Community & Social Media Specialist
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As an outsider to the Paizo forums, I think the struggle with the idea of a negativity/positivity culture comes with the attitude of the forums.
To put it plainly, I just don't think this forum is very nice. Not just that people are rude- but even when they're not, they're not .. Nice.
I think this is how the forums can feel both anti-criticism, yet also like they're full of personal attacks. It's abrasive, but not really aimed at anything.
I'll add that this is nothing new to these forums either, unfortunately, and at points it has been much, much worse. The fact is that devs used to interact here a lot, particularly during PF1E's day, but we've been told at multiple points, sometimes by the devs themselves, that interacting here has led to unhappiness, depression, and creative burnout.
I'd also like to point out that this was also a present sentiment in the PF1E days, when we did have an FAQ button, FAQ page, and the like. It didn't lead to less negativity and toxicity on the forums, it just led to people arguing about the rulings and FAQs that the devs put up, or claiming that they "just hated X," or whatever; this song and dance isn't new, by any stretch, it just looks it from the outside. From the inside too, I suppose.
Definitely here to change the lack of interaction! I know I'm not a Dev, but I'll take the questions I see here to the team and scurry back with answers as soon as I can!
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Definitely here to change the lack of interaction! I know I'm not a Dev, but I'll take the questions I see here to the team and scurry back with answers as soon as I can!
Could you bother the heads of the playtest to get two clarifications on fairly fundamental questions?
- Does the Runesmith feat "Runic Tattoo" require a rune that can go on a creature, or can you use it with a weapon/shield/armor rune?
- Does the attack from "Create Thrall" need to be with the thrall you've just created, or can it be from any basic thrall?
Back in the day the lead for each class playtest used to post occasionally in the subforums and could answer stuff like this.
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Community & Social Media Specialist
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Definitely here to change the lack of interaction! I know I'm not a Dev, but I'll take the questions I see here to the team and scurry back with answers as soon as I can!Could you bother the heads of the playtest to get two clarifications on fairly fundamental questions?
- Does the Runesmith feat "Runic Tattoo" require a rune that can go on a creature, or can you use it with a weapon/shield/armor rune?
- Does the attack from "Create Thrall" need to be with the thrall you've just created, or can it be from any basic thrall?
Back in the day the lead for each class playtest used to post occasionally in the subforums and could answer stuff like this.
I'm on it, PossibleCabbage! I'll get you answers as soon as I can!
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I'm on it, PossibleCabbage! I'll get you answers as soon as I can!Definitely here to change the lack of interaction! I know I'm not a Dev, but I'll take the questions I see here to the team and scurry back with answers as soon as I can!Could you bother the heads of the playtest to get two clarifications on fairly fundamental questions?
- Does the Runesmith feat "Runic Tattoo" require a rune that can go on a creature, or can you use it with a weapon/shield/armor rune?
- Does the attack from "Create Thrall" need to be with the thrall you've just created, or can it be from any basic thrall?
Back in the day the lead for each class playtest used to post occasionally in the subforums and could answer stuff like this.
You're awesome, Maya.
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Wanted to make a little statement here! I'm Maya, the new Community Specialist here at Paizo. It's really great to meet you! All of you. Even the angry ones. You're all apart of our community, and I'm happy you're all here. We as a company and a community can't grow if we only listen to the positive comments and members of our community. You're all important to helping us make good content, the content we're passionate about, and the content you want. I'm hoping that by joining the company and jumping right into the forums in my second week here, I'll show you through my actions (and my words) that we're working hard to make sure all your voices are heard by interacting directly with the community here at Paizo.
Secondly, I think we can all agree some comments in this thread have turned pretty nasty. The reason I say that is NOT because of the differing opinions being shared, which is why I am not closing the thread but rather just moderating the comments that had direct insults to other users in space. I say that simply because of the insults being tossed around here. This is not something we condone. It's entirely against what we stand for. People can be different, of course. Every member of our community is different, and has a right to their opinion, but no one should be simply hurling insults at each other.
Thirdly, I'd like to answer some questions I saw getting asked in this thread.
- Yes, we are currently working on updating our website! It is a very slow and difficult thing to do, but it is absolutely, 100%, underway.
- The fall errata will be released in three days, on 12/16!
