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Even if they didn't plan on doing it long term it is healthier for a game in its infancy to actually answer some bigger questions
Considering their track record of success, I think Paizo is quite comfortable with their design philosophy even if some in the forums aren't.
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Considering their track record of success, I think Paizo is quite comfortable with their design philosophy even if some in the forums aren't.
So? It doesn't mean they are right, also this is the first time they have taken a no FAQ system approach afaik.
The errata delivery is muddled and confusing too, it is split into two parts. But those parts aren't to do with when the errata was released, nor do errata have dates attached and some was silently added between the 1st and 2nd wave.
Add to that there are errated changes to bestiary elements in 2 and 3 that don't have errata specified for bestiary 1 at all. It is a mess, and a mess that has little excuse to exist like this in an age with the digital tools we have available to us.
A better maintained game with pain points fixed up retains more players, you can argue about people finding more tables or leaving the game if it bothers them. But paizo isn't big enough that it can happily lose players like that over things that are negligable to fix like including dates beside adjusted errata and acually keeping stuff like monster traits up to date if they change.
"But I don't care" is a poor argument to someone saying "I care about this". Apathy is not a fair retort.
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The thing about rules questions is that the first line of people on this website who can help you resolve them are "other posters who have no stake in any games you are in".
When "the combined wisdom of the forums" is insufficient to resolve the issue it's generally one of:
1) There is legitimate disagreement on the issue in the forums.
2) The person asking the question refuses to take the answer everybody is giving them and insists on a more official source.
#1 is worth addressing, #2 is not. For the relative frequency of either, your mileage may vary.
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So? It doesn't mean they are right
Right or wrong is in the eye of the beholder. It really doesn't matter if you or I think they are right. It only matters what they think of themselves and to date, they clearly think their actions are right.
paizo isn't big enough that it can happily lose players
Apparently they are given that they have lost a lot of players over the past decade due to some of their management decisions, but it hasn't made a measurable difference.
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The thing about rules questions...
I think it depends on the rules question. If its an issue that is clearly in the rules and the asker is just not clear or does not have access to a book with an answer, the online keyboard warriors can be a great help. If OTOH the rules issue is an ambiguous one that requires GM adjudication, often it makes matters worse to take ti to the forums. This venue can be pretty unhelpful and downright nasty at times. You are better off just making a decision for your own campaign and moving on. If you are a player, simply ask your GM and accept their ruling.
It is the latter where we need to most guidance from the designers, but it is also the place where they are least likely to respond given the history of vitriol they often get when explaining rules as intended and clarifications.
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I do feel it's worth noting that there is a very large contingent of people who run and play ttRPGs who aren't going to actively seek out official errata and guidance on unclear rules; at best, they'll google it to see if anyone's run into the same issue and what they did. Framing discussions on errata as make-or-break for a ttRPG misses the fact that it's not normally particularly profitable for a company to pay attention to these older books - if the designers spend a day in a big meeting ironing out the most frequently asked questions (which are almost exclusively complicated to answer), that's a day they're not working on products that will actually make the company money. That isn't to say they're worthless - almost anyone reading this forum is going to be the type of person who is invested in the errata, and it does help with the company's reputation amongst the very crunch-focused fans, but it's something that is done to make sure the game is as good as it can be, rather than because it makes or breaks a company. I'd love it if we could get some more answers to the more ambiguous points in the rules (and hopefully 2020 was just a very difficult year to collaboratively work on errata and that slowed them down), but I think rather than giving small, off-the-cuff answers (which are likely to be less well thought out in their interactions with the rest of the system AND likely to spread in a weird and confusing way across the fanbase; there were multiple 5e rules I ran into while running AL that were widely misunderstood despite there being an official clarification because there were multiple official clarifications), the best outcome would be to put that effort into a good system for searching errata and FAQ, that's easily accessible, and promoting that to allow it to be easily found by more people.
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I've had players drop out because after buying the books and reading the rules and the errata they still find PF2 ambiguous.
The very customers that like the extra detail of the PF2 system, are also the ones that struggle with poorly defined rules. When they find that no solution exists and even the forums don't agree, they give up on the system.
The customers who like simpler systems where everything is vague and fluffy are often playing lighter systems already.
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From Paizo's perspective, I understand some of the points made here, that financially it is a challenge to devout a full resource to being a gaming Czar/Tsar. That said from a customer's perspective, me and some of the rest of us, this is a tough nut to swallow.
We spend a good amount of money, and our time to read and understand the rule books to play something (fun) and get very little support from Paizo. Here is the bottom line. Paizo win's the contest against other gaming systems through player adoption. Part of player adoption is engagement with the community, regardless of how rage-induced some of the community can be.
