Introducing Paizo Plus

Just goes to show no matter the image or sense of community Paizo projects, it’s all about extracting as much money as possible.

I don't disagree with you overall, but in this specific case, Paizo is a TTRPG biz which, since its inception, has been frustrating at best to stay afloat. What with all the headwinds from all the messes going on right now, it's a wonder that any TTRPG biz is still around to take our money. Of course, they need to monetize as much and as efficiently as possible.

I have no problem with trying this new system out, but I think it would be a show of good faith to include an option to auto-redeem gold for society scenarios. It would show that the intention isn't "We hope that people forget to redeem their gold for a year so that it expires and they'll have to buy the scenarios rather than getting them for free like they had been".

I mean, the existence of an expiration date on gold already shows that that's the intention, but it would at least alleviate my concerns somewhat if they allowed us to effectively keep the way we had been doing it.

Excited for the new store! Finding stuff in the current one, checking out, and downloading my books are, uhhh, a severe-threat encounter right now :grinning_face_with_sweat:

Wow this is worse all around. I remember when I said:

nephandys wrote:

Is anyone else getting a bad feeling about the upcoming changes to the loyalty program? The way it’s been described so far - lots of vague “coming soon” language and talk of a “better experience” - just screams corpo-speak for we’re cutting benefits, but trying to make it sound like a good thing.

Let’s be honest: when companies say they’re “enhancing” or “evolving” a program to “better serve us,” it usually translates to more restrictions, fewer rewards, or a new tier system that’s harder to climb. They frame it as a win for the customer, but it almost always serves their bottom line, not ours.

Until they drop actual details, there’s no way to know for sure, but the language so far feels like a red flag. If the changes were genuinely beneficial, they probably wouldn’t be so cagey or need to spin it this hard. They'd be shouting them from the rooftops instead of deferring them for a future blog.

Would love to be wrong on this, but right now it feels like we’re being softened up for a downgrade.

Just goes to show no matter the image or sense of community Paizo projects, it’s all about extracting as much money as possible.

If Paizo wanted to extract as much money as possible, why have any rewards system at all, be it subscriptions or gold, and the Archive of Nethis would have to go, or have a subscription fee.

Encouraging social media helps grow the game, not just to make $ for Paizo. Reviews help people decide what to buy and also provide feedback to let Paizo know how they are doing. I wouldn't join X or Facebook for any amount of money, but Paizo only having 30.9K subscribers on YouTube, Twitch has even fewer subscribers, is pretty sad, because Paizo Live is the best way to keep up on game news. It took me 3 years to find a live local Starfinder game, so I certainly support anything that helps promote the game.

It's certainly a big change. I never benefited much from subscriptions, I think this new way allows more people to benefit from Paizo discounts, which seems like a bad idea if their goal was to extract as much money as possible, which I don't think it is.

Will you be able to leave unverified reviews, for products not on your accounts purchase history, and where these unverified reviews do not leave any rewards?

This solves awkwardness around PFS scenarios not being owned when you reviewed the foundry modules. We've been told those PFS scenario reviews are important, so I would imagine it's best and easiest to gather those on a per-scenario basis rather than sorting through multiple product pages for them.

This also allows someone who bought a physical book in a store to leave a review, or maybe a player who sat at the beginning of an adventure wants to say 'Hey, this was kind of an awkward start having the town hall on fire, but the rest of the book was pretty fun'. That seems like it would be a valuable review too, even if from a player perspective?

Don't get me wrong, the rewards sounds great, but I think it's been hard enough to get people to review some products that putting additional barriers on that seems like a net-negative.

The most unsettling part of all of these announcements is that there hasn’t been much discussion on how/whether the forums will exist…I don’t see a tab there in the screenshot for…Community. Not that that means there won’t be such available, but the optics, insofar as this Blog is about the Store/loyalty program as opposed to the new site, are concerning.

New forums are still on the roadmap, but we aren't going to be able to even guess on a date until we get the new store up and running. From my April Tech Update post:

"Areas that will stay the same for now will be the forums, Organized Play reporting, the blog, and a dozen or so landing pages."

We want to get everything improved, but we need to get some of this current work behind.

-Jim

Can we have an option to select a reward to just automatically "purchase" each time we have enough Gold? So like I can just say "every time I get 150 gold give me a $10 off coupon" (and also have said coupon automatically applied on the next purchase) and then just... forget about the whole micromanaging aspect of the system? Because doing all that manual work is going to be obnoxious when the former method was fully automatic.