- We will not be closing down forums, but we will be taking breaches to our Code of Conduct very seriously.
- I am here to be directly involved with the community, and it is my genuine goal to change the sentiment that your opinions are falling on deaf ears.All of that being said, I still want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone who expressed and will continue to express their opinions here about the...
Maya, this is almost enough to make me think they didn’t make an error when they didn’t hire me for the job.
I just wanted to mention that I often sound a little more harsh and hyperbolic than I intend to (english isn't my first language, after all) but to be clear I don't think Paizo is releasing thrash content recently. Yes, there's some problems with some parts of the recent books that I haven't liked that much, but I still think Paizo is one of the best devs in the hobby regardless.
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Alright everyone, let's all say "hello" and give thanks to Maya Coleman, the new Community & Social Media Specialist. She's been totally awesome so far and is clearly working very hard to keep this place as awesome as it can be; she deserves the warmest of welcomes! /sincere
Though as an aside, wasn't WotC also the developer of Star Wars Saga Edition or am I just wrong?
Now that you mention it, yeah, they did. Man, it's been SO long since I played either system. XD
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The negativity in this thread is very discouraging to me as someone that tries to champion the community around PF2e, so much so that I feel compelled to actually post instead of lurking. The fans should frankly not be surprised that Paizo employees have chosen to refrain from engaging with so much open hostility and baseless speculation about themselves and their coworkers.
I think it's an unfortunate downside of all old-school forums like this one - every person's opinion is listed in chronological order of replies, which leads to those with the most free time being able to shape the conversation before the majority has had a chance to weigh in.
Others are free to have their own opinions, but the lack of respect shown here today is exactly why I'll be sticking to the subreddit for any discussion I'm seeking. The vote system is a necessity in filtering out all the haters.
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Others are free to have their own opinions, but the lack of respect shown here today is exactly why I'll be sticking to the subreddit for any discussion I'm seeking. The vote system is a necessity in filtering out all the haters.
Good luck to you then. I can't say that I've found Reddit a shining example of positivity where upvotes always equal positive posts so milage varies a guess.
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Others are free to have their own opinions, but the lack of respect shown here today is exactly why I'll be sticking to the subreddit for any discussion I'm seeking. The vote system is a necessity in filtering out all the haters.
I'm usually a subreddit-only Andy, but even their thread announcing this errata is a little caustic and overly-sarcastic for my tastes. Not trying to tone police anybody, and critical feedback is obviously... Well, critical.
But the amount of snark and assumption and doom-posting is just... tiring. Happens every time there's an announcement, too, the most recent being the Impossible Playtest. Maybe just wait until you see the thing to be disappointed, guys -- there's no prize for being first in that race. These boards can be even worse, which is why I only dive in maybe once or twice a month.I can also only imagine that it's harder to take tone-deaf or caustic feedback as seriously as more level-headed critique, regardless of its actual merit. But honestly, I have no idea because I can't even imagine being the guy who has to help aggregate playtest feedback. Sterner stuff, for sure.
Sorry for the whinging; just needed to get that off my chest.
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Good luck to you then. I can't say that I've found Reddit a shining example of positivity where upvotes always equal positive posts so milage varies a guess.
Absolutely, I get what you mean. It certainly has its own subset of issues, particularly if you look at the website as a whole or within communities of a certain size. I would only defend the PF2e sub, and even that requires several large grains of salt.
That said, it does at least give lurkers an opportunity to put their thumb on the scale against undeserved hostility. I can't see much opportunity to do so here in the forums outside of getting into a direct back-and-forth discussion with those I disagree with.
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Community & Social Media Specialist
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You're awesome, Maya.I'm on it, PossibleCabbage! I'll get you answers as soon as I can!Definitely here to change the lack of interaction! I know I'm not a Dev, but I'll take the questions I see here to the team and scurry back with answers as soon as I can!Could you bother the heads of the playtest to get two clarifications on fairly fundamental questions?
- Does the Runesmith feat "Runic Tattoo" require a rune that can go on a creature, or can you use it with a weapon/shield/armor rune?
- Does the attack from "Create Thrall" need to be with the thrall you've just created, or can it be from any basic thrall?
Back in the day the lead for each class playtest used to post occasionally in the subforums and could answer stuff like this.
