Video game

The trouble is making sure everybody who plays is up to date.

Why don't companies just make updated PDF's of their rulebooks?

That would invalidate the physical books.

Some literally do.

Personally, it's never seemed much trouble? But I'm so used to running games online that even my IRL games include a lot of constantly updated pages of notes and such on gdocs, so pinging out a message to let people know there's been a new PDF update, and knowing they'll get it and read it, is something I can rely on which a lot of groups might be less well set up for.

It's not so bad for RPG's as you can easily ignore it either way. It's a pain in the ass for things like boardgames and wargames.

>physical books

what year is this?

Some do. Most indies like myself do since most indies are either solely pdf based, or pdf sales make up most of their sales.

A video game is much more limited in scope and yields much more data from playtesting, so in a way it's easier to pinpoint a problem in a video game than in a tabletop RPG. Also, a video game places a higher demand on the developers to fix problems because the players might be powerless to change anything directly, while a tabletop RPG always has room for houserules.

The Firefly RPG was basically errata for the unplayable Serenity RPG, except they sold it for money. (Which is why Margaret Weiss Productions are on my "Shitty Companies, will not buy" list.)

Unless your in which it will take them months to fix things if they listen.

Pathfinder has tons of errata and almost all of it is because they accidentally gave martials something nice and needed to take it away.

I meant to say Unless your in which it's blizzard will take them months to fix things if they listen.

The problem with the "have you tried not playing D&D" is that people use it more often than not when playing a different system wouldn't solve anything.

Few problems discussed on this board can be solved just by switching systems, largely because at the end of the day, the system is actually only a small component to the game that's being run, and that switching systems just leads to a new veneer on the same old problems.

"Try X system" is not always bad advice, but it's not particularly helpful in a thread about problem players, or about story issues, or even alignment arguments, because even in the last case it's just a name (or a different name) for things you'll find in find in almost every other game. Even games "without" alignments still have degrees of morality to them or factions with codes of conduct, and most alignment arguments typically revolve around these two features of alignment.

Does D&D have flaws? Certainly, but most of these are remedied in far less time than it takes to learn a new system, and the idea that you should abandon a system just because something didn't work out is why we find a lot of people hopping through multiple systems hoping that a change of game will solve their problems.

Most of the whole problem with system discussion is that it's actually political in nature. Play X game or play Y game is a tactic to try to garner support for one game or dissuade people from playing another, and is largely dishonest in its lack of transparency. D&D becomes a target not because it's a bad game by any measure, but because it's popularity means people are less inclined to play other games.

As a person who has played his share of everything under the sun and now plays homebrews almost exclusively, I've really gotten tired of people claiming system superiority or inferiority when they're all just talking about the same inferior games just under different disguises.

If only they knew how amazing Duck in the Circle was.

Shitty pasta

Video games were overall better when devs COULDN'T easily patch things, because it meant they couldn't as easily ship out a completely unfinished product and say "oh we'll patch the rest of the game in a few weeks from now" like EA and Ubisoft are fond of." I don't know why you want that kind of shit in tabletop.

...Because it's bullshit? Loads of games still shipped with catastrophic bugs, the only difference was that they were never fixed.

Well, it would be better than getting broken, half-finished games and never getting a patch.

>get refuted in every aspect of your existence and agenda
>"uh...ugh...uh...shitty pasta"

If you don't want to be trumped so badly, you might want to give up spamming your tired, forced meme.

The first time I saw that posted, it got dismantled and most people ignored it anyway. I can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole again.

Oh, you're so adorable pretending you've ever dismantled anything except the last shreds of your own pride.

Come, show us more of your shame and defeat. Let's watch how you go through such great lengths to defend your agenda-oriented shitposting.

It's kinda more fun watching you do it, honestly. The kind of desperation people have in defence of D&D, despite being an absolutely dominant force in the market, is astounding. Are you really that fucking triggered by a single picture? And are you really so stupid that all you can do is repost lengthy copy/pastes that don't actually say anything meaningful?

If you actually read the fucking thread, you'd see context appropriate arguments as to why 'have you tried not playing D&D' is not relevant given the current discussion, and also be aware that the conversation had moved on with no harm done. And yet here you are, shouting about your agenda when the only one being pushed in this thread is your own.

