going into 2e, or even better support since 2e is moving considerably slower than 1e did.
It'll be years before I can play all the options I want to try in the barely 4 month old book. And people complain there's not enough content (and like Fumarole said, they also complain there's too much. And etc).
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Because we love them and we love the game and they produce high quality works?I mean sure, but put that in a sentence.
“Dear Paizo, we love you and we love your game and want it to remain high quality. To that end, please slow down your pace of creating for profit works and work harder to create and the kind of free customer engagement tools that no other company utilizes.”
User experience is rather important in keeping a dedicated fanbase who will ensure sustainable profit.
What good would it be to create works after works if no one buys them ?
|
So why do you and others have the expectation that Paizo meet a standard they never needed to meet beforeWeekly FAQs and regular Society updates was the standard Paizo set for themselves back in PF1. When the game had a much faster content development cycle.
While I don't agree that Paizo needs to slow down or that it's that big of a deal what they're doing, I don't think it's that weird that some people would expect similar support going into 2e, or even better support since 2e is moving considerably slower than 1e did.
… when did we have weekly FAQs?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
… when did we have weekly FAQs?So why do you and others have the expectation that Paizo meet a standard they never needed to meet beforeWeekly FAQs and regular Society updates was the standard Paizo set for themselves back in PF1. When the game had a much faster content development cycle.
While I don't agree that Paizo needs to slow down or that it's that big of a deal what they're doing, I don't think it's that weird that some people would expect similar support going into 2e, or even better support since 2e is moving considerably slower than 1e did.
We had weekly FAQs in theory back during the brief period when FAQ Friday was a thing. In practice, it collapsed pretty quickly.
EDIT: Looks like it was actually FAQ Tuesday. And it ran from February 7th to February 28th, 2012 as a weekly feature. So, yeah.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
… when did we have weekly FAQs?
You don't remember FAQ Fridays? A lot of them were missed, but it was still at least an idea of a standard Paizo set for themselves.
We had weekly FAQs in theory back during the brief period when FAQ Friday was a thing. In practice, it collapsed pretty quickly.
EDIT: Looks like it was actually FAQ Tuesday. And it ran from February 7th to February 28th, 2012 as a weekly feature. So, yeah.
FAQ Friday was later, like 2018 or 2017 I think.
User experience is rather important in keeping a dedicated fanbase who will ensure sustainable profit.
I'm not sure that's actually true. 5e's only user support requires digging around twitter looking for dev commentary on how things work and most tier 2 game systems don't really have much in the way of support at all.
Step outside the realm of gaming and lots of major companies are notorious for their horrible customer support.
Support is great, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure it's actually necessary and it's definitely not an industry standard either.
A lot of users never even interact directly with the company they're buying the product from. It's easy to order Pathfinder 2 off Amazon or buy it from a physical store, use it (or don't) and then a few months later buy another book if the system impressed you enough.
|
|
Other companies user experience is less than Paizo’s, yet still they profit. What good is a FAQ system if there is no content to FAQ?
Well, either you spend more time on your products' quality before producing them, which means a lower pace of output, or you spend time on increasing the quality after the fact with FAQs, or you go for lower quality products.
FAQs are the equivalent of debugging features for apps. Putting out new features is good but not debugging existing features can be damaging.
We shall see in the end what choice Paizo made and if it was the right one.
|
|
… when did we have weekly FAQs?You don't remember FAQ Fridays? A lot of them were missed, but it was still at least an idea of a standard Paizo set for themselves.
We had weekly FAQs in theory back during the brief period when FAQ Friday was a thing. In practice, it collapsed pretty quickly.
EDIT: Looks like it was actually FAQ Tuesday. And it ran from February 7th to February 28th, 2012 as a weekly feature. So, yeah.
FAQ Friday was later, like 2018 or 2017 I think.
User experience is rather important in keeping a dedicated fanbase who will ensure sustainable profit.I'm not sure that's actually true. 5e's only user support requires digging around twitter looking for dev commentary on how things work and most tier 2 game systems don't really have much in the way of support at all.
Step outside the realm of gaming and lots of major companies are notorious for their horrible customer support.
Support is great, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure it's actually necessary and it's definitely not an industry standard either.
