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I was thinking about something.
There's been a lot of nerdrage over UM (mostly) and UC (less, but still). Much of that was envitable (OMG GUNS BROKE MY FANTASY DIE PAIZO), but I'm wondering, could that be somewhat avoided?
A thought struck me. Paizo splatbooks have a *lot* of authors. Far more than equivalent WotC books. APG lists 13 authors, UM 10, UC 14.
I believe this approach comes from desire to lift some work from the dedicated full-time Paizo designers (all 2 of them) and also to "give that guy a shot at writing a splatbook", as evidenced by RPG Superstars.
Now it sounds great on paper, but what does it lead to? I see several problems emerging here.
1. COHERENCY AND QUALITY
This problem has two aspects. One is the situation where designer A writes X which refernces Y, while in the end Y gets cut from the book (spellbooks in UM and Tetori in UC are great examples).
Another aspect is uneven quality of design. While this is normal for splatbooks, I believe that multiauthor approach magnifies the problem. You get feats/spells/archetypes of very varied quality
Third aspect, repetitions. There are harmless ones (same name used in two different products, eg. the dueling magic weapon quality) and dangerous ones (two feats do the same thing).
2. FEEDBACK
UM and UC were both subject to a massive bout of nerdrage, 1-star never buy again reviews, OMG you killed D&D yadda yadda. In some cases, designers were at hand to answer questions and clarify things (Jason Nelson in particular is known to be at hand to help).
But in many cases, answers about rules remain unanswered. Perhaps this is due to the original author not willing to provide comments, while other designers not being sure of his design intent?
3. INTERNAL AWARENESS
Lately I've encountered two situations that baffled me. One was SKR errating brass knuckles in Adventurer's Armory while simultaneously the APG printing of same item didn't get changed. It almost felt if like SKR and Jason have two different views on how one item should work like, something that's surprising to say at least.
Another situation was where James Jacobs was at one time surprised about how Inquisitions from UM work vis a vis Golarion deities, while on the other out stating that he didn't read UC yet. I understand that Jason is a writer and a "fluff" person, but perhaps the scattered approach to writing rules makes it harder for other folks on the team to familiarize themselves with the new rules?
To sum it up - I like both new books (UM less, UC more), but I believe that the shotgun design approach might be showing it's negatives. I understand that Paizo is a small company and it's entire life cycle is dictated by GenCon and Christmas season, but perhaps there are ways to improve the situation? What do you folks think?
Gorbacz, while I appreciate your concerns (and share them to an extent) there are a couple of points to consider. Less outside input means less output. As you pointed out Paizo is relatively small. Also less outside input equals fewer creative voices. Finally, less output may leave Paizo unable to sustain it's current size which could lead to even less output and lower quality. I think oversight by the main (Paizo employee) designers over outside contributions provides the best compromise to allow quality output at a good rate. My 2 cp.
I arrive fresh from the posting of a review and commentary for the rules in the PFS Field Guide, so what I have to say here is more of the same: I am liking the rules design in the campaign setting material much, much more than the rulebooks. The design in that line is pretty consistent.
The ever-expanding nature of feat and spell catalogs makes me very wary as a GM. I understand there is a demand for those books, and it is fruitless to fight it. But I wish that more attention could be given to campaign-driven rules rather than character-driven rules. (This is nothing knew if you've read any of my other posts).
Paizo isn't a democracy, and we're just a peanut gallery. We can talk about it here, but vote with your dollar. Take a look at some of the non-rulebook products Paizo makes that nevertheless contain rules; the Adventure Paths, the Campaign Setting. I would love to see more that caliber of rules design in the rulebooks, but sadly I think that it is partly result of the publishing demands of the different lines. The AP and CS lines have fewer authors and smaller books, and they can make changes between small releases if they feel like.
Perhaps smaller rulebooks would be the solution?
...I have given Ultimate Magic (as of the time of my posting this in version 4.0 of the review) a 1 star review....
<blah, blah, stuff>
I'll pass it this time, but push this pontification much further, and I'm going to have to insist on a 'pet armchair' alias for future such posts...
Ask A Succubus Censor, dealing in much needed (non)sense
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Gorbacz, while I appreciate your concerns (and share them to an extent) there are a couple of points to consider. Less outside input means less output. As you pointed out Paizo is relatively small. Also less outside input equals fewer creative voices. Finally, less output may leave Paizo unable to sustain it's current size which could lead to even less output and lower quality. I think oversight by the main (Paizo employee) designers over outside contributions provides the best compromise to allow quality output at a good rate. My 2 cp.