That's currently not a feature available on the loyalty platform, but we will let them know that is a feature we'd like to see in the future.

-Jim

I like the idea of offering Legendary Loot exclusives personally, and if I dropped out of Legendary tier it would not be the end of the world. This is assuming it is inconsequential items like hero point coins or pins, and not exclusive story lore that only the legends can know.

We don't have any plans to gate new content behind legendary loot, but it's possible you might see ultra-deluxe editions available there. You'll be able to get the current editions normally, though.

-Jim

nephandys wrote:

Wow this is worse all around. I remember when I said:

nephandys wrote:

Is anyone else getting a bad feeling about the upcoming changes to the loyalty program? The way it’s been described so far - lots of vague “coming soon” language and talk of a “better experience” - just screams corpo-speak for we’re cutting benefits, but trying to make it sound like a good thing.

Let’s be honest: when companies say they’re “enhancing” or “evolving” a program to “better serve us,” it usually translates to more restrictions, fewer rewards, or a new tier system that’s harder to climb. They frame it as a win for the customer, but it almost always serves their bottom line, not ours.

Until they drop actual details, there’s no way to know for sure, but the language so far feels like a red flag. If the changes were genuinely beneficial, they probably wouldn’t be so cagey or need to spin it this hard. They'd be shouting them from the rooftops instead of deferring them for a future blog.

Would love to be wrong on this, but right now it feels like we’re being softened up for a downgrade.

Just goes to show no matter the image or sense of community Paizo projects, it’s all about extracting as much money as possible.

If Paizo wanted to extract as much money as possible, why have any rewards system at all, be it subscriptions or gold, and the Archive of Nethis would have to go, or have a subscription fee.

Encouraging social media helps grow the game, not just to make $ for Paizo. Reviews help people decide what to buy and also provide feedback to let Paizo know how they are doing. I wouldn't join X or Facebook for any amount of money, but Paizo only having 30.9K subscribers on YouTube, Twitch has even fewer subscribers, is pretty sad, because Paizo Live is the best way to keep up on game news. It took me 3 years to find a live local Starfinder game, so I certainly support anything that helps promote the game.

It's certainly a big change. I never benefited much from...

Reward programs ARE designed to extract money. They encourage you to shop, in this case, from Paizo directly and not your LGS. They create an incentive for you to make purchases you wouldn't have otherwise, ie: This gold is about to expire, so I should buy something with my 10% coupon before I lose it. Or even just lowering the financial barrier making it more likely for a consumer to go through with a purchase because of a discount.

The archives can't go, for at least two reasons.
One: because you can't copyright game rules and mechanics; Paizo would have a lot of trouble, legally, trying to get it taken down.
Two: it would be a PR nightmare. After Paizo positioned themselves as the consumers' advocate ttrpg companyfollowing the OGL debacle, the community Backlash would be incomprehensibly large. I actually think removing the archives would end Paizo as their public image would be totally destroyed. Removing AoN is not in their best interest.

Plus, the it looks like the amount you'll save is going to be miniscule.
Looking at next year, when all the free sign up and social following free gold is gone, to get the $5 off Reward (the lowest tier, non-society reward) costs 75 gold. Supposing your birthday has already passed (Happy Birthday!), it will cost you $500 to accumulate the remaining 50 gold, netting you less than a 1% total discount, because you'll still need to buy another thing before that discount goes through.

"You can earn additional gold by writing reviews" I hear you saying.
Yeah, reviews of things you already had to purchase, so Paizo already recouped the cost of doing business there. But you're also helping them by leaving a review. James Jacobs frequently mentions how important reviews are for the success of products, APs, especially.
Now they're paying you for reviews. Not directly, of course; gold has no monetary value. But you can use it for money discounts, so we'll go with it.
5 gold is 1/15 of the way to a $5 Reward. Which means effectively, Paizo are paying you $0.33 per review, which is an unbelievably good deal for them.

Is it the worst system? No.
Do most people stand to save anything? No, I don't think so, not after the first year. Only people who were already spending a ton of money or writing a ton of reviews stand to benefit, the average customer will see no benefit. And that's probably my biggest issue.

At least if the gold didn't expire, the average consumer could get a reward once every few years.

Jim Butler wrote:

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

As much as I'd love to turn on the ability for people to write reviews for whatever products they'd like, the current system has been damaged by bots, international spammers, and those who hate particular product lines or editions. Paizo just doesn't have the resources to police a vast catalog constantly under assault by bad actors.