>the madman keeps going

Holy shit, I thought you were an idiot, but look at you go. Not only are you failing dramatically to refute any of the arguments presented, you're actually supporting them through your inept defense!

Give us more. We need more of a show of just how low you're willing to sink to defend your little meme you work so hard spamming regardless of how offpoint it is, like in this very thread.

And no, just because this thread mentions D&D doesn't make it an appropriate reply, and in fact in this very thread it is the most moronic reply imaginable, because each edition of D&D had a considerable amount of errata and even revised editions.

You're literally just shitposting at every opportunity, which is exactly what you're being called out upon. But of course, here's another opportunity. Shitpost some more, so every can see your stripes.

Are you even reading my posts? I'm one of the people who pointed out the use of 'Have you tried not playing D&D?' in this thread was not appropriate, and explained the reasons why. I don't care about your arguments. I'm pointing out that you're a ridiculously triggered little bitch spamming useless rants in places where they're entirely irrelevant because apparently you have the reading comprehension of a twelve year old.

People in this thread already did your job for you, by posting actual arguments as to why it wasn't appropriate in this case. You can go now. Your saintly maiden D&D is defended, and I'm sure there are people repeating a common and often appropriate meme somewhere else for you to freak out over.

His point is that the fact that this has become commonplace and acceptable has lessened the pressure for companies not to release broken, half-finished games in the first place.

>>moderately decent chance of a patch coming out to fix the problem, possibly even a patch every few months
Please tell me you're joking. Please.

>patch actually makes things worse
[insert 4E magic missile errata here]

>hey, you're right
>about everything
>but I'm still upset about it

Wow. Can you be more of triggered bitch, upset about your forced meme getting trashed from every angle? Not upset? Then quit being triggered.

>forced meme

...What? I hate to tell you this, fucko, but 'Have you tried not playing D&D?' is not in any way a forced meme. It emerged naturally fucking years ago, and is just an accepted part of Veeky Forums at this point. If it really twists your nipples that much, you might be better off on reddit.

And no. Contextually, the use of the meme was inappropriate, but the shitty pasta you posted is irrelevant as to why.

>forced
The picture is six years old, if not older. Get over it.

The only thing that's changed is people's awareness of it.

>I've been forcing me shit meme for a long time

Still makes it a shitty forced meme perpetuated by agenda-orientated individuals. Christ, look at you fuckheads try to defend your shitposting in a thread where it's absolutely indefensible.

The fact that the shitposter even called it OBLIGATORY simply because the thread mentioned D&D shows how bad your shitposting mindset is. Take your "accepted part of Veeky Forums" and shove it.

People have been calling it out as shitposting since day one.

Even that copy pasta that's triggered you is close to six years old at this point

>errata gets written over by another book's errata halfway through
>never gets corrected
>White Wolf errata:
>nonexistent because DUUUUUDE NOBODY LIKE CARES ABOUT THESE MECHANICS MAN, IGNORE THE 25% CHANCE TO HIT IN A BLANK FEATURELESS ROOM MAN

If you honestly believe it's a forced meme being consistently perpetuated over six goddamn years, you're actually fucking delusional.

We aren't defending shitposting. We're calling your tantrum and pathetic whining out because it is far more inappropriate to the thread than a use of an old, common meme that is pretty well established in Veeky Forums culture by now. If you don't like it, fuck off.

If you think it's being used inappropriately? Then actually make an argument as to why that makes sense in context, rather than posting pointless pasta that just makes you seem like an agenda driven cunt angry that other people do something you don't like.

I've been on Veeky Forums for a damn long time. I'm very familiar with the meme. I only first saw that pasta a few weeks ago. Got any evidence of it being posted earlier?

Just did a quick google, and apparently it's been posted a few times going back to 2015. So, way younger and way less common than the established and useful Veeky Forums meme 'Have you tried not playing D&D?'

>We aren't defending shitposting.

Yes. Yes, you literally are. In the most embarrassing, ineffectual way imaginable.
We've even got a guy agreeing with all the major tenants of the copypasta, and yet still arguing purely to try and save face, which only helps support the major point of the copypasta, that the entire thing is political in nature.

You attempting to call it an established part of Veeky Forums culture without realizing what it has been established as is the real joke. It's been recognized as shitposting ever since it was coined, and has continued to be shitposting even up to this very thread, and still you are hoping to somehow pretend that screaming "STOP PLAYING D&D" at every mention of the game is somehow supposed to be treated as a cherished and respected reply.

