First and foremost, there is never a satisfactory excuse for treating someone as unworthy of basic respect and dignity. Rudeness is unnecessary and un-useful.
However, I see no problem with expressing concern or dismay at the way someone is handling something which impacts you.
And, as you point out, the first point works both ways: the creators have no right to be rude in response to rudeness directed at them.
That's the thing: Not everyone is in control of themselves, and people shouldn't let that justify their own lack of control.
Whether it's frothing vitriol at someone who doesn't have the control of their work that you think they should have, or responding to that vitriol in like manner.
Communication is good, and valid, and necessary, but the manner in which it is conducted is often inappropriate.
However, I do disagree with your statement that creators must listen to their audiences.
It's often a good idea to listen to one's audience, but it is never mandatory and it should always be done in a fashion which does not place the wisdom of crowds as the foremost decision-maker in an arena of craft which requires experience, training, and consideration.
Authors need editors, artists gather and talk about how to improve each others' work, filmmaking has somehow perpetuated this wildly inaccurate notion that a single person can be responsible for the outcome of the film...
Art is best when it's part of a community, and some of the best artists were very aware that there's a difference between "write what you want to write" and "write what sells," and they had families to support.
There's no final conclusive one-size-fits-all answer, except "Communicate with respect."
So... yeah, I think it's very reasonable for people to tell Paizo what they'd like to pay Paizo money for, and to tell Paizo when that's not what Paizo is putting out.
@JonathanHobbs [FATAL utters a smothered scream from beneath the chat floorboards]
But that's what it is: telling Paizo what you will and will not pay them for. If they choose (or try but fail) to produce something else, you can't really get angry at them for not convincing you to give them money.
It sounds like Baskin Robbins gave someone a free mini-spoon of ice cream to try, and the person is upset that they didn't respond to his suggestion last time that they serve crepes instead.
[shrug] The person's needlessly upset, but from what little I skimmed... well, Baskin Robbins never served crepes.
It's also important to remember that just because you didn't like something doesn't mean it has to be scrapped. There's a difference between listening to critique and accepting it.
In summary: People should be able to talk about what they like and don't like about things they use. The people in charge should be aware of these conversations. Nobody should be rude about it or make personal attacks. However, people will because respect and priorities are often undervalued, and it's incumbent on everyone else to avoid escalation.
Paizo can ask for critique, get buckets of flames (and, yes, constructive criticism), and decide to go with that something anyway - either because they're betting on their creative vision, or because it tested well elsewhere.
@lisardggY I LOVE WHAT YOU ARE DOING! MAKE MORE EXACTY LIKE THIS! OR MAYBE LESS AWESOME BECAUSE YOUR LAST RELEASE MADE ME SPRAIN A MUSCLE FROM SMILING FOR THREE DAYS STRAIGHT!
@Lord_Gareth Do you know that they don't test before publishing, or do you just not like what they publish, and thus deduce that they must not have tested?
Posts like this imply that there is playtesting involved.
@lisardggY Paizo exclusively favors public testing, which they filter through a perception of total mechanical incompetence. The result is almost, but not quite, like the TSR days. They do no in-house testing.
[face/palm] I'm watching the first Mission: Impossible film and I'm going "I know Luther Stickell's actor from somewhere. That voice is VERY familiar."
@Lord_Gareth I suggest that you could have said that second thing first, and not done the whole "I'm going to condescendingly laugh at your notion" thing.
Less the condescension at either party, but the condescension of the notion. Which could be taken as a condescension of either party, really! Or both at once.
I'm just getting the feeling that your rancor towards Paizo, justified as it might be, might be clouding your judgement. One might debate the merits of internal vs. external playtests, but the game does get tested.
@lisardggY External playstests have tons of uses and I like 'em deeply. But they need to be supplemented with in-house testing, and they need to be administered by someone capable of understanding the data.
Paizo doesn't do the former (for reasons of budget, I'm given to understand) and has thus far proven incapable of the latter. I live to see the day.
@Lord_Gareth Again we return to definitions. I'm trying to see whether "incapable of the latter" means that you've been privy to their testing analysis and was displeased with their methods, or that you've seen material that passed playtest and analysis, and was displeased with that material's quality?
Because the first seems like very valid criticism. The second could just put you in a minority as far as liking the new rules is involved.
@lisardggY I've seen their responses during playtests, including detailed explanations of their rationale and their beliefs about the system and mathematics. What follows is a brief period of mechanical silence, and then the final product released displays low quality.
