Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 03:33:53 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

I just watched his video and to be honest I dont really understand what his point was.

He complains that a player chooses to memorise say Fireball and then complains that their character casts Fireball over and over again.

All I can say is, Dude you have played DnD before, right?

Shock and surprise!  Shasarak can't follow a criticism of PF?  Who would have thought it was possible!?!

Let me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PMLet me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Can't this criticism be applied to any system ever where characters are distinguished in any way whatsoever?

Otherwise being a 20 year lawyer is the same as being a 30 year navy seal.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 03:33:53 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

I just watched his video and to be honest I dont really understand what his point was.

He complains that a player chooses to memorise say Fireball and then complains that their character casts Fireball over and over again.

All I can say is, Dude you have played DnD before, right?

Shock and surprise!  Shasarak can't follow a criticism of PF?  Who would have thought it was possible!?!

Let me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Yeah what a fucking idiot.  You choose feats that let you do things better, you do those better things because that is what you wanted to do and then you complain because you always do the things that you wanted your character to do.

Fucking Genius!

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 18, 2020, 05:24:49 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PMLet me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Can't this criticism be applied to any system ever where characters are distinguished in any way whatsoever?

Otherwise being a 20 year lawyer is the same as being a 30 year navy seal.

It's a problem that rpgs keep running into for various design reasons.   In many ways 3.5 was the apogee of this especially with it's prestige classes - that's a lot of the caster/martial thing.  You could build a Fighter to specialise in Spiked Chains and even take a special prestige class - or you could play a wizard that could totally change what his thing was every day.  So if you knew you were likely to fight giants the wizard could prepare lots of spells that targetted Will saves and avoid those that targetted Fort and the Spiked Chain Fighter could sit in his corner and cry.

Of course, part of the above is what happens when theoretical optimisation crashes into reality - just don't make a Fighter that specialises in tripping people just because someone posted a build on the internet (actually by late Pathfinder 1 you had enought feats that you could build to have several tricks you could switch between - but this tends to get lost because optimisation is so focused on maximum theoretical efficiency).

The other option is circumstantial choice - a list of things are situationally useful that you can choose between so that you can effectively respond to different situations.  This makes the game more tactically complex and would seem to fit the aims of a rpg better - you're making strategic choices so you don't have conflict between choosing widgets for character growth reasons or optimisation (however, these can synergise)- presumably it's totally in character for your Fighter to try and choose the most tactically appropriate option in the moment.  However, there's reasons this isn't done very often.  It greatly increases the cognitive mode and level of mastery needed - and this narrows the audience.  If you've build a character that has only one or two things to do then it's relatively easy to play, but if you have a long list of possible approaches then the game can slow to a crawl (which it often did in 4E which really wasn't that tactically complex)

One of the big mistakes a lot of games do is they allow players to build to make the game less fun by removing some of the tacticaly complexity built in from the start.
Take Archery for example.  Archery is difficult to make interesting - you stand and you ping away.  Two things games often do are 1) put some kind of penalty for shooting into melee, and 2) put restrictions on shooting when in melee.  Both these things offer some tactical choice - the first means you need to consider targetting - is it better to focus fire with a penalty or aim for an unengaged target?  How do I position myself so that i don't become engaged in melee (or have a backup plan for when I do).  However, the first thing that many games do is offer feats or widgets to take away those restrictions.  This has two problems - it makes archery boring again and if makes these feats compulsory as archery has to then be balanced around the assumption that everyone will take them (so if you don't take them your archer will feel inneffective.)

This is the illusion of choice - it's also adding complexity to a game, for the sole reason of allowing the players to remove it and has the byproduct of making anyone who doesn't specialise in archery suck at it more then they should.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 03:33:53 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

I just watched his video and to be honest I dont really understand what his point was.

He complains that a player chooses to memorise say Fireball and then complains that their character casts Fireball over and over again.

All I can say is, Dude you have played DnD before, right?

Let me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells. 

That is the gist of it.  In the new 3 action economy,  he's also talking about some spells as they too fall into the same trap. There is an illusion of choice in how many magic missles you can cast each round (1,2,or 3) because it's never better to cast less than 3- iow, sounds great on paper, in play not so much.

And then his argument is:  if you have two systems that essentially have the same issue- one complicated and crunchy (PF2) and another less fiddly and  faster/easier to run, then why bother with the crunchy game?

But I also think his problem is he has been running one of the APs for the past year. IME, APs are a poor way to run a game anyway unless you want to play out a  movie script (which is truly an "illusion of choice" problem in gaming) , and  to top it off the general conclusion is that Paizo did a subpar job on the first one they released because it was being written and whatnot as final development was being done (like Tyranny of Dragons, and 5E).

I get what he is saying, but this is an issue with any RPG that is designed heavily around combat mechanics (which is any version of WOTC D&D, and PF , for sure).

Quote from: Slambo on December 18, 2020, 03:22:41 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:19:04 PM

Quote from: Slambo on December 18, 2020, 03:16:16 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

You mean the taking 20 video? The comment section on that is gold.

