Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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For whatever its worth my recollection is that the posters I find most obnoxious tend not to be anyone I recognize from Org play.
Ehhhh.... For me it's the exact opposite. I once had to report someone to a venture captain because their posting was so apocalypticly bad that a Paizo employee and a freelancer both were complaining about it. I'm not sure what hurts more. The fact that said person was obviously upset that Paizo said I should be treated with respect or that the moderator was clueless as to how bad the thread was.
Edit:
Also to answer Rysky's question at least 2 possibly more.
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Now(TM)I'm not seeing any updates to the PF1 AR on the web page...
Heroes of Golarion and a couple of books from the Tyrant’s Grasp AP have been added but that seems to be it.
Edit: it looks like the cutoff for this update was March 2019, since that’s when Heroes of Golarion and the second book of the AP came out. None of the books from April 2019 or later (Concordance of Rivals, Chronicle of Legends, or the last 4 books of the AP) are included.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Now(TM)I'm not seeing any updates to the PF1 AR on the web page...Heroes of Golarion and a couple of books from the Tyrant’s Grasp AP have been added but that seems to be it.
Edit: it looks like the cutoff for this update was March 2019, since that’s when Heroes of Golarion and the second book of the AP came out. None of the books from April 2019 or later (Concordance of Rivals, Chronicle of Legends, or the last 4 books of the AP) are included.
*nods* I'm just waiting on that final update.
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Organized Play Manager
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Wow, lots to parse through. Here the skinny:
The org play team likes being involved in the community and consider the community feedback a great resource, regardless of the channel it comes through (forums/social media/in person). However, every time we come to the forums to answer questions, it means we aren't putting that time into products/additional resources/convention support/<insert item here>. So we have to balance our presence here with getting things pushed out.
To that end, we look at using the blogs as the gateway for information. Keeps us from repeating things, we don't have to comb through loads of posts in a thread to get caught up on discussions, and allows us to reach the maximum audience.
We've posted several times about being short staff members. As has been posted elsewhere, we are now putting out 2.5 times the original amount of material for our organized play products and while we've added several developers to the team, we are just now adding our first operational person and we still won't be at 2.5 times the number of employees. We have been doing more with less for quite some time. Add to that two of the team are new hires - James Case and our soon to be hired Associate - and you can see we are undermanned. This doesn't take into consideration the tasks that our team cannot do - like tech and website - that rely on those teams being fully operational. Which is a different set of problems that some have noted in the thread.
With everything we do, it is a matter of priority. We have to make a judgement call as to what will help. First priority is always the scenarios/quests. Besides working on that month's releases, the team is also outlining/preparing the scenarios that will be published in a few months time. Otherwise, they won't be ready when needed. When those tasks wrap up, we look at what needs doing and pick our top agenda items. For the past month(s), it has been sanctioning Pathfinder (second edition) and Starfinder. These are our two active lines. We realize people want the Pathfinder (first edition) items, and we want to give it to them, but it is our third thing. Know that with Thing 1 and Thing 2 out of the way at present, we can now look at Thing 3. Especially since we now have the tech/web assets to make Things a reality.
So I know you don't like the answer of Soon[tm], but that is the best answer we have when a Thing has made it onto the priority list, but hasn't been scheduled in our workflow. Even with Thing 3 being in our workflow, I'm hesitant to talk specific time because there are any number of things that can push a deadline. We tend to talk deadlines when something approaches final checks/formatting/has a web publication date.
Which brings us to the community. We know you want these things. We want to give them to you. "Poking the Bear" only causes frustration and heartache on the part of the staff. Believe me, we aren't sitting in our offices and formulating responses in our best Mr. Burns voice. So as the calls become louder, we tend to disengage, otherwise we start focusing on that and not on getting things out. The simple fact is no matter how much we give, our community wants more. A positive thing, from a job security standpoint, but it can be emotionally crushing. So we set boundaries, remove ourselves from points of stress, and keep our heads down pushing towards the goal.
Whew. I've typed quite a few words. In doing so, I've put off tasks that need to be done - setting up reporting for this month's schedules, sending out convention support, answering emails. But right now, I think answering out community and having a conversation the best use of my time.
In summary, we know you want the rest of the Pathfinder (first edition) sanctioning and we intend on finishing it, but do not have a firm timeline at present. They are being worked on and when we know more, we will publish it in an organized play blog, which now appears on Thursday.you will get a final bout of sanctioning.
