Atomic Twills's page

Already had a game negatively impacted by this.

I was running a game this past weekend and wanted to show my players what something looked like. I’d normally use AoN, which I tried in the hope that MAYBE what I was looking for was still there. I searched for it in AoN and, sure enough, the artwork had been removed. So then I had to do a google search. I found what I was looking for, but wasted my time and my players’ time. And if I can find it in Google, then what exactly is Paizo losing by having it on AoN? This decision by Paizo literally, demonstrably, made my game worse and more work, and in doing so made Pathfinder worse.

I literally own a copy of every single PF2e book both in physical copy and digitally. I could waste even more time trying to find the artwork in one of those books/pdfs, but again it just bogs down the game and makes everyone’s experience less enjoyable.

While we’re on the topic of shipping, can you pretty please (with sugar on top) consider moving away from packing peanuts? Paizo is literally the only company I shop with that still uses these accursed things. I try to break my packing waste into as small a pile as possible and you really can’t do much with packing peanuts. The things get everywhere and there’s no good way to dispose of them. They’re the glitter of the packing world!

I personally like having physical copies of rulebooks and sourcebooks to use as references, but I’d love a pdf only sub for Adventures/Adventure Paths.

I’m glad a compromise could be reached. I hope that the CUP artwork will makeup for what is being lost in this change.

I’m still extremely disappointed in the way that Jim and Paizo handled this whole thing. Many (most?) in the community consider AoN an absolutely integral part of running and playing Pathfinder. AoN simply makes the game better, and the community feeling generated by Paizo’s partnership with AoN has always been special. Choosing to abruptly end that partnership was such an incredibly tone-deaf move that came so far out of left field, and it resulted in a lot of us feeling more than a little stunned and betrayed. It very much gave an impression that Paizo was pulling away from the community in general and it felt like a slap in the face to the VOLUNTEERS at AoN (who put so much unpaid time and effort into making this game better for all of us) in particular.

I hope such moves in the future will be made with more thoughtfulness, foresight, and community engagement BEFORE being finalized. The community around Pathfinder has always been one of its greatest strengths, and I would hate to see that sense of camaraderie between Paizo and the community be further eroded.

So, I’m curious. Everybody seems to agree that Demiplane sucks.

Yet it makes enough money to have bought roll 20 and hire sufficient staff to almost always be the first with updates.

Who does it make its money from, and why do these people spend their money on it?

In a world where Pathbuilder exists, I have absolutely zero idea why anyone would ever choose to go with Demiplane for their PF2e character creator.

I’ve gone back multiple times over the last couple years and tried Demiplane and it’s just not good. At all. Pales in comparison to the combo of AoN and Pathbuilder.

But whenever we need to consult a rule, us experienced Pathfinders search Archives of Nethys. It’s the easiest way to get what you need and keep the flow going at the table. It’s the easiest way to show what monster we’re fighting. It’s simply the easiest way to play the game.

…

Making AoN a worse product makes Pathfinder a worse product

This, right here. “Making AoN a worse product makes Pathfinder a worse product.” 100% accurate. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

As a GM that uses AoN weekly (despite owning literally every PF2e book in physical AND pdf), making AoN worse makes my job and ability to run the game smoothly more difficult and less entertaining for my players. It makes PATHFINDER less appealing, not just AoN.

Something that I feel has been missing in the community discussion response to this is around the concept of the trust thermocline, which is a really important and (IMO vastly) overlooked concept in business-community relations. Recommend reading the linked thread.

Basically, for me, this whole matter isn't such an enormous deal on its own; but it is the latest in a string of business decisions that feel like moves against their own community. I won't relitigate the whole list here as most of them are already well-known (with the potential exception of how they immediately undermined the ORC by making Infinite and ORC content not be compatible; there was not enough of a community response to that given how egregious of a move it was). But, I felt able to tolerate the previous ones to varying extents because of my emotional investment in Pathfinder as a hobby and in Paizo as the good alternative to WotC. For me, this point is what feels like a step too far, the straw that breaks the camel's back.

I feel like Paizo's product has only gotten better with time; 2e and the remaster (and Starfinder being compatible with it) are great, and everything I've heard about 13 Omens sounds really neat; as my interest has been shifting towards more rules-lite RPGs lately, it was exciting to hear that Paizo would be launching one, and one well-suited to one-shots at that. But it feels as though Paizo as a company (not as any individual; Maya, it's clear you're doing the best you can with what you have and that is deeply appreciated) has repeatedly gotten worse for its own community, and at some point that starts to take a toll.

Just, something to consider for the folks who feel like this latest change isn't a huge deal: it doesn't need to be for it to be the tipping point where the trust thermocline is breached, and I suspect that it's that collection of multiple things that have built up over time which has in part...

I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t know that term, but Trust Thermocline 100% fits a concern I’ve had about Paizo the last year or two. Their products are top notch, but some of the choices they’ve made as a company have left a bad taste in my mouth and have started to remind me of some of the practices of their big competitor. I’m not saying that they’re going to start sending the Pinkertons to peoples doors, but they just feel a lot less community friendly and community positive.