We know you're not the bad actors, but to start we need to leave the baseline as "only verified purchasers." In the future, feature gods willing, perhaps we can change that to unlock as you move up reward tiers. One more item for new feature requests...

-Jim

Will you be able to leave unverified reviews, for products not on your accounts purchase history, and where these unverified reviews do not leave any rewards?

This solves awkwardness around PFS scenarios not being owned when you reviewed the foundry modules. We've been told those PFS scenario reviews are important, so I would imagine it's best and easiest to gather those on a per-scenario basis rather than sorting through multiple product pages for them.

This also allows someone who bought a physical book in a store to leave a review, or maybe a player who sat at the beginning of an adventure wants to say 'Hey, this was kind of an awkward start having the town hall on fire, but the rest of the book was pretty fun'. That seems like it would be a valuable review too, even if from a player perspective?

Don't get me wrong, the rewards sounds great, but I think it's been hard enough to get people to review some products that putting additional barriers on that seems like a net-negative.

I agree we need to have reviews even if they are not a purchase on your account history. It is important to get the Player and Venture Officer prospective. Even though the individual has not purchased the product through Paizo (or they received the product for free), it is crucial to show what the community values at that moment, what the products are doing right, and how future products can be improved.

I have no problem with trying this new system out, but I think it would be a show of good faith to include an option to auto-redeem gold for society scenarios. It would show that the intention isn't "We hope that people forget to redeem their gold for a year so that it expires and they'll have to buy the scenarios rather than getting them for free like they had been".

I mean, the existence of an expiration date on gold already shows that that's the intention, but it would at least alleviate my concerns somewhat if they allowed us to effectively keep the way we had been doing it.

I concur.

Plus, the it looks like the amount you'll save is going to be miniscule.

Looking at next year, when all the free sign up and social following free gold is gone, to get the $5 off Reward (the lowest tier, non-society reward) costs 75 gold. Supposing your birthday has already passed (Happy Birthday!), it will cost you $500 to accumulate the remaining 50 gold, netting you less than a 1% total discount, because you'll still need to buy another thing before that discount goes through.

1 gold per dollar spent, so $50 instead of $500 to finish off that $5 off coupon. Math works out a bit better in that case.

For me if I apply the rewards exclusively to subscription payments and because I don’t care about getting every society scenario, I’d save an additional ~10% on top of the existing subscription discounts. This replaces a benefit I only rarely use (because I don’t play society and only use and heavily reflavor those scenarios in my home campaign when I need a side quest or something) with something that gives me a decent extra benefit.

Ectar wrote:

Plus, the it looks like the amount you'll save is going to be miniscule.

Looking at next year, when all the free sign up and social following free gold is gone, to get the $5 off Reward (the lowest tier, non-society reward) costs 75 gold. Supposing your birthday has already passed (Happy Birthday!), it will cost you $500 to accumulate the remaining 50 gold, netting you less than a 1% total discount, because you'll still need to buy another thing before that discount goes through.

1 gold per dollar spent, so $50 instead of $500 to finish off that $5 off coupon. Math works out a bit better in that case.

For me if I apply the rewards exclusively to subscription payments and because I don’t care about getting every society scenario, I’d save an additional ~10% on top of the existing subscription discounts. This replaces a benefit I only rarely use (because I don’t play society and only use and heavily reflavor those scenarios in my home campaign when I need a side quest or something) with something that gives me a decent extra benefit.

Thank you! I edited portions of my post to reflect my rather large mistake. It's a lot better than I had thought, though I still have gripes.

Cori Marie wrote:

Or a lifetime status for those that have spent over a certain amount lifetime like airlines do for their million mile flyers?

Or something for those that are still Charter subscribers? (Asking for a friend.)

Been wondering about this too. I'm sure those of us with charter status are in the super-minority, but it would be nice to get some sort of real benefit from it, beyond a little label on the forums.

They HAVE a Bluesky account, I'm not sure why it's not listed as an option.

We realized we forgot this and made the update!

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

To be fair, this would also prevent malicious trolls from leaving bad reviews because of some agenda, like, say, hating Pathfinder 2E because you think Paizo should have continued with Pathfinder 1E. Of which there have been dozens of reviews like this by the same person under different consecutive user names.

