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I contacted Google when the first thread appeared on the Onyx Path forums, it seems they got onto it pretty quickly. I'm pleased with the overall response of the community and the diligence of moderators on other forums, thank you.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:32
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bartkusa posted:Exalted's development is actually a subtle primer on the wickedness of empire. The whole "We're keeping it secret because we think you'll enjoy the surprise" thing is pretty paternalistic and authoritarian.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:41
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I, too, am nodding in sober satisfaction that the leak has been nipped in the bud. Where the files at, though.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:41
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Ferrinus posted:I, too, am nodding in sober satisfaction that the leak has been nipped in the bud. Where the files at, though. Oh, you.
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Jun 13, 2014 22:02
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I can't help but feel that there's a lot of anxiousness from backers of the kickstarter, and for several reasons. First, the original release date was overly optimistic. Second, we've been promised that the mechanics will be better, but aren't being shown a lick of them (unless you're a playtester) while constantly being told "We promise it'll be better this time." Third, what little we have seen does little to support the promise of "it'll be better." We're still getting BP/XP costs being different, making chargen into an extra game you have to learn to play before even playing the game, and for every awesome piece of fluff we've been given, we've seen some pretty awful stuff, too. Over the course of nearly a year, I've gone from the heights of excitement (I literally was watching the Onyx Path page and Kickstarter to see when the Limited Edition Kickstarter would go up) to despairing that we are going to get something that isn't really a significant improvement over 2e to at this point just wanting the damned thing to be finished so I can get the book I spent over a hundred dollars on about a year ago. The whole time, Holden et al's unwillingness to really have a dialogue with the community has been from frustrating to downright off-putting. I'm glad that Stephen has stuck around to keep telling us it'll be different this time, but with limited power to really affect change to the system at this point, it's also frustrating at times.bartkusa posted:Exalted's development is actually a subtle primer on the wickedness of empire. This is about spot on at this point. The team burned up a ton of goodwill during the kickstarter, and the absolute refusal to release any mechanical details ahead of the game's release, especially when contrasted against the openness of other authors with the publisher, cost even more. I honestly won't be surprised when 3e gets a pile of scathing reviews because we were promised the moon and the stars while the designers still live in a space where having things have different costs from chargen to actual play is a good idea. For every hint of innovation, we get as much legacy mechanics that are hated.
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Jun 13, 2014 23:29
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viewtyjoe posted:This is about spot on at this point. The team burned up a ton of goodwill during the kickstarter, and the absolute refusal to release any mechanical details ahead of the game's release, especially when contrasted against the openness of other authors with the publisher, cost even more. I honestly won't be surprised when 3e gets a pile of scathing reviews because we were promised the moon and the stars while the designers still live in a space where having things have different costs from chargen to actual play is a good idea. For every hint of innovation, we get as much legacy mechanics that are hated. I still look forward to making a Martial Arts style that has two branches: one requiring that you have no Martial Arts (dots) but that you have Martial Arts (Charms), one requiring that you have Martial Arts (dots) but that you have no Martial Arts (Charms). The capstone lets you be a Martial Artist and not be a Martial Artist at the same time, acting as an esoteric defense and surprise enabler from flipping you in and out of combat repeatedly.
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Jun 13, 2014 23:49
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I'm pretty confident that every instance of the word [REDACTED] in mentions of Ex3 rules is secretly just another instance of 'Martial Arts'.
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Jun 13, 2014 23:52
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I've seen some of the spoilers and honestly, they're not earth-shattering. Some of it's cool, some of it's concerning. Some of it's actually assuaged my concerns! Why go to so much trouble to keep it secret?
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Jun 14, 2014 00:30
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Bigup DJ posted:I've seen some of the spoilers and honestly, they're not earth-shattering. Some of it's cool, some of it's concerning. Some of it's actually assuaged my concerns! Why go to so much trouble to keep it secret? Because everyone who wants the game has already bought it, so they don't need to gain any good faith or show off a product that people want to buy? Or maybe a less blatantly 'evil' thing, like 'we don't want people to find out about beta mechanics that might change', but we all read about how this is an evil empire thing.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:34
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I like the way Holden put it -- "We want to get this thing out the door with its pants on and its hair combed, and not have people's first impressions based on something that looks like a hotel room at the Sochi Olympics."
