I guess that my complaint is that anyone with reasonably solid experience with 3.5E would, on a first read through, pick up around half of the mistakes that are present in a given book. I know that I do, and that's within a day. Are margins so tight in the industry that a few hundred dollars couldn't be spent sitting down an avid gamer or three with a free supply of chips and coke for a day and a new release book? That would also lead to questions that would clarify some PrC special abilities and feats.
PHB II and Improved Natural Attack
- Thread starter Tetsubo
- Start date
Moon-Lancer
First Post
one wrong doesent make a right a another wrong. Becuse the monk stat block got ina req wrong doesent invalidate the fact its in the block.
You still need a bab of 4 for ina.
You still need a bab of 4 for ina.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Artoomis said:Frustrated is one thing. Accusing WotC of "major incompetence...unforgivable" is another. It's going overboard with criticism.
It's fair to say we'd like to see them do a better job. But, since we do keep buying their books, I'd say we keep forgiving these errors and somhow dealing with all this "incompetence."
I'd challenge ANYONE on these boards to do a better in in EVERY CASE. That's the issue, you see - they (WotC) have to be darn near perfect in EVERY CASE or they get accused of gross incompetence.
I'd like to see anyone here to a better job of balancing costs, deadlines, desired accuracy, fan criticism and everything else and still stay in business.
I'd say they are doing a pretty fair job. Sure I'd like to see them do better, but I, for one, am not willing to pay more to get a higher quality product.
We seem to have a little problem in this country - a tendancy to use the strongest adjectives we can find, Everything, it seems, is either the "best" or the "worst."
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, irony intended, BEST RESPONSE EVAR.
Moon-Lancer
First Post
lol.
Thurbane
First Post
No seriously, it is a bit pathetic that any "professional" company could trot out publications with such glaring errors in them.
All jokes aside, imagine if this happened with car manuals, or medical textbooks, people would be up in arms...
Errata is all fine and well, but if a major error in a book has put a serious hole in a campaign that may have spanned 20+ years, it simply is not good enough. Heck, if I submitted such glaring errors in reports I do on a daily basis in my workplace, my boss would would boot my butt to the street.
Just because D&D is a hobby rather than a profession, it is no excuse to have lax proofreaders on staff. I mean for crying out loud, how hard is it to pick these things up? I strongly suspect that the people editing these books have never been within an arms length of a d20.
All jokes aside, imagine if this happened with car manuals, or medical textbooks, people would be up in arms...
Errata is all fine and well, but if a major error in a book has put a serious hole in a campaign that may have spanned 20+ years, it simply is not good enough. Heck, if I submitted such glaring errors in reports I do on a daily basis in my workplace, my boss would would boot my butt to the street.
Just because D&D is a hobby rather than a profession, it is no excuse to have lax proofreaders on staff. I mean for crying out loud, how hard is it to pick these things up? I strongly suspect that the people editing these books have never been within an arms length of a d20.
wayne62682
First Post
What I want to know is if the writers/designers are supposed to be gamers, how they allow some of the errors through in the first place? What gamer makes a character or writes ideas for a character without checking the prereqs for what they're picking?? I can forgive spelling errors and such, but blatant errors in core mechanics? Hell no I won't forgive that; these people claim to be gamers as well as designers, they ought to know better.
Any real gamer goes through a character and checks things as they pick them, not decide and then double-check to make sure they're within the rules later. Some of the errors I've seen in PHII like the Monk thing and what I said earlier about sorcerers (three spells instead of two; it's not hard to check the damn chart first!) are unforgiveable simply because any gamer worth his/her salt would check it in the first place, and for whatever reason whoever wrote it decided not to.