The most unsettling part of all of these announcements is that there hasn’t been much discussion on how/whether the forums will exist…I don’t see a tab there in the screenshot for…Community. Not that that means there won’t be such available, but the optics, insofar as this Blog is about the Store/loyalty program as opposed to the new site, are concerning.

Just to be very clear about this, we will still have forums! Although it is not included in these screenshots specifically, there will still be a section for Community on the new site and we will still have a forum, and not only that, it'll be easier to view, navigate, and moderate (that last one was for me).

As a long time Pathfinder player and a more recent subscriber (with 4 subscriptions) I just want to chime in and say that the new system sounds great and I appreciate the flexibility. As a PM for a website development firm I can also say this system dovetails MUCH better with a cart system and will make the subscription management much less onerous for the Paizo team. Also, once the system's running they'll have a more solid platform to work on the exceptions and corner cases for solid fans.

I saw that the new rewards replace free subscriptions to the Pathfinder Society and the Starfinder Society that Paizo Advantage gave. Are subscriptions still available to get the free PDFs with a book or adventure?

I'd like to ask again since I didn't see an answer- How will the review system work if someone received the content for free, sich as for convention support or as part of the venture agent program. Will they get gold for reviewing products they were given? Will they be able to review these products at all? If the answer to the former is no, that's not the end of the world, but tracking it on our end if we wish to leave reviews for gold will be annoying. If the answer to the latter is also no, that's going to cut down on the abilitu of a lot of prolific GMs to leave reviews on scenarios.

I'd like to ask again since I didn't see an answer- How will the review system work if someone received the content for free, sich as for convention support or as part of the venture agent program. Will they get gold for reviewing products they were given? Will they be able to review these products at all? If the answer to the former is no, that's not the end of the world, but tracking it on our end if we wish to leave reviews for gold will be annoying. If the answer to the latter is also no, that's going to cut down on the abilitu of a lot of prolific GMs to leave reviews on scenarios.

It sounds like the answer is no from Jim's comment above. Which is absurd. Punish the many because of the few. /shrug.

The.Vortex wrote:

Jim Butler wrote:

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

As much as I'd love to turn on the ability for people to write reviews for whatever products they'd like, the current system has been damaged by bots, international spammers, and those who hate particular product lines or editions. Paizo just doesn't have the resources to police a vast catalog constantly under assault by bad actors.

We know you're not the bad actors, but to start we need to leave the baseline as "only verified purchasers." In the future, feature gods willing, perhaps we can change that to unlock as you move up reward tiers. One more item for new feature requests...

-Jim

What do other sites do? Because this is one of the first places I have heard saying you can't leave a review unless you are verified purchased.

Please do not tie it to tiers. Players should be able to leave reviews just as much as GM or whoever buys the product. Reviews of products should not be tied to website purchases either. Its an odd choice in a normally awesome and opening community.

In the meantime, where do you suggest we can leave "reviews" "feedback" so that Organized Play Team has visibility because we were always told to do that through the reviews and now I and many others will be unable to.

Is it the worst system? No.

Do most people stand to save anything? No, I don't think so, not after the first year. Only people who were already spending a ton of money or writing a ton of reviews stand to benefit, the average customer will see no benefit. And that's probably my biggest issue.

At least if the gold didn't expire, the average consumer could get a reward once every few years.

If the gold system was already in place when I preordered just 3 things for SF2e, I would have been able to get the first 2 SF2e scenarios free, which sounds like a saving to me, since all I play is Starfinder Society, it's not something Paizo is tricking me into buying.

Paizo is a business I expect them to want to make a profit; doing so keeps the game alive, which makes me happy. What I don't think Paizo is doing is trying to bleed their customers dry like WotC or Games Workshop.

I often didn't have subscriptions, often I bought books locally so I could support my local game store, and I then also bought the PDFs from Paizo, now both my local store and Paizo have a rewards system I benefit from.

I agree that it would be nice if rewards didn't expire.

Ectar wrote:

Is it the worst system? No.

Do most people stand to save anything? No, I don't think so, not after the first year. Only people who were already spending a ton of money or writing a ton of reviews stand to benefit, the average customer will see no benefit. And that's probably my biggest issue.

At least if the gold didn't expire, the average consumer could get a reward once every few years.

If the gold system was already in place when I preordered just 3 things for SF2e, I would have been able to get the first 2 SF2e scenarios free, which sounds like a saving to me, since all I play is Starfinder Society, it's not something Paizo is tricking me into buying.

