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Wondering if Paizo would every consider releasing the PDFs first? Before the print runs? Certain other publishers have done this, it lets the community help find the little issues before a print run.
Just so everyone knows, I think Paizo does an amazing job at finding issues and their stuff in my eyes is very clean. But there are always a few little things that get through. Like the prices of certain items in LOWG that were off, not a huge deal but a little annoying. Or the Wizard getting an extra class feat at 1st level in the CRB (I think this will be errata but maybe not).
Maybe give a preview(with no art)PDF to subscribers a month or two before the book needs to go to print? Another reason to subscribe you get a preview :)
I am sure there are sales concerns and I do not claim to understand the business so I will leave part that up to you. But you have a bunch of dedicated people that want to help. We do the rule play test now let us help make the final books even better :)
Just a thought :)
...the Wizard getting an extra class feat at 1st level in the CRB (I think this will be errata but maybe not).
As an aside, it will be. It's already been corrected in the Character Portfolios (one of things people thought was an error in those turned out to be an errata they spotted after the CRB went to print but before the Character sheet did).
Maybe give a preview(with no art)PDF to subscribers a month or two before the book needs to go to print? Another reason to subscribe you get a preview :)
I think there'd be a definite upside to this, but given the timescale this is a preview many months ahead of streetdate. The internet being the internet, there's no way a full copy of the text wouldn't leak out before then.
I also don't know much about the publishing business, but my guess is that this downside would be far bigger than the upside of catching a handful of errors. (Since there'd still be errors - witness the fact the PF1 CRB went through five revisions during its lifetime. Despite a huge number of eyes on it, people were still finding things wrong. My guess is there'd be close to as many complaints about those).
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The big barrier to PDF subscriptions is the inevitable flow on effect that would have of reducing print sales. That in turn would push up the prices of the books (as number printed is pretty much the most significant driver of the printing costs per book).
Even if Paizo would win out in the long run, you have to be really, REALLY sure a change is going to be a net positive before you start tinkering with such a core, fundamental part of a successful business.
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Damaging Paizo's already difficult relationship with FLGSs (due to subscriptions, PDFs and selling direct) by giving people even more opportunities for skipping the store isn't worth the 0,07% of playerbase that would cherish the opportunity to possibly maybe spot any errors prior to "the real book" getting out.
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Friendly Local Gaming Store.
...the Wizard getting an extra class feat at 1st level in the CRB (I think this will be errata but maybe not).As an aside, it will be. It's already been corrected in the Character Portfolios (one of things people thought was an error in those turned out to be an errata they spotted after the CRB went to print but before the Character sheet did).
Can you provide more detail on this please?
Can you provide more detail on this please?...the Wizard getting an extra class feat at 1st level in the CRB (I think this will be errata but maybe not).As an aside, it will be. It's already been corrected in the Character Portfolios (one of things people thought was an error in those turned out to be an errata they spotted after the CRB went to print but before the Character sheet did).
Roughly 25min into this video from the designers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe0eJrrAlUE
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Interestingly, I was just talking about essentially this in another thread. TLDR, there's actually not much evidence to indicate that doing pre-print run PDF releases would be particularly helpful and a lot of reasons they wouldn't be.
A lot of times people assume that because a 3pp company can do something like trickle out pdf releases for year-long playtests and then compile them into a print book that Paizo might benefit from doing something similar, but there's a ton of issues with that idea.
1) Paizo works on projects far further out than most 3pps. There's stuff I wrote for Paizo at about the same time I was working on 3pp projects; pretty consistently the Paizo stuff came out a year after the 3pp product, because Paizo has professional editors and internal development that continue to work on books, as well as a more rigid production schedule since they sell to a massively larger market than any of the companies making 3pp PF materials.
2) Paizo has actual staff. Most 3pps don't have more than one or two full-time employees, and those folks usually have day jobs as well. They can afford to sit on a book for as long as they need to before publishing, because they don't have the same amount of mandatory month-to-month expenses. When they do have a hard release date, it's usually tied to crowdfunding (meaning they've already been paid for the products) and those dates are pretty commonly missed anyways.
