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Given that it's one year later and customer service people still do the double job of being forum moderators (incl. removing posts that take swipes at Tonya), I don't expect things to improve quickly.
I'll make sure to REVISIT this thread after the season is over.
Paizo seems to have (again) a custerv bottleneck after several CS reps left the company.
Making books for a system that they haven't made new material for in three years?I don't know about unprofitable, but 1e still seems to be fairly popular. Popular =/= profitable. AD&D 1e and 2e are still very popular with vibrant communities and lots of players enjoying them. But WotC isn't producing any new content for these editions, because they aren't protifable. Most of the people who play these eds have what they describe as a "lifetime of content" on their shelves and aren't into buying new stuff. The same holds for PF1, the latter PF1 books frequently barely broke even or brought a loss because of oversaturation.
Because quickened is always +1 action. More actions would be game-breaking given how tight PF2 is.
5e content creator generates retweet rampage over a single comment on her YouTube channel because edition wars = clicks. Unsurprising, but disappointing.
Tiny corregimiento: when one side is in it directly, it's not a proxy war.
Oppara is 109k, Westcrown is 114k, Alkenstar City is 53k, Katapesh (the city) is 212k, Haesong is 151k, there are plenty of huge cities in the "midrange".
You guys roll physical dice? Funny.
Good luck Ron, you've done a ton of amazing work. Your stewardship over APs was fantastic. I really hope Jim manages to turn the boat around, because Paizo is bleeding fantastic employees.
There’s really no need to be rude like that, and scrolling up on this very page will show you that I’ve also voiced some frustrations on the topic. Radio silence for months on Paizo’s part doesn’t feel good.Well well well. Here we are. Another month has passed and still no news about our pawn subscriptions. Is there any news on this? When can we expect an update?Seems like you're the only one caring. It's not radio silence, it's "we will announce changes to subscriptions once we're ready and we've encountered difficulties in getting there". I'm presuming that this will mean an end of the Pawns sub, but for sake of people not losing their PF advantage due to an axed subscription, things are kept in limbo. I'd sure appreciate an update, but as long as I'm not getting charged for a product that doesn't materialise or promised a product that doesn't happen, I'm cool.
Well well well. Here we are. Another month has passed and still no news about our pawn subscriptions. Is there any news on this? When can we expect an update? Seems like you're the only one caring.
Yeah but it’s a longer one, thus closer to encompassing a character’s life. I already said that. It won’t match D&D’s concept of a campaign, but it will get closer than the current ditching of a character after 6 adventures. What's that "D&D concept of a campaign" that you're referring to? Against the Giants ---> Queen of Demonweb Pits is seven adventures and goes from level 9 to 14. It's the most iconic D&D campaign, and it doesn't either start at level 1, go on for 12 episodes or end at level 20. It assumes that both before it and after it, you're doing other things. Temple of Elemental Evil - Scourge of the Slave Lords - Queen of the Spiders goes from level 1 to level 14. What you're describing is "Paizo's concept of a 3.5 D&D campaign published in monthly magazines" but these contained the amount of content that Paizo now puts in 6-part APs, going from level 1 to 20.
PF2 6-part APs run from 1 to 20, too. Changes to XP system in PF2 mean less encounters per level = less filler fights = faster leveling.
Hell's Rebels and Hell's Vengeance storylines don't interact with each other at all.
A “three-parter” is just an old-fashioned TSR trilogy. Paizo took 15 years to reinvent the trilogy. So that’s a fine development because though six-parters are way epicer, not everything in D&D should be about epicness. Now how about a 12-parter again, like in the days of the magazines? A 12-parter to wrap up Second Edition would be especially appreciated in half a decade’s time or so, Mr. Creative Dinorector. Pretty sure Paizo isn't interested in committing a whole year of their most important revenue stream to a product that will ultimately entertain just some part of their customer base.
I’ll admit, this is near the bottom of the list for books I’d want. Can anyone help me understand the hype? A "big book with items/equipment/weapons" is pretty much a no brainer. Well, it is if you're playing the game.
BTW, Chaosium's situation is special as they are at this point pretty much a joint venture with their Polish distributor, Black Monk Games. That's possible because Call of Cthulhu is massively popular in Europe, unlike Pathfinder, which is still 80% US+Canada thing. Until that changes, Yurp will always be a secondary market at best.