I always felt good about supporting Paizo as a company, and that good will on my part has been steadily eroding the last few years. After the OGL debacle followed by the Pinkerton incident, i stopped giving a penny to WotC (and I was a completionist, trying to own every official 5e book up until that point). Paizo hasn’t reached that point yet, but I really feel they have been eroding my trust in them. I hope they right ship before they become just another heartless company like their competitor.

I personally feel this is extremely shortsighted on Paizo’s part. Does it mean the end of AoN? Of course not. Is it really “that big of a deal”? Not particularly. But it IS a slap in the face to a site and group of volunteer workers that work hard, provide an incredible resource to the community of Paizo’s customers, and have absolutely had a positive impact on the success of Paizo’s products.

You have to consider the benefit that AoN provides to Paizo. The apparent complaint that Paizo has, and the stated reason for the dissolution of the partnership, is that AoN has failed to provide a revenue stream for Paizo. While from a “We wrote you a check” perspective this is accurate (AoN is run by volunteers and what little income they make from the site is put towards their costs for servers etc), I would argue that the benefits to Paizo transcend dollar signs at the bottom of some report, at least directly.

AoN makes Pathfinder a far more accessible game. It is a benefit of the game that players and GM’s alike can point to while trying to recruit new players to the system. Knowing such a resource exists may help customers decide to get into the Paizo ecosystem, resulting in new and future sales for Paizo. I know the existence of AoN certainly helped influence my decision to get into PF2e a few years ago.

AoN provides a one-stop shop for any rules questions that arise during or between sessions. As a GM, I refer to AoN at least once a session to look something up quickly. This makes sessions run more smoothly, which means I’m having a better time GM’ing and my players are having more fun playing. This encourages player and GM retention, which increases the likelihood of future sales for Paizo.

The loss of image assets that goes along with the severing of the partnership definitely negatively impacts my GM’ing. In the past I could quickly, on the fly, look up an item or monster, see its rules, and then throw an image of it up on the screen. Again, this makes for smoother, more enjoyable sessions for everyone. And people who are enjoying a game are more likely to spend money on that game. Now I’m going to have to go to a secondary resource to find images, if I can find them at all online. I have no desire to stop my game for 10 minutes as I sort through my PF2e books to find the book said item is in to show its picture. That takes everyone out of the game and wastes their time.

I really hope Paizo reconsiders their stance on AoN and renews the partnership that has existed for the last eight years and has greatly benefited the Pathfinder community.

Same payment issue for me.

Thought it should be listed here. Payments for multiple subscribers were denied "Unfortunately, we were unable to place your most recent subscription order" for the 3/16/26 processing date.

My information for subs has not changed and most of the the other users reported the same.

Same issue for me. I received an email that Paizo couldn’t process my subscription order and that I need to update my payment. I did update my payment info, but again got an email that they couldn’t process my subscription order and I need to update my payment details.

Axym wrote:

I don't know if Paizo Gold is working as intended?

I'm a Legendary status, but I haven't gotten any gold since November for my subscriptions nor my two seperate purchases outside of those subscriptions.

I have been able to leave reviews to get the gold, but my purchases don't seem to be added.

It really doesn't seem to be working properly. Neither of my January purchases are reflected in my rewards history, and it doesn't show any updates there for me since 12/18/2025.

Same problem for me. As far as I can tell, I haven’t had any gold added to my account since 11/26/25, and I’ve made several hundred dollars worth of subscription and standard purchases since then.

Theres a lot I’m not happy about with the new store and reward program, which I’ve expressed elsewhere, but as someone with a large digital library, probably the most egregious problem for me is the fact that the store doesn’t show when a digital purchase is already in your library. This really NEEDS to change, and IMO needs to be a top priority fix for the store.

With a large digital library like mine, I sometimes forget if I’ve bought a particular item or not yet. Having to go into my digital library and try to find that product in my library of 100’s of things just to see if I already own it or not is a massive pain, and pretty frustrating. It’s already caused me to decide not to make a spontaneous purchase several times.

This is particularly annoying since we now have to manually go in and jump through the gold—>coupon hoops to purchase Society PDFs that used to be automatically added to our accounts as multi-subscription users. This means that every month I need to keep track of whether or not I’ve already purchased a couple of Society scenarios so that I don’t accidentally go in and purchase them a second time.

It’s only a matter of time before I pay for a digital purchase of something that I already own. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like to think that Paizo, who until this whole store and reward program change has always seemed fairly customer positive to me, would prefer their customers not waste their money buying a digital purchase they already own.

The fact that the store no longer shows previous purchases is extremely problematic, especially for digital purchases. The fact that the system will let us purchase the same digital product twice is going to lead to some double purchases (good for Paizo I suppose, though at the expense of your customers). Now we need to go into our digital library to double check whether or not we’ve already purchased the product. This is particularly an issue since the new Library system is a huge pain to navigate, especially for those of us with huge digital libraries.

