If we could just have a thread asking what Mark and the rest of the design team can can not say.

[Pronate11]

I don't envy Mark. This can neither be easy nor fun, with all the arguing, criticisms with no actionable steps what so ever, and needing to protect brand. He can't answer many questions, as some people will take his word as gospel regardless of how he qualifies it, and if he even responds to an idea that the community literally isn't 100% for, the discussion will turn more personal and the feedback less and less useful. I even get if this is to much to answer. But some discussions would be improved with some developer insight, and I believe discussions can be more civil and constructive if we know if Mark can't answer or if Mark can and just hasn't gotten to it. So many small mechanical debates could be cleared up, and designs can become more focused if we know vague limits.

So with all that said, I have a few more specific questions for Mark and the team:

Low level flight for eidolons, is it theoretically posable or is flight in of itself to disruptive for lower level play. (is the combat balance and carrying others as you've mentioned the main/ only concerns, or is something with PC capacities being airborne in the first place a no go)

What idea from these forums do you like the most?

What is the best way to give constructive feedback?

When are you generally looking at the forums/ what are you looking for?

What has gotten such universal support that it's very likely to make it to print, and what has gotten such universal criticism it is unlikely to see print?

And Mark, feel free to not answer any or all of the questions above. You're in a very difficult situation, and if you don't feel it is best for the playtest to answer something, don't. Or PM me, but I know that's a little much to ask.

[Verzen]

If animal companions can fly at level 1 why is an Eidolon flying out of the question?

[Midnightoker]

After yesterday when Logan got his head bitten off for posting two comments (and rather innocuous ones at that) for the first time since basically the playtest started, "We had our chance" is what comes to mind.

If they do decide to come in and make comments again, that's great, but considering how poorly we responded, I wouldn't if I were them. And that's besides the fact that anything they say, comment, or do by the nature of who they are can compromise the opinions of the people here (or anywhere else it is noted what they said).

We'll get to hear their thoughts likely in a stream or post playtest commentary.

[Katrixia]

Midnightoker wrote:

After yesterday when Logan got his head bitten off for posting two comments (and rather innocuous ones at that) for the first time since basically the playtest started, "We had our chance" is what comes to mind.

If they do decide to come in and make comments again, that's great, but considering how poorly we responded, I wouldn't if I were them. And that's besides the fact that anything they say, comment, or do by the nature of who they are can compromise the opinions of the people here (or anywhere else it is noted what they said).

We'll get to hear their thoughts likely in a stream or post playtest commentary.

I'd like that, a stream or post-playtest commentary; just so i can hear what big things stood out for the devs and what comments they have to people's questions and experiences.

[Midnightoker]

-Poison- wrote:

I'd like that, a stream or post-playtest commentary; just so i can hear what big things stood out for the devs and what comments they have to people's questions and experiences.

They did a stream for the APG playtest last year and it was pretty insightful.

[graystone]

Meh... While I'd like to hear post-playtest commentary, I'm not going through a stream to get it. For too often I hear on here that some important thing was said of some random place other than here and wonder why it wasn't mentioned here. :P

Midnightoker wrote:

After yesterday when Logan got his head bitten off

I didn't notice anything yesterday. Where was this?

[Midnightoker]

graystone wrote:

Meh... While I'd like to hear post-playtest commentary, I'm not going through a stream to get it. For too often I hear on here that some important thing was said of some random place other than here and wonder why it wasn't mentioned here. :P

Midnightoker wrote:

After yesterday when Logan got his head bitten off

I didn't notice anything yesterday. Where was this?

The comment I’m referring too was heavily edited after the fact. I’ll leave it at that. Doesn’t bare repeating. But In general, I think 6 responses that all say “striking spell sucks, here’s why” is a bit redundant. And that’s basically what happened.

Logan’s a smart guy, I’m sure the point was made after one comment (and 90% of the threads honestly).

