RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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Sounds to me from all of this that the BEST way to fix all this is to ramp up content production.
I know that's a tall order. Is it a staff volume issue? Money? I know you guys can't answer that, I'm just thinking out loud.
If it helps, I'd pay a little more for scenarios if it meant more quality scenario production in a season.
I think financials and staffing is a big part of things. There is a lot of risk/reward to think of. Paizo is at the limit of what their editorial staff can put out for product right now, so more content = hiring more people.
Now think on the reward side. What % of players are playing more than 2 scenarios a month and have run out of content? So how many areas would buy additional modules each month? (And VO's don't count...how many non-VO's are going to run things?) If an additional scenario was put out each month, would it pay for another editor? Additional art and layout staff? I'm sure Paizo has done some analysis, but I think the diminishing returns of creating more PFS modules would have a tough time covering the additional costs.
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Actually it is that bad, maybe not as bad as Pirate Rob who has exactly one 7-11 out of all scenarios to play
I have levels 15,12,10,10,10,10,9,7,7,7,6,5,3,2,2,2
So I had to go check; if my notes are right:
10,4,11,11,9,3,3,1,1,6,4,4,5,6,2,1,2,1,1,2(C),1(C)I don't have much local opportunity for AP play, and I am as likely to run a module as I am to get to play one. Also, in my experience it does feel like level 6 can be a bit of a wasteland for scenarios.
(I do GM some, but fulltime work and part-time grad school limit me. Due to our tendency to play 1-5s -- almost all of which I've played -- I was giving heavy consideration to devoting my Wednesdays to another game's organized campaign, but Core seems to have alleviated that need for the nonce! ^_^ )
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Just to add to the slow track topic, I slow-paced my main character through every level but 6th on the way to 12. It was totally worth it. And now she's 20th.
-Matt
I was slow sometimes. Except for Eyes. That was fast and I didn't want to fall behind everyone else. As a jarl, I don't get out much any more, but if I do I will move slow again.
Contributor
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As someone involved in writing the multi-tier 11+ Specials, I just wanted to chime in.
I find that after a certain number of level ranges, the encounters just break down. I'm all for more higher level content, but it needs to be prepared as higher level content and not just repurposed 'main-line' content, or Specials where the same encounter is expected to support a 1st level party and a 15th level party.
I think if there were more reasons to get high level (unique scenarios, retirement arcs, truly exotic locales) then people would dedicate themselves to hitting that higher level threshold.
It's a problem I see in MMOs a lot. If the endgame content isn't good, then people will just spend their time grinding characters through the actual game and discard the characters they've invested in.
Maybe one day I'll convince John into letting me do a 7-11 or (preferably) 12+ scenario... :)
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...Now think on the reward side. What % of players are playing more than 2 scenarios a month and have run out of content? So how many areas would buy additional modules each month? (And VO's don't count...how many non-VO's are going to run things?) If an additional scenario was put out each month, would it pay for another editor? Additional art and layout staff? I'm sure Paizo has done some analysis, but I think the diminishing returns of creating more PFS modules would have a tough time covering the additional costs.Sounds to me from all of this that the BEST way to fix all this is to ramp up content production.
I know that's a tall order. Is it a staff volume issue? Money? I know you guys can't answer that, I'm just thinking out loud.
If it helps, I'd pay a little more for scenarios if it meant more quality scenario production in a season.
That's why I suggested that I would pay more for scenarios. If you increase the price of all scenarios, the additional revenue is pulled from that as well as from sales of additional published scenarios.
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Maybe one day I'll convince John into letting me do a 7-11 or (preferably) 12+ scenario... :)
Bring it. I'll step into Shax's House of Pain.
That's why I suggested that I would pay more for scenarios. If you increase the price of all scenarios, the additional revenue is pulled from that as well as from sales of additional published scenarios.
I wonder how many PFS players actually buy the scenarios. There are some like me that have to catch them all. But then there are those who only pick up the one or two scenarios they run themselves. Increasing the price of the PDF may not have that big an effect.
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That's why I suggested that I would pay more for scenarios. If you increase the price of all scenarios, the additional revenue is pulled from that as well as from sales of additional published scenarios.
I'm not a GM yet, I'm a player (wanting to get a bit more table time before I take the plunge), so perhaps my opinion on this lacks a bit of context, but I it seems it would be fair to charge more for the higher tier scenarios. They are likely to be more complicated to assemble (as the relative capabilities of the PCs make what they can do far less predictable and controllable), and just by supply and demand, if they sell so much less, but require similar or more effort to assemble, they should cost more to compensate.