Paizo is a business I expect them to want to make a profit; doing so keeps the game alive, which makes me happy. What I don't think Paizo is doing is trying to bleed their customers dry like WotC or Games Workshop.

I often didn't have subscriptions, often I bought books locally so I could support my local game store, and I then also bought the PDFs from Paizo, now both my local store and Paizo have a rewards system I benefit from.

I agree that it would be nice if rewards didn't expire.

Regrettably, I misread the original post and the $ to gold rate by a factor of 10, but was too late up update my post.

Bleed their customers dry? No. This could be way more predatory.
Use marketing tricks and fomo to try and get people to buy more than they otherwise would have? Definitely.

I want for Paizo what I want for all companies: financial success based purely on the strength of the products they're producing.

How do we get the points for following on social? I rarely use my real name places if I can help it (looking at you Facebook 2004) and my user name here is not the same as elsewhere.

How do we get the points for following on social? I rarely use my real name places if I can help it (looking at you Facebook 2004) and my user name here is not the same as elsewhere.

On other places I've seen have things like that, I have seen two ways. A "link account" setting, that ask permissions, and long-term link the two accounts. This is overkill, and is usually used for interactions that are WAY more "in-depth".

Jim Butler wrote:

(Elfteiroh: SNIP to limit tunneling)

What do other sites do? Because this is one of the first places I have heard saying you can't leave a review unless you are verified purchased.

Please do not tie it to tiers. Players should be able...

Usually, other sites that DO something about it just remove reviews entirely. There's also a lot of sites that are starting to remove comments entirely for similar problems and raising demands on moderation.

Driftbourne wrote:

Ectar wrote:

Is it the worst system? No.

Do most people stand to save anything? No, I don't think so, not after the first year. Only people who were already spending a ton of money or writing a ton of reviews stand to benefit, the average customer will see no benefit. And that's probably my biggest issue.

At least if the gold didn't expire, the average consumer could get a reward once every few years.

If the gold system was already in place when I preordered just 3 things for SF2e, I would have been able to get the first 2 SF2e scenarios free, which sounds like a saving to me, since all I play is Starfinder Society, it's not something Paizo is tricking me into buying.

Paizo is a business I expect them to want to make a profit; doing so keeps the game alive, which makes me happy. What I don't think Paizo is doing is trying to bleed their customers dry like WotC or Games Workshop.

I often didn't have subscriptions, often I bought books locally so I could support my local game store, and I then also bought the PDFs from Paizo, now both my local store and Paizo have a rewards system I benefit from.

I agree that it would be nice if rewards didn't expire.

Regrettably, I misread the original post and the $ to gold rate by a factor of 10, but was too late up update my post.

The system is much better than I original asserted.
But responding now to this post:
That's great! The system is pure upside for you, since you would be saving on things you were 100% going to buy anyway.

Bleed their customers dry? No. This could be way more predatory.
Use marketing tricks and fomo to try and get people to buy more than they otherwise would have? Definitely.

I want for Paizo what I want for all companies: financial success based purely on the strength of the products they're producing.

I don't see the FOMO, I have a high will save, or I'm blind, to me, predatory marketing is MTG Secret Layers. If reward points expire with a year's notice causes FOMO, then a 3 day holiday sales must be the work of pure evil. For me, in gaming, FOMO is having to buy something because you'll never get a chance to get it again, or be forced to pay collector prices for it. If Paizo had classes that were only available in deluxe editions of books for a limited amount of time, I'd be the first to grab my pitchfork.

I don't see the FOMO, I have a high will save, or I'm blind, to me, predatory marketing is MTG Secret Layers. If reward points expire with a year's notice causes FOMO, then holiday sales must be the work of pure evil. For me, in gaming, FOMO is having to buy something because you'll never get a chance to get it again, or be forced to pay collector prices for it. If Paizo had classes that were only available in deluxe editions of books for a limited amount of time, I'd be the first to grab my pitchfork.

It sounds to me like you DO get it.

This reward program isn't as bad as those in its manipulation. It's more boring and ordinary.

But reread the description for Legendary Loot and tell me that's not designed to induce fomo.

Count me in as disliking the review restriction. I've written quite a few reviews for adventures I've either run or played, and those reviews have been pretty serious examinations of the material on offer. Of my reviews, probably less than a third are for adventures I bought through the Paizo store. Humble Bundle-sourced pdfs, borrowing adventures from friends, or even being a player in an adventure someone else is running would all be disqualified from posting reviews if this goes through. That means basically far less reviewing from me.