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Jun 14, 2014 01:31
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KittyEmpress posted:Because everyone who wants the game has already bought it, so they don't need to gain any good faith or show off a product that people want to buy? I haven't, and neither have a lot of people SOMEWHAT interested in Exalted that I've talked to. Stephenls posted:I like the way Holden put it -- "We want to get this thing out the door with its pants on and its hair combed, and not have people's first impressions based on something that looks like a hotel room at the Sochi Olympics." Eh the parts I've seen honestly aren't really that bad and to be frank this leak soothed my concerns to the point where I'll probably buy it as soon as it's actually available instead of waiting a few months for a consensus.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:42
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Stephenls posted:I like the way Holden put it -- "We want to get this thing out the door with its pants on and its hair combed, and not have people's first impressions based on something that looks like a hotel room at the Sochi Olympics." But first impressions can change?
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Jun 14, 2014 01:42
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Bigup DJ posted:But first impressions can change? Followup impressions can change.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:43
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Stephenls posted:Followup impressions can change.  What the hell does that even mean?
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Jun 14, 2014 01:48
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reignonyourparade posted:
That there's a difference between a First Impression and a 'I went back and looked at it and it's actually pretty good'
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Jun 14, 2014 01:50
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Stephenls posted:Followup impressions can change. First impressions don't last long and in the scheme of things they're not important then?
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Jun 14, 2014 01:52
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reignonyourparade posted:I haven't, and neither have a lot of people SOMEWHAT interested in Exalted that I've talked to. This sums up my thoughts, really. Tell the R&D dudes that they are acting like amateurs trying to constantly polish their stuff and feeling like it's not good enough. This document should have been made public to great fanfare so Onyx Path could count it as a smashing success instead of a shameful leak, IMO. And now that this is out, there's honestly no reason not to steal a page from the FATE Core playtest either and be actually, truly public.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:57
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Hi by way of clarification, things that the company makes that they dont want passed out are  and verboten to post in the public forums. This playtest would be in that posse. Take it to any of the hundreds of other venues to get this poo poo on the internets, or just PM each other, I don't care.
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Jun 14, 2014 02:37
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So I went hunting for the playtest document, and surprisingly I can't find it anywhere. I'm actually kind of annoyed by that, not because I want the as because it just feels like an extension of the sort of pretentious top secret bullshit that Holden has been pushing and I'm just kind of exhausted with it. I didn't pay into the Kickstarter, and now I'm probably just going to pass on Exalted 3e, just because I'm getting really negative associations with the entire process. I was really excited about the game when it was announced, and now I'm just kind of disheartened. I'm increasingly frustrated with the secrecy surrounding the game, and the general attitude Holden and company have toward rules complexity and openness. Frankly I'm starting to feel like I'd have more fun with my group if I just make an Exalted rule set for some other game. Holden clearly doesn't have any idea what he's doing as a line developer or he'd know how much good press he'd get from letting this leak be out there, assuming the content is decent at all. It would shut all of us up who are bitching about the secrecy and it would hopefully sell the game to people who were on the fence like myself, but instead he's gone out of his way to stop anyone from seeing it. It's petty, amateur, control freak bullshit and he can make Sochi jokes all he wants but that is not how this business works. When you hype something and nobody gets to see it until it's done, you get things like Daikatana and Spore and every game Peter Molyneaux ever made. If you open up the process and give us an idea what's happening and listen to feedback from the fans, you get a product that everybody already wants when it comes out. It's about trust. Ink Monkeys had a lot of trust from the fans because of some of their late 2nd edition stuff, but they haven't shown us any trust at all. They think we'll only buy the game if it's "perfect" the first time we see it, and they don't trust us to provide useful feedback or have the intellectual capacity to understand when a thing is a work in progress. It's patronizing and rude and it has cost them my trust. I am probably not the only one.