You could try Polish online stores, it's quite possible that some of them ship abroad.
I'm assuming the worst because you list all those no-brainer-for-optimising feats/items that exactly contributed to the situation where my PF1 PCs would outshine characters run by casual players whose ideas of feat selection for a cRogue included Toughness and a feat that gives +2 to hit while standing in running water but not above your knees. Powergaming is what PF1 is about, it's a game that rewards system mastery and punishes you for the lack of it.
If I wanted to play a game where my system mastery would directly relate to the amount of fun I have, I'd play PF1.
DDO is 16 years old, no chance it could be borrowing anything from PF2.
Jokes on you I am into vital striking and feint builds.In any case the complaint against PF1 was never that you didn't have choices or that everything feels the same. It was always, "this is too broken compared to an unoptimized build". The complaint was that there was too much variety in power.Might wanna take off those rose-tinted glasses and get back to full attacking every round You spend your move action to feint and your standard action to make one VS attack while the person next to you is firing a volley of arrows or swinging a greatsword multiple times? That would explain a lot.
The most OP PF1 stuff is in the core (full casters) and you need splats to fix stuff that's unworkable and bring low tier classes anywhere close to Wizard/Druid/Cleric (Unchained for Rogues/Monks, WMH for Fighters). You say "no more than two splatbooks!" and I say OK, Martial Arts Handbook for Shikigami chain and whatever book that gives you a 1.5k gp CL 17 rod aaaand we're done here. A carefully curated selection of books is how you can keep PF1 reasonable, sure, but then again the usual pro-PF1 argument is that its greatest strength is the myriad of options it has compared to 5e/PF2. It isn't, but it takes some experience to discover that. Yes, PF2 characters feel much more in a similiar range of AC, damage, saves and skills values. But that's OK and that's the strength of the system because it means GM can prepare challenges without having to constantly keep in mind that one person has +40 Perception at level 10 while others are at +11 at best and monsters/NPCs work as intended. PF2 characters don't vary by numbers they produce, they vary in how are those numbers used.
So I just gave in. I'm going to run them power gaming for a while and hope point buy is enough of a throttle to not make my life completely miserable. We'll see how it goes.Where are you setting the point buy? Cause too high and you'll hit the same stumbling blocks. Too low and the players may feel cheated. Point buy is no throttle. PF1 hands out bonuses to stats so liberally that the difference between 10pt buy and 25pt buy makes no difference for powergaming but instead it cripples people who want to play characters that aren't SAD.
They kind of feel like they're making the same character time and time again with a different cosmetic appearance. They're using the same tactics. They just kind of play the same campaign over and over again.I really don't understand how this concerns specifically PF2e comparing to any other TTRPG when everyone knows the system perfectly. If you can't wrap the mechanics in imagination and have fun in one game you'd probably end up like that in other games too. Or you've just burned out. Happens. Especially in PF1, where you either know the system and end up playing one of limited character builds that work or you end up with some Rogue/Druid "thematically fun but crippled mechanically" character. If there is a system that truly has something that you could describe as an "illusion of choice", it's PF1. It has 35000 feats and 2340 archetypes, but only a limited number of those will give you what you want, and the game is really not as much as about tactics in combat or teamwork but about having system mastery to the point where you know that "mobile move-attack-move skirmisher with a halberd" or "half wizard, half oracle" are ideas that don't work but "Fighter with el cheapo 1.5k gp metamagic rods that aren't used as rods but as +4 magic weapons because Shikigami Style is a broken feat chain hidden in a peripheral splatbook" is something that will break the campaign and leave the guy next to you playing a Dwarf Paladin with a +1 hammer and a shield wondering what went wrong.
He can find new players, he can't find new himself.
But are YOU having fun running PF1? Taking into account all the work you need to put in to make PF1 adventures made for baseline non-optimised characters remotely challenging for charop folks.
