| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I appreciate your reply, but what I'm really looking for is any comments from the designers or Paizo in general about the class like they did when they discussed the playtest classes on Twitch.
Personally, I've seen enough discussion between players like us and I'd like to hear what Paizo's views on the class are and I'd *really* like to know if they are planning any further errata to the class or if there's no changes like that planned for the foreseeable future.
There are a lot of folks who come onto the forums asking for dev responses and nothing but dev responses, and it's generally not successful.
The devs are doing their work, I've gotten the impression that weighing in on this particular type of thing doesn't have a great "return" on doing so, there's no interesting discussion that might tempt them to comment, and some of this stuff is giving out previews for upcoming changes (probably before it's finalized).
You're also asking for existing commentary, which is fair! I'm afraid I don't know of any addressing this specifically.
As for changes… Alchemist did already get some changes, and presumably any more changes to existing/fundamental material would happen when that material goes in for a reprint (as is Paizo's usual approach).
Alchemist 2e playtest comments are probably not gonna be a ton of help, because a lot of those were addressing other issues- all the stuff that did get resolved, like Alchemist having bomb progression as a big chunk of class features, etc.
If you want more than that, though, I'm afraid it'll be Google and/or hunting through the devs' posts.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Asking for dev reply is pretty much never going to work, but they do read the forums. There's plenty of evidence of that. It can feel like all the discussions are never heard which can definitely feel frustrating, but you just have to have patience unfortunately.
For a while I was getting really frustrated with a few questions in 2e that heavily impacted my character choice, questions that are yet to be cleared up. I'm still waiting for errata. A person can only be frustrated for so long though, and I eventually moved on to different ideas and kept having fun.
So I would vent or discuss alchemist all you want, and if the frustration gets to be too much, give up and play another class. It sucks, but you might find yourself having fun. The good thing about Pathfinder is that as more and more options come out, classes get more and more options, and the weaker ones get better. Just stick it out for a year or two and see where things are after that.
|
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
The designers generally make it a policy to not discuss things like this, especially if they're actually thinking of doing something about them. This is also why they very seldom discuss errata in advance.
Discussions like this can easily be twisted to make it seem like they promised things they didn't, or just generally to stir up bad feeling as people impute meaning that wasn't there. It's not good policy to discuss what is generally seen as a flaw in your game, except in the context of either why it's not a flaw because it's what you were going for, or in the context of an official and available solution.
From that perspective, I feel like the silence on Alchemist is really fairly telling. I suspect they know there are issues and are considering ways to address them. But discussing what those ways are prior to their official announcement? Probably not gonna happen.
Now, those ways may not be what you or I would prefer, and may only solve the problem from certain perspectives...which goes back to why discussing them is a bad idea for the designers, as if they said 'We know there's a problem, we're working on a fix.' and people get excited, but then it comes out and the 'fix' they came out with was not what some people were looking for, that leads those people to feel betrayed, and that's no good to anyone.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
This may be a function of one year of play versus ten, but it feels like Paizo is less communicative about issues in this edition than it was issues in first edition. Of course I have no actual data to back that up.
Doesn't matter if they're less communicative (which they aren't), but it matters that they've been doing a great job making changes and taking feedback. The playtests are a good example of this.
Around the time the devs were engaging in discussion as well as willing to make sweeping changes to the game, so much so that people even complained that the Playtest book wasn't worth it because of how much it changed, since people expected everything in the book was almost final and bound to have some minor adjustments. Couldn't be further from the truth. There were even some big mechanics entirely dropped such as Resonance and Signature skills.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
This may be a function of one year of play versus ten, but it feels like Paizo is less communicative about issues in this edition than it was issues in first edition. Of course I have no actual data to back that up.Doesn't matter if they're less communicative (which they aren't), but it matters that they've been doing a great job making changes and taking feedback. The playtests are a good example of this.
I want to echo this. I’ll take silent and effective any day. Besides, silence is less divisive.
They’ve built up a lot of good faith for me personally at this point in how they’ve responded to feedback.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I feel I've read somewhere that a dev was saying they were more vocal in first edition, especially in the earlier days. I believe they said it was a mistake to be so vocal as it caused more problems than it solved, and so now they are a lot more reserved.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The other day, I asked Jason Buhlman on Twitter when the devs were going to clarify a couple of the issues that seemed to be causing some confusion on these boards (shield scaling and how many hands Battle Medicine requires). Jason was kind enough to reply, "Noted, we will take a look." I believe the devs do pay attention to what is being discussed here and are pretty proactive (perhaps often behind the scenes) in trying to address problematic issues. In any case, I was impressed that the lead game designer responded to my inquiry.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When I started a thread criticizing the playtest witch, Mark Seifter popped in when I misquoted something he said on a podcast. Embarrassing for me, but it shows the devs pay attention to the forums.
