Community & Social Media Specialist
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Heartily seconded; thank you very much!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.
Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still waiting on a reply for this!
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.
I'll be just fine! Thank you for the care!
Hey, Maya. Happy to see you. Good luck with all your endeavours. :)
Thank you so much!
Welcome Maya!
Nice to meet you!
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.
Still going to do my best to bridge this gap a little more!
The vote system is a necessity in filtering out all the haters.I post in both under the same username. The vote feature is the biggest downside to reddit. Populism tends to lead to an echo chamber that prevents meaningful engagement. I've had posts where I quote a rule with a link (nothing more than a link to the rule that answers the OPs question with no added opinions) and get a tonne of negative votes. I've provided in depth build advice to hundreds (thousands?) of posts and get anywhere between -50 votes to +200 votes with an average of 2 votes and is seen by the OP but no one else. Often those negative numbers come from some person taking umbridge with a rule interpretation representing 1 sentence or 1% the post.
The vote feature rewards first posters, short quippy posts, vote inertia (your first few votes drives whether your at the top of the thread or bottom), and people with bots. The best actual comprehensive and researched posts that help are often just above the bottom negative posts (only slightly more favoured than the jerk responses). The top responses are nearly always 3 sentence concise hand wavy platitudes (that is or is not raw/rai, that would be balanced or unbalanced, remember to ask your gm). I can almost always skip/skim the top 3-5 responses without missing anything.
What reddit is good for is getting a different cross section of the community. As well there is a much larger versatility of top posters. These forums have the same 200-500ish names making most of the content (or at least that is what it feels like). On Reddit I find it is more likely to get new names, new players, and actually help a more average ttrpg person. That also minmizes people holding and executing on grudges. It also has a way better text editor and doesn't prevent post changes after 30 mins or other QOL improvements.
Not sure what the answer is but they are both far from perfect.
ANYWAYS: Welcome Maya! I think more engagement with the wider design team to...
Luckily, this is not my first Community Managing rodeo! I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you, even when you're upset, so I can try to fix it!
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.
** spoiler omitted **
Thanks for listening, everyone. Also...Great to see you here, Maya!
Nice to see you here too, Hilary! Still also working on your question about the two Starfinder Space Station Flip-Mats!
Contributor
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Made some progress on my writing deadline, so I'm back.
I'm linking to the complaint that Maya cited in her last post as an example of a complaint without vitriol that still conveys urgency.
Also, I would like to correct a misapprehension. Nowhere did I suggest that civil discourse be limited to staff and developers. I want it everywhere, and applied to everyone.
I'm a fan of well-written and polite disagreement. We can and should complain when we need to do so (I certainly do, as I did in the case of duplicate flip-mat names.)
Thanks all!
Hmm
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Maya, you are doing an amazing job, thank you!
If I were at Paizo, I would be very cautious about trying have any kind of "known issues" list or "to be addressed errata" list.
Firstly, what goes on that list? Every complaint/rules clarification any forum poster ever makes? That is pretty unreasonable of an expectation and a headache to keep up with for a part of the game/community that actually brings in 0 revenue. Especially as there might be no consensus in the community or within Paizo that there is an issue to be addressed. Making developers spend time and energy expressing "we are not going to change this aspect of the game at this time," for every issue ever brought up on the forums or even specifically posted in an errata thread, feels like pretty misdirected energy to me...even as I have had my own pet issues/concerns since the start of the PF2 and many of them have never been addressed or got addressed years later by just not having those aspects of the game carry over into the remastery.
Secondly, as soon as anything is on some "we are looking at this" list, then expectations from players immediately jump all over, including to very unrealistic and often conflicting places: see the kineticist for just one example. This is especially a problem because errata has to fit in the books that it was first printed in, and so some issues might be brought up in developer meetings and no satisfactory changes can be agreed to at the time, so the issue might sit in indefinite hiatus or until a new place to make the change is published that gives them the room to make the change. Errata is not just "these are ways to make the game play better," Errata is changes to published books that improves the quality and useability of that book. For very many "bad" or "unplayable" options, that will more often mean that Paizo is better off publishing something new that better fits player expectations for what that option was supposed to offer, rather than try to substantially change something that has a limited amount of space for change. For that reason, I was actually really surprised to see any Secrets of Magic errata in this recent batch, because that is errata that will not see print in a new edition of the book, since so much of the book is mired in OGL content. The fact they did it was amazing and shows how dedicated they are to making sure that some of the key options from that book stay relevant and playable, even without a known republishing deadline.