Like the copypasta says, suggesting alternate games can be good advice. Spamming a stale forced meme perpetuated purely by agenda-oriented individuals upset about D&D's continued popularity is pure and simple shitposting.

The best part is, you being upset about the copypasta doesn't make it pointless, especially because all you've done is help support it, rather than refute it as you haven't even attempted because we already have sufficient evidence to support it in this very thread.

You're paranoid, delusional and not worth spending time on. Take that as a win if you like.

>one page
>crying Traveller 4e players

Too late to try that, when you've just wasted plenty of time already. I'm just glad you realized you've had no ground to stand on from the very start and have enough tact to give up, since you've literally just been upset because that copypasta tears apart your favorite forced meme. The truth hurts, as they say.

Getting this mad over this image is like going to /tv/ and yelling about Baneposting.

At least you recognize that they're both shitposting. Though, it's funny that you're still trying to defend that shitposting, even to the point where you act like we need to respect shitposting or even be afraid to call it out for what it is. We're hardly /tv/, and if someone is spamming a shitty meme, it's amazing to think that the single response out of three that got you this upset was a copypasta from years ago.

Oh, I wasn't the guy claiming "Have you tried not playing D&D?" was a super serious image macro. I just like my shitposts.

Then you should stick to /tv/.

>patching/writing erratas
>not just accusing your critics of using petty grievances to tear down your product because they don't like that it has women and minorities
>not using this as free publicity to get some extra sales before running off with all the money

Well, I mean, video games do that too

A little shitposting never hurt. It builds character.

The patch cycle for multiplayer video games is one of the reasons I rarely play new multiplayer games.

I really liked Company of Heroes, for instance. You cannot go back and enjoy the game in its early iterations anymore. Even if you did find someone to play it with, they probably own the steam version of the game which only has the newest patch.

In the old days, if a game was shit, you waited until the next one, you didn't demand a billion changes. Games come out today with problems because there is a group of people that demand bonus content after release and because there are devs that just want to claim the game has gone gold when it's really 75% finished.

In my opinion, the only patches a video game should get are technical ones, eg "fixed a case where a crash to desktop could occur". Not "Oh we nerfed that thing all the beginners were complaining about and added 15 fetch quests to pad content". Tabletop games would be worse if there was an expectation that "errata will fix the game".

...But if you can make a change that would improve the game, and you have the ability, why wouldn't you make it? I don't grasp your logic at all.

Tabletops have rule 0. If you don't like something, fucking change it yourself. Don't like that fighters only get 4+ skills? Give em 6+. Don't like how the suggested die roll creates ability gaps between characters? Use predetermined stat values.

If you see all these "glaring problems" then write up your own houserules to fix them. Then when you start a game, give each player a copy and remind them that these are subject to change because you are the fucking DM.

There is a difference between houseruling a game to your preferences and fixing a game that straight up doesn't work.

The GM should be free to alter a game to work better for them. The GM shouldn't be forced to redesign half the system because the devs are lazy or incompetent and didn't test anything.

>video game
>glaring problem noticed
>have to wait few months for update

>table top RPG
>"Hey guys, this rule is kind of stupid/gamebreaking"
>"Oh, yeah, let's do X instead"
>problem fixed instantly

What is with this BS where one must play by the explicit rules? It's the DM's job to correct such errors.

You also forget the:

>Video game
>Fans notice glaring problems with video game
>Modders fix problems

>Tabletop RPG
>Fans note glaring problems with tabletop RPG
>Players find a way to agree to balance the game, be it through an agreement not to pursue a certain broken character build or coming up with a house rule or homebrew to address the issue.

It's also not like writing your own house rules is harder than making a mod to fix a broken game, one requires the ability to code and the other just needs a google document and a vague grasp on whats wrong.

First of all, "better" is subjective.

Second of all, the average person doesn't actually want the game to be better, they want the game to be easier or to change entirely to something else.

Third of all, the developer doesn't want to make the game better either, he wants to turn the game into a cash cow.

