I wonder if one of the design team is designated as the community contact person. I remember getting that impression from Sean (back when he was the only design team member who posted a lot). Personally, I think that'd be a good thing, but I'd suggest they do it through the PDT account, to make it clear it's an official, group decision rather than an opinion from an individual who happens to work on the design team.
I wonder if one of the design team is designated as the community contact person. I remember getting that impression from Sean (back when he was the only design team member who posted a lot). Personally, I think that'd be a good thing, but I'd suggest they do it through the PDT account, to make it clear it's an official, group decision rather than an opinion from an individual who happens to work on the design team.
From what I can tell they don't "designate" any one member as community contact, or they're very god at hiding it, they just happen to have had designers that want to keep up with the community, though it's since come out that SKR was very much made to "toe the company line" whether he agreed with decisions or not.
I think if they were going to make a community outreach account or whatever, it should be separate from the PDT one, which should just be for FAQs IMO. Helps keep things clearly delineated.
Considering we only get meaningful posts on the forums from the design team during playtests, I wouldn't be surprised if they designated a member as the community outreach.
Alternatively them posting on the forum is completely optional and Mark just does it because he loves us. I think this is the more likely option because the other devs have posted less and less on these boards while Mark has remained pretty consistent.
Also the fact that Mark has very strong people skills probably helps. A lot less grar is directed at Mark than any of the other devs due to his strong diplomatic practices.
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Steve, did you ever consider a career in diplomacy or peacekeeping ops?
Would you and kthulhu like a session? ;)
I wonder if one of the design team is designated as the community contact person. I remember getting that impression from Sean (back when he was the only design team member who posted a lot). Personally, I think that'd be a good thing, but I'd suggest they do it through the PDT account, to make it clear it's an official, group decision rather than an opinion from an individual who happens to work on the design team.From what I can tell they don't "designate" any one member as community contact, or they're very god at hiding it, they just happen to have had designers that want to keep up with the community, though it's since come out that SKR was very much made to "toe the company line" whether he agreed with decisions or not.
I remember similar - although I seem to recall him also saying that when he wanted to dial back his engagement he was told it was part of his job description. I'll freely admit that could be way off though.
I think he was talking about the FAQ thing.
I remember it as SKR saying that he wanted to dial back on doing FAQs because whenever he did a FAQ it led to people attacking him. After 3 months of no FAQs Jason made the FAQs a part of SKRs job description. This led to a significant amount of engagement with the community.
It's less that he didn't want to engage with the community and more that he didn't want to engage with the community through the FAQ process.
You're probably right - I don't spend much time in the rules forum, so my memory is somewhat hazy.
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I got that from his interview with Louis J Porter a few months back. It's a really interesting video!
Thanks heaps for the link, I haven't seen it. Although...an hour and a half!? :o
Is that all interview?
Yeah, it's an hour and a half of questions from Louis and from the people watching the interview live.
Cheers. I'll definitely look into it when I get some time. Really appreciate the link. :)
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Reading this thread is... conflicting.
On one hand, I'm relieved I'm not the only one feeling disappointed and tired of Paizo and the design team's decisions... On the other hand, seeing so many sharing my concerns and frustration doesn't exactly give me hope of a better future.
*sigh*
Reading this thread is... conflicting.
On one hand, I'm relieved I'm not the only one feeling disappointed and tired of Paizo and the design team's decisions... On the other hand, seeing so many sharing my concerns and frustration doesn't exactly give me hope of a better future.
*sigh*
I know, right.
It especially doesn't help that our criticisms are largely directed at senior Paizo staff. If a lot of the people in this thread are right and they actually are the issue then it is really unlikely that the problem is going to be go away, because it would mean that the people who are causing the problem are the ones who can veto any attempts to fix it. The only other way to change things would be to essentially restructure how Paizo is organized so the "problem" staff can't dictate the state of the entire RPG line. Or just outright fire them. Both of which are huge decisions for Paizo to be making, and I doubt that those decisions will be made at all unless it looks like failing to do so would sink the company. And we aren't anywhere near there yet.