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Jun 14, 2014 02:39
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I have very little investment in Exalted, but I find it odd that, on the other end of the proverbial hallway from 3e's development, the Demon: the Descent kickstarter released the (admittedly close to final) draft print of the entire book, for everybody, and this got them showered with hype, praise, tweak suggestions, and a general level of healthy discourse. I know I certainly bought a higher tier specifically because they did that, and ended up way, way more excited for the game after I read it. When Deus Ex: Human Revolution was coming out, you couldn't find a bigger group of grognards and poo poo-stirrers absolutely determined that it'd be Hitler's own video game, worse than DX2, and personally responsible for raising the mortality rate of the world. Then the first act of the game's test build got leaked, and the vast majority of them had their opinion turned 180 after hands-on experience with the product. When I first heard that 3e was starting to leak, I actually thought specifically of this, and the theory that it was intentionally leaked - until I also heard that they're playing whack-a-mole across the entire internet, an endeavor that will probably prove pointless the second someone wises up and just puts the drat thing on a torrent site instead of direct fileshare websites. I understand that the rules may be in a rough state right now, and subject to change, but...yeah, Gilok's Molyneux reference seems sort of apt. Hype only goes so far when you absolutely refuse to back it up beyond token concessions, and it shouldn't be surprising someone inside the compound got sick of it and tried to make a break for the outside with the goods.
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Jun 14, 2014 04:27
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quote:The developers are currently investigating the source of the leak. The exact nature of Onyx Path’s response remains to be seen, but simply letting it slide doesn’t seem like an option, insofar as the company needs to ensure that its nondisclosure agreements retain some teeth. I can’t think how we can playtest effectively otherwise. If external playtesters can’t be relied on to adhere to their NDAs, we’ll have to do all playtesting in-house, and without fresh eyes we’ll get substandard results. Or they could just do open playtesting like numerous other design studios have instead of worrying about having to hide their precious material from the prying eyes of their fans.
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Jun 14, 2014 04:50
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Heart Attacks posted:Or they could just do open playtesting like numerous other design studios have instead of worrying about having to hide their precious material from the prying eyes of their fans. Holden and John flat out do not have enough time to process the amount of playtest feedback an open playtest would generate. We have, to my knowledge, as many playtest groups as we can manage.
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Jun 14, 2014 04:56
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But if we see her without her makeup on we won't love her anymore. Of course if we never see her until the wedding day we may just leave her at the altar and I am finished torturing this analogy, thanks for reading. EDIT: Stephen, I'm a big fan of yours and have admired your writing and in-depth White Wolf knowledge since alt.games.white-wolf, but man stop trying to do damage control because you look like a drat lackey. If you have no influence over these decisions and think the game will speak for itself when it comes out then there's no reason to keep defending this obtuse bullshit, just let us stew. Cool Dad fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 04:56
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Stephenls posted:Holden and John flat out do not have enough time to process the amount of playtest feedback an open playtest would generate. We have, to my knowledge, as many playtest groups as we can manage. Remember when people were excited about Exalted? 
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Jun 14, 2014 05:01
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Stephenls posted:Holden and John flat out do not have enough time to process the amount of playtest feedback an open playtest would generate. We have, to my knowledge, as many playtest groups as we can manage. See this? This is bullshit. And I'm gonna tell you *exactly* why it's bullshit with a firsthand example. You see, I was a part of the playtest for FATE Core. And when i saw the first draft, there was a lot I was not satisfied with. Too few stunts, wonky rules, no Block action, broken math that favored attacking directly too much, IMO. I was rather annoyed by the lack of improvements and wanted to make my voice heard. So I went to the playtesting hub in G+ and I made a thread. And you know what happened? People talked. There was discussion, I was called to defend the assertions I'd made repeatedly, talked to people at length to convince them I was right, and only when the discussion gained traction and it became one of the hottest and most reviewed threads on the Hangout did Fred Hicks and Lenny Balsera step in. You've got a community, and it is not, in fact, half as poo poo as you think it is. Use it as a filter to screen the feedback and see where the consensus lies. There are talented people who've put a lot of work into understanding math and how game systems work who like Exalted. Use them. This is not a two-man job and it's dumb to act like it is. Now that the playtest is out in the wild, crowdsource the feedback screening instead of clamping down and refusing to acknowledge it exists.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:04