TF2 is the best example of this. What started out as a game where you pay to buy the game and have complete access to all of the game's content turns into this free-to-play mess of design. Every patch is some combination of:
-"we fixed what isn't broken", sometimes these changes end up breaking things
-new content nobody asked for, Valve trying to get people to pay money to just buy them, and over time they reduced the number of free items you get and frequency of certain items. Over time, the sheer number of items muddles what was originally designed as a simple game
-some aesthetic change that might not be bad but isn't worth patching in

People don't ever think about the down sides of the patch cycle when it comes to multiplayer. You are buying a game that, instead of having a normal life cycle, will have uninvited events that change the game and, because it's multiplayer, you have no choice in. Finding 23 other people to play vanilla TF2 is an unreasonable challenge to just play TF2 like it should be played. TF2 would have been a better game if it had stayed essentially the same except for technical changes, like crash fixes or extra mod tools.

If the game is so busted that it straight up "doesn't work" then you'd be better served finding a new game.

It's possible for individual aspects or mechanics of an otherwise good game to not function as intended.

Blizzard is just as bad.

P&P is literally more primitive, though

Most of my experience of patches has led to games I enjoy being improved significantly?

Most of my experience of patches has led to games I enjoy being muddled over the course of two years?

Then clearly the concept has merit, it's just a matter of proper execution.

And its possible to fix those. If the game is broken to the point where houserules can't fix it, as the other guy claimed, then you're better served playing a different system.

I am that guy.

No game is broken beyond the point houserules can fix. My point is that you should still hold developers to a quality standard of making games that actually work as intended, and if a GM is forced to fix things that do not work right, that is a failure on the part of the developer.

The proper execution is to not do it. The small number of instances of where changing a game after release is truly necessary is dwarfed by the number of times where a game is being changed for no reason or a bad reason.

If every server runs a mod intended to "fix" something, literally every server, all servers, then you can release a patch to just simplify what already exists. This is almost never going to happen.

But that's just an arbitrary assertion which clashes with my own experience. It's anecdotal evidence vs anecdotal evidence, but I've played a lot of games that were significantly improved by patches and additional content over their lifetime.

Like what?

>No game is broken beyond the point houserules can fix.

Nonsense. Tell that to the people who had to try to reverse engineer the character creation system for Serenity because they didn't include the rules for it. That's way beyond just "Iunno, houserule it I guess."
Games can be so fucked that you basically have to redesign big chunks of it, or else telepathically discern how the fuck they expected you to work something. At that point it's not worth doing, you should drop it and play something at least halfway functional, unless you have limitless free time and a decent level of skill at game design.

I'll just pull a few from memory and scroll through Steam, remembering games that were improved by patches and updates-

Warframe, Heroes of the Storm, Seraph, Total Warhammer II, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Superhot, a lot of the Dark Souls games, Darkest Dungeon, Civilisation (basically all the recent ones got so much better with updates), Path of Exile, Stellaris, Slime Rancher, Endless Legend... I'm not far down my library but I'm just gonna stop there.

A lot of those games had big problems, flaws or missing features, which were added in the form of post-launch content and patches that kept the game fresh and improved the experience. And while some of that content was paid, a lot of the time it's accompanied by completely free updates to tweak things to ensure the game is working better.

'Not worth doing' is not the same thing as 'Can't be done'. The statement that no game is broken beyond the point houserules can fix is accurate. The question of whether it's worth it is an entirely separate matter.

"Can't be done" depends on the skill of the DM doing it. It absolutely is true that there are some fixes that are beyond your average DM's ability.

Consider how much effort was expended by people trying to fix D&D 3.5 over the years, yet it was never actually fixed any better than "it sorta works now if you're careful"

Oh yeah. Whether it's practically possible depends, 3.PF is fucked to the core, but it is theoretically possible that someone dedicated enough could pull the system apart and put it back together to the point where it worked how it was meant to.

Of course, depending on how that person interpreted how it was meant to work, you'd probably end up with something resembling 4e or 5e.

Stellaris is a great example of a game that was ruined with patches. They are completely different games from each other and worse for it. Exploring is simplified and trivial now, and the game became more 4x than grand strategy, with most early game loses being caused by dumb gotchas (scripted fleet always attacks X minutes into the game) rather than because you built a weaker empire than your neighbor. At least it lets you pick which version to play, fortunately, so you can ignore patches.