Letting a person feel like they’re allowed to come into a space without getting that kind of attention I think is important for making them feel like they can discuss something.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk. I’m no saint myself, but I just finished helping two players build two more characters for a Playtest Sunday and I love this game and this community. Best wishes everyone. Keep on keeping on. One of them came up with an idea for a Sustaining Steel Magus that I love and plan to post about tomorrow lol

[graystone]

Midnightoker wrote:

The comment I’m referring too was heavily edited after the fact. I’ll leave it at that. Doesn’t bare repeating. But In general, I think 6 responses that all say “striking spell sucks, here’s why” is a bit redundant. And that’s basically what happened.

Clearly something is getting lost in translation as that doesn't sound so bad: you get the guy working on something you think has a problem and you want to say something. Now if it was a specific person being a pain in the butt with repeated posts I can see that as an issue but that's an issue that's plagued the internet since dial-up.

Midnightoker wrote:

Logan’s a smart guy, I’m sure the point was made after one comment (and 90% of the threads honestly).

It's kind of like water in the desert: it's not odd to take an opportunity when it shows itself when such opportunities are rare. Even if it's different only slightly from other comments, just having the chance to say it to someone that can actually change things is something people will jump at the chance to do.

Midnightoker wrote:

Letting a person feel like they’re allowed to come into a space without getting that kind of attention I think is important for making them feel like they can discuss something.

Well, as I didn't see the content nor have I heard what it is exactly I can't make a direct comment on this: however, I can't see how very limited contact doesn't reinforce getting attention when someone does show up and discussion is a 2 way street so replies are expected.

Midnightoker wrote:

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk

Well, thanks for at least giving me some idea of what went on. I've seen it mentioned a few times today and was trying to recall if I saw anything yesterday and couldn't come up with anything.

[richienvh]

Woah, just saw that one of these comments was mine and I’d like to take this post to apologize for being repetitive or going in circles. I mean, I imagine that if the playtest is sometimes hard for us, due to expectations and such, it must be doubly hard on the devs. After all, they get their work criticized from multiple angles.

[HumbleGamer]

I think most of the issues encountered are tied to 2 aspects:

First, we have the conversion from p1 to p2.
Just looking at either the magus or the summoner's thread we may be able to see that the majority of the complaints are towards stuff like

- This is not the class I played on the first edition. Please don't change the class iself.

- The spell slot progression doesn't allow you to play at medium/high levels. We need more spells.

- Spellstrike/eidolon ducks ( quack!). Change it this way, or this way, or even this way.

Special guest ( I, as well as some of you, happened to read it):

- If this goes live this way, I am not going to buy the book.

...

Now, on the one hand I really appreciate a company who takes time to interact with its community, as well as listen to it.

But on the other hand I started understanding, especially reading the majority of posts here on Paizo, that it's really true that most of the times what people want and what people need is pretty different.

Which brings us to the second point.

I am completely at ease with Paizo, mostly because they really care about balance ( and I noticed that I agree with their idea of balance).

Not that I don't care about lore, flavor or similar stuff, but especially given how the 3 action/reaction system fits well for a boardgame, I agree that balance has to come before anything else.

This would mean not being able to recreate classes as they were, as well as spells, objects, and anything else. But it's ok.

Once balance has been given, if anybody doesn't like something then he's free to modify it the way it wants ( changing feats, adding items which have been removed, modifying rules, and so on).

Being able to understand that a different system comes along with differences is key in understanding the balance and modifies behind the game.

...

I'd really like them to endure difficult situations like these, and continue to join threads in order to add their point and enrich discussions.

[richienvh]

Like Midnightoker pointed out, I think that after more than 3000 posts across both subforums plus other media (reddit, etc) Paizo got the message. I don’t think our feedback and experiences will not be taken into account. Said post by Logan even acknowledged some of the problems in one ot the classes

Probably they have multiple versions of these contentious abilities and have ways to adress the exact concerns we have expressed. Maybe they even expected some of what we pointed out to happen.