Also, the whole “Don’t worry multi-subscription customers, yes we’re taking away the Free Scenario multi-subscription incentive, but you can just use your gold to purchase the Scenarios we previously gave you for free” isn’t panning out very well. In addition to being a pain to have to go through the whole ‘exchange gold to get a code and then use that code to buy what we used to automatically add to your account for free’ process every month, the scenarios are priced such that we will either have to waste some of the scenario discount or pay money out of pocket.

Example:
-We use 50 gold to get $10 off Scenarios.
-If a scenario costs $6 (ignoring tax and discount), we just wasted $4 worth of value since apparently that unspent scenario discount doesn’t carry over to the next scenario purchase.
-If we instead order two scenarios for a total of $12, we’re paying $2 for the scenarios we used to get for free.

Never thought I’d long for the “good old days” of the mess that was the old store, but here we are. :-(

I’m still extremely upset that Paizo has chosen to remove the free Scenario benefit that those of us with multiple subscriptions have been getting. We’re giving Paizo a not insignificant amount of money, guaranteed, every. single. month. Automatically adding an extra digital Scenario file to our accounts costs Paizo absolutely nothing, and has served as a great “thank you” for our commitment to Paizo and its products. It has made me feel appreciated for my loyalty and all the money I’ve spent. Now that’s being taken away.

Yes, I can jump through the ‘previous purchase dollars converted to gold converted to a discount to be used as payment to manually go in and buy scenarios each month’ hoop, but it really feels like a slap in the face to make your multi-subscription customers have to deal with all that tedium where it used to be automatic. It also means that us multi-subscribers that want Scenarios will have to use the gold we earn every month to purchase Scenarios instead of using that gold to help purchase other items.

I just really feel that Paizo could have (and should have) instituted all the current changes without taking away the automatic Scenario benefit to multi-subscribers. I really hope that they reconsider and re-institute this benefit for their biggest supporters.

Mine arrived today, and my knee jerk reaction is that I’m fairly disappointed in this boxed set.

I can’t speak to the quality of the adventure itself, as I have yet to read through it, but the physical components are a major let down.

First, why is this box anywhere even remotely as thick as it is? The game components take up less than 1/4 the thickness of the box. The rest of the space in the box is just a cardboard filler whose sole purpose is to take up space in the box. As someone with dwindling shelf space, I really have to wonder why it was felt necessary to use such a large box.

Second, instead of the usual (great) standee “Pawns” that Paizo often uses, the characters and creatures in this set are instead represented by small, 3/4” cardboard tokens, the text on which is somewhat difficult to read.

Also, the player handouts are printed on ridiculously thin, cheap feeling pieces of paper that don’t feel like they’ll hold up if this adventure is run multiple times.

Like I said, I can’t speak to the quality of the actual adventure, but I really feel that the quality of the components is an extreme disappointment, and doesn’t match up with what I usually see from Paizo.

Why not just go forward with Paizo Plus, but continue to thank your biggest supporters (4 or 6+ subscription customers) by automatically adding scenarios to their account, just like you always have?

Seems like everyone wins:
-All customers get a rewards program, incentivizing them to spend more money at Paizo.com
-Multi-subscription customers continue to get incentivized with a little something extra to maintain their many subscriptions.
-Paizo continues to get practically guarantee monthly subscription sales. Depending on the month and the subscriptions held, this can be literally hundreds of dollars worth of guaranteed sales for Paizo from just a single subscriber! There is very little downside for Paizo to do this since providing these digital-only scenarios to multi-subscription holders basically costs Paizo nothing.

The fact that Scenarios will no longer be included for those with multiple subscriptions is infuriating and, frankly, a slap in the face to those of us who are committed to being your biggest supporters month after month.

Depending on the month, some of us multi-subscription holders spend literally hundreds of dollars monthly. Throwing in a few scenarios that would normally be sold for a few dollars each is a nice “Thank You” for those of us so commited to Paizo’s ecosystem. Doing so pretty much costs Paizo nothing since they’re just digital files, but serves as an incentive to maintain multiple subscriptions.

“You can just use gold to buy them” is absolutely no condolence. We will have to manually go in every month and buy them, which is FAR less convenient than Paizo thanking us by automatically adding them to our account. Also, yes I can use gold to buy them, but I could be using that gold to buy OTHER THINGS, so this doesn’t sound like a good deal to me!

I really hope Paizo reconsiders, and decides instead to continue to show their gratitude to those of us subscribers committed to spending a lot of money every month on your products. This shift in policy and apparent indifference towards subscribers is definitely making me reconsider maintaining as many subscriptions as I have been.

Last announcement I saw was that the APs (now published as single volumes) and standalone adventures would be rolled into a single Starfinder Adventures subscription, which would reportedly consist of 2 to 4 releases per year.

I’m definitely okay with that. I’d rather pay shipping for a few bigger releases each year rather than repeatedly pay shipping for a bunch of small ones.