Surely there's a better way to eliminate "troll" reviews than this.

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

The most unsettling part of all of these announcements is that there hasn’t been much discussion on how/whether the forums will exist…I don’t see a tab there in the screenshot for…Community. Not that that means there won’t be such available, but the optics, insofar as this Blog is about the Store/loyalty program as opposed to the new site, are concerning.

New forums are still on the roadmap, but we aren't going to be able to even guess on a date until we get the new store up and running. From my April Tech Update post:

Quote:

"Areas that will stay the same for now will be the forums, Organized Play reporting, the blog, and a dozen or so landing pages."

We want to get everything improved, but we need to get some of this current work behind.

-Jim

Thank you Jim (and Maya!) for reminding/confirming this. I clearly forgot what you said in April. And I understand that the Store update/upgrade is your first priority.

I would echo other posters dismay at the “only verified purchasers can review” policy. I have read the reviews of may reviewers who were players, and likely not the purchaser (I have no data for this) who provided the “player experience” point of view. Which is incredibly useful even for prospective GMs. Sure a review of how easy a scenario is *to run* is useful, but I’d also be just as interested, as a GM, in who and how many of my group, will have certain itches scratched, and player reviews tend to be laser focused on things like degree of combat, puzzles, intrigue, length/pacing etc.

The other point I’d like to make is that the current posited option seems to be designed to cater reviews to those who will purchase them, which seems like a no-brainer, but also, for the points I raise above, kinda also not.

So maybe look at this, and see what you can do.

I get that Paizo is a business. And a business needs to make money to run. And these are times of great instability amd change - tariffs, distribution woes, AI/technological change. I guess there are multiple ways to make money, and these seem like, to Paizo, some great ways. And to plenty of customers, they are. I applaud Paizo for making changes to their business model, upgrading the site and trying to grow their customer base. In and of themselves, those are sensible business decisions.

I just don’t particularly applaud the actual steps they are taking to achieve those necessary aims.

But then again, neither am I offering much in the way of useful alternatives. So, community, if you have ideas, post away…

As much as I'd love to turn on the ability for people to write reviews for whatever products they'd like, the current system has been damaged by bots, international spammers, and those who hate particular product lines or editions. Paizo just doesn't have the resources to police a vast catalog constantly under assault by bad actors.

We know you're not the bad actors, but to start we need to leave the baseline as "only verified purchasers." In the future, feature gods willing, perhaps we can change that to unlock as you move up reward tiers. One more item for new feature requests...

-Jim

Maybe you are policing them quite well curently, but looking at the reviews of PFS scenarios for the last two seasons, I cannot see any indication of troll reviews there. So I don't see a valid reason to change the current system. And it is frankly baffling to me that you want to restrict the reviews of ADVENTURES to the people that bought them. That would mean that players cannot review and adventure they just played. That removes 80% or so of possible valid reviewers!

If you absolutely MUST restrict those reviews (again: currently I see no indication that such a restriction is even needed), how about allowing people who have the adventure reported as played or GMed at least? That would also prevent most, if not all, trolls from doing so, but still allow people who demonstrably have experienced the product to voice their opinions about it?

Please don't lock it away under some rewards tier, either. That, too, would remove a lot of players from the pool of possible reviewers!

Go look at Sky King's Tomb AP reviews and see if you feel the same.

The time and effort in moderating reviews is not worth the cost.

Make no mistake. This is a price increase for Paizo's most loyal customers. The company profit pros of using a reward currency system is that you can effectively change the value of that currency in the future on a whim. There are basic, modern methodologies being put in place here to better control profit margins now and in the future. Paizo is hoping gamers are not bright enough regarding economics and business practices to realize how this system will be worse for their customers. Keep in mind, they are planning to release FAR more Society scenarios over the next year than perhaps ever before. This new currency system means they aren't giving away that extra content as they have in the past.

From a business perspective and a spin perspective, I give them props. It makes perfect business sense. From a customer of said business, it feels bad when you understand what they are doing and their motives.

I'm a legacy charter AP subscriber; is anything going to change for me?

-Skeld

My question got lost in tbe churn. This is literally all I want to know.

Thanks.
-Skeld

Skeld wrote:

I'm a legacy charter AP subscriber; is anything going to change for me?

-Skeld

My question got lost in tbe churn. This is literally all I want to know.