TL;DR - First edition sanctioning is coming Soon[tm].
Venture-Captain, Online—VTT
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For what it's worth, I agree with the three previous posts - the majority of PFS players that I've encountered, both live and online, either don't visit this section of the forums at all or they do so sparingly and usually don't post often. While I believe that the vocal minority who do post here often mean well and genuinely want the best for Organized Play, they are not representative of the PFS player base as a whole.
I'd just like to echo this, we have almost 4000 members on the Org Play discord server online, games running every day and the number of people who are actually like those who have you not wanting to play in Society are vanishingly small... and for those who are they are very quickly shown that such behaviour isn't acceptable and either realise it's not okay and get better or find other avenues of play since we have no interest in enabling people who cause such problems to stick around and ruin things for everyone else. We take the section on community standards in the guide very seriously, especially the part where it says;
We ask all participants to respect their fellow players and to work together to create positive, memorable experiences.
Hopefully some day you'll give Society a try and find people are a lot more welcoming and friendly than you fear :)
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Sounds an awful lot like "No" and "Paizo doesn't care about P1 anymore", got it.
If you've been keeping up with the Blogs and leadership's constant updates, as I would hope you've been doing before commenting on something you weren't aware of, I think a reasonable and understanding person would see that's far from the case.
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The only update relating to sanctioning things and updating the AR any time close to recently is "We have no sanctioning in the pipeline this month" Sure, Covid-19 has thrown a wrench into everyone's plans, but that doesn't explain the fact that they have had 10 months since the last books release, plus who knows how long they had the assets from the book in their possession prior to final printing to go over things and decide what to sanction or ban, which leads me to believe Paizo simply doesn't care to update the AR. That or they for some reason haven't been able to spare a few hours out of the thousands they have had in the last year, to go over a handful of rules and type out an update. Too broke to pay someone to do it? Too inept to handle it? What kind of lame excuse can explain taking a year to do a days worth of work?
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If you're genuinely interested in learning what's been happening for the last year, here's a chronological snapshot:
TL;DR – Pre-existing Sanctioning Backlog, 2.5x Workload, Understaffed, Legacy Code, Triaging Priorities, Literal Pandemic
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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It may sound cynical, but actually the pandemic seems to have had some good side effects; with the PFS team not going to a lot of conventions, a lot of other backlog is being tackled instead. It's just that there's a LOT of backlog. PFS has always been rather ambitious.
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That or they for some reason haven't been able to spare a few hours out of the thousands they have had in the last year, to go over a handful of rules and type out an update.
Cutting out the string of insults that followed, this is presuming a LOT on your part on what all is involved and needed.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia
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They've been pretty busy with Pathfinder Second Edition stuff as well as Starfinder. They've got to work on what pays the bills first and with the new edition, there's been a ton of work just to get it launched and then work on all the adjustments. I think they've done a great job.
The pandemic is wreaking havoc on everything now. We're just going to have to adapt like they are at the way things are developing and work towards the day we can all play in person again.
Fortunately, we have the online region going at full speed.
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In doing that research, I found it enlightening that when Michael Sayre started 3 years ago, the backlog of work was 15 months. To then state that a year ago, the backlog would be finished by end of year, shows definite improvement.
And then they lost John Compton, which understandably set them back again (as Tonya repeated ad nauseum).
So to now state that the backlog is still on the "Soon" radar speaks volumes to their mitigation efforts.
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I have never understood why Paizo hasn't simply made sanctioning a part of the development process. They have to read over and approve everything prior to publishing it anyways...which would be the perfect time to do it...not 2 years later. Sure does not inspire me to go out and buy copies of their product, when I know I won't be able to use anything from it for so long.
I've found copies of several PF1 books at used book stores before they were sanctioned...and that was while they were still actively working on new PF1 content.
You need volunteers Paizo? I'm laid off and on lockdown...I could probably go through the last few PF1 books and have an update for the AR for you by tomorrow.
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The people developing the content are not the people clearing it for organized play. Paizo has separate teams for specialized tasks and the pipeline is long. (The stuff releasing this month was last in the authors hands likely 3 to 6 months ago.) We actually have VO teams tasked with reviewing upcoming books and recommending what should be sanctioned and what shouldn't. The Organized Play team still has to review those recommendations and the content to come to a decision.