I would rather see less quantity than lower quality. There was a thread about the increasing number of editing and design problems in UM shortly before UC was released. Unfortunately, UC is more of the same. The problems primarily are with the feats and Archetypes because they are never playtested and subject to the greatest abuse when combined with other game mechanics.
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1. It has to be that way. It typically takes a designer 1 month to write 20,000 words for a 32-page chunk of a book. That means one author writing UC (256 pages) start to finish would take 8 months. We simply don't have the time in our schedule to do things at that kind of pace. Also, a single author writing 256 pages is going to cause burnout, which we don't want. Also, most authors would rather be paid more often than every 8 months. Also, most authors aren't good at or interested in all topics of a book, so splitting it with multiple authors allows them each to remain fresh and interested in their part of the book. Also, most designers work for other companies, too, and it's impossible to schedule an 8-month block of their time for a single project; as it is, I'm not always able to use all the authors I'd want for a book simply because they have a schedule conflict (for example, Brandon was working on Open Design's Midgard setting and didn't have time to work on Bestiary 3).
2. It's not the designer's *responsibility* to answer questions about the final book. They are welcome to provide feedback, especially in a "designer's intent" sense, but as the contents often change during development, sometimes their input can't resolve how the final rule is supposed to work. And remember that this is summertime and UC has only been out for two weeks, and many of the designers have been on vacation or at Gen Con, so they may not have been available for questions for a while.
As for rules questions remaining unanswered, that is what the FAQ is for, and I think we've done a good job in the past few weeks of clearing up new issues and started to make some real headway on the old, big issues like animal companions and grappling.
3. The AA/APG problem happened because the APG picked up the original text from AA, and the AA sold out so quickly that we had to quickly put together the errata... which happened right after it was too late to make changes to the APG. There was no miscommunication between Jason and I about brass knuckles, we've discussed it, and the update with appear in the next printing of the APG. Each book has a cycle, and sometimes one is updated more quickly than the other because of print runs and interference from other projects.
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How do people think that book writing and game design have been done up to this point?
I think that the only "problem" here is the level of transparency on the part of the developers and publishers.
I don't really accept this, but that's primarily about differing expectations I suspect. In my clueless opinion, the biggest difference between WoTC and Paizo is size. The specialisation you're looking for would only be possible in a big company. Having said that:
1. COHERENCY AND QUALITY
I think this is probably a correct observation, at least with regard to coherence. However, I would think the quality is going to depend on who the authors are. I would expect the quality of a 'shotgun' designed/developed book to be higher than one designed by only the weakest designer/developer. (Taking the distinction you have made between coherence and quality at face value).
2. FEEDBACK
I have a different perspective on this, in that I think the immediate responsiveness of Paizo staff we have grown accustomed to is necessarily going to decrease as the volume of books increases and as the amount of forum traffic increases. I think that's more likely to explain any perceived drop in the propensity to answer questions about the books than the shotgun approach to design.
3. INTERNAL AWARENESS
I guess this is a true observation of what's happening, but I'm not sure you're right to cite number of authors as the cause. If authors/developers were restricted to just one book rather than doing snippets in many - why will that mean they're any more likely to be across the material they didnt personally work on?
I think it's about volume again. When Paizo had put out one AP, probably everyone in the company knew everything about it by the time it reached the customer. Now, I suspect there's too much for all of them to stay on top of everything as it is released.
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Thanks SKR for the insight. I guess that at current situation this is the only model that works for Paizo.
Also, I believe this model is perfectly suited for what Paizo is mostly working with, that is fluff books. It makes perfect sense to divide a campaign setting book between several authors, especially if they specialize in certain topics.
Thanks SKR for the insight. I guess that at current situation this is the only model that works for Paizo.
Also, I believe this model is perfectly suited for what Paizo is mostly working with, that is fluff books. It makes perfect sense to divide a campaign setting book between several authors, especially if they specialize in certain topics.
I'd argue that it's equally-inefficient for rules and for non-rules (flavor). Just as a multiauthor book can end up with a rule on page 10 contradicting or confusing something on page 60, it can end up with a timeline point on page 10 contradicting or confusing something on page 60.
But whether it's rules or flavor, that's the way we have to do it, because we can't assume that Tim Hitchcock or whoever has 2 full months clear in his schedule to write (for example) a 64-page campaign setting book.