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Even /TG/ and Reddit have been cracking down on this leak. As in 'straight up bands from reddit and 4chan, two of the hardest places to get banned from'. And yet everyone who has seen the leak has come out fairly positive, with a few disappointments but more happiness. They are treating this like someone leaked an entire line of explicit rape charms meant to strip any female character of survival chance or something similarly hosed up and line killing, when in reality all it'd cause is people to be happy again. This is some Nintendo level poo poo marketing.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:05
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The NDA doesn't need teeth, it needs justification. The only one given has been the bullshit about surprises, which is also the only justification I could pick up on in Eric's article here:quote:Witness the “godbook leak” for the New Phyrexia set of Magic: The Gathering, where images of the entire card set were leaked a month before the release date, thoroughly ruining Wizards of the Coast’s plans for the prerelease spoiler season. Read that and tell me who could possibly give a poo poo. I mean who in a year's time or even a week after release is going to say "Ah yes, I look back on Exalted's trickle of pre-release spoilers with a sweet fondness - truly, those were the days!" Stephenls posted:Holden and John flat out do not have enough time to process the amount of playtest feedback an open playtest would generate. We have, to my knowledge, as many playtest groups as we can manage. Transient People gets a bit too fussed about Exalted, but they make a lot of really good points. I'm doing playtests for a game I'm editing at the end of the month. I'm going to get a few teams of playtesters to stress test the mechanics and deliver in-depth feedback. I'm also going to release the playtest draft for general consumption and check in on discussion occasionally to see if there's any burning issues. Nothing says you have to look at each and every bit of feedback you're provided - it's a resource you can dip into at your leisure.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:27
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Stephenls posted:Holden and John flat out do not have enough time to process the amount of playtest feedback an open playtest would generate. We have, to my knowledge, as many playtest groups as we can manage. I appreciate all your posts, and your engagement with this thread, so don't take this as a personal attack. I can smell the weariness behind some of your posts, and I sympathize. Just the other day someone else in Onyx Path posted this in the World of Darkness thread about the upcoming Werewolf redesign: DigitalRaven posted:We're not planning to kickstart at this point, but getting material out in front of people so they've got an idea of what we're doing and where we're coming from is really goddamn helpful. The feedback from people who read the open development stuff is informing what we do just the same as playtest feedback. Someone else, doing an extremely similar project in the same company, is singing the praises of something that requires effectively no effort and allows you to, as Transient People says, let the community input a ton of voices hashing out problems and ideas, letting the most detailed debates gain traction. The WoD blog manages to have a weekly(?) column about topics the community wants to hear about an upcoming line, with discussions in the comments that the developers occasionally chime in on. That's the key part - occasionally. Yes, if you're approaching this as a two-man job trying to monitor every single piece of information and discussion on the entire internet, of course that's impossible, but that's not how you actually do it in practice unless you've got 72 hours in your days. I would think monitoring nothing but a large amount of specific playtests, their results, and feedback would be way more complicated and time consuming than throwing it out to the wild for general discussion while doing stress tests with specific playtesting.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:32
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KittyEmpress posted:Even /TG/ and Reddit have been cracking down on this leak. As in 'straight up bands from reddit and 4chan, two of the hardest places to get banned from'. And yet everyone who has seen the leak has come out fairly positive, with a few disappointments but more happiness. Nobody's actually getting banned from 4chan just posts deleted.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:34
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Hey Stephenls can you post the NDA material in the secret RPGnet mod dungeon so I can taunt Ferrinus and not read them, thanks in advance
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Jun 14, 2014 05:35
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reignonyourparade posted:Nobody's actually getting banned from 4chan just posts deleted. That's actually not true. There are bans, but only a couple. Like 10:1 ratio of Deleted Posts:Bans As it was explained to me, discussion isn't being totally locked down because that'll just engender the Streisand Effect.