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So could all of Paizo’s fur babies, if we’re just going for speed and not anything else.
Speed is obviously not something they are going for...unless they are trying for worlds slowest speed record.
Maybe if they spent as much time working on their products as they do reviewing it for organized play sanctioning, we might not end up with things like the Oozemorph Shifter archetype.
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Record according to whom?
And yay more insults. Rushing will solve nothing, and had repeatedly been pointed out multiple times, there’s different teams working on different aspects of Paizo, Freelancers have absolutely zero say in the AR decisions as well.
(Also I like the Oozemorph)
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I have never understood why Paizo hasn't simply made sanctioning a part of the development process.
And that doesn't even cover the multiple other hats that everyone wears.
Paizo employees also prepare for, travel to and participate in Conventions, give virtual interviews every week, playtest, participate in the Forums, type up Blogs, and still attempt to avoid burnout so that they can actually enjoy gaming as a hobby.
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(Also I like the Oozemorph)
I love the Oozemorph...in concept...mechanically it is virtually unplayable for the first 3 levels (saddled with the pre-errata shifter wildshape frequency and duration, so 1 shift per day until level 4), none of it's abilities qualify for any of the feats that would make it better (everything is replaced instead of modified, so you cannot take any of the wildshape related feats, any of the shifter claws feats, etc), the base form is nearly useless since you cannot communicate or use items, etc. The Oozemorph basically trades out every single Shifter ability, in exchange for half as many abilities, most of which are inferior to the base class the archetype is for.
In a home game, where a GM is free to ignore RAW, the Oozemorph could be quite a fun archetype to play with...in PFS play though...it is worthless until level 4...unless you really like handicapping everyone else at the table..or you save up enough GM credit that you can level one up to useful levels without having to actually play through them on a sub par character. Of course, all of this was discussed in lengthy detail in the 1200+ post Oozemorph thread last year. Don't even get me started on Paizo's lack of support when it comes to FAQs and Errata...they are even worse about that than they are with updating the AR.
One of the things I am actually hoping gets sanctioned out of the Chronicle of Legends book is the Vigilante talents that let you use some of the powers of the Oozemorph. At least if that happened, I could play something with some of the flavor of an Oozemorph without having to be carried through 1/3rd of the character's PFS life.
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While I think Slyme is being unnecessarily rude and abrasive, I must admit that I personally think that the whole
"lets put all sorts of PFS2 stuff online" decision was just conceivably possibly just a tiny smidgeon overly optimistic (yes, I'm British and known for understatement. Why do you ask? :-))
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Well, as an Oozemorph, you will likely get 1 combat where you can be in a useful form per day. So for the rest of the day you can...not use any items and not speak. If you go for a strength based build you will have an AC of 10...maybe 12 max...if you go with a dex based build you can push that up to a 14, maybe 15 if you flat max your dex on a high dex base race...16 if you use your level 1 feat on dodge...but then you will hit like a wet noodle.
If you survive til level 2 you get DR 4...which is bypassed by the most common damage type in the game, and you can now hold a useful form for 2 hours...so maybe an extra combat.
Even once you hit level 4 and can adventure in a useful form 8 hours a day, you are still giving up way more than what you get by taking the archetype. You give up all your your aspects, you give up all of your chimeric forms, you replace wildshape with a vastly inferior version of wildshape that does not qualify for any wildshape feats, you trade out shifters claws for an inferior version that scales worse and never bypasses DR, you replace scaling AC for the worst DR in the game, the wild empathy swap is a null...neither one is particularly great, the only thing I would actually say is an improvement is swapping woodland stride for a 10' climb speed.
Conceptually, I love the idea of the archetype...you get to adventure as Odo from Deep Space 9 mixed with the T1000 from Terminator 2...unfortunately, it is probably one of the worst written archetypes in PF1, and Paizo will never step up and put out an official fix for it...so it is less than worthless in PFS, and requires significant homebrew fixes to bring it up to par with even the baseline shifter for home games.
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As for the original topic, if Paizo wants to focus so much on organized play, maybe they should get their act together, and not spend a year making excuses for something that they should have done before they actually release a product. I love the idea of PFS, but waiting more than a year to actually be able to use their product does nothing but make me not want to buy it. Why should I spend money on something I can't use? That is just a horrible business plan.