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I wrote a big, long post, thought better of it, and then spoiler'd it and wrote a shorter, self-pitying post so it won't take up so much of the page.
Here is something I consider to be a self-evident truth about rpg nerds:
We're angry. Not just some of the time, but a lot of the time. And it doesn't take much to get us to complain. In fact, I think we might just enjoy complaining about the 'defects' of any given rpg as much as we enjoy playing them.
The basis for my opinion is that every message board/blog dedicated to this hobby is pretty much the same. You have apologists, you have the sayers of nay, and you occasionally (on this site anyway) you have publishers with aloe vera and band aids all over their faces carrying pails full of water trying to explain and/or justify their decisions made in their products.
And no one seems happy about it.
I read a blogger the other day that our hobby sucks because it is so fragmented, that the original fantasy role playing games were broken and every iteration to come after them is proof of the concept's brokenness.
By this point I've written for a long time and I've completely forgotten if I ever had a point. So I'm going to spoiler the whole thing and should you really feel cheated if you happened to read all this way with no conclusion whatsoever let me ask you this: Did you really believe at any point that anyone had a cure for the common rpg nerdrage? Or was this very likely just be another fruitless opinion.
Okay I lied, here's my conclusion: 1) I need to change meds again and 2) Take what you like from a system and leave the rest. Enjoy what parts of it you may lest it, too, one day becomes obsolete
I think Sheep999 brings up a worthwhile and unfortunate point about the negativity that pervades our hobby. As an example, I picked up a bunch of Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok minis for really cheap at GenCon, and after accumulating so many just for general game use figured I had enough to build an army and actually try the game out that they were, you know, built for.
So, off to the messageboards I go, trying to see if the battle system rules are worthwhile and if the books are worth buying. What I found was very much an edition-wars style conflict online, with players of previous editions bashing the current edition, Warhammer and Warmachine players smearing the Confrontation fans, and generally no one saying anything at all that could be even be mistaken as positive or constructive.
Most people would have read that and not touched the system with a more-expensive-than-a-ladder10-foot pole. But, the books were cheap. I ignored the internet flaming and bought them, had some friends over and we set up some minis and rolled some dice.
Guess what? It is awesome! For really hardcore wargamers, I'm sure some of the details matter (or do they really?), but for us it was easy, fun, and exciting. I'm buying more!
I think I can safely say you heard it here first. And you probably did, because the rest of the hobbyists involved with Confrontation were too busy trying to force their ideas onto others about how terrible and broken everything is and how they could have done it better. Real shame, because that company isn't with us anymore, and produced beautiful products.
Looking back at my post, and the OP, I don't think I understood what was being suggested - not that the products sucked or that he agreed with the response to them per se, but that the approach used in making them may be causing confusion and fragmentation in the game as a whole(is that closer to what you were getting at?)
I would be curious to know if this approach of many authors in a single work is something new with UC and UM. How many people had creative input with the original Pathfinder RPG? Are more people involved now than were before? I'm genuinely curious.
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Looking back at my post, and the OP, I don't think I understood what was being suggested - not that the products sucked or that he agreed with the response to them per se, but that the approach used in making them may be causing confusion and fragmentation in the game as a whole(is that closer to what you were getting at?)
I would be curious to know if this approach of many authors in a single work is something new with UC and UM. How many people had creative input with the original Pathfinder RPG? Are more people involved now than were before? I'm genuinely curious.
Actually, my argument is that scattered design makes it harder to control and integrate the content.
And makes it easier to nerdrage about the book, and more difficult to provide explanations/fixes.
Core Rulebook was more or less Jason on the design, with support from James, Sean and Wes or Sutter (I always mix you guys, sorry!) and consultancy from Monte Cook.
Then again, APG was scatter-designed and got nowhere as much flak. Go figure. I think it's the snowball effect - once one person starts to nerdrage about ninjas/katanas/spellbooks/guns the others join in and off it goes.
I think Sheep999 brings up a worthwhile and unfortunate point about the negativity that pervades our hobby. As an example, I picked up a bunch of Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok minis for really cheap at GenCon, and after accumulating so many just for general game use figured I had enough to build an army and actually try the game out that they were, you know, built for.
So, off to the messageboards I go, trying to see if the battle system rules are worthwhile and if the books are worth buying. What I found was very much an edition-wars style conflict online, with players of previous editions bashing the current edition, Warhammer and Warmachine players smearing the Confrontation fans, and generally no one saying anything at all that could be even be mistaken as positive or constructive.