I think he, Michael Sayre, and James Jacobs are the most active forum-posters.
|
|
Doesn't matter if they're less communicative (which they aren't), but it matters that they've been doing a great job making changes and taking feedback. The playtests are a good example of this.
I’d say playtests aren’t an example of this at all because playtest materials aren’t yet actually part of the game, and so are wholly separate from what is being discussed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The other day, I asked Jason Buhlman on Twitter when the devs were going to clarify a couple of the issues that seemed to be causing some confusion on these boards (shield scaling and how many hands Battle Medicine requires). Jason was kind enough to reply, "Noted, we will take a look." I believe the devs do pay attention to what is being discussed here and are pretty proactive (perhaps often behind the scenes) in trying to address problematic issues. In any case, I was impressed that the lead game designer responded to my inquiry.
Jason Buhlman strikes me as the kind of person who would rather wait a bit and get a response correct, rather than shoot off the hip and make promises about issues he isn't sure are resolved or addressed in a reasonable way.
I've certainly criticized Paizo's lack of a quick response to various threads, and openly wish that they would implement a system for making quick rulings to address the fan bases issues until an official errata is finished. But at the same time I can understand and respect their decision to wait and get it right.
Even the responses we do get tend to be about things that I suspect have already been discussed at length. Mark Seifter's various responses are a good example: He speaks seldomly, but when he does it is with confidence.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, the community will discuss it to death and might get hot tempered but that's what rules, mods and bans are for.
At Paizo, no one's job description includes "take angry abuse from customers".
It's far better to have people post in a civil environment than to clean up the boards after-the-fact when the anger and abuse get out of hand.
I think it's a sign of corporate sanity that Paizo boards aren't used for verbal harassment and anger directed at staff.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It was stated that there was supposed to be a second round of CRB errata on the way back in December. That was before the dread plague though.
Unless you want to read through all the posts from the developers every few days there's been no information about errata. No official release of information about when that errata is going to be out or what it contains. I'm not even sure any more alchemist changes are going to be in it. The lack of any information has been very frustrating. A once a week post on the blog saying "hey, here's what we're working on this week" would be great. "Here's the ability or skill we're looking into this week" would be even better. Trello boards for software development come to mind. Yeah, the community will discuss it to death and might get hot tempered but that's what rules, mods and bans are for.
I check the blog every other day, and read through those "here's what we're streaming" posts and am disappointed every time I see nothing on anything that might make my favorite class not the pale shadow of what it was in PF1.
I personally have given up on my alchemist, PF2, and PFS in general. The whole reason I liked it was a chance to get out of my work from home job and go see people and have fun. The alchemist, for the most part, hasn't really been fun. Yeah, it had moments and eventually it might be but why should my character not feel fun for the first 6 levels? Why doesn't it get the cool choice of class feats instead of boring stat boosts (I'm looking at you, Far Lobber).
The alchemist was a new class to begin with and had a bunch of changes between play test and release. I don't think it got enough testing between play test and release. I'm hoping it'll see some love soon but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Pretty much everything in this post tells me that if the devs were to extend to you the hand of steady updates and dialogue on the state of your favourite class, sooner or later you'd bite that hand off and vomit it back at them.
Which is why they aren't doing this kind of stuff anymore.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Umm, the OP wasn't asking for a dev response to their post... They were asking about links to previous dev comments about alchemists. No one here seems to actually be commenting on that.
In response, to my knowledge, there's been no discussion about the current state of alchemist. The last I can remember was before the first errata came out when, I believe, they acknowledged that there were some problems with alchemists either when or before they released the errata. I don't have a link to that particular video, does someone else?
I just rewatched that part of the errata stream. They acknowledged there was a problem with the mutagenist since its features actually didn't do anything, but they didn't allude to any other issues with the class - at least not in that part of the video.
They DID reiterate that they are definitely listening. Of course that's good, but I just wish I knew whether or not more changes are planned for the class. I get why they don't communicate things before they're done (just look at what happened to those No Man's Sky guys), but I am anxious for some clarity on this issue in particular.
I think your best bet is to pick one (or possibly 2) of the house-ruled fan creations that attempt to fix the Alchemist. My own house rules document began with my Alchemist fixes, and I know there are several other fan created versions that make big changes too.
If/when Paizo adds more errata you can then decide if you like their changes better, or you want to stick with what you are currently using (and maybe even combine the official changes and your own, that's what I did when the official errata came out and I didn't feel they went far enough).
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I miss Pathfinder Fridays so much