That's the one. I saw in my yootoob feed that guy from taking 20 was soliciting a vote on whether to post his video rebuttal to all those slamming him and his players.

The thread on the Paizo  PF2 forums makes my brain hurt.

I bet, i saw a ton of comments basically telling him he cant have a negative opinion on PF vause he has a youtube channel and people might not try it if he does. A few mentioned the game is hurting for players, but im not sure if theyre reliable for the purpose of this thread.

Yeah, those were funny. I mean, the guy has a quarter million subscribers and is apparently a big influencer on yootoob, so it has the potential to hurt, but still- he cannot have an opinion and post it? 

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 06:16:28 PM
That is the gist of it.  In the new 3 action economy,  he's also talking about some spells as they too fall into the same trap. There is an illusion of choice in how many magic missles you can cast each round (1,2,or 3) because it's never better to cast less than 3- iow, sounds great on paper, in play not so much.

If you run a white room game where the Wizard can just stand there uninterrupted and use all of his actions casting the 3 action version then yeah of course that is the only way that you would ever cast magic missile.

I never see that in an actual real game but sure on paper I would agree 100%.

QuoteAnd then his argument is:  if you have two systems that essentially have the same issue- one complicated and crunchy (PF2) and another less fiddly and  faster/easier to run, then why bother with the crunchy game?

But I also think his problem is he has been running one of the APs for the past year. IME, APs are a poor way to run a game anyway unless you want to play out a  movie script (which is truly an "illusion of choice" problem in gaming) , and  to top it off the general conclusion is that Paizo did a subpar job on the first one they released because it was being written and whatnot as final development was being done (like Tyranny of Dragons, and 5E).

I get what he is saying, but this is an issue with any RPG that is designed heavily around combat mechanics (which is any version of WOTC D&D, and PF , for sure).

I am working through the Age of Ashes campaign and even though aspects of it are a flaming bag of dog poop on your front porch, the combat aspect has been extremely variable.  Especially the critical hit rules can change up the combat very quickly.

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 07:55:54 PM
I am working through the Age of Ashes campaign and even though aspects of it are a flaming bag of dog poop on your front porch, the combat aspect has been extremely variable.  Especially the critical hit rules can change up the combat very quickly.

What level are the players at? I ask because he says fairly early on that this did not become apparent until they had gotten to higher levels in the year plus campaign.

Quote from: lordmalachdrim on December 18, 2020, 08:40:29 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 07:55:54 PM
I am working through the Age of Ashes campaign and even though aspects of it are a flaming bag of dog poop on your front porch, the combat aspect has been extremely variable.  Especially the critical hit rules can change up the combat very quickly.

What level are the players at? I ask because he says fairly early on that this did not become apparent until they had gotten to higher levels in the year plus campaign.

We are on book 4 which is level 12 almost leveling up to level 13 (if they can beat the last boss monster to rescue the captured Dwarves.)

In the last fight, the Fighter took almost 300 hp damage and was kept on his feet only with the help of the Druid and Wizard.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 18, 2020, 05:24:49 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PMLet me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Can't this criticism be applied to any system ever where characters are distinguished in any way whatsoever?

Otherwise being a 20 year lawyer is the same as being a 30 year navy seal.

Uh, no?

First, im pretty sure most of us play RPGs to escape the constraints of the real world, not replay them.  And secondly, I'm pretty sure that a navy seal doesn't approach every situation by repeating the exact same moves every time.  A terrorist?  Shove prone, shield bash, attack with advantage.  Another? Shove prone, shield bash, attack with advantage.  A terrorist in a wheelchair!  Shove pr... Oh no, I'm defeated!

Not every system is built so that you are an expert in a handful of things and a noob at everything else.  It is a common design problem in RPGs, but not every one suffers it to the same extent.  If you abstract enough, a shark is a camel, because they both are living creatures.  That doesn't make a shark a camel...

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 05:37:53 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PM

Quote from: Shasarak on December 18, 2020, 03:33:53 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

I just watched his video and to be honest I dont really understand what his point was.

He complains that a player chooses to memorise say Fireball and then complains that their character casts Fireball over and over again.

All I can say is, Dude you have played DnD before, right?

Shock and surprise!  Shasarak can't follow a criticism of PF?  Who would have thought it was possible!?!

Let me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Yeah what a fucking idiot.  You choose feats that let you do things better, you do those better things because that is what you wanted to do and then you complain because you always do the things that you wanted your character to do.

Fucking Genius!

Yeah, because we all want to play Assembly-Line: The RPG.  How dare he want variety in gameplay!

Quote from: TJS on December 18, 2020, 05:48:03 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 18, 2020, 05:24:49 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 05:04:40 PMLet me help.  His video is complaining that, by focusing on character builds, the game becomes reduced to players using the same set of actions over-and-over, because the mechanics have made anything other than that small subset of actions inefficient to the point of being substandard.  He's not talking about spells.  He's talking about the consequence of feat-based character builds, where not having a feat means you are terrible at something and having the feat means that it would be a waste of your turn to do something else.  5e has this somewhat (if you play with feats), too, but not to the same extent as a game whose bonuses scale to a larger extent.  It's a feature of feat-type systems, and I don't think its a solvable problem within that context.