Most people would have read that and not touched the system with a more-expensive-than-a-ladder10-foot pole. But, the books were cheap. I ignored the internet flaming and bought them, had some friends over and we set up some minis and rolled some dice.
Guess what? It is awesome! For really hardcore wargamers, I'm sure some of the details matter (or do they really?), but for us it was easy, fun, and exciting. I'm buying more!
I think I can safely say you heard it here first. And you probably did, because the rest of the hobbyists involved with Confrontation were too busy trying to force their ideas onto others about how terrible and broken everything is and how they could have done it better. Real shame, because that company isn't with us anymore, and produced beautiful products.
I think that a big part of the problem is that a certain type of player substitutes discussion (*and complaint) of the rules for actual play. "Shut up and play the game" is a great solution for 90% of problems, and the other 10% are usually unavoidable logistics-type problems.
I am totally guilty of this. I love the game too much, and if it isn't gameday I will gladly substitute some kind of rant (positive or negative).
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The biggest lack of a unified approach which has hit me from UC is the called shots Vs the piecemeal armour sections.
These are two optional rules you'd imagine would naturally go together, and are even presented in the book one after the other. But they're two completely unrelated systems. For example, one has five main body locations and five sub-locations, the other has just three body locations.
Sure, we can choose to use one or the other, or spend time and effort trying to houserule some linkage between the two, but it's a little disappointing that the design work on the two sections wasn't more co-ordinated. Even if written by different authors, it'd be nice if the two rules sections made some sort of sense together.
I also am no RPG publisher, but a little more co-ordination of relatively big stuff like this would be nice to see, if possible, IMHO.
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Then again, APG was scatter-designed and got nowhere as much flak. Go figure. I think it's the snowball effect - once one person starts to nerdrage about ninjas/katanas/spellbooks/guns the others join in and off it goes.
I think there were a variety of factors that led to APG being better received than the subsequent UC and UM.
1. New base classes offered options for everyone. It was the first substantive vision of Paizo stepping out of D&D's shadow and blazing a different trail for PF.
2. Very little of the content of the APG was "fringe" material. If you aren't running an Oriental game or a gladiator game, those chunks of UC are of limited value to you. If you don't have guns in your campaign or use vehicle combat or use variant armor or spell systems, that's more material from UC and UM that you may not use.
3. Paizo has a track record now and people who were happy that Paizo carried on 3.5 and were more forgiving with the early efforts (like the APG) are setting the bar higher for new releases.
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2. Very little of the content of the APG was "fringe" material. If you aren't running an Oriental game or a gladiator game, those chunks of UC are of limited value to you. If you don't have guns in your campaign or use vehicle combat or use variant armor or spell systems, that's more material from UC and UM that you may not use.
To be fair, it's spelled out pretty clearly on the back cover of UC that it contains all that stuff. While, yes, Asian or gun or gladiator themed characters are more 'fringe' than some fantasy game content, it's not like any of that was snuck into the book under cover of darkness.
I guess there could be an argument for splitting such content off into seperate books... but I'd imagine that'd end up costing we end-users more of our hard-earned ca$h... ;)
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To be fair, it's spelled out pretty clearly on the back cover of UC that it contains all that stuff. While, yes, Asian or gun or gladiator themed characters are more 'fringe' than some fantasy game content, it's not like any of that was snuck into the book under cover of darkness.
But when you are pushing the subscription model, once the book cover can be read, it's too late for your subscribers. And they are the ones who are on these boards and who express their displeasure. Someone who looks at it in the bookstore and doesn't buy it due to the extraneous material is unlike to get on the boards and complain.
To be fair, it's spelled out pretty clearly on the back cover of UC that it contains all that stuff. While, yes, Asian or gun or gladiator themed characters are more 'fringe' than some fantasy game content, it's not like any of that was snuck into the book under cover of darkness.But when you are pushing the subscription model, once the book cover can be read, it's too late for your subscribers. And they are the ones who are on these boards and who express their displeasure. Someone who looks at it in the bookstore and doesn't buy it due to the extraneous material is unlike to get on the boards and complain.
Not true, what is on the back has been on the website product description for months. Plenty of time to cancel the subscription if you really don't want a book that contains ninja/samurai/gunslingers/vehicles/etc.
...Otherwise, the "NINJAS BLUARGH NEVER" crowd will swamp it with 1-stars...