That said, they might to some degree be a loss leader now, as you can see all the neat things you can do in the future and thus be driven to go through the lower levels - I'm not all that familiar with Paizo's business model (which is probably true for all of us but the employees).
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Honestly? Yeah, I think it matters. As it is, every level has the opportunity to play in-subtier, and I don't think that is a choice we should take away from the players. Players might have to work to avoid playing OOS, but it should be an option for them if they want it.Replacing 3-7 and 5-9 with 4-8 would leave levels 3, 6 and 9 characters without an in-tier option. 3-9 makes more sense, but it would mean developing three tiers in a single scenario. I believe the difficulty in doing that is one of the reasons we don't have 1-7s anymore.Does that matter though? Players are always going to be playing out of tier at some stage regardless, unless they're trying really hard to avoid that.
I think it matters less than in the past, now that out of subtier gold exists, but I still think it matters. That's 3 levels where there wouldn't be a scenario with an appropriate challenge level. That may not matter to experienced players who try to play up a lot, but I think it would matter to the more casual player. You'd run the risk of tier 4-5 really becoming tier 3-5, which means slightly less difficult than it is now. Tier 7-8 could become 6-8 or 7-9 depending on whether it's a 4-8 or 7-11. That's not unheard of, as modules already have a 3 level range, but then modules aren't designed for PFS and sometimes end up on the difficult side.
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The only scenario I've purchased myself was The Confirmation, because I wanted to be prepared to run it if we had walk-ins. Everything else I have was given me by the organizer of the venue I'm running at. (Except for one time where they didn't get it to me soon enough, so I bought it so I would have preparation time.)
Which contrasts with the Card Game scenarios, which I've purchased all of.
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As far as discussing prices goes, I created THIS THREAD so we could better focus on just that discussion.
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Developer
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Maybe one day I'll convince John into letting me do a 7-11 or (preferably) 12+ scenario... :)
Eh what? You want to write high-level content? Hmmm…
I'll keep that in mind.
Bring it. I'll step into Shax's House of Pain.
Oh, you know not what you have requested (unless you do, in which case I salute your foolhardy bravery).
Thursty, did we ever share that outline? Maybe I should compile that for a Monday blog.
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You're probably right, 4H. But, if production hasn't ramped up over, what, six and a half years, I don't really see it ever ramping up. If it was an option, it would have already happened
I'd like to point out that when Paizo was a much smaller, tinier company they released this great resource called Dungeon Magazine that regularly meant 3-4 brand spanking new adventures each month for a mere $7 (or about $2 per adventure). And that was a hardcopy - imagine if it was PDF-only!
The production quality was off-the-hook with amazing art, immaculate editing, and really truly great adventures (in many cases a chapter in some of their greatest APs of all time).
So, if there's anyone who knows how to produce 3-4 quality adventures every single month - it's Paizo (or their old guard - it looks like it was Mona, Jacobs, 2 assistant editors and an art guy). It should absolutely be doable. Perhaps the ideal format for PFS is simply a monthly PDF at $10 that includes 4 adventures and the same production-team-of-old model is duplicated for its creation? They can make it a subscription model for all the hardcore PFS players, and it's a nice healthy predictable (and profitable) revenue stream at N players * $10/month (5,000 subcribers x $10 = $50,000?)
Go go!
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The multiple tiering of current adventures and word count is higher than 1/4 a magazine. Dungeon had a much higher circulation to amortize costs of content acquisition. Dungeon had serious advertising revenue, which PFS does not (and as a PDF that I print to consume, i DO NOT WANT).
Negative. For kicks, I did check the word count lengths. For example, Slave Pits of Absalom clocks in at a nice tight 5600 words. I took a look at a couple random shorter (non side-trek) Dungeon adventures and they were easily pushing 8000-10000 words.
I think you also may over-estimate the monetary value of print ads in 2007 (or whatever baseline year you want to compare) for a circulation of ~30K-35K readers and its effect on the sale price. I wouldn't even waste a single person trying to source ads for a digital-only offering.
The world's changed dramatically since 2010 with the current generation and their willingness to part with monthly subscription rates for digital-only offerings, mostly thanks to the proliferation of app marketplaces. You can easily charge 3-4X for a digital only service than you did just a few years ago.
I suspect the only inhibitor would be that at first blush this looks like a return to the "magazine business" for certain folks at Paizo and they are shell-shocked from what it meant to be in a labor-of-love magazine business a decade ago.
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Sounds to me from all of this that the BEST way to fix all this is to ramp up content production.
I know that's a tall order. Is it a staff volume issue? Money? I know you guys can't answer that, I'm just thinking out loud.
If it helps, I'd pay a little more for scenarios if it meant more quality scenario production in a season.