Any real gamer goes through a character and checks things as they pick them, not decide and then double-check to make sure they're within the rules later. Some of the errors I've seen in PHII like the Monk thing and what I said earlier about sorcerers (three spells instead of two; it's not hard to check the damn chart first!) are unforgiveable simply because any gamer worth his/her salt would check it in the first place, and for whatever reason whoever wrote it decided not to.
lukelightning
First Post
To fix the stats block problem all they need is a well-built character creation program that checks things like prereqs, etc.
Cedric
First Post
I'm sorry, it's very easy after the fact to find errors in most any publication. However, I think many of you are underestimating the complexity of any task as difficult as writing a rule book for a game system.
Even if you had everything exactly right, some publisher could think he's doing you a favor by realigning a column so it prints better and in doing so wind up moving feats out of order.
That's a simplistic example, but my point is that any task of that magnitude is subject to human error in many places. You hope you catch everything, but often times you won't.
Even if you had everything exactly right, some publisher could think he's doing you a favor by realigning a column so it prints better and in doing so wind up moving feats out of order.
That's a simplistic example, but my point is that any task of that magnitude is subject to human error in many places. You hope you catch everything, but often times you won't.
Cedric said:
The problem that I have with this justification is that it assumes that quality is a one-time effort (btw Cedric, I'm not trying to pick on you, you were just the most recent poster to state this oppinion). It isn't. True quality assurance doesn't just mean getting things right the first time, it means looking at what the product turned out like the first time and fine tuning it more and more as time goes on. It is in responding to problems that I think WotC has failed.
For example, many manufacturing certifications (ISO, etc) have strict requirements for QA standards, including testing, problem reporting, resolution finding, change implementation, documentation, and a well defined process for all of these things. WotC has their own equivalents of these in many places, but have dropped the ball on many of them
In regards to testing, I know that WotC has editors and playtesters. They generally do an okay job. But there are always bound to be problems that get through. For finding problems, their system is limited, but potentially effective. They have a fairly easily accessible Customer Service department, and their own message boards for people to discuss issues.
WotC also has a decent system set up for documenting and informing people of changes. For errors, they create errata. For ambiguities, they have the FAQ and the sage. And they have a decent heirarchy system with the Primary Source rule.
When in comes to implementing changes, though, is where they have really dropped the ball. In any case where they deem an error to not be significant enough (like this one), they choose to ignore it. In other cases, they go against their own published standards (i.e. the Primary Source rule) and make changes to the product in the FAQ or RotG articles. They are also very slow at implementing changes to the errata and FAQ, as noted by the continued existence of blatant errors like the lance entry in the FAQ (Hypersmurph even has an email from CustSev stating they know about the problem and are working on getting it fixed. The email is now a few months old). The issues that I think are the worst though, are when they make changes to existing product and they don't even point out which parts have been revised (this is present in the Spell Compendium, and I believe in Complete Psionics as well). These changes also requires you to spend more money to get the fix, which is just adding insult to injury.
The bottom line is that WotC does an (arguably) acceptable job of quality the first time around, but they are horrible at follow through.
Last edited:
Cedric
First Post
Deset Gled said:
I agree with you completely on this point. I really just thought that some people were taking an overly simplistic approach to the level of difficulty involved in writing, playtesting, editing and publishing a primary rulebook or source supplement on the scale we are talking about.
However, from having worked in quality for over a decade (I'm a Quality/Process Engineer by trade), I can guarantee they have nothing so robust as an ISO style quality system...and furthermore I would be the first person to say that they would benefit from one in terms of quality.
However, their bottom line would likely not benefit, as I feel product quality (in the terms we're discussing) has a relatively minor impact on their current and future sales. In other words...they do an adequate job in an industry where adequate is the status quo.
I'd love to see their quality improve, I just balk at seeing a bunch of people pointing out how easy it would be.
Hehe, as to picking on me, no worries. I have been posting a lot lately because I cleared out several work projects recently in preparation for a large series of projects...and the company put those on hold. So I have free time to post and have been posting a lot and always encourage dissenting opinions, especially ones like your own which are always well thought out and presented.
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