We aren't making Pathfinder 1.5 we are helping with Pathfinder 2

(late to the party here) @OP:
shouldn't the system be informed by and build off what came before? especially with a playerbase that's become accustomed to the level of individual/horizontal customization in the first edition (which was the whole selling point of the system, and basically what the company advertised as), shouldn't 2E seek to improve upon the good or well-received ideas there before?

And with the official adventures set in the PF1E world, and stated as supposed to be able to tell the roughly same stories (the runelords are in some dire straits atm, hoo boy), people are going to compare the two, just as people are going to compare it with DnD 5E, because both are recent and popular and a great many people enjoy them. 2E doesn't (and shouldn't) exist in a vacuum, and that can't really be ignored.

Pathfinder 2e has the great need to take big steps back if it wants to be functional. Currently nobody I know wants to play with it. The problems of the game are not the contents but the system at the base, the comparison with the previous edition is essential.

Yep

It is a system that rewards narration and it plays hard on Narrativism in GNS.

That means it's on the players to be creative and explain in better detail how their character is solving problems. This is encouraged with their hero point system, Inspiration. It encourages role playing.
I've found when playing it, tackling the problem with the same mentality of 3.x, and following the steps is the best way to explain it to my DM, it's how I get my points at least. I guess whether you agree or disagree with that tells us something about your play style.

Hero Points are not supposed to be handed out like candy in 5e. If you compare it to the flow of momentum and fortune in Conan 2D20 for instance, the 5e Heropoint mechanic is a shallow parody. In all those streams of "all star" gamers, the 5e Hero point system never really played any significant part so far.

Brondy wrote:

Pathfinder 2e has the great need to take big steps back if it wants to be functional. Currently nobody I know wants to play with it. The problems of the game are not the contents but the system at the base, the comparison with the previous edition is essential.

Yep

The playtest seems to be hampered by the sunk cost fallacy

Agreed

Some comparisons are good to make, others are not.
"Old races were better than ancestries" can be a good one.
"My Barbarian did 150 DPR and now only can only do 120!" is not a good comparison. Math has changed, numbers are just different.
"I could play a Magus in PF1, but I can't now" is borderline. It's fine to say that the game is missing a class you liked, but it's an unfair comparison: PF2 has not even started yet, more content will come.
"I can no longer break the game with chained Simulacrum, or with an extremely convoluted multi-class build spanning every 3PP book ever made" is a good comparison only if you want to say that the new version is better.

Just saying, Pokemon had two games.

This has to do with scale. Pokemon's yearly sales run in the hundreds of millions (average of about $500 million), and as a total product line has sold roughly $85 billion worth of product since 1996.

I would be genuinely surprised if Paizo has total gross sales over $100 million since 2009. I suspect they're far closer to $50 million. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but when you're talking about international manufacture, shipping, distribution and how expensive each employee is, and how small a business is at $5m/year revenue, it starts to make sense.

If we use Roll20's user statistics as a general indicator, Paizo is about 1/3 of the entire RPG industry market share. Using Pokemon as the analogy, D&D/Pathfinder ARE the two sister games, they just happen to be made by different companies. D&D 5e is at 62% market share on Roll20, there is overlap, but people can buy more than one product. Corebook purchase is by far the most common, and people rarely buy more than that (literally, they don't buy a second corebook, nor do they buy supplemental books). Roll20 stats don't tell us how big the customer base is necessarily (roughly 70k people play there), but it does give us an indication of which games sell to what percentage of that market.

Take this all with a grain of salt though, because none of the major players in the industry release anything in regards sales figures. Which is too bad. The industry really is tiny. I know of a senior "project manager" type job opening at one of the industries oldest publishers, and I suspect it's probably one of a handful of similar jobs that were open at one point this calendar year (and by handful, I mean 5 or less).

BryonD wrote:

The playtest seems to be hampered by the sunk cost fallacy

Agreed

Digression for which I sort of apologize and which should be ignored by anyone who wants to avoid social science theory wars.

As a recovering political scientist who came of age when rational choice approaches were seeking to take over the discipline, I've always been leery of any model that depends on distinguishing between the "rational" and the "non-rational" as these can be very social and culturally embedded and determined concepts.

"I can no longer break the game with chained Simulacrum, or with an extremely convoluted multi-class build spanning every 3PP book ever made" is a good comparison only if you want to say that the new version is better.