Thank you, Thank you! I'm about to enjoy some lunch here, but if I don't hear back today or get to post the answers today because of timing, please know I'll be back on Monday! I don't do forum moderating on weekends, but I'm here to help out to the best of my ability Monday-Friday!
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Alright everyone, let's all say "hello" and give thanks to Maya Coleman, the new Community & Social Media Specialist. She's been totally awesome so far and is clearly working very hard to keep this place as awesome as it can be; she deserves the warmest of welcomes! /sincere
Welcome aboard, Maya! Glad to have you here!
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Community & Social Media Specialist
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Welcome aboard, Maya! Glad to have you here!Alright everyone, let's all say "hello" and give thanks to Maya Coleman, the new Community & Social Media Specialist. She's been totally awesome so far and is clearly working very hard to keep this place as awesome as it can be; she deserves the warmest of welcomes! /sincere
Thank you for the warm welcome!
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Hey, can we stop assuming what Paizo is doing, has done, or has 'lost', or whatever? It's all mostly speculation, anyway.
It's unproductive, and its stuff like this that makes ANY dev not want to engage with the community.
The whole damn point is that it IS productive to discuss negative feedback. And it is necessary to confront and deal with negative things instead of pretending they don't exist. Because eventually, pretending becomes impossible, and you get situations like "where did this dev go?" where a potential PR disaster is averted only because of the fast reflexes of some employee making a snap decision to stop the buildup of rumor milling right when the post starts going viral.
It's productive to discuss negative feedback. It's not productive to trash and insult things. One of these is not useful feedback: it just drives people off.
They've only got so many hours in the day, and if interacting here results mostly in getting yelled at a bunch, they're probably not going to. I wouldn't either.
This is something that the community needs to self-police, really. If we want to have an environment where the devs show up more often to talk about the things we're having issues with, we need to make that a thing they can do without needing whiskey afterwards.
None of us are perfect on this: I'm sure everyone knows that I get wound up pretty easily when Remaster Oracle comes up. So it's something that we have to improve as a community. That's our end of the "we want more interaction" request.
(also hi Maya!)
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Community & Social Media Specialist
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Hey, can we stop assuming what Paizo is doing, has done, or has 'lost', or whatever? It's all mostly speculation, anyway.
It's unproductive, and its stuff like this that makes ANY dev not want to engage with the community.
The whole damn point is that it IS productive to discuss negative feedback. And it is necessary to confront and deal with negative things instead of pretending they don't exist. Because eventually, pretending becomes impossible, and you get situations like "where did this dev go?" where a potential PR disaster is averted only because of the fast reflexes of some employee making a snap decision to stop the buildup of rumor milling right when the post starts going viral.
It's productive to discuss negative feedback. It's not productive to trash and insult things. One of these is not useful feedback: it just drives people off.
They've only got so many hours in the day, and if interacting here results mostly in getting yelled at a bunch, they're probably not going to. I wouldn't either.
This is something that the community needs to self-police, really. If we want to have an environment where the devs show up more often to talk about the things we're having issues with, we need to make that a thing they can do without needing whiskey afterwards.
None of us are perfect on this: I'm sure everyone knows that I get wound up pretty easily when Remaster Oracle comes up. So it's something that we have to improve as a community. That's our end of the "we want more interaction" request.
(also hi Maya!)
Hi, Tridus! ^_^
Can we agree to vote Maya as the true Leshy Iconic? Love her choice of forum avatar.
Welcome!
You're too kind! Also, I use xe/xem/they/them pronouns! No harm done though, since you had no idea!
Welcome Maya, I hope you and the community are able to have a fruitful conversation over your time here.
I hope so too! Thanks, Moosher!
Hello Maya, I might not be a bastion of positivity but I'm glad to see you here. Hopefully, we don't cause you too many headaches.
Hey, Maya. Happy to see you. Good luck with all your endeavours. :)
Welcome Maya!
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On the topic of paizo staff not commenting. I know they don't on rules, which is fair (imo it isn't the place for it, better errata system is what is needed not bespoke answers)
But outside of that we have had people commenting on products, in adventure threads and James especially when it comes to lore.