Essentially I see them talking about what the data means
Which they do on public forums, mind
And the ignorance displayed...well, I can't say it's shocking because frankly I'm used to it by now but once upon a time it was downright offensive.
I can understand being disappointed, frustrated or even depressed when people you work with display ignorance or incompetence. But why is it offensive?
@lisardggY That part is personal. That lands squarely in, "So lemme get this straight - these people are getting paid for this garbage? While I trawl around in the muck like a rat?"
DSP hiring me on did wonders to sap away some of the unending hate.
@Lord_Gareth I can understand that. In my line of work, it took me years to be able to separate the professional aspect of my job (doing the work well) and the marketable aspect of it.
Just because a piece of software is beautifully, elegantly written doesn't mean it will be successful.
A part of that realization was being able to accept that the business demands of my company will sometimes (often?) require sub-optimal choices (from a professional, technical perspective) that meet the business's demands.
Having accepted that, I'm no longer frustrated that less-talented people than I are successful, or that making the "wrong" choices leads to more success.
Because I realize that my goals (technical competence, proper coding) don't necessarily align with business success. And that's perfectly fine. I am not a business man.
Thus, Paizo's success can be seen as based on many aspects (proper marketing, being in the right place and time) and not just based on "writing the best game possible".
Thus, the fact that you can believe you write better games and are still less successful isn't necessarily a sign that you aren't as good a game designer as you think, you're just not as successful a game seller as they are.
Thing is, Paizo had a perfect marketing opportunity. The base of their system was free - free, you understand, they didn't have to design most of it - and the 3.X community was angry at WotC throwing their custom to the wolves. After the announcement that they wouldn't keep printing or reprint any 3.X books ever, Paizo could have sold the community anything at all as long as it vaguely resembled 3.5
They had all the data, 10+ years of play experience to learn from, and volunteers to do their QA for free.
All they had to do was revise content that existed already. Making it better would have been easy.
And they didn't. They didn't just not make it better, they actively and aggressively worsened the completely and publicly known problems.
@Lord_Gareth Personally, I believe they did make it better. I much prefer PF to D&D3.5. I do accept the claim that it could have been a hell of a lot better than it is.
@Lord_Gareth Seeing as I've played some 3.5 and I've played some PF, and I felt the improvement myself (at least as far as my playing style is concerned), it's hard for me to accept statements like this as more than personal opinion.
@Lord_Gareth The highly detailed archetype/ACF system means I can customize my character's ability right off the bat at 1st level, not build towards PrC and multiclassing to arrive at it only later.
@lisardggY [Nitpick] Archetypes and ACFs are very different things that affect character creation - fluff and mechanics - very differently. Please don't equate them, it makes conversing about the two confusing. [/nitpick]
I don't feel like they're much different, as far as my liking for them goes.
But let's focus on archetypes.
Of course, some of what I disliked in 3.5 is slowly encroaching on PF as well, with more splatbooks and more classes, each with a relatively distinct subsystem of its own.
It's telling that in my old 3.5 game, apart from one psionic character, everyone played relatively core classes (paladin, thief, bard, sorcerer, and a monk/thief), rather than the extensive array of classes from splatbooks.
@lisardggY I haven't really seen this. 3pp publishers seem to handle most of the subsystems, with in-house content breaking out into spells vs. talents
I also like combat maneuvers. At low levels (which is mostly the way I play), they give an important tactical option. My last two characters were an oracle and a bard, neither particularly melee-ish characters, and CM gave me a lot of things to do.
Most of the changes I saw Paizo make to the core mechanics were deceptive and aimed at folks who didn't understand the fundamental math. Which, I mean, those are legitimate customers, but doing it properly would not have caused Paizo to lose those customers either. From my end of things, here's what went wrong:
- Paizo offered all characters slightly more feats, then broke apart and nerfed every martial feat while leaving the caster ones untouched. As a result, nonmagical concepts now have less effective content than ever.
- The combat maneuver system streamlined the math, and then made it nonfunctional. For something that was supposed to make those useable, it certainly falls apart at the exact same time it did in 3.5 - and unlike in 3.5, their additional content hasn't offered meaningful support.
- Streamlined skill system was good! Sadly the introduction of the Fly skill has slapped non-casters in the face yet again.
- New class features introduced in core didn't address real problems with the classes and set a terrible precedent
These problems, as you put them here are not very well defined. "They didn't fix problems and added more problems" is meaningless without saying what those problems are, and why they are a problem.
Adding the Fly skill means they really think that spellcasters and flight-enabling magic are a core part of the game. How is that a "Slap in the face"?