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As for the original topic, if Paizo wants to focus so much on organized play, maybe they should get their act together, and not spend a year making excuses for something that they should have done before they actually release a product. I love the idea of PFS, but waiting more than a year to actually be able to use their product does nothing but make me not want to buy it. Why should I spend money on something I can't use? That is just a horrible business plan.
The blogs going over the state of things and plans have been pointed out and posted here a few times I believe, so I’m pretty sure you’re intentionally ignoring them in order to be abrasive. They’re not excuses.
What I know for a fact that has been said over and over and over and over is that the Designers (and freelancers) and the PFS team are two separate teams. Stop acting like they’re the same group and they don’t sanction stuff just because.
And lastly (and this ties in with the separate team thing in a way), not everyone plays PFS. PFS is not the sole model for how products are set up and sold, if it was they likely would be sanctioned on or before release.
But as it stands PFS is a possible way to play Pathfinder, it’s just not the only one. The PFS team has no control on what gets made or published or when. The PFS team is in charge of PFS. They’re not intentionally waiting months/years for sanctioning things so they can be used.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia
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----As for the original topic, if Paizo wants to focus so much on organized play, maybe they should get their act together, and not spend a year making excuses for something that they should have done before they actually release a product. I love the idea of PFS, but waiting more than a year to actually be...
You may have noticed they are not producing any more PF1 content and instead have shifted their resources to supporting both Starfinder and Pathfinder Second Edition. That's what is paying the bills to keep the lights on. They are putting out Pathfinder Second Edition content as well as working on making it work in Organized Play.
You've been told multiple times that the Pathfinder Development team designs for the ruleset, not for Org Play. Org Play is a separate team. Org Play is not the sole money maker for Paizo. There's a lot of debate over just how much of the company's sales are derived from Org Play. It is not the total sum of their sales, that's for sure. It is significantly less.
You've also been told that a lot of the effort in sanctioning content comes from the Venture Officers of Org Play, people who do not get paid to work on this stuff. They have jobs of their own. If you want to help them, then volunteer to become a Venture Officer and be part of the team.
Paizo as a company is focused on publishing content for the entire audience who may purchase their products. Org Play is just part of that audience. That's something we have to keep in mind. There's a lot of things I wish Paizo would do. Recently, they took steps to address some of those things which was great. They spent their money to address some of the things we were asking them to do.
Then the pandemic hit. Things are not good for the RPG business right now with game stores and distributors shut down. Not only that, Paizo's warehouse was shut down for two weeks. Their entire company is working from home. This is a massive disruption. They could have just shut the door and laid everyone off for the duration (which would have been extremely devastating to the entire company). Instead, they're keeping up with their production schedule. The profit margin in the RPG industry is not very big. They have to focus on what is selling and will be selling. The sanctioning of PF1 content is going to be down the list of things that get done because of that reason. This pandemic is shoving it further down the list. That's not their fault. That's just business.
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To echo Rysky, PFS is the minority of Paizo's business. I'm not sure it's ever accurately been estimated, or could be, but PFS is designed to be more of a marketing campaign. Probably their ONLY marketing campaign, since I've never seen a commercial or online advertisement for their products. This is reflected by the small handful of Developers who operate PFS and the larger number who actually Design the game.
Seeing a poster on the wall of your FLGS and a couple weekly tables of people having fun is an effective way to advertise. Or at least it was, back when people could gather in person...
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Premier Event Coordinator
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To be honest there have been delays in getting the Additional Resources updated virtually since it started. So it’s not so much delays as business as usual. That you or anyone else wants it faster does not seem to mesh with Paizo’s operating model. The simple fact is it has been going on for so long that you cannot in good faith say any of the “excuses” really matter. Paizo is either unable or unwilling to speed up the AR process. So, rather than this topic constantly coming up month after month, year after year, why not learn to work within the parameters provided. If the only reason you buy a book is because it is sanctioned for PFS, then don’t buy them until then. If you want to enjoy playing with those rules earlier, then join/create your own game and use whatever rules you want. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. And the impression of the brickwork is starting to show on your forehead. ;-)
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I remember back when additional resources was part of the Guide to Organized Play and it moved to being a webpage since that was much easier to update than an official PDF that had to go through all the publishing rigamarole...