They've said before that the bottleneck is on the editing/layout side of things/ PFS doesn't have its own it has to go through the rest of paizo and they're BUSY
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Developer
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The multiple tiering of current adventures and word count is higher than 1/4 a magazine. Dungeon had a much higher circulation to amortize costs of content acquisition. Dungeon had serious advertising revenue, which PFS does not (and as a PDF that I print to consume, i DO NOT WANT).Negative. For kicks, I did check the word count lengths. For example, Slave Pits of Absalom clocks in at a nice tight 5600 words. I took a look at a couple random shorter (non side-trek) Dungeon adventures and they were easily pushing 8000-10000 words.
Just as a quick point of reference, most scenarios over the past two years have clocked in at 10,000–14,000 words by the time they're published (not counting the OGL text, table of contents, etc.)
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Just as a quick point of reference, most scenarios over the past two years have clocked in at 10,000–14,000 words by the time they're published (not counting the OGL text, table of contents, etc.)
A point of reference right back at you -- you're shipping a product with 2-3X the "cost" at the same price it was previously listed at.
What's amazing is you could probably be shipping the shorter adventures (word lengths comparable to season 0-1) for $6 a piece in 2015.
Starting in 2011 (conincidentally with the widespread adoption of the App Store & Android Market/Google Play), growth-minded businesses have had a general trend to "boil the ocean" w.r.t their monthly pricing. There's no way people would've paid $10/mo for an Evernote subscription back in 2009 - price sensitivity to these "services" has done a 180 and a lot of the more "old school" businesses (possibly including Paizo) have been so busy just doign what they do, they've overlooked the shift.
I know it's emotionally a hurdle to raise prices. Everytime I'm in a room with a CEO or founder on this very subject, it goes against their primal desire to maximize the reach of their product. I've personally seen a 400% price increase for multiple digital services in the past 2 years turn companies from losing money each month into extremely profitable (and well funded) ones. And amazingly, in the worst case, sales volume dropped a mere ~10%. To be fair, there were certain well-tested assumptions in the 2000-2010 timeframe where $1.99 or $3.99 were magical price points where the demand curve took a dive if you inched $1 higher. My advice: Retest these price points as the world's changed considerably since.
(Additionally, you should absolutely employ some form of price discrimination on scenarios. If you release them at a $6 sale price, there's no reason you can't have 1-2 annual sales where they come down to $3 to address the market where this price increase would be prohibitive. You will have people who "can't wait" for the sale and purchase them at the full list price in order to play them first and ahead of everyone else.)
John... think of all the editors you could hire...
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Well, I seem to recall a discussion about an adventure with players running Aspis Consortium PCs and how that wasn't an option. And now look at this years GenCon specials.
Wait...WHAT?! Did I miss something?
Anyway, as an average store coordinator, I would pay more for more scenarios per year. I'll probably put up a more detailed post in Nefreet's thread.
As someone who applies 7-11's for credit to characters, I am not yet terribly worried about my content. But I'm a spring chicken in comparison to some of the folks in this thread, I haven't even hit my second anniversary of playing yet. But at the rate of play currently, and with how many characters I already have in the tier, (One fourteen seeker, two 11 slow tracked, after reading this thread, probably to my detriment, one 10, and one 8), I will run out of 7-11's sooner rather than later I think. Coming from the viewpoint of someone who plays ~6 scenarios a month, it would be great for more scenarios to come out.
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Read Monday's blog post...thoroughly.
Wait...WHAT?! Did I miss something?
The relevant bullet point from the blog:
The "Serpents Rise" Special in which the PCs are agents of the Aspis Consortium bent on sabotaging the Pathfinder Society. Special pregenerated characters are provided for this event on Sunday morning.
But, indeed, there are some other, very interesting pieces in that blog. Like a reference to playing kobolds....
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Read Monday's blog post...thoroughly.
Wait...WHAT?! Did I miss something?
The relevant bullet point from the blog:
The "Serpents Rise" Special in which the PCs are agents of the Aspis Consortium bent on sabotaging the Pathfinder Society. Special pregenerated characters are provided for this event on Sunday morning.But, indeed, there are some other, very interesting pieces in that blog. Like a reference to playing kobolds....
Would this be like how the Goblin booms were given out? Survive, and the top group per bracket gets the boon. IF YOU SURVIVE...
/ominous thunder
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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But, indeed, there are some other, very interesting pieces in that blog. Like a reference to playing kobolds....Would this be like how the Goblin booms were given out? Survive, and the top group per bracket gets the boon. IF YOU SURVIVE...
/ominous thunder
Based on the views he expressed in this post, I would not expect to see Mike Brock awarding boons in any such fashion.