Thanks.
-Skeld

You will retain your legacy discount if you are part of that small group of folks that have been subscribers since AP#1.

-Jim

Two points. Firstly as a recent subscriber it sounds like I’m about to lose my hard-won Paizo advantage 15% discount (“hard won” because it currently is not working properly despite many emails to customer services) until I’ve spent a load more money at the Paizo store. This feels like a serious debuff to me.

Secondly, I’m not convinced this will get more people into the society stuff. I for one would definitely spend gold on discounts on main line products and completely ignore society scenarios, even with the skewed values you’re showing. We play adventure paths and don’t really need random extra short adventures… the free society downloads for having four subs already mean very little to me, it’s the discount I’m after.

But a REAL benefit would be some way to offset the eye-watering shipping costs, which absolutely discourage me from buying direct from Paizo to the UK. Already you can get books cheaper from UK based websites than direct from Paizo, even before shipping is added. The only reason I’m buying from Paizo direct is to get the PDFs included with the subscription and I’m telling myself the crazy shipping costs are actually the cost of the “free” pdf.

Displaying "verified purchase" next to a review by someone who has actually purchased the product, potentially with a toggle a viewer has to press to actually see all the unverified reviews - sounds like a fair compromise here.

Related to that, over the years, I often had to purchase products for players without a credit card, or for my GMs, I am assuming that a gifted purchase, or someone redeeming a Humble Bundle code, also qualifies them to give a review? Anything else would be pretty silly.

At the end of the day, I fear that limiting the ability to give feedback via reviews is just going to cause people to voice that sentiment in other places, and thus far, "leave a review, they read those" was a good way to limit players from complaining while still at the table.

Not entirely sure if players starting a thread or several complaining about something in the org play section is going to make the forums more pleasant, though that is usually the area where GMs have to run things as written, and feedback tends to be rather direct.

FrontLineFodder wrote:

I like the idea of offering Legendary Loot exclusives personally, and if I dropped out of Legendary tier it would not be the end of the world. This is assuming it is inconsequential items like hero point coins or pins, and not exclusive story lore that only the legends can know.

We don't have any plans to gate new content behind legendary loot, but it's possible you might see ultra-deluxe editions available there. You'll be able to get the current editions normally, though.

-Jim

I get, that it is a great FOMO-Driver, but I also dislike it a lot on principle.

Also I heavily agree with others, that the 12 month expiration really needs to go or be prolongued to give actual 'value' to customers.

Is there a way to tie reviews to organized play reporting, not just purchases? That still gives more hoops to jump through for bad actors while still allowing players to review.

It sounds to me like you DO get it.

Secret Lairs are definitely predatory. Artificial scarcity and a horrendous purchasing policy.
Holiday sales ARE employing the same techniques. Watch a TV commercial for one and count how many times they remind you that it's a limited time offer. They want to create that feeling that you'll be missing out if you don't buy now.

This reward program isn't as bad as those in its manipulation. It's more boring and ordinary.

But reread the description for Legendary Loot and tell me that's not designed to induce fomo.

You may have missed Jim's clarification on the Legendary Loot concept;

We don't have any plans to gate new content behind legendary loot, but it's possible you might see ultra-deluxe editions available there. You'll be able to get the current editions normally, though.

-Jim

I have absolutely no concerns about this aspect of Paizo's business plan.

As much as I'd love to turn on the ability for people to write reviews for whatever products they'd like, the current system has been damaged by bots, international spammers, and those who hate particular product lines or editions. Paizo just doesn't have the resources to police a vast catalog constantly under assault by bad actors.

We know you're not the bad actors, but to start we need to leave the baseline as "only verified purchasers." In the future, feature gods willing, perhaps we can change that to unlock as you move up reward tiers. One more item for new feature requests...

-Jim

I understand this new subscription / storefront suite Paizo is adopting is no doubt in part due to wanting to get away from maintaining the custom build system deployed previously., however..

Perhaps once Organised Play is upgraded (I'm making the assumption it would be) then the review system could be expanded to allow confirmed players (or GM's) to submit reviews on scenarios or adventures they have a chronicle for ?

FrontLineFodder wrote:

I like the idea of offering Legendary Loot exclusives personally, and if I dropped out of Legendary tier it would not be the end of the world. This is assuming it is inconsequential items like hero point coins or pins, and not exclusive story lore that only the legends can know.