3) There's actually not much evidence that doing so would meaningfully improve the product. I've playtested for many different 3pp companies, and for Paizo. I can point at numerous 3pp products (I won't because that would be a kind of crappy thing to do) that spent up to a year or more in playtesting and still came out with more errors than exist in the entirety of the new Core Rulebook. Most of those books aren't even close to the size of the CRB. Any book that gets published is going to have errors; it's actually pretty impressive when you consider how big the CRB is and what an aggressive and thorough playtest it actually had how few errors are in there. Which brings me to point 4...
4) The longer a playtest runs and the closer into its publication date it stays in flux, the more likely it is that you'll find errors in the final product. This is something I've seen time and time again; someone makes a last minute change based on really good feedback, but another change addressing the issue has cropped up somewhere else or the person implementing the fix isn't aware of another incremental change made elsewhere that affects the new paradigm. Some of these will slip through without being caught, some of them will be fixed in final edit (which opens up a new point in time where an error can be introduced), and some will be properly caught and adjusted.
4b) There is a point where too much playtesting can actually become detrimental to a project. Designers and developers are creative folks, and they're often holding six or seven different versions of a rules set in their heads as they try things out, roll them back when needed, replace those removals with alternate systems, or roll out entirely new materials that fill unanticipated needs. There is a hard point in every playtest where you're no longer improving the game but instead just taxing the mental resources of your team and swirling on sections that are functional but which people have split feelings about or some similar obstacle. 5E had a multi-year playtest and still had tons of errata and changes that started flowing out shortly after it hit print. You cannot make a perfect book; all you can do is make the best possible book you and your team are capable of making at that point in time.
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There's actually not much evidence that doing so would meaningfully improve the product.You say this, but Ultimate Wilderness exists.
As do all the other PF1 hardcovers which received the same level of playtesting.
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As do all the other PF1 hardcovers which received the same level of playtesting.There's actually not much evidence that doing so would meaningfully improve the product.You say this, but Ultimate Wilderness exists.
Not to mention, UW has a ton of great stuff.
Also, I’m not convinced that public playtests are mega helpful. If you took ALL of the time and energy put into a public playtest and had it focused on one book, I bet you would get at least as good of product without all of the angst
Honestly, a lot of what I see on the forums makes me think I would much rather have the designers follow their inclinations.
With that said, I’m glad there are public playtests mainly because we get ore insight into the process, I’m just not convinced they are so ultra valuable.
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Occult Adventures stands as a testament to the value of public playtest. The Occultist in particular was in an embarrassing state in its original incarnation but the developer in charge listened to the criticisms and implemented the proposed solutions and it came out as one of the best classes Paizo has ever made.
People like to point to the Vigilante playtest as a counter example of why Paizo shouldn't bother with engaging with the community on these things, but you must remember that when the playtest began the Vigilante was terrible, even at the one specific thing it was made for because it didn't have any meaningful protection against getting scry'd. And the end result after the playtest again was one of their better built classes, certainly as far as martials go.
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Occult Adventures stands as a testament to the value of public playtest.
Agreed and it's a counterpoint to Ssalarn's #4: even without playtests, things like gencon have books "in flux" far too close to the production date. As such, I'd rather filter out big issues like oozemorph being unplayable with a playtest than relativity minor issues that don't require a full remake of the material.
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Occult Adventures stands as a testament to the value of public playtest.Agreed and it's a counterpoint to Ssalarn's #4: even without playtests, things like gencon have books "in flux" far too close to the production date. As such, I'd rather filter out big issues like oozemorph being unplayable with a playtest than relativity minor issues that don't require a full remake of the material.
Oozemorph never would have appeared in a playtest because of point #1. Archetypes were generally written by out-of-hours playtesters and turned over well after a main class playtest (since you can't make an archetype of an unfinished class and expect to have any meaningful feedback on it).