On that basis I guess the best that we could hope for is that some of the senior guys retire (or move on, or work part time and take a lesser role in the company etc)? It's the best resolution I can think of, but I don't think it is likely to happen any time soon.
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I'm still quite happy with Pathfinder. I might be running a short campaign in some other game between my 3rd and 4th AP, but I'm not sure what yet.
I actually like the huge number of options. Not because I (or my players) particularly care to optimize anything, but because we can cherry-pick things that match each player's concept and level of complexity.
That said, I'm not in a group where I'm "forced" to play one particular system. I could see that rankling.
But I could run anything from 2nd Edition Spelljammer to a totally homebrew game and setting. For now, folks love the APs, so we're sticking to that :)
Cheers!
Landon
You do realize how ironic you are being when you state that the developers refuse to engage with fans on a forum put up by Paizo and paid for by Paizo? The developers are on these forums constantly. They very often engage with fans about criticisms.No. Wrong.
Mark Seifter engages with fans constantly. So does James Jacobs (but he's not a designer).
The others? Jason Buhlman, Stephen-Radney McFarland, and the two new guys who haven't even bothered to introduce themselves, much less engage with the community besides one dismissive put-down from one of them, do not. Jason hasn't posted anything beyond generic "We are opening this playtest" and "We are closing this playtest" remarks in almost a year. He didn't even participate in the most recent playtest, and neither did SRM from what I could tell, and both were BARELY active in the ACG playtest.
I guess I should amend what I said to state that compared to any other company I have seen, the amount of feedback is astounding. I also feel that the level of negativity on the forums over the past two years has been much higher than normal. I have seen some people try to have reasonable discussions regarding criticisms of PF, but I have also seen a lot of complaints without anything constructive being said. If I ran a company and a (relatively) few of my customers were upset, but the vast majority are happy (based on the continued success of sales) I would probably refuse to engage the negativity at all. The fact that Paizo does engage with this population at all is, frankly, amazing to me.
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I guess I should amend what I said to state that compared to any other company I have seen, the amount of feedback is astounding.
How does this reputation build itself?
I've been a part of many many different gaming communities over the years, and every. Single. One. seems to have this reputation for being "that one company where the staff actually offers feedback and communicates with the playerbase on the regular, when no other company does."It's just simply not true. Most companies are quite involved in public discussion and feedback.
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I guess I should amend what I said to state that compared to any other company I have seen, the amount of feedback is astounding.How does this reputation build itself?
Largely because it's compared with the gaming companies of yore, which didn't have very useful channels for feedback and didn't make use of the channels they had.
Paizo has several advantages over golden-age TSR (which was, by legend, one of the most fan-unfriendly companies in the industry, and that's saying a lot).
* Management actually plays the games they produce (for fun)
* Management is Internet-enabled, so it's easy for fans to contact them. In fact, through the message boards, it's easy for fans to contact each other.
* PDFs are easy to produce, distribute, and update, so there's no issues with trying to get hardcopies into the hands of every model railroad store across North America.
Of course, this is also true for most other gaming companies in 2015. But Paizo is also about the right size as well. Hasbro, for example, is a $10B company of which D&D is a tiny line and it gets relatively little support from management. (To be honest, I'm not sure that Hasbro's CEO plays Monopoly regularly, let alone D&D.)
But at the other extreme, Draco Passant Guardant Hobbies (and Pizza) is a one man-operation, and Dave spends most of his time making and delivering pizzas, so he's not going to be able to respond quickly to issues like "pages 35-61 of my Player's Guide are printed in Chinese," let alone "Does the 'blast of fire' power set fire to things?"
Similarly, Paizo spends more time than most interacting directly with the fans/customers via PathFinder Society. Again, Dave at DPGH(&P) doesn't have the time to manage that kind of thing. Paizo sponsors PaizoCon, which Dave can't afford to do.
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Largely because it's compared with the gaming companies of yore, which didn't have very useful channels for feedback and didn't make use of the channels they had.
Paizo has several advantages over golden-age TSR (which was, by legend, one of the most fan-unfriendly companies in the industry, and that's saying a lot).
* Management actually plays the games they produce (for fun)
* Management is Internet-enabled, so it's easy for fans to contact them. In fact, through the message boards, it's easy for fans to contact each other.