A lot of users never even interact directly with the company they're buying the product from. It's easy to order Pathfinder 2 off Amazon or buy it from a physical store, use it (or don't) and then a few months later buy another book if the system impressed you enough.
Horrible customer support might work for a time if you are at the top. Not if you are a challenger.
And a challenger might dethrone the top company if their product is good enough. And support for your product is part of your product's worth.
Organized Play Developer
|
| 14 people marked this as a favorite. |
… when did we have weekly FAQs?So why do you and others have the expectation that Paizo meet a standard they never needed to meet beforeWeekly FAQs and regular Society updates was the standard Paizo set for themselves back in PF1. When the game had a much faster content development cycle.
While I don't agree that Paizo needs to slow down or that it's that big of a deal what they're doing, I don't think it's that weird that some people would expect similar support going into 2e, or even better support since 2e is moving considerably slower than 1e did.
You do occasionally see surges in certain activities, particularly around new hires. When Seifter first got hired there was a surge in FAQ updates as he tackled those while settling into the team. When I first joined org play we had like a 15 month tail on additional resources and adventure sanctioning and I cranked out a ton of sanctioning to get us to like a 3-month tail before GenCon hit and other factors came into play. There tends to be an ebb and flow that ties into the product schedule, hiring, and time of year. In org play we're finally starting to clear some breathing room now that we've hired James Case to fill the empty slot on our team, and as long as tech issues start falling into place I'm feeling good about the future (less so the present) of our sanctioning timelines.
It really hasn't been that long since we released this new edition, and a lot of that time has been filled with sad leavings like Owen's retirement and happy promotions like John Compton joining the Starfinder team and James Case joining us here in org play. It takes time to spin people up. It takes time to fully transition the sheer wealth of knowledge possessed by someone like Owen or John. We've also gotta keep up with the voracious demand for this new edition so we can keep our sellers and potential consumers happy and our lights on. For a lot of us, convention season only just ended and making sure that we've got feet on the ground at places like PAX Unplugged is an important part of paying the bills.
It's also worth noting that despite moving to a slower release schedule, we're actually releasing more total content now than in PF1. We added an extra monthly scenario to Starfinder not that long ago and launched this new season of PFS with 12 extra products in the form of monthly quests. Our Lost Omens books may be coming out at a slower pace than our player companions and campaign setting softcovers, but each Lost Omens book has about 4 times the page count of our previous softcovers; the upcoming Absalom, City of Lost Omens book will have over nine times the page count of a typical PF1 player companion and something like five times the page count of a typical gazetteer.
Getting out of crunch time as we actually take on more total work and replace valuable parts of our teams throughout the company means our resources have been stretched. They're starting to normalize. These things just take time, and in the broader scheme of things there really hasn't been much of that since we released this new game.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, y'all might have a slightly skewed view of what is impactful on the bulk of players. We're all hopeless nerds here, but there are lots of players who don't enjoy digging into minutiae and rules and stuff. Those players never care too much about errata, but the APG? Hell yeah, they all care about that.
This game is by no stretch of the definition unplayable, broken, or even all that rough around the edges. Little updates and bug fixes are great, but most people (the majority of their source of paizo's income) will be happier with an expanding product instead of a perfecting one.
At least to my experience anecdotally in person and online. These forums offer a pretty different view of what people really care about compared to the general gaming population.
From my personal experience most home groups ignore like 50% of the rules - and most of the time because they didn't know about them or remember to use them (at least in the PF1 days).
I mean - how many times at the table did you say 'oh - when you do x this happens - we've always done it y way' - and everyone goes... 'OH WOW' and usually you keep doing the "Y" way because that's now familiar to your group.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I get the sentiment of wanting Paizo to slow down even more in order to guarantee they don't rush things out to print, but given that the company is broken down into several differently managed groups, telling all of those groups to "slow down" might not be as helpful as we'd like to think it is.
If one group is working on the APs, one is working on the APG, one is working on a Lost Omens book, telling them all to slow down and work on FAQ/errata doesn't help, since that's not their jobs. They need to hire dedicated people to focus on that part, and whether Paizo wants to do that is questionable. After all, once that set of people are finished with the FAQ/errata, what's the plans for those employees? How can they integrate those writers into other projects?