Is it every post? No... but it is frequent enough that I am not surprised by it when it happens. These are community forums first and foremost, not a line to Paizo.
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On the topic of paizo staff not commenting. I know they don't on rules, which is fair (imo it isn't the place for it, better errata system is what is needed not bespoke answers)
But outside of that we have had people commenting on products, in adventure threads and James especially when it comes to lore.
Is it every post? No... but it is frequent enough that I am not surprised by it when it happens. These are community forums first and foremost, not a line to Paizo.
I agree, at least to an extent. If you're offering rules clarifications in an offical capacity it's best it comes from a centralised source. I can think of another system, with another designer where that doesn't happen, and it leads to all kinds of messes.
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On the topic of paizo staff not commenting. I know they don't on rules, which is fair (imo it isn't the place for it, better errata system is what is needed not bespoke answers)
What has frustrated people is that they HAVE been commenting on rules, just not here. They've made them on reddit posts or random streams. It's it actually WAS a strict 'no rules talk', I think people would be less salty about it.
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On the topic of paizo staff not commenting. I know they don't on rules, which is fair (imo it isn't the place for it, better errata system is what is needed not bespoke answers)What has frustrated people is that they HAVE been commenting on rules, just not here. They've made them on reddit posts or random streams. It's it actually WAS a strict 'no rules talk', I think people would be less salty about it.
I stand corrected, then
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Is this a thread where we are lobbing all of our current frustrations together into one big pile?
Because, for the love of Nethys, the Wizard needs some actual love, attention, and a proper remaster that wasn’t driven “we need to change this for legal reasons asap!”
I’m sure the stuff in the upcoming Lost Omens books will be… fine. But Paizo need to revise their design philosophy for the Wizard and just realise that current implementation fails on several key points.
Is this a thread where we are lobbing all of our current frustrations together into one big pile?
Because, for the love of Nethys, the Wizard needs some actual love, attention, and a proper remaster that wasn’t driven “we need to change this for legal reasons asap!”
I’m sure the stuff in the upcoming Lost Omens books will be… fine. But Paizo need to revise their design philosophy for the Wizard and just realise that current implementation fails on several key points.
Maybe there will be some adjustments to the wizard in the coming errata?
One can hope!
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Whoa, I disappear for a couple months and everyone turned into a bunch of negative Nellies! What happened?
Honestly I get it to some degree, Paizo going largely radio silent on things is a bit disheartening but… Can’t we cut them some slave since they had to basically restructure the entire game, continue their my early release schedule, and Playtest 6 classes in an extremely short time?
Paizo is a big fish in a small pond dominated by a whale that’s taking up most of the room.
Has the content from the last year been perfect? No. But acting like it’s all horrible awful trash? That feels to me like hyperbole.
We don’t have to be positive all the time, but these forums hardly ever seem positive. I dunno maybe it’s just me.
~~~~~~~~~~~End of Whinging~~~~~~~~~~
Also hi Maya! You’re doing Abadar’s work!
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Honestly I get it to some degree, Paizo going largely radio silent on things is a bit disheartening but… Can’t we cut them some slave since they had to basically restructure the entire game, continue their my early release schedule, and Playtest 6 classes in an extremely short time?
Again, if they truly had gone radio silent, sure, but that wasn't the case. It was just HERE they'd gone radio silent but they somehow managed to answer questions on reddit and steams as people will occasionally link to them. I'm salty that they don't seem to bother with their own website: the reason they went with the 'only official posts were RAW' in the old days is so people didn't have to keep links to old posts for rules but they have brought it back but worse as it's not hidden in their own site but across the internet now. They didn't even leave posts here that they were going to be on another site.
Hopefully Maya can solve some of that by being a bridge between the DEV's and us. Count me as cautiously optimistic.
PS: Also, Welcome Maya!
Contributor
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One thing that struck me from reading this thread is that some posters might want tools in their communication toolbox about how to disagree politely and offer feedback without personal attacks.
I started a thread on that a few years back, and I'm linking it here:
How to disagree without being disagreeable
I think that polite complaints and feedback are more likely to have impact and be read fairly. When you throw insults in about the developers or freelancers, emotions kick in and people won't be able to process your suggestions with an open mind.
Good feedback:
Arcane Cascade is broken for the following reasons... [list reasons] I think that [list suggestions] could work to fix it and make it more playable.