* PDFs are easy to produce, distribute, and update, so there's no issues with trying to get hardcopies into the hands of every model railroad store across North America.Of course, this is also true for most other gaming companies in 2015. But Paizo is also about the right size as well. Hasbro, for example, is a $10B company of which D&D is a tiny line and it gets relatively little support from management. (To be honest, I'm not sure that Hasbro's CEO plays Monopoly regularly, let alone D&D.)
But at the other extreme, Draco Passant Guardant Hobbies (and Pizza) is a one man-operation, and Dave spends most of his time making and delivering pizzas, so he's not going to be able to respond quickly to issues like "pages 35-61 of my Player's Guide are printed in Chinese," let alone "Does the 'blast of fire' power set fire to things?"
Similarly, Paizo spends more time than most interacting directly with the fans/customers via PathFinder Society. Again, Dave at DPGH(&P) doesn't have the time to manage that kind of thing. Paizo sponsors PaizoCon, which Dave can't afford to do.
This, and it's also compared to WotC. Back in 3.5, you could have the actual designer who made a class come to the boards and tell you what he envisioned, or that the design needle has shifted with power creep and they're more tolerant now, but he would be powerless to actually get anything fixed beyond proposing houserules. Two prime examples of this are the Hexblade and the Shadowcaster. Then there was custserv, where two players could ask the exact same question and get two conflicting answers because the folks answering the phones or e-mail weren't on the design team and apparently didn't even talk to one another. They also have a "one-and-done" approach to errata where even if something is changed, they then consider it fixed for all time and never revisit it.
5e seems to be a little better at engaging the base (via Twitter?) but given how rules light the system is there is less need for it there anyway - almost everything boils down to "ask your DM to come up with a DC."
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I'm enjoying Pathfinder a great deal. It still provides much of the D&D-style adventuring I like, particularly when viewed as a toolbox game with options for a GM to include (or not include) in their campaign. That isn't to say I'm not also liking 5e D&D - they scratch different itches I happen to have.
I'm not enjoying the boards nearly as much as I used to though. But that's a function of the community around it rather than Paizo itself.
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I'm enjoying Pathfinder a great deal. It still provides much of the D&D-style adventuring I like, particularly when viewed as a toolbox game with options for a GM to include (or not include) in their campaign. That isn't to say I'm not also liking 5e D&D - they scratch different itches I happen to have.
I'm not enjoying the boards nearly as much as I used to though. But that's a function of the community around it rather than Paizo itself.
Couldn't say it better myself.
I strongly dislike it.
I play it because of PFS Organized Play.
I don't like:
- Level based systems
- Class based systems
- Logorithmic power increases
- Lack of consistency in the rules
- Almost total disregard to what having these powers would do to a world
I much prefer GURPS, Hero System, or other things like that.
Every time I go to make a character, I find myself fighting the system to make the character I want. It often isn't even about power (however you want to define it), but rather wanting to do something a little different.
I'll continue playing because of organized play, but when I GM outside of that, it isn't using any of the D&D clones.
In spite of everything I've said above, I still consider a good GM more important than a good system.
I still like this game, though I haven't gotten to play in a while as our group fell apart due to the pressures of Real Life. I buy less than I used to, but that's due to the themes of the past few years: I have little interest in guns and tech in my fantasy, so the Iron Gods adventure path and support material were of no interest to me. I'm not interested in psychic magic either, so Occult Adventures and related material won't pull me in either. Did grab Hell Unleashed, and there are some Player's Companion items I'm interested in.
That said: yes, the recent errata leaves me scratching my head. Not just for the 'why did they do X', but also 'why now?' I'm still digesting the ARG part of it. I'm not enraged, just a mix of curious and confused.
I frequent the boards every day, though my posting history is much less than others as I choose to post sparingly. I have noted that members of Paizo, broadly speaking, have become more scarce on the boards other than I keep seeing Chris and Lilith coming into threads and intervening on the negativity (as they should!). The Paizo team is still present, but not as much as they might have been say five years ago.