And from what Mr. Sayre says up above, how their team's been missing members, and how new hires cut their teeth on surges of sanctioning or FAQ/errata work, it seems Paizo does have that hiring concern in mind. So hopefully, now that the jobs have been filled, then maybe Mr. Case or someone else in the company can start on the process of reorganizing or prioritizing new methods in order to get more errata out, or give out more timely FAQ releases.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Problem is that we are missing a lot of customization options. So they need to publish the basic material.
What they could do is, publish as pdf, hold the book publishing efforts. After getting all erratas done, patch the PDF and then Publish the book material.
That’s not really a sustainable business model for anything other than maybe a very small company though and, as Paizo has said before, not something they would adopt.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't want Paizo to slow down until kitsune are added to Second Edition. o7
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pathfinder has always been geared towards a fanbase that prizes customization. In general, we want more clssses, feats, archetypes, etc.
If you want a game where 5 years go by without a new book coming out, there's 5e.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you want a game where 5 years go by without a new book coming out, there's 5e.
That actually happened? Is Hasbro trying to kill D&D???
I'm still somewhat new to the RPG side of things (having only played a few 1e games and now a few 2e games), but I personally am enjoying the content release rate. Perhaps I don't understand the nuances of balance and FAQ-needed material, but the one thing I really wanted to do was build a hellknight character and I'm in a game where that should be possible so that's pretty cool from my seat.
I will say that lore wise I was a bit disappointed in the size disparity between the inner sea world guide from pf1 and the lost omens world guide for pf2. I'm not fully familiar with the distinction that might have existed between these, but from my newbie seat seeing a 320 page "world guide" for pf1 and then getting a 136 page "world guide" for pf2 was frankly disappointing. I still find myself referencing the inner sea world guide for things like nidal which were inadequately covered in the lost omen world guide.
Overall though, that's just me being nitpicky and I like the content being pushed out at the current rate.
Yeah main reason I don't buy 5th edition is I don't have that level of patience and from what I understand hardly any new actual character options have been added in that time.
|
|
Pathfinder has always been geared towards a fanbase that prizes customization. In general, we want more clssses, feats, archetypes, etc.
If you want a game where 5 years go by without a new book coming out, there's 5e.
There is indeed such a thing as balance.
3.5 OGL had a huge lot of 3pp options. Most were not good.
There is indeed such a thing as balance.
3.5 OGL had a huge lot of 3pp options. Most were not good.
Yes, but as you stated they were third party publications. So thank you for the needless apples to hackee sack comparison.
If you want a game where 5 years go by without a new book coming out, there's 5e.That actually happened? Is Hasbro trying to kill D&D???Pretty sure that the answer to the first question is "no."
Not gonna go check to be sure, but I recall there being a new book every year even if you don't count the published adventures.
As for them trying to kill D&D, it clearly doesn't matter that they do it but... kinda, yeah, they keep doing stuff like having their adventure products have random bad mechanics that ignore already established mechanics (like an adventure which has a party roll stealth and every 2 failures results in a random encounter, instead of using the random encounter rules from the DMG), or just have really inflexible or outright shoddily written plot lines (one of their newer adventures reads like a cranky kid that wants their friend to play their story their way with it's 'this NPC could legally kill the characters for not doing what he wants, but he's being nice right now' nonsense).
But none of that matters because they keep the attention focused on "D&D is a fun thing to do with friends, and all these celebrities love it" instead of on the details of the game materials themselves.
Well, my comment was supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek. That said, 5e had been out for like 5 years and has had only two player-facing books come out in all that time (Core Rulebook and Xanathar's). So, I actually wasn't far off.
Almost all of their books have been published adventures or bestiaries, for GMs only. That's not the direction I want 2e to go. I don't want a dumbed-down, basic game for noobs. I want depth, I want options.
It sounds like plenty of people just want moar stuffs, whether or not it's properly vetted or not, which is fine.
I think that's kind of mischaracterizing the position of people who disagree with you. It's more the idea that there's nothing to suggest printing less books would make the stuff that does come out necessarily better or leaves the game in a better place overall.
I don't think it is... I've seen plenty of posts here that have commented that they don't care about whether or not these books have mistakes, they just want more materials. Did you want me to cite those posts here? I'm not saying it's everyone... but plenty of people seem to feel that way.It sounds like plenty of people just want moar stuffs, whether or not it's properly vetted or not, which is fine.I think that's kind of mischaracterizing the position of people who disagree with you. It's more the idea that there's nothing to suggest printing less books would make the stuff that does come out necessarily better or leaves the game in a better place overall.