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Jun 14, 2014 05:42
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As someone bothering to track down the leaks, I just want to say that holy poo poo, the Zenith anima powers are amazing. I never knew I wanted anything like that, but drat. I am honestly looking forward to playing a Zenith. Edit: basically the reaction I'm having to everything so far. The worst I've had in reaction to anything I've seen about the leaks is 'well that's cool, but it's not as cool as X other Leak'. I seriously do not understand why Holden is so scared of this. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 05:58
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KittyEmpress posted:Edit: basically the reaction I'm having to everything so far. The worst I've had in reaction to anything I've seen about the leaks is 'well that's cool, but it's not as cool as X other Leak'. I seriously do not understand why Holden is so scared of this. There's a lot of rougher patches and while not every Exalted community focuses on the negative aspects, there's some shitlords that do.
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Jun 14, 2014 06:18
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KittyEmpress posted:Edit: basically the reaction I'm having to everything so far. The worst I've had in reaction to anything I've seen about the leaks is 'well that's cool, but it's not as cool as X other Leak'. I seriously do not understand why Holden is so scared of this. I'm almost starting to think this entire leak and the subsequent cover-up was all part of an ill-conceived plan to maintain the secrecy and security of 3E while at the same time convincing people that it would be worth the wait and secrecy. Practically everyone it seems who actually got their hands on the leaks have only good things to say about them. Perhaps Holden hopes this will tide over people grumbling about the black box of development?
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Jun 14, 2014 06:26
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KittyEmpress posted:Edit: basically the reaction I'm having to everything so far. The worst I've had in reaction to anything I've seen about the leaks is 'well that's cool, but it's not as cool as X other Leak'. I seriously do not understand why Holden is so scared of this. I think he's just afraid of criticism. I mean that's what perfectionism is - the attempt to make your work immune to criticism. That's why people are perfectionists!
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Jun 14, 2014 07:39
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I really don't know what the devs were worried about w/r/t first impressions. People become loyal to entertainment media based on preview hype, not actual content. The leaked 3e playtest could literally be the exact same .pdf as the leaked early playtest articles for D&D Next, in which you moved zero feet and backsolved for hit dice, and the vast majority of Exalted's market would be ardently reminding us that it's only a beta and immune to judgment or critique. One thing they should definitely not expect is their wishes for secrecy to be respected by the fanbase at large, though. If you just shove the Christmas presents in a closet and I find 'em in early December, tough poo poo, I win. This is what you signed up for when you decided to play the part of the stodgy authority figure. Ettin posted:Hey Stephenls can you post the NDA material in the secret RPGnet mod dungeon so I can taunt Ferrinus and not read them, thanks in advance Who are you again?
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Jun 14, 2014 07:49
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Bigup DJ posted:I think he's just afraid of criticism. I mean that's what perfectionism is - the attempt to make your work immune to criticism. That's why people are perfectionists! And that's why perfectionists are shitheads who need to be smacked with a giant stick labeled "THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD" until they learn.
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Jun 14, 2014 08:13
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I mean, if John, Holden, and co. feel like they need more time to write/balance the game and want to use this leak as an excuse to delay the release further, they should go for it. If they not only deliver a better final product but also deeply embarrass themselves then we're getting a twofer! I'm loving this leak, though. Current favorite element is the charm that blasts any given oWoD player character into nothingness instantly. Also I totally, totally, totally called the name for combat momentum many posts ago. Edit: Also, hey, encounter and daily powers? That's more than I ever hoped for! I was worried that whatever dumb opinions the devs might still hold on 4e would lead them to spitefully refuse to use any of its innovations. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Jun 14, 2014 |
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Jun 14, 2014 08:18
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Kenlon posted:"THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD" This is the precise wording of the Primordial death curse against the Solars btw. It's also the motto of President Barack Obama, who ordered the NSA to delete evidence of the Exalted leak from the internet before sealing the actual text in his Fact Vault for another six months.
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Jun 14, 2014 09:09
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Since I got asked, a clarification. I don't care what you discuss here as far as exalted goes, if someone with access to the document talks about what is in it, enforcing someone else's NDA is not my bag and whatever happens is between you and your lord. The only thing that is out is posting a direct link to the whole thing. Also please be less stupid if you could in general in this thread. That is YOU in the collective, so if you are being dumb, be less dumb.
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Jun 14, 2014 15:12
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