I still like the game. I feel there's an issue that every niche apparently has to be filled with a base class instead of an archetype (I was not a fan of the ACG classes for the most part). But I respect the rights of others to enjoy these things. And I'll join the fight of others to enjoy them.
5e seems to be a little better at engaging the base (via Twitter?) but given how rules light the system is there is less need for it there anyway - almost everything boils down to "ask your DM to come up with a DC."
Given the actual task resolution of D&D 5E, that's overthinking it. They should just tell people to declare (whatever it is) at the table, roll the die, add some vaguely relevant number from their character sheet, and ask the GM if they succeed.
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Design Manager
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I wonder if one of the design team is designated as the community contact person.
There is. It used to be Sean, and now it's Mark Seifter, and it's specifically part of their job description to be the main design team presence on the forums.
Anyways, in answer to the actual topic of the thread-
I love Pathfinder. I really liked 3.5, and Pathfinder has built on and fixed a lot of the issues I experienced playing with that system. Paizo has also done an amazing job of creating a cultivated and regulated 3pp system, to the point where so much of the 3pp material out there is on par with, or in some cases even exceeds, the core Paizo materials. I probably use as much 3pp material in my games as Paizo material, and that wouldn't be true if Paizo weren't so involved with their 3pp community.
Sure, there are a few things I don't like. I don't like that the current version of Vancian casting is so poorly balanced to the other subsystems, or that it doesn't actually resemble any kind of spellcasting in fiction or media, including the works of Jack Vance. I don't like that PF inherited the weird, crappy version of the Fighter that was rolled out in 3.0.
Fortunately, I've got so many other options built to work within the framework of the game that that isn't going to stop me from playing, and it really makes me hopeful for what Paizo can do in the future. My opinion might be different if it weren't for all the amazing 3pp stuff out there, but that 3pp stuff wouldn't be as accessible or of such great quality were it not for the environment Paizo created for it.
Is it just my brain playing tricks on me or does it seem like most of the people who are really happy with PF are also into the 3pp material?
I have that impression too.
If you want to get some sort of empirical confirmation, you could always just flick through the thread and tally it up.
Is it just my brain playing tricks on me or does it seem like most of the people who are really happy with PF are also into the 3pp material?I have that impression too.
If you want to get some sort of empirical confirmation, you could always just flick through the thread and tally it up.
Someone please do. I'm on my phone right now so my ability to participate is limited.
I'm not sure if I like the game itself. There are a lot of issues, a lot of flaws, a lot of things I want to be able to do and can't. But I love roleplaying. Golarion is also a pretty cool setting.
I can usually find people who play Pathfinder or 5E, other games, not so much. Plus Pathfinder seems to have the biggest PbP following and I love PbP.
I was never the biggest fan of 3.0 either, I liked 2nd edition more.
I guess I should amend what I said to state that compared to any other company I have seen, the amount of feedback is astounding.How does this reputation build itself?Largely because it's compared with the gaming companies of yore, which didn't have very useful channels for feedback and didn't make use of the channels they had.
Paizo has several advantages over golden-age TSR (which was, by legend, one of the most fan-unfriendly companies in the industry, and that's saying a lot).
* Management actually plays the games they produce (for fun)
* Management is Internet-enabled, so it's easy for fans to contact them. In fact, through the message boards, it's easy for fans to contact each other.
* PDFs are easy to produce, distribute, and update, so there's no issues with trying to get hardcopies into the hands of every model railroad store across North America.Of course, this is also true for most other gaming companies in 2015.
Yeah, golden-age TSR was infamous for being so unfriendly to its fanbase that a lot of people think the management was trying to deliberately sabotage to D&D brand so they could put it's resources to work on other properties instead. Their internet policy was so insane they were doing stuff like shutting down fansites and forums about the game, and threatening lawsuits just for mentioning it online.
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To be fair, that was pretty much par for the course for big companies in the mid-90s. I remember all the cease and desists Marvel and DC sent to fansites then. The Internet was a new thing to the public then, and no one at companies really knew how to deal with the issue then. (They barely even do today.)
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I like Pathfinder. The only thing I don't like is the Martial/Caster disparity and Paizo's complete unwillingness to let Martials have any nice toys. It's gotten to a point where I primarily play Martials and avoid Full Casters purely out of contrariness.