Here's the thing Bahb. It hasn't always been this bad.
For years it was a couple months with things occasionally slipping closer to 6. Slowly things got more and more behind.
Now it feels like rather than just being behind they've been dropped completely.
I know that's not true and that it's in the pipeline somewhere. It's just becoming less and less relevant as we get further and further away from the publishing of 1e material. If I we're waiting for some bit that had inspired me to become legal or waiting for an AP to get sanctioned so that I could get to the right level to play something else I'd be incredibly frustrated.
All that said, Paizo I love PFS. It's fantastic that we get 2 new scenarios + other content every month basically on time for a decade+.
Now if only we could get Additional Resources and adventure sanctioning in order...
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Venture-Captain, Online—VTT
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that outside the Organised Play people and those currently or previously on the AR team most people probably can't speak terribly accurately as to what the process is and so hurling insults and demands about something they don't understand is... not the most productive thing possible.
More specifically, the further and further into PF1s development cycle books got released the more and more work is involved in sanctioning them. Sure, book X may only have 50 new feats, archetype, etc in it and that can't take more than a couple of weeks to sanction right? Except that book was released after 10 years of other material and you now have to go back and try to compare the new rules to all the previous options and find out if it breaks them, if they break it, if there are interactions that make it not work, that make it work far too well, if in combination with multiple other options there are problems etc. All on top of the basic evaluation of the ability in regards to the way Society works and plays to begin with.
The sheer variety and number of options we enjoy in PFS works against new material getting sanctioned as it is a huge undertaking (and as we all know, even then things can sneak through that probably shouldn't). It's certainly frustrating seeing something you'd like that you don't even know if it will be legal or not and I completely understand that, but if anyone genuinely thinks if the OP team couldn't have everything sanctioned they wouldn't then frankly they're arguing in bad faith. The OP team wants the content in players hands, but there are only so many hours in the day and always more work to do than there is time.
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More specifically, the further and further into PF1s development cycle books got released the more and more work is involved in sanctioning them. Sure, book X may only have 50 new feats, archetype, etc in it and that can't take more than a couple of weeks to sanction right? Except that book was released after 10 years of other material and you now have to go back and try to compare the new rules to all the previous options and find out if it breaks them, if they break it, if there are interactions that make it not work, that make it work far too well, if in combination with multiple other options there are problems etc. All on top of the basic evaluation of the ability in regards to the way Society works and plays to begin with.
Uh, isn't that the responsibility of the rules team? Surely they've already made certain that the feats, archetypes, etc don't break things, don't have unexpected interactions, etc.
Especially at this point in 1e's lifecycle, surely a relaxed attitude is acceptable. Err on the side of sanctioning. Do a quick pass to make sure that things fit thematically and fit with the (actually reasonably small) set of PFS house rules and call it a day.
The situation is VERY different than it was a year ago. Then, new players had to be protected. Now, (with, I'm sure, some exceptions) the new players have moved to PF2 and the ones left playing PF1 PFS are the experienced grognards who can handle a bit of imbalance.
Sure, that isn't a perfect solution. But its better than what we have now with the huge delay in PF1 sanctioning
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Premier Event Coordinator
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Uh, isn't that the responsibility of the rules team? Surely they've already made certain that the feats, archetypes, etc don't break things, don't have unexpected interactions, etc.
Not at all. They have admitted on more than one occasion that new rules often embrace the “rule of cool” moreso than game balance. As rules in 1E evolved, it often became necessary to push the bounds of balance in order to bring in new and exciting rules. The designers are not beholden to PFS and they shouldn’t be. Just like a scenario author should have the freedom to create a map they need for the vision of their encounter and not be limited to only the maps that Paizo publishes, the designers need to freedom to create whatever they think is interesting. Yes, they will make some attempt to balance it so one choice doesn’t become the default over all others, but balance is not as high on the priority list. It’s left to the GM to decide what is appropriate for their game.
To some extent, balance is in the eye of the beholder and no matter what they do, people are going to complain about balance. Even with 2E which is accepted on a much wider basis as being balanced over 1E, we have lengthy threads about wizards being too underpowered, alchemists being unplayable, etc. Perhaps they have changed the methodology for 2E and placed balance much higher on the design priority list. Only time will tell. Virtually every game, no matter how fair and balanced suffers from a growing power curve as more rules come out. If we wanted them to test every rule against the existing rule set to make sure it didn’t break something, by the time we’re in the sixth, seventh, etc. year of the system, it would take twice as long to produce a book. They would be spending as much or more time developing than designing.