I, for one, trust them completely. I mean, during the last playtest, I really disliked their Investigator and now, I’m pretty sure it’ll be one of the first classes I’ll consider playing.

That said, I kind of miss the way they did things with the 2e playtest, in which we got more feedback on what was being considered and even an update or two to the rules. I know this format may not work right now, though.

[siegfriedliner]

Given 4e never got let off its legacy and pathfinder came out of that hot mess I as someone who liked 4e am finding it all immensely entertaining to see a little bit of that drama play out again.

[Gaulin]

This thread has gone pretty off topic, but I wanted to chime in on where it's ended up. We all love Pathfinder, and lately I've understood more and more why people are so fanatical on the forums (not that it's justified, just that I understand it). The thing I hate most about 2e is weapons and weapon runes. Too many times running a certain ap a weapon has been dissolved, broken, or straight up ineffective, meaning backup weapons have to be used. Punching something with 300 hp for 9 damage a round is extremely unfun and bothers me immensely. I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that it was forum posts and other feedback that pushed the devs to making weapons matter so much, as paizo themselves wanted something closer to automatic bonus progression. I wish I had fought for abp back when there was at least a small chance of it mattering. So yes, all these people who don't want their favourite class done dirty, I know where you're coming from. Just keep the devs feelings in mind, and remember that even though paizo themselves are very smart and know what they're doing, they do have to listen to their customers. Make sure those crazy suggestions that might pick up traction are well thought out.

On the actual topic, I asked in another thread if anything specific should be tested out more thoroughly, and was told basically all data was good, and to stress the classes in any way we could think of. Which makes sense, as most of the issues are probably going to be unforeseen.

[Grankless]

Gaulin wrote:

abp

It is in, btw, though I'm not sure if you know or not. I agree I would have liked this to just kind of be the standard but I guess some cows are too sacred.

On topic...

I think it's a bit unreasonable to try and theorize what they can and can't talk about. It just doesn't feel like it'll go anywhere.

[Mark Seifter]

Gaulin wrote:

The thing I hate most about 2e is weapons and weapon runes. Too many times running a certain ap a weapon has been dissolved, broken, or straight up ineffective, meaning backup weapons have to be used. Punching something with 300 hp for 9 damage a round is extremely unfun and bothers me immensely. I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that it was forum posts and other feedback that pushed the devs to making weapons matter so much, as paizo themselves wanted something closer to automatic bonus progression. I wish I had fought for abp back when there was at least a small chance of it mattering. So yes, all these people who don't want their favourite class done dirty, I know where you're coming from. Just keep the devs feelings in mind, and remember that even though paizo themselves are very smart and know what they're doing, they do have to listen to their customers.

In that case, there was also survey data that indicated we needed to keep those +s on weapons and items (but reduce them from +5, which was too extreme a swing), much as we might have liked to try it out without that.

When it comes to the forums, if you have posted once and said your piece, you've made your case, and we'll see it. You don't need to (and Gaulin I'm not saying you do, just that some people have and your post suggests it) "fight for" the change you're looking for by continually posting towards the same opinion many times, and it doesn't necessarily help your case because we aren't going to give you any less weight for posting once than we would for a large volume. We'll always take you seriously.

[Temperans]

Mark Seifter wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

The thing I hate most about 2e is weapons and weapon runes. Too many times running a certain ap a weapon has been dissolved, broken, or straight up ineffective, meaning backup weapons have to be used. Punching something with 300 hp for 9 damage a round is extremely unfun and bothers me immensely. I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that it was forum posts and other feedback that pushed the devs to making weapons matter so much, as paizo themselves wanted something closer to automatic bonus progression. I wish I had fought for abp back when there was at least a small chance of it mattering. So yes, all these people who don't want their favourite class done dirty, I know where you're coming from. Just keep the devs feelings in mind, and remember that even though paizo themselves are very smart and know what they're doing, they do have to listen to their customers.