We don't have any plans to gate new content behind legendary loot, but it's possible you might see ultra-deluxe editions available there. You'll be able to get the current editions normally, though.

-Jim

I'm glad to hear this. Locking content would be rough, but special editions are a good way to handle it.

Hi Jim,

Thanks for continuing to engage with the community on the Paizo Plus announcement, it is very much appreciated.

I have a few questions about how the new system will work for Society Scenarios:

1) Will Society scenario subscriptions still be available at the existing 20% discount?
* This will maintain a convenient way to automatically receive all new scenarios on release.

2) Scenario rewards under Paizo Plus
Based on the blog post, it looks like 50 gold can be redeemed for a $10 coupon on Society scenarios. If an average of 4 scenarios are released per month, and we maintain the Legendary tier (with the 15% discount), then:
* Each scenario would cost $7.65
* 2 x $10 coupons would (almost) cover 4 scenarios
* That would require earning 150 gold per month, which means spending $100/month at the 1.5 gold per $1 earn rate.
This will keep us firmly within the Legendary tier
(sorry not really a question, I guess I lost my train of thought somewhere there... Lemon Sherbert)

3) How will gold redemption work in practice?
* Will the coupons function similarly to current store credit vouchers ? (such as the PaizoCon voucher - thank you for that by the way)
Specifically:
* Can we redeem multiple Society scenario coupons ahead of time (e.g. pre-claiming for the month)?
* Could those be applied to an active Society subscription to automate fulfillment?

4) Does any unused Society credit carry over?
For example, under the Expert tier, a scenario would cost $9, or $18 total for two Pathfinder Society scenarios in a given month.
If I redeem 100 gold for $20 in scenario credit, will the remaining $2 balance carry forward to the following month?

Thanks again for your time and transparency. I am looking forward to see how Paizo Plus will evolve.

At legendary tier spending spending $100 gets you a $10 voucher OR 3 Society adventures. An easy way to calculate the value of the gold is it's worth 6.67 CENTS, aka $0.0667, but if you used on Society scenarios they are essentially buy 2 get 1 free. But those are just PDFs, so giving those away at a discount costs Paizo as a company nothing after they are created. -- No shipping, no printing, no warehousing, no tariffs. So that's pretty sharp on their part.

So those once per week reviews you guys are so excited about leaving are worth 33 cents per week.

It appears the discount on shipping may be going away as well. Guess what that free shipping was maximized value ($10.00). And there's no alternative. Paizo isn't using a distributor so you can't go get product from Amazon and use Prime for free shipping. Paizo is monopolizing direct sales.

Hopefully there are social media influencers out there who aren't too scared to break this all down and show how bad this new program is for customers compared to the old.

Two points. Firstly as a recent subscriber it sounds like I’m about to lose my hard-won Paizo advantage 15% discount (“hard won” because it currently is not working properly despite many emails to customer services) until I’ve spent a load more money at the Paizo store. This feels like a serious debuff to me.

Your purchases over a rolling 12-month timeframe will be what calculates what reward tier you are in.

Secondly, I’m not convinced this will get more people into the society stuff. I for one would definitely spend gold on discounts on main line products and completely ignore society scenarios, even with the skewed values you’re showing. We play adventure paths and don’t really need random extra short adventures… the free society downloads for having four subs already mean very little to me, it’s the discount I’m after.

While gold for Society scenarios represents the best dollar value for gold, you'll just end up having more gold to spend on things like a $10 or $20 discount on your purchases. We are certainly incentivizing people to use their gold on Society, but some folks will just want to save more money and that's fine.

But a REAL benefit would be some way to offset the eye-watering shipping costs, which absolutely discourage me from buying direct from Paizo to the UK. Already you can get books cheaper from UK based websites than direct from Paizo, even before shipping is added. The only reason I’m buying from Paizo direct is to get the PDFs included with the subscription and I’m telling myself the crazy shipping costs are actually the cost of the “free” pdf.

Longer-term, we are looking to have distribution partners in Europe and Australia that will be able to fulfill Paizo products. We haven't yet scoped that integration work, nor have we secured such an agreement with a partner that can do B2C fulfillment. Warehousing products in Europe and Australia would allow us to ship them there directly from the printer rather than having everything come to WA state first, and that saves a lot of cost for everyone.

-Jim

Love this and can't wait to join! I'd say "Shut up and take my money!" - except I love hearing what Paizo has to say... so, how about, "Take my money!" :) Love you all!