It's just that without some details, it boils down to "the rules are bad because they're bad"
@Lord_Gareth I know a guy who passed to PF some years ago. I just got the feeling that he doesn't care if the wizard is even more powerful than his rogue now, but he's content with his rogue being able to get more things than he had in 3.x
@lisardggY Because non-native fliers can't take ranks, which means that when melee tries to handle flying enemies by grabbing flight themselves they're consistently out-maneuvered.
Which means that now not even WBL can solve the flight problem unless you're already a caster.
@lisardggY It mostly has to do with the kinds of monsters that are iconic and/or common to PF. Bestiary is full of challenges that require flight to solve.
3.5 was the same way, but back before the Fly skill's implementation melee could solve that issue with money. It was annoying but doable.
Likewise, the summary on combat maneuver math goes like this:
CMD outstrips CMB pretty rapidly. The way the math breaks out, if you invest in CMB you can pull off your one or two tricks most of the time against humanoids, bumping it up to about 60% success rate against CR-appropriate class-leveled enemies if you invest.
Sadly, it does not work at all on anything else.
Once you get to the point of about dire wolves, a combination of size bonuses, monster traits, and inflated AC means that non-humanoid enemies can safely ignore every kind of combat maneuver while they trash your overspecialized self.
I remember playing combat maneuver-focused characters in 3.5, another D20 system (BESM) and in PF. Only in PF did I feel I could actually do something with it.
Maybe it's because of my focus on low-level play, and it breaks down further on.
Oh they were terrible in 3.5 too, with the possible exceptions of tripping (thanks to Stand Still and its friends) and Bull Rush (thanks to Dungeoncrasher)
But Pathfinder first claimed to fix them, and then made them the central focus of its melee paradigm - especially in splatbooks
@lisardggY No argument here, though Dungeoncrasher is more like a deep dip.
Thing is, meaningfully investing in PF CManeuvers also requires the use of specific options (often in combination) and still falls apart at about ninth level
You can throw everything you've got at it and break out on the losing side every time unless the DM caters to your trick.
Two different characters played to about lv6 felt that it works great. Two characters in 3.5/BESM, and it felt broken. Something changed for the better. Is it perfect? Undoubtedly not. I still feel it's an improvement.
Part of Paizo's paradigm is the statement, "No dead class levels." On the surface this isn't...necessarily...unreasonable. You can balance a class just fine with 'dead' levels but they're kinda a feel-bad circumstance and a frequent public complaint. So, fine, alright, you get rid of 'em.
But what ended up happening is that some classes got meaningful features, and others did not.
Fighter, for example, got a bunch of stuff that either A. essentially does nothing or B. augments stuff it was already good at while doing absolutely nothing to address its existing problems of having nothing to do outside of combat
Whereas Sorcerer got a whole bunch of really cool, character-defining features that it did not need.
@lisardggY Pretty much this. Then there was their professional conduct after, but my complaints about the system are pretty much this.
It's not so much that their rules are terrible, they're just not the improvement that was promised. None of these complaints seem to indicate that PF is worse than 3.5, only that it's not as good as it should have been.
Or, alternately, that you've grown used to 3.5's shortcomings, and now must come to terms with a different set.
@Lord_Gareth That's where it gets subjective. Since I never had expectations and never listened to PF's promises, so I am not disappointed. Is the game better for me than it is for you?
Q: I am getting aquainted to The riddle of steel. How does skill increase work? That is, if there are no ranks in a skill, it defaults to [<other skill> - x]. Now what happens when I put 1 rank into a skill?
I suppose I could bounce over to the Overlook Hotel and we could talk shop at a different time convenient to the two of us. Sadly, "right now" is pretty much the only certified time for me >.<
@Lord_Gareth looks like you got distracted from what would have been a good read to me.
Especially because I think the claims the abilities make for themselves is not a PF problem, it's a 3.PF problem to me. So, I probably didn't really get what you wanted to talk about.
You know in the 70's the entire country of Switzerland called in to work? Being gay was classified as a disease in their laws, and millions upon millions of Swiss workers called in claiming they "felt too gay to work."
@Lord_Gareth Not only in America. Russia and Uganda, for instance. And only the latter is doing it for reasons partially incited by the American right wing.
I don't think that has anything to do with "capitalism" one way or the other. The Civil Rights Act is not an attack on private ownership of the means of production or the ability to sell anything on the open market.
@Zachiel I was using it in the context of "and sometimes you fall asleep when it's not your turn," so I didn't want to make the rest of the explanation too negative. ;)