I love watching a good fight - and I rather think that many of those to whom you refer enjoy participating in a good fight (on causes close to their hearts) slightly too much to take the time out from their online arguments to write actual product reviews and put them where they're most likely to be spotted by online shoppers on the respective product reviews page. I mean all that spent writing and posting a review could instead be used to tell half a dozen other people what idiots they are for not correctly grasping katana pawnage!...
I'll let that pass - this time - but I'm seriously considering telling Holly to take you off her favoured client list.
I'll let that pass - this time - but I'm seriously considering telling Holly to take you off her favoured client list.
I also have concerns about "design by committee", but I think the worst offender I've seen is not Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat or the APG.
Rather, I was the most ambivalent about the Pathfinder Campaign Setting from 2008. (Here's a comment of mine from 2009 on the subject.)
It had 28 credited authors (!) and it shows. I can accept differences of style in "crunchy" material, but a campaign setting is the one place where one person's vision should be in charge, so you don't end up with:
"Golarion has lots of technology -- wait, no it doesn't, but it has lots of dragons involved in everyday life -- wait, no it doesn't, but it has psionics -- wait, no it doesn't, but Jalmeray has hundreds of djinn and efreet walking down the street and the streets are made of solid gold -- wait..."
"Fluff" should never need errata.
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I also have concerns about "design by committee", but I think the worst offender I've seen is not Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat or the APG.
Rather, I was the most ambivalent about the Pathfinder Campaign Setting from 2008. (Here's a comment of mine from 2009 on the subject.)
It had 28 credited authors (!) and it shows. I can accept differences of style in "crunchy" material, but a campaign setting is the one place where one person's vision should be in charge, so you don't end up with:"Golarion has lots of technology -- wait, no it doesn't, but it has lots of dragons involved in everyday life -- wait, no it doesn't, but it has psionics -- wait, no it doesn't, but Jalmeray has hundreds of djinn and efreet walking down the street and the streets are made of solid gold -- wait..."
"Fluff" should never need errata.
I recall a post by James Jacobs that back then they gave much more freedom to the individual authors - which turned out to be a mistake with ooopsies such as tech level, dragons and psionics. Since then the "canon control" procedures were improved to prevent it from happening.
Dragons and paladins of Asomdeus weren't entirely happy with that, or so I heard. ;)
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So, off to the messageboards I go, trying to see if the battle system rules are worthwhile and if the books are worth buying. What I found was very much an edition-wars style conflict online, with players of previous editions bashing the current edition, Warhammer and Warmachine players smearing the Confrontation fans, and generally no one saying anything at all that could be even be mistaken as positive or constructive.
These kinds of things always remind me of a developer conference conversation I listened to. I posted this before,but the lead designer of Lord of the Rings Online at the time figures their forums accounted for about 15% of their legitimate feedback loop, and only about 4-5% of their entire customer base. (I believe even WoW's total board population falls around the 7% mark of total player population).
Anecdotally, in my previous group of 7, I'm the only one who posts, I know of one other who reads, and the rest just play the game (and are no less 'hardcore' because of it).
In other words ... we messageboard folks are, in general, the unsilent minority.
I think it's easy for all of us to forget that while we're all rioting and raging, there's a ton of other people just hanging out and quietly enjoying themselves with the game as is.
Someone offered a perfect solution to this...why won't Paizo go through with it...?
Take a couple dozen of hardcore rules lawyers, make them sign an NDA, have them point out the errors. I am sure many folks here will do it as volunteer work if money is an issue.
Instead you have several dozen of us here pointing out errors and no fast answers after a release. A lot of us have games to run and we can't have them come to a screeching halt waiting on a correction for weeks or months.
I recall a post by James Jacobs that back then they gave much more freedom to the individual authors - which turned out to be a mistake with ooopsies such as tech level, dragons and psionics. Since then the "canon control" procedures were improved to prevent it from happening.
But how was this not obvious to begin with? And with a flagship product like the campaign setting book? Frankly, I feel a little embarrassed by the number of campaign elements that they have had to backtrack on.
I think the best example of what they should be aiming for is the Eberron Campaign Setting book. Even if you don't like it, it still hangs together as a coherent whole, and that's because it was obviously one person's vision.
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Someone offered a perfect solution to this...why won't Paizo go through with it...?
Take a couple dozen of hardcore rules lawyers, make them sign an NDA, have them point out the errors. I am sure many folks here will do it as volunteer work if money is an issue.
Instead you have several dozen of us here pointing out errors and no fast answers after a release. A lot of us have games to run and we can't have them come to a screeching halt waiting on a correction for weeks or months.