I sent an email to Paizo support asking a question and they told me to post it here and get the communities take. That was a bit frustrating. This had to do with my Druid and Handwraps. Would any of you want to write another post about that?
Bottom line, PF2 is not a perfect product and requires support. Some of that support we can get here but there are times that the community can be a rough place to get guidance and support.
I think at a minimum Paizo could respond to a post and say they will look into it, just show they ARE LISTENING. Gather internally and discuss it and then post something back in a couple of weeks.
In my opinion, Paizo should not have created PF2 without creating a plan to support the product; (and still my opinion) otherwise you will bleed customers that bought your product based on prior experience of playing and enjoying your games and now are just left "stranded" with practically zero support.
Might want to direct you over to the un-necro'd thread where everyone got real quiet after Michael Sayre gave a pretty in-depth breakdown of why a game that released just before COVID and with numerous editing passes, may not fit into everyone's exact timeframe got getting immediate errata.
Please be kind to the community and especially the people who support it and help it grow. The past year and a half have been incredibly difficult for everyone and Paizo is not exempt from that.
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From my perspective, you're being unkind in two ways. The first is expectation.
You are expecting a degree of engagement that many consider unreasonable (as explained in the post linked above) and unnecessary (your question has already been talked about at length, and ultimately it comes down to either your GM or your own discretion, regardless of the ambiguity of the rules).
The second is that your post (where you opined that they should not have created PF2 without a plan to support the product) shows that you haven't particularly examined that thought. They do have a plan to support the product, and have been doing so regularly since its release. So either you didn't bother to give them the benefit of the doubt and look into what is actually happening and what they're actually doing (which is at the very least negligent, if not outright unkind), or you're intentionally saying things you know to be false (which is also unkind).
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...Might want to direct you over to the un-necro'd thread where everyone got real quiet after Michael Sayre gave a pretty in-depth breakdown of why a game that released just before COVID and with numerous editing passes, may not fit into everyone's exact timeframe got getting immediate errata.From Paizo's perspective, I understand some of the points made here, that financially it is a challenge to devout a full resource to being a gaming Czar/Tsar. That said from a customer's perspective, me and some of the rest of us, this is a tough nut to swallow.
We spend a good amount of money, and our time to read and understand the rule books to play something (fun) and get very little support from Paizo. Here is the bottom line. Paizo win's the contest against other gaming systems through player adoption. Part of player adoption is engagement with the community, regardless of how rage-induced some of the community can be.
I sent an email to Paizo support asking a question and they told me to post it here and get the communities take. That was a bit frustrating. This had to do with my Druid and Handwraps. Would any of you want to write another post about that?
Bottom line, PF2 is not a perfect product and requires support. Some of that support we can get here but there are times that the community can be a rough place to get guidance and support.
I think at a minimum Paizo could respond to a post and say they will look into it, just show they ARE LISTENING. Gather internally and discuss it and then post something back in a couple of weeks.
In my opinion, Paizo should not have created PF2 without creating a plan to support the product; (and still my opinion) otherwise you will bleed customers that bought your product based on prior experience of playing and enjoying your games and now are just left "stranded" with practically zero support.
I think it needs to be expressed how those difficulties with COVID can differ between an individual and an entire company. While there's many tragedies that can only be described on an individual basis, the same can be said of the unique problems companies like Paizo had to face for 1 1/2 years during the outbreak.
Having employees work from home when there was previously no real systems in place in their workflow, having employees switch departments or leave entirely due to outside circumstances out of their control, unable to meet work assignments due to the pandemic and the other world events that were occurring (like Hilary Moon Murphy's experiences in Minneapolis described in this post), and all of this while Paizo was effectively launching their new edition of their game in this type of environment is a burden we can't really comprehend. ESPECIALLY when most FLGS are still dealing with COVID restrictions and are affecting their sales.
Believe me, there's a fair bit of frustration I also have in many of the problem areas of the game. I'm sure we all do, given we're all paying customers. But I also understand I need to keep those frustrations in check, since this isn't the typical case of a company neglecting their primary userbase. It's a company of people who had to struggle to keep their heads afloat in truly dire times, and making tough decisions in order to keep the lights on.
Thankfully, the FAQ page for Pathfinder is up. Now, if the good people at Paizo can get back into the offices and get back to their usual local workflows (or creating a stable hybrid system for both those who prefer local offices and those who like to work from home), maybe that FAQ page will expand to cover the actual FAQ part and not just a posting of errata.