Dark Souls 1 on PC was garbage and patches never fixed it. Dark Souls 2's combat was made pretty generic by patches (knee-jerk reactions to WAAAAAAAH from people losing online) and they actually tried to undo much of it when Sins came out. Demon's Souls did it best, they only patched a few weapons and the only major change was literally one weapon.

You're right that the console versions of DaS1 needed that miracle and that ring nerfed (I forget the names), though. I think that was more a case of DaS1 being just plain bad online in the first place.

I don't remember Endless Legend getting any major changes in patches except a minor race being added. The game was so buggy that the patches were mostly to just make it stop crashing. I stopped playing soon after the first expansion, though.

I guess it's just opinion then, I've really enjoyed and appreciated how Stellaris has changed, I think it's a hell of a lot better than it was on launch.

As for Endless Legend, the big one is that they nerfed the hell out of the Broken Lords to stop being them ridiculously fucking overpowered.

>it is theoretically possible that someone dedicated enough could pull the system apart and put it back together to the point where it worked how it was meant to.

Well a couple very skillful guys did, and it was called Fantasy Craft. But it never really caught on like Pathfinder.

>yet it was never actually fixed any better than "it sorta works now if you're careful"
Remaining as the 2nd most played game, even 18 years after it was first published, makes it less "sorta works now" and more "works better than more balanced games." There's more to a game than balance, which is why people are more than willing to expend the small amount of effort required to balance 2-8 characters relative to each other. Balancing one of the largest games ever made would be extremely difficult, but balancing the small cross-section of what a group of players are actually involved with is child's play.
I'm really weirded out that you think it's so difficult, when even little kids do it largely in the amount of time it takes to build their characters.

Oh look, it's another 'Caster Supremacy doesn't exist' 3.PF apologist. There never seems to be any shortage of those.

You seem to very hostile towards anyone who doesn't accept your "This game is unplayable, despite it being the 2nd most played game" ideaology. I am not denying that there are tiers to the game's classes, but to exaggerate the amount of effort required to play the game is just being detached from the wider opinion of the roleplaying community.

>There never seems to be any shortage of those.
What there doesn't seem to be a shortage of is contrarians on Veeky Forums.

Whoever said it was unplayabe? But any GM who has had to balance a party involving tier 1's and tier 6's either knows exactly how busted is, or got lucky with their players not figuring out how the system actually works.

People came up with adequate fixes. E6, tier limiting, mixed gestalt.

Then other people ignored them and insisted on "core only" because they're fucking stupid

You seem to be stuck in a weird mindset where player balance needs to be strict in a cooperative roleplaying game where the more powerful classes are also the most tedious and laborious to operate. While the balance may be busted, the game tends to run fine on its own momentum and the natural tendencies of players. We're not talking about a game people pick up and immediately discard, but a game that has persisted in popularity for the better part of two decades despite two following flagship editions.
While it's on its slow way out thanks to 5e approaching the tipping point of a dominating majority, this is a system with rather transparent math that makes it quite easy for people to recognize when things are unbalanced, which while on one hand is a strength of the system, this also leads it to be quite open to criticism because even idiots can compare single and double digit numbers and flat probabilities.

It's kinda hard to trump anyone when you're spouting the same shit over and over again.

I don't know what's more pathetic, the fact that you bothered to spam the same pasta over and over again, or the fact that someone was so triggered that they made it in the first place.

...What?

The more powerful classes are tedious and laborious? How? That they have actual game mechanics associated with them other than playing 'Mother may I?' with the GM?

The game runs fine if you never do anything the system wasn't expecting and don't do several obvious, intuitive things that leap out to new players, many of which can bust the system in two. If everyone has to go out of their way to not break the system, the system is fucking broken.

There are ways to make the game work, sure. They often involve ignoring huge chunks of rules, treating what's written in the books as very vague guidelines or scrapping huge chunks of content. The very fact no clear consensus fix still exists, and that people still argue how severe the problem is, does simply that the system isn't as transparent and intuitive as you seem to believe.

3.PF is a system that enjoys a unique position amongst RPG's as it launched as the largest game on the market during the era when the internet was just taking off, leading to a massive explosion of the market and an entire generation for whom 3.5 was how games were meant to work. I think that's a far better explanation as to the persistence of the system than any particular aspect of its rules. It was in the right place at the right time.

