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I find it odd that there isn’t a welcome thread here in General Discussion from James Case or even Joshua Birdsong. Given the number of posts from either developer during the last playtest could be counted on a few hands, I’m also not surprised. Also given that the playtest doc confirms that:
We don’t expect to release any changes during the playtest itself, only in the final book, but keep an eye out for a blog or two after the playtest period where we might debrief some of our observations!
I feel the nature of playtests is becoming more and more opaque. Perhaps Paizo have decided that the cost benefit analysis is that a lighter dev hand during playtests is favourable, and that engaging in minutiae is just not worth their time. Or it could be argued that there just isn’t the time available, which begs the question - why commit to something you can’t commit to?
Regardless, it feels a little lonely and empty without at least a welcome thread and a few housekeeping comments to at least guide some of the chaos. Even some guidance as to posting writeups of *actual playtests conducted* perhaps here in the Playtest General forum so the devs can easily find them.
And finally, given the disappearance of Michael Sayre as the “Director of Rules and Lore” without any kind of community notice I feel a little more bereft. What is going on at Paizo?
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It's right there on the blog, just like every other playtest launch post has been. Please, try checking the place Paizo has always posted their communications before acting like the walls are closing in.
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It's right there on the blog, just like every other playtest launch post has been. Please, try checking the place Paizo has always posted their communications before acting like the walls are closing in.
No, that’s the “Welcome to the Playtest” blogpost. Which every playtest has. And which is usually linked to the Playtest General Discussion, but hasn’t been. But generally there is a separate post, either in this subforum, or in each of the particular class subforums to say hi, lay out some expectations and ground rules for what the devs do and don’t want.
I’ve read the blogpost. That’s how I got to the playtest forum. But there was no thread in the Playtest General Discussion subforum. I think that is…new.
If anything, it isn’t that the walls are closing in, it’s that the place is….deserted. It’s not a good feeling.
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The place feels deserted os a good way to say it. I thought the same thing when I posted on Monday. In past playtests I felt the Debs were engaging. Sometimes clarifying an oddly worded rule, sometimes weighing in on designer thought process. That's something I really appreciated about Paizo and their willingness to engage with their player base.
This just seems...odd.
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I don't know, how many playtests did serious language clarification before the end of the second day? Like, the playtest has officially been a go for maybe 36 hours now? Maybe I misremember, but I feel like it took at least half a week for something that 'everybody' was saying was confusingly worded before a dev stepped in to say something definitive.
It did seem a little strange there was no posts in the general discussion, but given it's literally 2 weeks until Christmas, I'm not sure it's all that meaningful.
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Well, it would be great if someone would step in and say “yes, we are definitely looking at including gemeral out of combat functionality for Necromancer’s undead (whether thrall or otherwise) akin to a Kineticist’s Base Kinesis” but I’m not expecting that given the trajectory of successive playtests. So really all I would have hoped for was a post to say “Hi, we’re really excited and hope you are too. Try not to x, don’t bother to y and here’s to having some Impossible fun.” or a more individual post stickied at the top of each class for the individual dev in charge to keep track of really, glaringly superduper important changes or keep us informed of same. Iunno, it certainly helped before.
As to it being close to Christmas, that isn’t really that meaningful either. Either you organise to commit, when it works, or you…don’t. Otherwise, do it after Christmas. When you can.
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There wasn't a Welcome to the Playtest forum post for the War of the Immortals playtest either as far as I can tell. So this isn't the first time its happened. The Kineticist playtest also didn't even get a blog post until a week in.
I think the main culprit is the simple reality is that old school forums are dying as people move to newer platforms like Discord and such instead.