Can't this criticism be applied to any system ever where characters are distinguished in any way whatsoever?

Otherwise being a 20 year lawyer is the same as being a 30 year navy seal.

It's a problem that rpgs keep running into for various design reasons.   In many ways 3.5 was the apogee of this especially with it's prestige classes - that's a lot of the caster/martial thing.  You could build a Fighter to specialise in Spiked Chains and even take a special prestige class - or you could play a wizard that could totally change what his thing was every day.  So if you knew you were likely to fight giants the wizard could prepare lots of spells that targetted Will saves and avoid those that targetted Fort and the Spiked Chain Fighter could sit in his corner and cry.

Of course, part of the above is what happens when theoretical optimisation crashes into reality - just don't make a Fighter that specialises in tripping people just because someone posted a build on the internet (actually by late Pathfinder 1 you had enought feats that you could build to have several tricks you could switch between - but this tends to get lost because optimisation is so focused on maximum theoretical efficiency).

The other option is circumstantial choice - a list of things are situationally useful that you can choose between so that you can effectively respond to different situations.  This makes the game more tactically complex and would seem to fit the aims of a rpg better - you're making strategic choices so you don't have conflict between choosing widgets for character growth reasons or optimisation (however, these can synergise)- presumably it's totally in character for your Fighter to try and choose the most tactically appropriate option in the moment.  However, there's reasons this isn't done very often.  It greatly increases the cognitive mode and level of mastery needed - and this narrows the audience.  If you've build a character that has only one or two things to do then it's relatively easy to play, but if you have a long list of possible approaches then the game can slow to a crawl (which it often did in 4E which really wasn't that tactically complex)

One of the big mistakes a lot of games do is they allow players to build to make the game less fun by removing some of the tacticaly complexity built in from the start.
Take Archery for example.  Archery is difficult to make interesting - you stand and you ping away.  Two things games often do are 1) put some kind of penalty for shooting into melee, and 2) put restrictions on shooting when in melee.  Both these things offer some tactical choice - the first means you need to consider targetting - is it better to focus fire with a penalty or aim for an unengaged target?  How do I position myself so that i don't become engaged in melee (or have a backup plan for when I do).  However, the first thing that many games do is offer feats or widgets to take away those restrictions.  This has two problems - it makes archery boring again and if makes these feats compulsory as archery has to then be balanced around the assumption that everyone will take them (so if you don't take them your archer will feel inneffective.)

This is the illusion of choice - it's also adding complexity to a game, for the sole reason of allowing the players to remove it and has the byproduct of making anyone who doesn't specialise in archery suck at it more then they should.

Apparently you must have a PhD in RPGs, since the concepts you have described above seem to be incomprehensible to the average poster on this thread.  Or maybe there are none so blind as those who don't want to see...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2020, 09:29:32 PM
Yeah, because we all want to play Assembly-Line: The RPG.  How dare he want variety in gameplay!

Take the Druid example from the video.  Druids already have many more options then turning into Dinosaurs and Biting and Clawing.

Has he tried, I dont know, not turning into a Dinosaur?

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 06:16:28 PM
...But I also think his problem is he has been running one of the APs for the past year. IME, APs are a poor way to run a game anyway unless you want to play out a  movie script (which is truly an "illusion of choice" problem in gaming) , and  to top it off the general conclusion is that Paizo did a subpar job on the first one they released because it was being written and whatnot as final development was being done (like Tyranny of Dragons, and 5E)....

That is on Baizuo.

They designed the game with the intention to sell AP's to run it. They are in no position to cry foul now just because they stuffed it on release.

Absolutely legitimate to critique the game when played as presented by Baizuo on release.

Once you put out the product - no backsies!

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 06:22:22 PM

Quote from: Slambo on December 18, 2020, 03:22:41 PM

I bet, i saw a ton of comments basically telling him he cant have a negative opinion on PF vause he has a youtube channel and people might not try it if he does. A few mentioned the game is hurting for players, but im not sure if theyre reliable for the purpose of this thread.

Yeah, those were funny. I mean, the guy has a quarter million subscribers and is apparently a big influencer on yootoob, so it has the potential to hurt, but still- he cannot have an opinion and post it? 

He played the game for a year. He didn't run a couple of one shots then post a scathing diatribe. Ran it RAW for a whole year.

He has a right to his opinion.

He must know that putting his opinion up for the world to see has cost him any future free books or friendly relations with Baizuo. Which IMHO takes a bit of conviction on his part.

And while it is perfectly reasonable to disagree with his views (after all they must be selling that thing to someone...) The fact that he publicly nuked his warm relationship with Baizuo in the process does give some weight to his criticisms.

A Response to @Taking20 Regarding Pathfinder 2e



This guy seems like he knows a bit more then Cody.