But expecting Paizo to basically have to give us the minutes of every meeting they ever have to potentially address errata or even just points of friction in the game is adding way to much to the work load of the developers and is intrusive into their creative space. This is not government policy that demands as much transparency as possible. People who don't like specific little rules of games change those rules all the time and PF2 is a game designed to let its players mod the rules in an amazing broad spectrum of ways. The extra document from War of the Immortals for mythic play, for example, might serve as a good way for future potential variant rules to see the light of day.
Really, I think it would make a lot more sense for folks from the community to create our own lists of potential issues that we see in the game and how we deal with them in documents similar to all of our class guides and such, all kept in one place instead of spread out across hundreds of threads and posts, as then it would be a lot easier for GMs to see what issues they might need to resolve at the table and be supported in having multiple ways to address them--all in one place--rather than get into heated debates because we all believe that our posts to this forum are going to be "the thing" that set off official clarification around our pet issues to our satisfaction.
3rdly,
3rdly,
A quick heads-up, but it looks like your final post didn't make it to the page.
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The reason I'm still set on pushing a "Known Issues" living document is because that change requires the absolute minimum dev lift from the work that we know they already do now.
Right now, every fear you cite is something Paizo already has to face for the full errata. You are catastrophizing a whole lot outta a rather small thing.
The main difference here is that Paizo would formalize a version of a document they are already certain to have internally; multiple staff like Maya gather "Is _ a known issue?" and pass them to devs/teams who either say "nope", or confirm and add it to their private version of this doc.
Hell, I'm pretty sure some of the other game/software lists don't even update their "known issues" until a fix is already done, and applying that to pf2, would mean that said issue is added only when the errata is already written (whether or not said fix is public in a Known Issues *+ Future Errata* doc).
Even that "only admit it's a Known Issue after it's fixed" version would still be extremely helpful to the staff & community.
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Yes, the Paizo work would not be 0. Likely, this would take the form of a once a week sign off from some lead with only a slight variation from the now-norm:
Dev_X: take #3 off the list. I don't understand where the problem is, so you'll need to explain it to me after the weekend, but post the rest to the scrum board [and to the public list].
But again, I promise yall that every worry you're talking about here is something that Paizo already has to deal with for the errata. If anything, this norm would reduce anxiety by giving them a middle step to potentially catch errors before the big twice yearly patch.
Something like the [staves are invested now?] issue with this errata certainly caused some Paizo people anxiety/panic, and this is a perfect example of what would not be possible if said pre-errata was publicly visible.(for the possible version that is Known Issues + Errata)
It's important to emphasize that the public-facing living document would be for "known issues," not "player feedback." You would never see something like "Toxicologist is underpowered" on there. But you might see "inhaled poisons lack a functional ruleset."
While some games include ~balance concerns, usually it's only those sorts of "balance" things caused by changes breaking some core build combo. The "rules are technically functional, but the intended play experience is broken" type of known issues. (which is not even mandatory for this Paizo-specific list. I'd argue an example would be Rogue's save upgrade. "Everyone knows" that only master saves get to upgrade, and that no class gets to upgrade all 3 saves. But the rule/norm could have been broken on purpose.)
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The number 1 reason why I'm as certain as I can be for this list to make a positive difference from Paizo's perspective is because right now, we have some hella, uh, yikes incentives.
We have been directly, explicitly, instructed to clog up the rules forum with player-identified bugs in hopes that the right staff member sees it, forwards it to a dev, who flags "yes, bug confirmed." and that said bug is fixed in the next patch, up to six months away.
I've never seen a forum suggest players who recognize a single "cone"-->"line" error scream into the void for hopes possibly, being heard. Maybe.
The lack of feedback for said poster, and the community, makes that a nightmare for Paizo staff only kept manageable due to how niche and low population this forum is.
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Another thing to be aware of is that we already have the core essence of this "known issues" list in fragmented form. Every time a staff post slips in and says something to the effect of "You are not crazy, watch for the next errata, [the scaling on I R Torrent is too high and will be lowered, so don't get attached!]." these posts are fundamentally the same confirmation.
The problem with that type of "issue confirmed" feedback is that it is stuck inside a single thread that will not be visible for long. Once upon a time, it was normal to work with that existing paradigm, and for those who remember those places, it was a big improvement when they added the ability to click a button and filter the entire thread/forum for "dev posts."
Because that type of staff feedback is just that impactful and important to filter for.
The next evolutionary step was community managers doing a "dev roundup" where staff would gather all the dev posts into one weekly/monthly post so readers could stay informed.
