Advanced Race Guide

[Marediv]

What are you saying is missing from the bllodlines and feats from Ultimate Magic? I have not seen anything missing, but I have not really looked to see if everything is there. I am sure they are doing what they can to keep everything updated and complete, but if some things are missing it might help to mention some of them so they can know where to look to complete said book.

Just saying that saying something is not there does not really help without saying what is missing.

[Aaron]

Dwayne does have a fair (if stinging!) point. There are a few items from UM that are still pending implementation, such as the Eldritch Heritage feat, and we are aware of them. In our defense, the remaining things require a lot of work to do, and we are catching them up, in between big releases. For example, we had to implement a whole new way of handling companions in order to get the Broodmaster working (which took weeks of work on my part), but that was done a few releases ago.

I love this program, and I use it all the time myself, so I want it to be as near to perfect as you all do. I am sorry that it is not and I am working on getting things squared away as quickly as possible. That's all I can say.

[Dwayne]

I really don't want to be mean. It has been a long time and the Crossblooded bloodlines are still not finished. The last time I asked about it the response was that it would take too much time to finish them. Look it up. All three of the Eldritch Heritige feats are still not implemented and are there in name only. Spell Perfection from the Advanced Player's Guide is still not implemented. There are others still not implemented but I can't think of them right now.

[rob]

Here's the quandary we're in. Paizo doesn't consult us regarding whether a particular new mechanic will be easy or hard to implement, nor do they give us advance notice about what new mechanics are being introduced in an upcoming book. So there are invariably a handful of new mechanics that require a week or more each to implement (i.e. the Broodmaster). We also receive the books only after Paizo has completely wrapped it up for printing, which is sometimes barely a month before the book hits the streets.

We can do as Dwayne recommends and complete every tiny detail of each book before starting the next one. If we do this, though, the other books will start to backlog, since Paizo isn't going to slow down their production of new books for us. The alternative is to get 98+% of the books completed right away, circling back to address the extremely complex exceptions as time allows. This puts 98% of the material into everyone's hands as quickly as possible.

Based on the feedback we've received, the latter approach is far more desirable by our users. Our goal is to make our users as happy as possible, so we've continued with that approach.

Is it a perfect solution? Nope. But users vastly prefer it over waiting weeks or months to get access to the data files for a new book. And that's what would happen if we completed each book 100% before moving to the next one.

If you elect not to purchase the ARG add-on until it is 100% complete, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. However, if achieving 100% will delay the release more than a few days, we're willing to release it without a few pieces so that the vast majority of players can immediately leverage all the pieces that *are* complete. An early release doesn't hurt anyone, but it definitely helps everyone that wants the completed pieces.

Hope this explanation helps...

[rob]

After completing the above post, I realized that I hadn't addressed an obvious question from Dwayne's last post. Why haven't we yet implemented some of the missing mechanics from the APG or UM?

Everything here gets prioritized, and the single biggest factor in prioritizing anything is how many users will be impacted - negatively by omitting something or positively by adding something. If a particular mechanic of a book is asked about by only a few users over a lengthy span time, it's clearly not nearly as important as a mechanic of a different book that is asked for by numerous users.

In addition, there's the question of how long something will take to add. If one mechanic will take us two weeks to implement and another three days, and they are both asked for by about the same number of users, we'll do the one that takes three days first. If a mechanic from a old book takes weeks to implement, it also competes against all the new books that are being released for time in the schedule.

It's a juggling act on our end, and we're constantly re-evaluating the schedule and re-prioritizing all these competing tasks. We'll never be able to please everyone perfectly, so the biggest driving force behind our prioritization efforts is user demand. The more people that want something, the higher it gets prioritized.

I guess the bottom line with some of the long-unimplemented mechanics from the APG and UM is that there just haven't been many people asking for them. The net result is that other mechanics (and the onslaught of new books) keep getting prioritized above them. If some of these missing mechanics are important to a lot of you, let us know. That's how to boost their priority in our development schedule.

As I stated in my previous post, this is definitely not an ideal solution. But we don't have the staff to get everything done in the time available. This solution ensures that the most users get the most benefit, which is the best we're going to achieve.

Hope this (further) explanation helps...

[Kaleb]

looking forward to the ARG when it comes out latter this week. Thanks for your hard work it is not simple even doing basic scripts I know I have tried. How much is the ARG going to cost?

[Kiteran]

Aaron & Rob,

I'm currently playing a crossblooded sorcerer and so the fixes whenever they happen are welcome. But I greatly appreciate what I have now.

I've asked AncientOne if he could make the spell list editable with his custom sheet. If A1 can do this then a workaround for the crossblooded error could be had. At least on an esthetic level. Lord knows I could probably fix it with a 50 cent bottle of white out...(shhhhh, don't tell AncienOne).

But I don't play with hero labs open, I just print stuff out. I understand Dwaynes concern; If you are counting on HL to do the number crunching not having something crunch does you little good.

Looking forward to the APG and will pick it up ASAP.

-Kit

[Dwayne]

Maybe Lone Wolf could start posting a description on the downloads they sell letting people who are buying that not everything is implemented. Something like the crossblooded bloodline and eldritch heritige feats are too complicated for us to code so it may be years until they are available. That would let users decide if they wanted to buy or skip the product. As it is now the buyer assumes everything is there since nothing says otherwise. Then there would be no complaints. Problem solved.

[UndeadDan]

I would actually be in favor of a single document posted somewhere that plainly stated what hasn't been implemented fully.

[John]

I wanted to provide everyone with an update on the ARG.

At this point, we have finished coding all the individual races. We're in the process of testing right now. Additionally, we believe the race builder will be included in the initial release; it's almost done, so it is looking good, barring any unexpected issues during testing.

We will release the add-on as soon as testing is concluded. We hope it will be out Sunday, but it is possible that it could take us until Tuesday to wrap our testing. We'll continue to provide updates if things take an unexpected turn.

Additionally, there was a question about how much our ARG add-on will cost. It will cost $9.99.