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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 7485540" data-attributes="member: 9789">We all have our quibbles and pet peeves:  there's another thread for that.  "This class lost this" or "this mechanic is dumb" or even "this is really confusing" are all important, but solvable / houserule-able issues.  Even the second-biggest issue in my mind - which is that the entire playtest was poorly designed* - is disappointing, and it will negatively color the overall impression of the new rules, but you can always try your own stories and characters.The elephant in the room, in my opinion, is that the entire concept of changing Pathfinder is an anathema to many (most?) of the people who play Pathfinder.  The demographic of people who play PF is generally, by definition, people who didn't want to change.  They flocked to 3.75 to avoid 4.0, and if they're still here it's because they didn't like 5.0 enough to switch as well.The group I tried the playtest with all decided to quit and never play again after 3 battles.  (Character creation - 2.5 hrs, intro and 3 battles - 2.5 hrs, so 5 hrs total.)  No offense to them, but I felt like they didn't give it that much of a fair shake because they didn't want to learn new rules all over again.  They didn't like being confused.  They didn't like not knowing what they were doing.  They were annoyed at all the things that made it hard to play:  difficult, complex concepts that were poorly or only half explained.  I felt like nothing in the playtest was any more complex on an individual level than anything in original Pathfinder (once you actually understood it, which was impossible for some concepts), but because it was so complex and different than what they were used to, it was rejected.  I just don't know if they would have been happy with any major overhaul, because there's no way you can take a game as incredibly complex as PF - which they like because they've basically been playing some variation of 3.0 for 18 years - and make complex changes and still make them happy.  (And yes, I just used the word "complex" like 10 times for a reason.)  Change is something they don't enjoy, and so I don't know that Paizo ever really had much of a chance.  (And I'm not even talking about all the slaughtered sacred cows that were grumbled about during the game - which was always going to be an issue anyway.)*I mean, maybe it was possible:  but this playtest wasted its one chance to make a good impression.  The rulebook and the first adventure should have been proof-read by someone who had never played the game before and had no one else from Paizo around to explain anything:  they would have learned a LOT.  As it was, the playtest seemed designed to test all sorts of niche rules and corner cases so the devs could get an idea of how they played out on a big scale (poison, invisibility, stealth rules, difficult encounters to learn about dying, etc.).  This was a colossal mistake.  They should have had several easy, straightforward battles to ease everyone into the rules.  Trying to understand how poison works while also understanding how healing and medicine and casting and attacking and dying and then not dying worked was completely overwhelming.  (Not to mention one long-time pet peeve of PF maps:  no space.  All their maps need to be 2x as big, maybe 3x.  We spent most of the game stuck in a line in 5' corridors, fighting mobs one at a time, which was also awful.)  They should have treated everyone like a beginner, because we all are.  Instead we were thrown into the deep end and now we don't want to waste our time on a confusing mess anymore.</blockquote>

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