I disagree. It's a poor subject to bring up at all. It is nothing but a hyperbolic example that doesn't come up in gameplay.

I would be genuinely surprised if Paizo has total gross sales over $100 million since 2009. I suspect they're far closer to $50 million. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but when you're talking about international manufacture, shipping, distribution and how expensive each employee is, and how small a business is at $5m/year revenue, it starts to make sense.).

Do you have any data on this? I’d be amazed if Paizos numbers even remotely approached your estimates.

Removed a Post.

Please remember that your philosophy for playtesting is determined by your own beliefs and experiences. It is acceptable if individuals have different focuses when approaching the playtest so long as everyone acts in the spirit of providing constructive data. Please keep this thread in the spirit of discussing these philosophies, and construct your posts to contribute to that discussion.

Avoid language which de-values the opinions of others or escalates argumentative discussion.

Zolanoteph wrote:

BryonD wrote:

The playtest seems to be hampered by the sunk cost fallacy

Agreed

Digression for which I sort of apologize and which should be ignored by anyone who wants to avoid social science theory wars.

As a recovering political scientist who came of age when rational choice approaches were seeking to take over the discipline, I've always been leery of any model that depends on distinguishing between the "rational" and the "non-rational" as these can be very social and culturally embedded and determined concepts.

Agreed

But I'd also offer that the larger collective norm, zeitgeist, whatever is more important than the various camps of predispositions.

4E was replaced by 5E. This is an objective truth for all parties. (even those who are playing 4E this weekend)

A combination of true self awareness and also honest perception of the larger community is valuable. I think anyone here would like to see 2E avoid the 4E reality.

Also removed a post for profanity. The post was otherwise acceptable and seemed to take a decent amount of time to synthesize. If the original poster would like the text of your post to re-post without the profanity, please email community@paizo.com. Thank you.

This is

quit anagraming me......

:)
:)

Well, D&D 3.0/3.5 didn't entirely replace earlier editions - there are still many folks playing either straight AD&D or OSR clones - yet nobody in their sane mind will call a 3.5 failure.

what % of the TTRPG playing population do you assume for "many" How many 2nd ed tables are there at gen con for example and how do you know they aren't disproportionate.

AD+D Is Certainly not adding NEW players at any significant rate and relies on luck in used book stores or knowing where to find pdf versions online (and being willing to do so, a lot of people take great offense at having to go online for rules)

Irontruth wrote:

I would be genuinely surprised if Paizo has total gross sales over $100 million since 2009. I suspect they're far closer to $50 million. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but when you're talking about international manufacture, shipping, distribution and how expensive each employee is, and how small a business is at $5m/year revenue, it starts to make sense.).

Do you have any data on this? I’d be amazed if Paizos numbers even remotely approached your estimates.

Nope. No hard data. Of course... no data exists to prove me wrong either.

To be fair, I'm talking gross sales. I misspoke at the end when I switched to revenue. I'm not estimating their net profits, or anything else.

For a big publisher in RPGs, print runs of 5000 aren't unreasonable for modules. Pathfinder gets 1 AP module a month. I'm not saying they sold immediately, but just that the first 11 APs have mostly sold out (not 100%, but fairly close). Let's say they sold 90% of copies printed. 11 APs, 6 books each, at 5000 copies, that's 330,000 books. 90% of those sold at $17 each, generates $5m in gross sales.

So, just using the first 5 1/2 years of AP sales, no CRBs, no bestiary, no adventure card game, we can cover 10% of the distance to $50m.

I'd guess the CRBs sold 300-400k (over those 10 years), and all bestiaries combined about 150-180k. Again, I'm largely guessing based on numbers I've only heard 2nd hand about 3.0/3.5 publishing, but I don't think they're gross overestimates.

But it's still beside the point. At my estimates, there isn't enough revenue to support a whole second game of the exact same type/theme/genre. If my estimates are HIGH, then there's even less reason to think that they could support 2 such games.

Lastly, based on these numbers, if sales are diminishing (which everything that is known about product sales of non-essentials tells us would be true), if Paizo doesn't introduce a new edition, the game will die anyways within a couple years as they'd no longer be able to afford to publish anything.

stuff

My bad. I thought you were talking annual sales. Over 10 years I’d guess you’re in the ballpark.