I think I'm one of those you're thinking of, and I think you're mischaracterizing that point of view as well.
Absolutely nobody is utterly ambivalent about in-book errors. But errors will always be in there. There are issues in the 5e PHB, which is pushing into six years old and with several errataed reprintings.
The point is there is a sliding scale here. They can focus in incredibly hard on the existing material and release new stuff very slowly, with full playtesting or whatever, that will be largely without serious errors. On the other side, they could just spit stuff out with minimal concern for balance or interaction. No one wants that either. But somewhere in the middle is a reasonable approach, pragmatic about the idea that some issues will sneak through or crop up, but continuing to create the game anyways.
The pace absolutely could get out of hand. I just don't think many in here think it currently has done so.
That said, 5e had been out for like 5 years and has had only two player-facing books come out in all that time (Core Rulebook and Xanathar's). So, I actually wasn't far off.5e doesn't really do "GMs only" books, and you've left out Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Acquisitions Incorporated, and Eberron: Rising from the Last War that are each more player-facing than not.
Maybe I haven't thumbed through them intently enough, but I disagree.
SCAG is the most player-facing of those, with four spells and a few subclasses (almost half of which are in Xanathar's). The new Eberron book has the 13th class included, so that's pretty player-sided. Otherwise, there's a subclass or two here and there, but pretty much the only player-side stuff are race options.
While that is actual player options, the truth is the vast bulk of all these books are not player/character choices. More Lost Omens World Guide and less Lost Omens Character Guide.
5e doesn't really do "GMs only" books, and you've left out Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Acquisitions Incorporated, and Eberron: Rising from the Last War that are each more player-facing than not.
The point was to say 5E is a "dumbed down game for noobs" without actually saying it. The details of the case dont really matter.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The point was to say 5E is a "dumbed down game for noobs" without actually saying it. The details of the case dont really matter.
What? When did anyone say that?
People can like 5e or dislike 5e on its merits and there's nothing wrong with that, putting words in people's mouths to try to discredit or ridicule them doesn't do anything to help anyone though.
It's also not unfair for them to say that 5e isn't big on printing new player options, because it isn't. The game is five years old and is only just now publishing its first new class and has only really printed a handful of new feats, spells or class archetypes in that time frame too.
That's not a good thing or a bad thing, for some people the lack of options is frustrating and for some people the lack of content bloat is a plus, but it is part of the system either way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That said, 5e had been out for like 5 years and has had only two player-facing books come out in all that time (Core Rulebook and Xanathar's). So, I actually wasn't far off.5e doesn't really do "GMs only" books, and you've left out Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Acquisitions Incorporated, and Eberron: Rising from the Last War that are each more player-facing than not.
A few pages of options in a 100+ page book isn't useful to me. I didn't forget those books, I left them out because those are examples of what I don't want Paizo doing. As far as I'm concerned, unless a book is mostly character options, it's not worth my money. Of the 5e books I've seen, only Xanathar's fits that description.
I'm not bringing this up to crap on 5e, I'm bringing this up to say I want Paizo to go a different direction. There's more than one valid approach after all. Just my perspective, I don't claim to speak for anyone else.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
People can like 5e or dislike 5e on its merits and there's nothing wrong with that, putting words in people's mouths to try to discredit or ridicule them doesn't do anything to help anyone though.
It's also not unfair for them to say that 5e isn't big on printing new player options, because it isn't. The game is five years old and is only just now publishing its first new class and has only really printed a handful of new feats, spells or class archetypes in that time frame too.
That's not a good thing or a bad thing, for some people the lack of options is frustrating and for some people the lack of content bloat is a plus, but it is part of the system either way.
Solid agree with all of that.
I sent you a PM.
|
|
There is also the matter of getting FAQs, which is distinct from the pace of new books.
Though it is related. Producing FAQs actually helps support having a steady pace of quality releases.
Entertainment as a Service. What matters is the total consumer's experience.
And accurately gauging it and assessing what the winning strategies will be is complex and critical. Which puts real marketing abilities at a premium.
I guess it is a good thing that the powers that be at Paizo are Marketing people.