To be fair, that was pretty much par for the course for big companies in the mid-90s. I remember all the cease and desists Marvel and DC sent to fansites then. The Internet was a new thing to the public then, and no one at companies really knew how to deal with the issue then. (They barely even do today.)
True enough. My only point was that when you compare any modern gaming company to mid-nineties TSR, the modern company's gonna look amazingly better at online policy.
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But even with people that enjoy crunch, it just seems to me that there is kind of an archetype and variant class fatigue. Just how many are they going to make anyway?
I don't have a problem with archetypes, feats and other crunch features.
What's a problem for me is the amount of BAD, USELESS ones. I find that about 90% of the new archetypes and feats are ones I'll likely never use because they're very underwhelming. Which is most likely a result of Paizo wanting to avoid power creep and the "you have to keep buying new books to keep up with the power curve" horror, so I can understand it. But it does curtail my new product buying.
So I wouldn't call it fatigue so much as belief that the new stuff is inconsequential.
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I'm not enjoying the boards nearly as much as I used to though. But that's a function of the community around it rather than Paizo itself.
This is a good summary of how I feel.
-Skeld
Is it just my brain playing tricks on me or does it seem like most of the people who are really happy with PF are also into the 3pp material?
I happen to like 3pp material and keep my eyes open for items with interesting subsystems, that support Paizo ideas I like (such as Mythic; I love the Mythic Minis pdfs), or just come up with useful stuff (like decent archetypes for classes I like).
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I'm not enjoying the boards nearly as much as I used to though. But that's a function of the community around it rather than Paizo itself.This is a good summary of how I feel. ** spoiler omitted **
-Skeld
Yeah. I'm not one to penalize a company for it's community but for a long time I've said that Paizo online community was one of the better ones out there. That started changing for me personally about a year or two ago. And now I still browse but I'm not likely to engage as much as I used to and I definitely stay off the rules forums.
If these people are an example of what PFS is then my decision to stay away from any Organized Play is well warranted.
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I'm not enjoying the boards nearly as much as I used to though. But that's a function of the community around it rather than Paizo itself.This is a good summary of how I feel. ** spoiler omitted **
-Skeld
Yeah. I'm not one to penalize a company for it's community but for a long time I've said that Paizo online community was one of the better ones out there. That started changing for me personally about a year or two ago. And now I still browse but I'm not likely to engage as much as I used to and I definitely stay off the rules forums.
If these people are an example of what PFS is then my decision to stay away from any Organized Play is well warranted.
I'd say that 1-2 years is a good estimate of when I started to feel a shift in the overall mood around here. My recent lack of engagement has had more to do with the TLS change locking me out of posting from work (until this week apparently). I still try to engage in the same areas as before (such as the RotRL forum).
-Skeld
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Yes. I like it. I don't have any major issues with any aspect of the game, and I also really enjoy the forum community (you guys!) and the 3PP community. There are a lot of good and intelligent people here, and I really like that. I know that some of the people that I like do have issues with some of the rules or the updates - but hey, it's just a game, so I'm not that concerned. I do enjoy discussing it, though.
But what I really like about Pathfinder is the Golarion world. I like that there are a bunch of adventures that all take place in the same world, and that I can experience them through my characters and my games. I like that I can have the same experiences as other players around the world as we all play through the various APs (albeit in our own little way).
I also like that Paizo, as a company, shares almost all of the rules freely on the Internet, so I don't have to purchase every little book to allow my players to have the options they want to play with. This is vastly different than my experiences with WOTC, who threatened a legal action against a forum for allowing me to post snippets of rules during a 2e game I was running (which also got me banned from that forum).
I like that Paizo staff engages with the forum community, and I like how professional and kind they are. Every time I see them diffuse a situation, I'm amazed at their skills in doing such.
I like the tactical aspects of the game, I like the rules-heavy aspect of the game that allows me to play at tables where one person doesn't have to dictate how things shall be - instead we have the option to defer to the rules. Not all games are like this.
There's nothing really that I have to complain about that would make me go to a different system.
I joined during the ACG playtest, so about 2 years also.