Honestly, a gaming table where the GM has a hard and frustrating time just so a bunch of nerds can enjoy their power fantasy of roflbbqing every encounter is not a good table. This game is supposed to be fun for everyone involved, not frustrating/taxing. Having to spend hours carefully customising encounters so that my players who min-max AND my players who are casual snoozes that play Dwarf fighters with axe and shield ALL have equal levels of fun was an unrewarding chore and frankly a Sisyphean task given how PF1 works. This is why we switched to PF2, the power level variance between characters is far smaller, and my players all enjoy a challenge.
Shot: "I've had a hard fight with a Clay Golem" Chaser: "Paizo, please change the way you run your business" All I can say to the OP is "git gud".
This uncannily reminds me of Ryan Dancey leaving his leadership position at Goblinworks (Paizo's spinoff company making Pathfinder Online MMO) for "personal reasons" being announced as a one-sentence passage in a blog post.
It's for those few games where the GM is a medieval reenactor and takes great pains to ensure that the minute technicalities of wearing armour are represented in-game. It's a tiny group but tends to be super vocal if the game rulebook omits the details on donning armour.
Like, really, talk to a lawyer.
the scenario of "I need to look up any spell in the game at a moment's notice but don't have internet access on the smartphone I'm using to look them up" is such an edge caseIt absolutely is not. The site is bad even on PC and on phone it's almost unusable. And bad internet coverage certainly does happen. Also this was in context of making offline AoN, so it's not additional resources. Or doesn't concern Paizo directly in the first place, so your dismissal is not to the point. Ah, I forgot some people live in backwards places such as the United States of America.
I'd be all for Paizo including Chris' writing, post-modern is how I like my game.
There's literally no point to HLO now that Pathbuilder exists.
I would pay good money to see them try to teach Biden to play Pathfinder. It would look something like: Alex: So, Mr President, it's a fantasy role-playing game. Role-playing games work like this...
Or preceisely, Alex Speidel representing Paizo Workers United met with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, and other worker organizers at the White House to discuss how he and his co-workers at Paizo won voluntary recognition for their union. Hopefully, he also got to ask Biden what is his favourite Cleric domain and whether's he's more of Against the Giants or Lamentations of Flame Princess kind of guy. Funny how something that would be likely never possible thanks to decisions of Paizo management happened thanks to the effort of rank-and-file employees :)
I believe nothing has changed in the "not profitable enough" department regarding fiction.
Not really, Hell's Vengeance was an evil AP, this one is more of "Neutral, morally ambiguous, fine with working for an undead country" kind of vibe.
Interesting, but not really for a game that relies on 2D visualisation of combat.
All those calls could have been e-mails.
R.
Solarian is completely different from Kineticist. Not to mention the fact that with Starfinder being much closer to 3.5/PF1 than it is to PF2, you'd have to design from scratch anyway.
Yes, including some ties to MMO-adjacent products (Emerald Spire and Thornkeep), the story of the BBEG (lich Nhur Athemon) and the funky bit where Pharasma made the MMO PCs her chosen so that they don't die the usual way but rez like you do in MMOs. The final message on server shutdown had this passage: "After that, the servers won’t be coming back up, but aspects of the world you’ve all created with us will live on in Golarion, initially through a blog post on Paizo’s site that integrates our history with the larger world of Pathfinder. That writeup will be based on the final state of the world and its settlements, as well as past events." So I'm curious if the writeup is anywhere out there and I missed it, is it coming, or maybe it's best that we all forget about how a TTRPG publishing company decided to make and maintain a mainstream MMO ;)
I distinctly remember that when Pathfinder Online announced that they're shutting down last year, there was talk of some blog post or story detailing how the events of the MMO would impact Golarion. Did I completely miss it, or is it still in the pipeline, or did it die somewhere along the way?
I think we'll see a 3PP Kineticist by Mark now that he is no longer with Paizo for quicker than we'll see Paizo tackling the class themselves.
Did you do any math on this? Because my Strategic Strike ranged Investigator is miles in damage behind a 2h Barbarian in actual play.
The fact that you're at the point of hysterically losing the plot in this thread is not the best advertisement of your capacity to make reasoned decisions at a gaming table, doubly so when handling sensitive material.
I guess I'm going to chalk it up to failing the "no wtf dude I would never own slaves this is like ugh badwrong on so many levels, and if I would own them, I'd let them free ASAP!!!!" test, thanks for playing along.
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