I think this is closer to the tabletop RPG experience
>fans note glaring problems
>errata comes out but it fixes things that weren't actually problems
>complain about it on the game's official forums
>devs tell you the problem doesn't exist, that it's part of the system and is intentional design, and that it's not a problem at their table
>get banned from the forums
>ban reason: arguing with a dev or mod
>date ban will be lifted: never

Yeah, this. Even little things like a weapon cord get errata'd away. Hell, they'll even errata an entire class feature into not working, just because it gives a martial something useful or fun to do.

>2nd most played
Popular doesn't mean good. Unless you think however many billion smokers can't be wrong.

I really don't understand you. You're trying to tell me that the game doesn't work, or that it's hard to play, or that it only owes its popularity to it being popular (thanks for that circular logic), when all of that is instantly refuted just by the simple notion that people continue to play it without dramatic issues like you are insisting they must have.
I think you might just be sort of special stupid? The kind where you can see a game has problems, but you think you're some sort of special genius for noticing them, when they're the super obvious things that people naturally avoid because their goal is to have fun with the system, not explain to people on the internet why its so hard to have fun with a game even small children can play without really any huge effort.
Also, your entire last paragraph is just a pretty bitter rant about how the game was popular, and how you don't like that it was popular, followed by a leap in conjecture that really needs to be addressed. The older editions of D&D never disappeared, and there were always competitors to D&D. It's just that they couldn't compete with 3.0 largely because the dramatic problems you believe are crippling to the system really just aren't as terrible as you keep insisting they must be.
It was in the right place at the right time, as the arguably best game on the market. Now, that's no longer the case, but we're still looking at a product that was a modernized and streamlined AD&D, and AD&D is an amazing system in its own right, despite its own grievous issues.

>We're hardly /tv/, and if someone is spamming a shitty meme, it's amazing to think that the single response out of three that got you this upset was a copypasta from years ago.
I find it more amazing that people can still get (you)'s from posting "have you tried not playing D&D" years after it was first used.

You'd think eventually you fucks would move on or realize that it's something said in jest but nope, still triggered over stale memes.

It is possible to play 3.5 without experiencing the issues inherent to the system. It is possible to like and enjoy 3.5 even with its issues. But the existence of the issues is a fact and something that has been detrimental to the experience of the game for many, many people. Those who continue to play it are those who have miraculously avoided them, those who have found their own solutions, or those who for whatever reason don't care despite the game not working as intended. None of this stops the problems existing. Attempting to argue the only reason it's popular is the system is also ludicrous, context is everything and D&D's position within the roleplaying market is one with huge advantages, although also downsides as we saw with 4e.

When arguing about subjective topics like movies, music, video games, and RPGs, popularity is frequently used as a measure of quality, because it's largely a matter of opinion. You can argue your opinion, but that ultimately only remains that.
Also, if someone was trying to say smoking wasn't pleasurable or not easy to do, a billion smokers would have something to say about that.

>Remaining as the 2nd most played game, even 18 years after it was first published, makes it less "sorta works now" and more "works better than more balanced games."
5e is way more balanced than 3.PF and is also the most popular edition of D&D to date. Guess you're wrong.

It sure as fuck was detrimental to my experience. So detrimental, in fact, that it almost turned me off of RPGs altogether. I ran a Pathfinder game for two years and was so bogged down by the game's bullshit by the end of it that I actually ran the last session completely freeform. The martials were only good at fighting because by the game's own rules they weren't allowed to be good at anything else, and the wizard -- using only core rules, no house rules, no homebrew at all -- was solving every problem with smart application of spells, rendering entire skills and entire party members completely obsolete.

That's a problem, sure, but I can live with it. My solution is to just not play Pathfinder anymore, and to keep 9-level casters on a short leash in any 5e games I run. No, see, my real problem is Paizo, and how the devs steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that caster supremacy exists, and when they get trapped into admitting it exists, they try to deny that it's bad, and call it intentional design.

That's my problem. That the Paizo devs are a bunch of self-fellating egomaniacs who can't admit they fucked up in copying all of 3.5's flaws and making a token, and quite frankly, hilariously feeble attempt to throw martials a bone. If they were smart, they would have incorporated Tome of Battle material into their core rules, but no. Martials are never allowed to have anything nice, ever, and if you complain about it, you're a troublemaker who gets banned from the official forums.