Would I be wrong in guessing that the ACG playtest was the turning point?
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I joined during the ACG playtest, so about 2 years also.
Would I be wrong in guessing that the ACG playtest was the turning point?
IMO, yes, you'd be wrong. Playtests aren't really the issue. If you joined that recently, you missed the Alpha & Beta playtests and the birth of PFRPG. The ACG playtest was downright polite by comparison.
Playtests happen once a year, roughly. The shift in attitude I've noticed is a day-to-day thing. It's the same people, in the same threads, complaining about the same things, ad naseum. The more time that passes, the more shrill, caustic, and hateful they become, to the point where they're starting to drift into conspiracy theory territory. (TBH, I view it with a mix of amusement and sadness because, on the one hand, it's funny to watch people slowly go full derp, while on the other, it's sad to see otherwise intelligent people who's only method of communication is to continually shout louder and louder at anyone that disagrees with them.)
-Skeld
I joined a bit before that...I'd say that sounds about right.
There's been a lot of internal shake-up since then. SKR left, Mark joined, Jason Buhlman just completely stopped talking to the community after that, they hired like a dozen new editors because of the editing of the ACG and the shitstorm that brewed, etc.
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I really like Pathfinder.
I am about done collecting Pathfinder.
I have just about everything they've come out with so far for this RPG. I have years and years and years worth of stuff to run.
I will continue to enjoy running Pathfinder for many many years.
I've played around with many other systems in the past, and will likely continue to seek out games that interest me.
I do love certain 3PP stuff- Dreamscarred Press is an awesome company for filling in gaps in Paizo's design philosophies.
All that said, looking at what they're putting out in the near future is quickly shutting down my interest in further subscription.
I'm a charter subscriber, and that title used to mean a lot to me, and has kept me collecting despite disinterest in some Adventure Path themes. I think I'm hanging in there until #100... and will probably finish off the AP containing it.
For some reason Cheliax is one of the least interesting regions of Golarion to me. After that, well, I have no interest whatsoever in a Mythos adventure Path. To me, Mythos is cool for a one-off game, a convention, or a short campaign. For a full campaign and all the support books that come with it? Not so much.
And with about 10 yards of Pathfinder Books already in my collection, and a bunch of expenses in my life, I'm pretty sure I can convince myself to give up the collecting. My wife would like that.
I am comforted by the fact that there are a great many players for Pathfinder, and with that base, even when the forces of market cause a split in the fanbase, the hope I can find players online for the stuff I already have.
EDIT: Regarding the community: With growth comes pain. I liked it when there were fewer of us. Hyperbole is tiresome, especially when rampant. It is hard to find threads without it, due its commonality as an internet "communication" tactic.
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I think most of the RPG line since the APG has been largely unnecessary (bestiaries excepted....we always need MOAR MONSTERS!) There have been good bits in most of the following books, but in my less-than-humble opinion, it's like picking blueberries out of a field of poison ivy: They're there, and they're good, but you have to wonder if they're worth it.
But to be honest, the book that really soured me on Paizo doesn't really have anything to do with the RPG...it was the Visions of WAR art book. I won't go into why, if you really want to know, just read my review of it (especially my review of the "limited edition"...they should have limited that to zero copies).
The fact that the staff not only refuses to admit that the gulf between caster and martial characters exists, but also seems intent on widening it has only increases my disappointment with the company as a whole.
The sad thing is that I still think they put out great adventures, and they have a pretty good setting (assuming kitchen sink / jumbled jigsaw settings don't put you off). It's really just the RPG line that isn't living up to my expectations
And it's more than just my preference for simpler systems like S&W or 5e...even judging Pathfinder on it's own merits, I'm disappointed with the game past the APG.
I'm not really one for wordy posts, so I'll stop this here, although I will undoubtedly have more to say in reply to whatever discussion this post might happen to generate.
One thing: about the community...I actually like most of the people I've interacted with here (at least as much as you can like someone that you've only interacted with via posts)...even the ones I tend to disagree with. A few of them might hit some of my pet peeves on occasion, but I'd gladly hang out / have a beer with most of the posters here, even if I think we wouldn't be a good match gaming-wise. With a very few exceptions.