This is exactly why the AR is so important for PFS
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Uh, isn't that the responsibility of the rules team? Surely they've already made certain that the feats, archetypes, etc don't break things, don't have unexpected interactions, etc.
Read Mark Seifter's post that Nefreet linked above (here it is again). It is really informative.
The part that is particularly relevant to your question explains that the Pathfinder Design Team (the "rules team") were directly involved ONLY with the Pathfinder RPG line. That's the hardbacks like Ultimate Magic, Horror Adventures, etc.
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Premier Event Coordinator
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If that were universally true, then they would have immediate answers to questions that come up like how Battle Medicine is supposed to work. The rules team would have had to analyze that already and would know exactly how it works. I think it’s fair to say they bounce the rules against the basic parameters of the game, just not to the extent that anyone could claim all new rules are balanced given the breadth of the system. This becomes increasingly true the farther away from the CRB we get.
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Mark Seifter said that Battle Medicine is getting an errata. They actually wanted to release it with the first batch of errata, but apparently it's tied in to a few other rules and was deemed best to wait.
Which I think highlights the problem.
If your entire rules process is delayed because part A relies on part B which relies on part c which....
Then change. The process.
It's not a physical law of the universe or a law that you're subject to, if it causes problems change it.
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Design Manager
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It's not that process point A was tied to process point B was tied to process point C, it's that rule A was tied to rule B was tied to rule C. All the rules needed an answer together, speaking purely to Battle Medicine would not answer the overall question that led to the Battle Medicine question (and probably would result in inference of many ripple effects if done in isolation).
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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Look, we all want timely Additional Resource updates.
But the reality is that the workload and scope of the Organized Play Program is overwhelming. Getting products out the door is the top priority. This combined with technology and pipeline issues means we won't get timely updates. Not to mention a global pandemic crisis complicating things.
The hardworking staff at Paizo have recognized this issue and the community's frustration. Tonya and others in Organized Play have already committed to finding solutions to pipeline issues, such as temporarily implementing 2nd Edition's AR as a blog post, brainstorming better ways to sanction content, and creating a new FAQ for Starfinder. Mark Seifter and others continue to dedicate time to address feedback.
Patience is the best play here.
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Premier Event Coordinator
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I do agree that patience is key. It does no one any good to bring this subject up again and again seemingly every month and rail against Paizo again about it being outside our accepted level of delay. Better to just accept it as it is. Paizo knows very well the situation and the general opinion of the community. It just isn’t that high on their priority list. Some would say that doesn’t make sense because people have said they don’t buy books until they can use them in PFS. One would think those possible sales would strongly encourage Paizo to elevate the priority of this issue. However, it doesn’t. Maybe they have watched and seen no correlation between books sales and the AR. Maybe those sales are so marginal as to have little impact on the revenue. Maybe, the cost involved in them making it a higher priority is too much in relation to the revenue gained (RoI). Whatever the circumstances, the simple fact is they are either unable or unwilling to process the AR more quickly.
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It's not that process point A was tied to process point B was tied to process point C, it's that rule A was tied to rule B was tied to rule C. All the rules needed an answer together, speaking purely to Battle Medicine would not answer the overall question that led to the Battle Medicine question (and probably would result in inference of many ripple effects if done in isolation).
That's not the only issue awaiting clarification
Because of the requirements for FAQ friday it frequently didn't happen, and then stopped all together. And I don't recall any "We're not doing that anymore" announcement... which just compounds the worry when things go dark for a while.
FAQs didn't happen until there was a reprint
Some lines didn't get reprints, so they didn't get FAQs
Folks tried to use PFS clarifications as a faster more agile errata, but that got PFS blamed for dropping the nerfhammer.
Anything that requires the understandably busy tech or layout teams just adds to the delay.
I get wanting to make things perfect, but how long does something sit on the back burner before its decided that nothings going to be done with it... and then no anouncement to that effect is made?
I get that the current situation sets things back, but its kind of like ignoring your cardio regimen and then breaking a leg in a freak office store accident. Yes the broken leg was an unforseeable unique circumstance, but you'd be in a better position to deal with it if you'd kept up the cardio.