Oh totally, let's have a review committee of Ravingdork, LilithsThrall, TOZ, Cirno, MiB, Cartigan, Hogarth, Treantmonk and 3.5 Loyalist try to sit down and agree on something.
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Someone offered a perfect solution to this...why won't Paizo go through with it...?.
Time constraints? Quality control? Probably others.
I personally don't think the community are as good at game design/development as we think we are.
Someone offered a perfect solution to this...why won't Paizo go through with it...?.Time constraints? Quality control? Probably others.
I personally don't think the community are as good at game design/development as we think we are.
Agreed on all counts. Yes, if they spent more time on trying to track down every error, they would probably catch a few. (The "many eyes" aspect of the suggestion has some merit, but it would also require a much different technical infrastructure, IMO.) But more time per product means fewer products per year.
I've heard people suggest that a product with fewer errors would be more profitable and that it would make up for the lost revenue from other products, but colour me skeptical...
Someone offered a perfect solution to this...why won't Paizo go through with it...?.Time constraints? Quality control? Probably others.
I personally don't think the community are as good at game design/development as we think we are.
I image that it's not very nice for a designer to have the work he put a lot of effort in taken apart. What happens if the 'chosen few' system experts disagree with the designer?
It's much more important for Paizo to have happy designers than to completely satisfy the small subset of their fans that are hardcore rules lawyers.
I too am surprised by how people can conjure up energy to post 1-star bash reviews while praising, say, APG which they never bothered to review in the first place.
Oh well, guess that negativity comes naturally to some, while being positive is just too bothersome.
Myself, at times, I just waited for the errata because I wanted to avoid my usual negativity and say again that APG is a great book but several abilities are just in the "does the designer of this know the rules" field.
After UC, I just gave up with the RPG line.
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It's much more important for Paizo to have happy designers than to completely satisfy the small subset of their fans that are hardcore rules lawyers.
Yes and no. A small number of Pathfinder players, probably including some hardcore rule lawyers, are responsible for spreading Pathfinder play to new customers. Part of the reason that Paizo has been so sucessful is that many long time D&D players feel that they were abandoned by WotC when 4e was released. Their enthusiasm and support for Pathfinder has been instrumental in allowing the new rule set to challenge the market leader.
Happy designers and poor products have put a large number of companies out of business over the years. Paizo's biggest challenge will be holding their market share when D&D 5th edition is released (whenever that may be and assuming that WotC realized that they alienated a large portion of their player base with 4e and tries to make ammends).
Having a community review would double the time it takes to produce a book and probably only result in about a 5% increase in quality. Simply not economical for Paizo.
The way I look at it, every book beyond core is just a menu of options you can add to your game. Not everything has to fit my game. I have a ton of great 3.5 sources I also pick and choose from. Overall, Paizo has put more quality material on my shelf than any other publisher. So they must be doing something right.
(Yes, my gaming shelf has more Paizo books than WotC books for d20.)
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It's much more important for Paizo to have happy designers than to completely satisfy the small subset of their fans that are hardcore rules lawyers.Yes and no. A small number of Pathfinder players, probably including some hardcore rule lawyers, are responsible for spreading Pathfinder play to new customers. Part of the reason that Paizo has been so sucessful is that many long time D&D players feel that they were abandoned by WotC when 4e was released. Their enthusiasm and support for Pathfinder has been instrumental in allowing the new rule set to challenge the market leader.
But Paizo employees themselves stated multiple time that the put the emphasis on fun, not on balance.
And it's clear since the public playtest for the PFRPG that they would not fix the most glaring holes in 3.5. People still bought and buy their products in droves. I think their success shows that their strategy is good.
Happy designers and poor products have put a large number of companies out of business over the years. Paizo's biggest challenge will be holding their market share when D&D 5th edition is released (whenever that may be and assuming that WotC realized that they alienated a large portion of their player base with 4e and tries to make ammends).
I don't think that 5E is the biggest threat. I think it's much more their own success... with PFRPG, most people were happy to disallow 3.5 splatbooks with thousands of options. Now, with APG, UM and UC and the race guide next year, PF is nearing the kind of saturation that made people happy to drop 3.5 for PF. And once most of the basics are covered, where to go? How many variations on "guy with sword", "girl with magic wand" and "divinely inspired zealot" do you need rules for? More and more, new options will only appeal to a subset of fans, and that's a bad thing from a business point of view. I think the effect this has on sales is much stronger than dissatisfaction with the rules or editing quality.