In that case, there was also survey data that indicated we needed to keep those +s on weapons and items (but reduce them from +5, which was too extreme a swing), much as we might have liked to try it out without that.

When it comes to the forums, if you have posted once and said your piece, you've made your case, and we'll see it. You don't need to (and Gaulin I'm not saying you do, just that some people have and your post suggests it) "fight for" the change you're looking for by continually posting towards the same opinion many times, and it doesn't necessarily help your case because we aren't going to give you any less weight for posting once than we would for a large volume. We'll always take you seriously.

Glad to hear that.

[Pronate11]

Mark Seifter wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

The thing I hate most about 2e is weapons and weapon runes. Too many times running a certain ap a weapon has been dissolved, broken, or straight up ineffective, meaning backup weapons have to be used. Punching something with 300 hp for 9 damage a round is extremely unfun and bothers me immensely. I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that it was forum posts and other feedback that pushed the devs to making weapons matter so much, as paizo themselves wanted something closer to automatic bonus progression. I wish I had fought for abp back when there was at least a small chance of it mattering. So yes, all these people who don't want their favourite class done dirty, I know where you're coming from. Just keep the devs feelings in mind, and remember that even though paizo themselves are very smart and know what they're doing, they do have to listen to their customers.

In that case, there was also survey data that indicated we needed to keep those +s on weapons and items (but reduce them from +5, which was too extreme a swing), much as we might have liked to try it out without that.

When it comes to the forums, if you have posted once and said your piece, you've made your case, and we'll see it. You don't need to (and Gaulin I'm not saying you do, just that some people have and your post suggests it) "fight for" the change you're looking for by continually posting towards the same opinion many times, and it doesn't necessarily help your case because we aren't going to give you any less weight for posting once than we would for a large volume. We'll always take you seriously.

Of all the things I was expecting Mark to comment on in this post, this was not one of them. But glad the playtesting works.

[QuidEst]

Mark Seifter wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

The thing I hate most about 2e is weapons and weapon runes. Too many times running a certain ap a weapon has been dissolved, broken, or straight up ineffective, meaning backup weapons have to be used. Punching something with 300 hp for 9 damage a round is extremely unfun and bothers me immensely. I'm pretty sure I read or heard somewhere that it was forum posts and other feedback that pushed the devs to making weapons matter so much, as paizo themselves wanted something closer to automatic bonus progression. I wish I had fought for abp back when there was at least a small chance of it mattering. So yes, all these people who don't want their favourite class done dirty, I know where you're coming from. Just keep the devs feelings in mind, and remember that even though paizo themselves are very smart and know what they're doing, they do have to listen to their customers.

In that case, there was also survey data that indicated we needed to keep those +s on weapons and items (but reduce them from +5, which was too extreme a swing), much as we might have liked to try it out without that.

When it comes to the forums, if you have posted once and said your piece, you've made your case, and we'll see it. You don't need to (and Gaulin I'm not saying you do, just that some people have and your post suggests it) "fight for" the change you're looking for by continually posting towards the same opinion many times, and it doesn't necessarily help your case because we aren't going to give you any less weight for posting once than we would for a large volume. We'll always take you seriously.

Yep. I gotta remind myself every now and then to relax and step back after I've said what I wanted to. (I could definitely do with more of that.)

Even if what the majority of folks want were to somehow completely ruin both classes for me forever/get the classes banned by all my GMs, it's gonna be a great book with plenty of content that I will enjoy, the year is going to have a ton of ancestries I've been waiting for, and Investigator is right up my alley so I've got plenty of characters to get out of my system.

Thanks for all the hard work, and it will be exciting to see the final result!

[GM OfAnything]

Last I checked, community management wasn’t part of the game designer job description.

You should absolutely apologize for making someone’s job harder for no good reason.

[Ruzza]

Anyway, uh, point proven about it being lose-lose for designers to dip their toes into the forums?

Thanks, Paizo Community. Never change!