Hero Points are not supposed to be handed out like candy in 5e.

They aren't even a standard thing in 5th Ed, though I believe there is some optional rule about revolting Action Points or something.

Everyone knows first edition has problems although we may not agree what those are. I was hoping for an evolutionary Pathfinder 1.5. and instead got something that feels and plays VERY different. We paused our first Starfinder campaign for a round of playtesting 2nd Edition. Although there were some good ideas, overall no one liked it better than first edition and we haven't touched the playtest since.

Unless there are massive changes we will likely switch over to Starfinder when we run out of first edition material.

My biggest concern with the new system is the way that the Multiclassing works, as I saw someone mention, whose post seems to have disappeared... The new system makes it so that you can have the features of another class without losing the abilities of your original class.

Well my question is, what if I didn't want those abilities at all? What if I am Purposefully trying to opt out of those abilities? Do I not need a way to do that? What if the things I wanted were the Feats from the two classes more than anything else? What if I wanted to Multiclass just because I liked the Feats from the 2 classes I wanted to combine, and didn't necessarily care about the Baseline Abilities?

Well then I guess that I am quite out of luck because I can't replace those baseline abilities just the Class Feats. Then there's the question of when the Class Specific Archetypes come out, will they be able to be Multiclassed into? I'm honestly having a hard time believing they will.... And these, THESE are my biggest gripes with the new system. I'm honestly not the kind of person who min maxed and munchkinized. Heck quite a few of my builds were far from it, But they were FUN to play regardless. Nerfing Multiclassing like this takes away a Lot of why I was having fun.

Now! I agree that there were people who were abusing multiclassing, I agree that the classes are looking pretty good in comparison to the classes in 1E, carrying over a Lot of the flavor and even cannibalizing from the Hybrid Classes (looking at you Fighter & Ranger). But I don't Like playing Straight up classes, I never have. Now I know they shouldn't have to cater to one lone voice in the crowd like mine, but I'm sad and scared for the future, my future.

I don't like 5E because of the lack of any Real support for it, and the classes kinda turn me off in comparison to 1E's and even 2E's (I like them I really do), and sticking around on a sinking ship isn't a real option, because there will be no support once 2E is out. Then there's PFS (which I do want to join, just not right now while in this Transition Period) which will Definitely be moving on to 2E once it's out. So I'm feeling really lost with no path forward...

Don't worry. The game itself does a really good job reminding everyody that it is not really Pathfinder. I'm sure nobody forgets that, despite the misleadinding Pathfinder 2 title

You're completely right. You're so completely correct that you've helped me decide that I shouldn't buy a Chevrolet Cobalt because it really isn't a Chevrolet since Chevrolet is obviously only the Corvette...

I'm kinda shocked that this post wasn't taken down as it has absolutely nothing to do with the original post, and also comes off a very passive aggressive way at trying to insult the developers and what they're wanting to do. And to question why some people are trying to claim that Paizo is attempting to "censor their criticism".

Hythlodeus wrote:

Don't worry. The game itself does a really good job reminding everyody that it is not really Pathfinder. I'm sure nobody forgets that, despite the misleadinding Pathfinder 2 title

You're completely right. You're so completely correct that you've helped me decide that I shouldn't buy a Chevrolet Cobalt because it really isn't a Chevrolet since Chevrolet is obviously only the Corvette...

I'm kinda shocked that this post wasn't taken down as it has absolutely nothing to do with the original post, and also comes off a very passive aggressive way at trying to insult the developers and what they're wanting to do. And to question why some people are trying to claim that Paizo is attempting to "censor their criticism".

i think a more fair comparison would be being reminded that you're trading a beat-up volkswagen for a horse-and-buggy advertised as a car.

i mean, it's technically also a wheeled vehicle, and it'll get you there, but certainly not any faster or more comfortably. and i mean hey, you can see them building some sort of chassis around the horse, so there's promise there for later, even if you can see them getting tangled in the rigging right now.

Folks have made their points here, but considering the amount of bickering as n moderation, I'm thinking it's probably run its course.

This thread is locked.

I've also removed a post and replies. We understand that "Might as well ask when I stopped beating my wife," may be a common phrase to make a point about leading questions, but please do not use examples of domestic violence so flippantly.