Bad Feedback:
Y'all are a bunch of hacks. Can't you tell Arcane Cascade is broken?
One helps the designers by pointing out the problem without resorting to personal attack. The other just grumbles.
Thanks for listening, everyone. Also...Great to see you here, Maya!
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Counterpoint regarding Arcane Cascade in particular: the polite option was taken for several years before Arcane Cascade was fixed.
A lot of the feedback on these forums in general is like that where a problem is identified and outlined and then f$%% all is done about it and it's extremely rarely acknowledged.
This is why I'll keep chiming in about a public-facing website for "known issues/bugs/___"
Just the Paizo admission of specific "player dissatisfactions" could radically reduce the amount of negativity that gets posted to the forums.
The fact that Paizo *will* respond when community posts seem to hit a bulls-eye / threaten to go viral, like with their immediate response to the Dying rules situation, only proves that they are watching, and choosing to willfully deny these problems / bugs via omission.
Again, every reader with a brain can recognize this subconsciously. Once people see that responses *do* happen for critical, "mask-breaking" problems so they can save their precious face / image, said reader understands that if they stir up shit that *looks* toxic / disastrous enough, it can spur Paizo to do a fix. Which is as bad as it sounds.
Paizo's current modus operandi literally incentivizes toxic behavior. I begging yall to change this. The system as-is takes the tiny bits of toxicity that happen here, and essentially magnifies them via this core incentive of wanting to fix / change the system for the better (by being toxic/alarmist as hell until Paizo takes action).
A public "future errata" page,
A monthly dev roundup Q&A (delayed and curated community Q & dev A reverses the prior incentive for toxic alarmism; incendiary comments don't get picked, while insightful ones do),
etc,
all can systematically reduce the toxicity.
But this "emergency response mode" is outright asking for things to get toxic. It's been genuinely great to see how well-adjusted 99% of the community here is on the forums, and consequently how little toxicity gets added to the pipes.
But if these bad incentives were put into another context, with a greater daily user count, such a space would not last long.
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Counterpoint regarding Arcane Cascade in particular: the polite option was taken for several years before Arcane Cascade was fixed.
We still have things lingering from the start of PF2 that remain unanswered, like what exactly an instance of damage is too. Civility kind of wears thin after this long.
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Just the Paizo admission of even "player dissatisfaction" of things can radically reduce the amount of negativity that gets posted to the forums.
I agree with you on this point, Trip. It helps having staff interacting in this forum and does make it a calmer place.
The fact that Paizo *will* respond when community posts seem to hit a bulls-eye / threaten to go viral, like with their immediate response to the Dying rules situation, only proves that they are watching, and choosing to willfully deny these problems / bugs via omission.
...and here is where our agreement parts ways. Language like 'willfully deny' is needlessly incendiary. I agree that Paizo Staff read these boards. And I too want them to feel welcome to dive in and chat with us. But I don't think that attributing malign motivations to dev staff incentivizes them to come here and talk with us.
I'm not Paizo staff. I'm just a freelancer who occasionally writes stuff for Paizo. But I do know how insanely busy their production schedule is. My guess is that staff see the comments and complaints and note them internally to look at later rather than comment here on the forums.
And commenting on the forums is a lot of time when your job involves doing tons of writing, development and editing elsewhere. Not everyone is suited to doing it, or feels comfortable diving in. I believe that they see our comments and complaints, and internally triage them. Some things that I might see as a Priority A 'really important / must fix now' they may see as Priority D that will keep for later.
Just another way of looking at things.
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We still have things lingering from the start of PF2 that remain unanswered, like what exactly an instance of damage is too. Civility kind of wears thin after this long.
And all this reminds me that I too have a writing deadline due tomorrow, and so I'm going to bow out of this thread. All I can do is offer the tools to those who want them. Good luck, all.
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Counterpoint regarding Arcane Cascade in particular: the polite option was taken for several years before Arcane Cascade was fixed.
A lot of the feedback on these forums in general is like that where a problem is identified and outlined and then f$%% all is done about it and it's extremely rarely acknowledged.
This is why I'll keep chiming in about a public-facing website for "known issues/bugs/___"
Just the Paizo admission of specific "player dissatisfactions" could radically reduce the amount of negativity that gets posted to the forums.