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You're right that the Oozemorph would not have appeared in a theoretical UW playtest. But I think if the Shifter had been playtested, Paizo maybe would have realized that the class doesn't do any of the things that the people clamoring for a martial shapeshifter wanted it to do.
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Oozemorph never would have appeared in a playtest because of point #1. Archetypes were generally written by out-of-hours playtesters and turned over well after a main class playtest (since you can't make an archetype of an unfinished class and expect to have any meaningful feedback on it).Occult Adventures stands as a testament to the value of public playtest.Agreed and it's a counterpoint to Ssalarn's #4: even without playtests, things like gencon have books "in flux" far too close to the production date. As such, I'd rather filter out big issues like oozemorph being unplayable with a playtest than relativity minor issues that don't require a full remake of the material.
Oozemorph was just an example of something that 2 seconds of playtesting would have shown as unworkable. As Arachnofiend points out, I think just playtesting the base class would have shown that the shifter wasn't the shape changing fighting class anyone way looking for*. Just reworking the base class alone would have made the issues with the oozemorph less likely IMO.
* As is always the case with absolutes, I'm sure there was that statistical anomaly that thought the shifter was just what they wanted: I just haven't met them yet. :P
Hulking brute alchemist!
Occult Adventures stands as a testament to the value of public playtest. The Occultist in particular was in an embarrassing state in its original incarnation but the developer in charge listened to the criticisms and implemented the proposed solutions and it came out as one of the best classes Paizo has ever made.
Yes. Yes, it is.
Reminds me of a review I did of a third party product that was a bunch of alternate bloodlines for the sorcerer.
I remember there being a few options that were very close to "an option that already exists, but actually worse" (for example, a crystal magic ancestry gave a power similar to the Elemental Ray from the Elemental bloodline, except it did 1d4 slashing: less damage and of a type that was less useful). What actually got published was in a much better state.
I still think that this one bloodline that I can't remember the name of, but basically made the sorcerer a fighter was pointless ("play a fighter!"), but it at least wasn't an utter trap (from draft to publication it gave the sorcerer some BAB so they could actually use their abilities).
PF2 feels like it needed that one (select) extra pass from the community to catch things like the Alchemist path that does Actually Nothing, but I definitely understand why Paizo didn't do it.
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The alchemist really needed one extra version before official release. I mean, even excluding missing/non working class/path features, most class features are way more useful to one class path (bomber) than to the others. This shows that the class has design problems...
I'm not sure one class path needing errata extrapolates to "Paizo dropped the ball on this entire class".
It ain't as bad as the bad classes in the PF1 CRB, I suppose. That's an extremely low bar to set though.
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I'm not sure one class path needing errata extrapolates to "Paizo dropped the ball on this entire class".In fairness, the rest of the Class has some legitimate issues as well. But yeah, 'dropped the ball' seems an exaggeration.
I think they were running out of time.
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I'm not sure one class path needing errata extrapolates to "Paizo dropped the ball on this entire class".In fairness, the rest of the Class has some legitimate issues as well. But yeah, 'dropped the ball' seems an exaggeration.
As one of the classes I've played a few times but for me it under performs vs other classes. I wanted to like the alchemist but that's been hard: some of the issues IMO are as deep as the alchemical items themselves, so even if bulk, 2 out of the 3 fields having issues and the other "legitimate issues" get fixed I question if even then it'll feel up to snuff.
So for myself, "dropped the ball" seems appropriate. Another way to put it is it seems like it's still part way in development and we got the beta version instead of the final product: like the deadline came and we got what was ready and now we're waiting for the updates [think modern game software].
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Interestingly, I was just talking about essentially this in another thread. TLDR, there's actually not much evidence to indicate that doing pre-print run PDF releases would be particularly helpful and a lot of reasons they wouldn't be.