These "living document" pages are just the next incremental improvement. They are explicitly not places for public discourse, but by reacting to said discourse, they shape it; they act as a very helpful clutter reducer and toxicity reducer.
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Yes, the Paizo work would not be 0. Likely, this would take the form of a once a week sign off from some lead with only a slight variation from the now-norm:
Dev_X: take #3 off the list. I don't understand where the problem is, so you'll need to explain it to me after the weekend, but post the rest to the scrum board [and to the public list].
This is part of what I mean with some posters having wildly unrealistic expectations. If you think the development team is discussing errata issues weekly you are assigning way too much work to the team as a whole. We get errata twice a year because they collectively get together to discuss these issues at most 2 or 3 times an errata cycle. This is labor that earns 0 dollars for the company.
Posting rules questions to the forum is about getting community discussion and feedback back, not about getting additional secret rules content out of the development team. PFS has its own system for dealing with this as should any other organized group. Everyone else is as free to use whatever rules make the most sense to them. This is very different from a software system where the rules require special outside coding skills to change as needed
This is part of what I mean with some posters having wildly unrealistic expectations. If you think the development team is discussing errata issues weekly you are assigning way too much work to the team as a whole. We get errata twice a year because they collectively get together to discuss these issues at most 2 or 3 times an errata cycle. This is labor that earns 0 dollars for the company.
Posting rules questions to the forum is about getting community discussion and feedback back, not about getting additional secret rules content out of the development team. PFS has its own system for dealing with this as should any other organized group. Everyone else is as free to use whatever rules make the most sense to them. This is very different from a software system where the rules require special outside coding skills to change as needed
It has been made very clear that the request for errors/bugs to be posted to the rules forum is precisely so that Paizo staff can gather, filter, and pass that list on to the few devs with the authority to declare "known issue" & create errata.
So long as there is anything resembling a scrum board, to-do list, etc, what I have discussed is a real thing. You are vastly over-estimating how much additional work this public-facing list would require.
It does not matter what the time frame for such internal communications are. Once p week, etc. We know that there is a process by which staff talk to one another and confirm what is a real issue and what is not.
A "Known Issues" list only keys off that work that we 100% know is already being done.
The time it takes per errata item is static whether it is procrastinated to all happen in one big rush every 6 months, or if said items are done in much smaller chunks as they are identified. Once a bug is identified and a fix is made, it's done.
It doesn't "save time" to wait to push them all in one giant patch every 6 months.
In the rare case when there is real internal fighting against these absolutely standard organizational features in 2024, it is virtually always about staff fearing the blame game involved in a sign-off, the act of putting their name to something that might be erroneous. Not about "increasing work load" for the devs (who generally save time from this feature).
It's the CMs like Maya that hypothetically get additional work if they did not previously collate & filter community posts (which is why their confirmation of this obvious/suspected community-sourced issues has further emboldened me).
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Having a "To look at" list would be extremely easy and not labour intensive, and shows they're looking at stuff. It doesn't necessarily need to be or mean "this is up for errata".
People already start "errata maybe" threads for new books all the time, so half of this is covered. Although they have a tendency to involve some bickering, they're still a good place to trawl for a dev who's preparing a seasonal errata batch.
The other side, acknowledging an issue is being looked at. I don't think it's the time it would take that's stopping them. It's that it doesn't really help. You just change from "why won't the devs acknowledge my issue" to "why haven't they fixed the issue they acknowledged" or "why did they look at it and then not fix it the way I wanted".
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I don't think it's all the same, and I think it's a little disingenuous to claim that it is. Although you do have some people who will scream regardless (because the issue they're screaming about isn't the point; the screaming is), people who do have legitimate grievances and feel unheard do tend to respond positively to communication from the developers, as many threads have shown recently with the announcement and release of the new errata. A "developer has seen this thread" alert of some sort could make those people happier and add a little bit more transparency to the process.
In this respect, I think the issue isn't so much that there is no worth whatsoever to more transparency or developer communication, because there very clearly is, but that the work needed to implement that is unlikely to be very efficient at the moment. This website is awful and has been in dire need of an overhaul for years now, so this is probably not a good time to add new features, but also the developers are overworked as-is, and don't really have the time, structure, or emotional bandwidth right now to constantly post online and engage with a community that has sometimes responded with abuse in the past. We could do with changes to those systems that would allow better communication for all to happen, especially since we'd been promised a new website in the past and those overhauls would benefit everyone, but right now, we're not set up in the best way for the kind of improved communication some people are asking for.