I think the problem with that is that collecting all problems in one visible pile only helps if you then actually work on that pile to try to fix it. If you just collect problems and let the collection get bigger, that will actually just make people more unhappy.
The fact that Paizo *will* respond when community posts seem to hit a bulls-eye / threaten to go viral, like with their immediate response to the Dying rules situation, only proves that they are watching, and choosing to willfully deny these problems / bugs via omission.
Again, every reader with a brain can recognize this subconsciously. Once people see that responses *do* happen for critical, "mask-breaking" problems so they can save their precious face / image, said reader understands that if they stir up s$@& that *looks* toxic / disastrous enough, it can spur Paizo to do a fix. Which is as bad as it sounds.
I don't read that situation the same way you did. I think Paizo considers some problems as being not so important as you consider them. That's not the same as pretending they don't exist - they just value them less than you do.
The Dying rules were deeply problematic, because they hit a couple of criteria that any helpdesk person would see when triaging a problem:
- impacts a lot of people
- impact is severe
- no workaround available
Anything that kills a character is severe. The "no workaround available" came because it was a mostly consistent rule where it's hard to argue that the book doesn't mean what it says.
Now compare that to the arcane cascade:
- impacts few people
- impact on those people is severe, but,
- workaround available
Why is the workaround available in this case? Because it was obvious to everyone that this rule was just wrong on a technicality, which people could just ignore in actual play. If your GM really wouldn't let arcane cascade not work because of this technicality, the GM is broken to begin with. We had a workaround in the form of the "dealing with ambiguous rules" meta-rule which tells you that you should pick the interpretation of a rule that's less problematic.
So while the arcane cascade thing is a bit ugly technicality, it's not something that should be a problem in actual play and therefore not nearly as crucial to fix.
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There's a difference between what you seem to be expecting (Paizo aims to fix all issues) and what Paizo seems to be expecting (they will fix some issues, mainly the important ones).
I do think Paizo is honest when they say they play to do errata on a regular schedule. But I also work in a company and I also know that what companies think they're gonna do, and what companies end up actually having time and priority to do, are not the same. Companies make plans with the best of intentions but then something else comes up, and it becomes a matter of priorities. Was their prior plan really important, or is the other thing more important?
This is where we get to why some errata happen, and some don't. Sometimes you get lucky and there's time to fix your favorite issue. Sometimes an issue is too important and has to be fixed. And sometimes an issue is not really that severe and it gets snowed under.
I think you'll have a better time by changing your expectations of what will get errata, instead of trying to change Paizo.
If you can easily see what the correct way is that a rule is supposed to work (arcane cascade), don't get worked up about it being technically wrong.
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Whoa, I disappear for a couple months and everyone turned into a bunch of negative Nellies! What happened?
Honestly I get it to some degree, Paizo going largely radio silent on things is a bit disheartening but… Can’t we cut them some slave since they had to basically restructure the entire game, continue their my early release schedule, and Playtest 6 classes in an extremely short time?
Just want to point that they did not actually have to playtest 6 classes in an extremely short period of time given the already highly compressed schedule. Look: I like Paizo and the people that work there quite a lot, but they're a company trying to sell me a product. I want the product to be good if I'm going to be giving them money for it.
The remaster being necessary and the schedule problems it caused are not on them, and they can have lots of slack for that. Deciding to try to do too much new stuff while also having to deal with all that absolutely is their decision and if it results in quality problems with what is being released, that is on them.
Like, I think its likely the Remaster Oracle got little to no playtesting, given it's got some really glaring mechanical problems that would have come up in play pretty fast. Given it's a major class revamp, skipping that step isn't a good idea and the decision to do that wasn't forced on them by Hasbro.
New books are great and all since they pay the bills, but a reputation for quality also matters. Take too many hits to that, and it becomes harder to sell new books. That was largely why I stopped buying PF1 material: there was just so much of it being churned out of middling quality that it was kind of a lottery if a book would actually be worth it or not.
PF2 IMO has had multiple disappointing books this year and at least for me, that isn't something I've felt in any other year since the system came out. That sentiment is not encouraging me to open my wallet next year (frankly I regret it on War of Immortals). Taking a bit more time to improve these releases would have helped a lot.