A lot of times people assume that because a 3pp company can do something like trickle out pdf releases for year-long playtests and then compile them into a print book that Paizo might benefit from doing something similar, but there's a ton of issues with that idea.
1) Paizo works on projects far further out than most 3pps. There's stuff I wrote for Paizo at about the same time I was working on 3pp projects; pretty consistently the Paizo stuff came out a year after the 3pp product, because Paizo has professional editors and internal development that continue to work on books, as well as a more rigid production schedule since they sell to a massively larger market than any of the companies making 3pp PF materials.
2) Paizo has actual staff. Most 3pps don't have more than one or two full-time employees, and those folks usually have day jobs as well. They can afford to sit on a book for as long as they need to before publishing, because they don't have the same amount of mandatory month-to-month expenses. When they do have a hard release date, it's usually tied to crowdfunding (meaning they've already been paid for the products) and those dates are pretty commonly missed anyways.
3) There's actually not much evidence that doing so would meaningfully improve the product. I've playtested for many different 3pp companies, and for Paizo. I can point at numerous 3pp products (I won't because that would be a kind of crappy thing to do) that spent up to a year or more in playtesting and still came out with more errors than exist in the entirety of the new Core Rulebook. Most of those books aren't even close to the size of the CRB. Any book that gets published is going to have...
I was not talking about play testing, that is a different beast all together. I was talking about a final review of a finished rule set before print. There are some simple questions that could be asked and answered on a final rule set before the print run to fix some little issues.
As for evidence there have been several companies that I have worked with that have done just this..the latest Savage Worlds Kickstarter went through 4 version of player review before the print run. They clarifying language, fixed little typos and inconsistencies missed in editing ...this made the product solid upon delivery.
Once again I think Paizo produces very good games, their stuff is great! why I sub to a ton. But a few minor issues seem to creepy in but nothing major.
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I was not talking about play testing, that is a different beast all together. I was talking about a final review of a finished rule set before print. There are some simple questions that could be asked and answered on a final rule set before the print run to fix some little issues.
As for evidence there have been several companies that I have worked with that have done just this..the latest Savage Worlds Kickstarter went through 4 version of player review before the print run. They clarifying language, fixed little typos and inconsistencies missed in editing ...this made the product solid upon delivery.
Once again I think Paizo produces very good games, their stuff is great! why I sub to a ton. But a few minor issues seem to creepy in but nothing major.
If Paizo wanted to shrink it's staff size down significantly and go to a Kickstarter model, that would work. The Savage Worlds Kickstarter could take the time it did because it already had all the money; Paizo operates on a rolling schedule to distributors and doesn't make people pay for product that they haven't delivered yet. These are fundamentally different models and your comparison just isn't a good one, as I tried to point in my original post that you quoted-
2) Paizo has actual staff. Most 3pps don't have more than one or two full-time employees, and those folks usually have day jobs as well. They can afford to sit on a book for as long as they need to before publishing, because they don't have the same amount of mandatory month-to-month expenses. When they do have a hard release date, it's usually tied to crowdfunding (meaning they've already been paid for the products) and those dates are pretty commonly missed anyways.
Pinnacle Entertainment, the folks who make Savage Worlds, have something like 13 employees who can live and work off of the funds generated by Kickstarter until those products start generating income of their own. Paizo has over 70 employees and much larger distribution channels that need to be maintained. There's simply no comparison in what is feasible, profitable, or possible between the companies, in much the same way that there is no comparison between what is feasible, profitable, and possible between Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar conglomeration) and Paizo (a privately owned company that is not a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar conglomeration.)
There's a lot of things that seem easy from the outside to people who don't actually know anything about publishing or how size and scale affects different sized companies, but the factors are many, varied, and significant.
And frankly, I don't want to call anyone out or point at any particular products, but I've only seen one company that makes products that are even arguably better-edited than Paizo's PF2 products have been, and their name hasn't come up in this conversation (though they also fall under the "Kickstarter-funded with small distribution channels" umbrella.)