Errata is also an investment in that: it doesn't make money directly but it improves the game overall which helps sell stuff later.
There's only so much time avialable and stuff still needs to come out to pay the bills, but sacrificing quality for quantity to meet the schedule is not a good long term plan for the game.
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It's a slippery slope for developers to start answering questions, I don't blame them in the least for not being active. Answering one question (especially in a text format where meaning doesn't always go through perfectly) can lead to the same tantrum throwers wanting further explanation or just outrage at the answer.
The mindset of throwing tantrums every time you can't get an answer to a specific question is crazy to me, especially when it's directed at the people who make the game we love. We've already had developers quit (I don't know for sure but being underpaid and overworked is probably part of why), adding extra workload and stress to the equation is a formula for a revolving door of developers.
I hope people take it easy on Maya too. If they do answer a question or two, floodgates are going to open and they might get hounded by people non-stop.
In order to fix questions just say during the weekdays from X pm to X pm, like 3:30 pm - 4:00 pm we will have staff answering questions on the forum and have them answer a limited amount of questions and that's all each day or something.
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I’m not looking to engage further in this thread, but as a career-long product manager I wanted to pass along a truism from the field: Users are adept at identifying problems, and usually bad at identifying solutions. Even assuming we have the domain expertise, we lack the relevant perspective across the entire market (of which participants here are a narrow and unrepresentative sample) as well as insight into the business and company dynamics to usually identify the best way to sustainably solve the issues we raise.
I mention this to point out that ways we individually think may solve the issues, even ways we may all generally agree are a good way to solve the issues, are likely not how those issues will best be solved.
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A mistake a lot of frustrated posters are making is assuming that there is one developer at Paizo who knows exactly how all of the rules are supposed to work and work together. The errat happens after the whole development team gets together to address the issues, possibly having to give some developers “homework” of researching every possible interaction a rules change might entail, before coming back and formalizing the errata into a list that can can keep all the page numbers in place and line up correctly in the book.
So answering questions “officially” online in forums pretty much requires waiting until the errata drops anyway to make sure the change actually happens the way the individual developer thinks it is going to happen. If players didn’t jump all over personal “this is how I play it” threads as official statements from the company, then individual developers would be free to say “I do it this way” and not have that lead to conflict both on the forum and at Paizo of different developers who run games do it differently. That is a lot of the great stuff we get from James Jacobs, and used to get from Mark and Mike, and Logan and even Jason, but it seems like rules advice (as opposed to official rules clarification) gets a lot more vitriol than lore advice.
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A public "future errata" page,
A monthly dev roundup Q&A (delayed and curated community Q & dev A reverses the prior incentive for toxic alarmism; incendiary comments don't get picked, while insightful ones do),
etc,
all can systematically reduce the toxicity.
While I do agree that Paizo could be a bit clearer on "what problem they are aware of and looking forward to fix, and what they don't consider a problem", I do have to point out that a "rule pending for future errata" list could be far more noxious than the current level of toxicity if handled incorrectly.
Publishing such list would create very clear expectation, and if they struggle to find a satisfying "fix" for one of these issue, or worse, change their mind about a certain issue and decide that they actually don't want to errata it anymore, it can very quickly be seen as "betrayal" for the fans that expect these rules to be errata'd in the very next rollout when they see that they aren't (or worse, when they see that the rule is taken away from the "to be fixed" list). Furthermore, all contentious rules that does not appear in such list could then grow even more toxicity, as the part of the community that consider this a problem and want this rule changed would now feel vindicated, as Paizo would be openly disregarding their concerns by ommiting it from "the list".
These two issues also create a big problem, as Paizo would only want to post the rules they are 100% certain they will errata shortly in such list to avoid the first issue, but doing so will amplify the second one as most of the rules people are unsatisfied with fatally won't show up there.
So not only doing this would require a lot more work from Paizo, it's could also be a double edged sword, so I understand that they are wary about how to approach this. Personally, I think it could be nice if they introduced a short "errata preview" telling us of the biggest things they are 100% working on and are certain will be part of the next errata wave, so that we know what to expect, but it would be far from a magic "fix toxicity" button, and they need to clearly set expectation with it.