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The most recent ICv2 report states that PF2 sales are "strong," "better than expected," and second only to D&D. Seems like a good sign, although the report only covers through the end of August.
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It does, especially since I think that rather than a system with a massive release hype that shrinks as time goes on, I think PF2e is likely to have a slow burn of rising popularity.
I suspect that its true market demographic is going to be a gradual flow of new players from 5e whose evolving tastes may very well find them looking for a crunchier game with a more frequent release schedule and a robust character customization metagame.
I'd be more interested to see how their sales for that time period compare to how the sales from PF1 when it released went. If they made more money with PF2's release compared to PF1's release, I'd say they created a better game than PF1, since I have faith that they can release supplementary content (like APs and future rulebooks) to maintain the sales they have.
Sad to say, I do not expect PF2 to supersede D&D 5E; brand-name recognition, history, and awareness of it will trump it every time. Unless Paizo gets the rights to D&D (which it never will, OGL or not), it's not going to come close to passing it in sales.
I am impressed that it has surpassed other high quality brand-name gaming systems, though, for how little exposure and recognition it has, so good on them for that at least.
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I don't think anyone expected it to supersede 5E - for all the reasons you stated. 1E beating 4E for a time is not really comparable
I don't think it is even Paizo's aim
5E is in a very different space to the 4E times. It has been played in Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things which are both incredibly popular shows
Also I don't think a comparison in launches would necessarily be useful as the size of the market would be different. For example even if 2E sold more that might not mean much. But perhaps your thoughts were what if it sold less despite what I believe is a larger market
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I am impressed that it has surpassed other high quality brand-name gaming systems, though, for how little exposure and recognition it has, so good on them for that at least.
It’s been the #2 selling Roleplaying game worldwide(except for the year it was #1) for the entire 10 years of its existence. It isn’t underexposed or under recognized.
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I am impressed that it has surpassed other high quality brand-name gaming systems, though, for how little exposure and recognition it has, so good on them for that at least.It’s been the #2 selling Roleplaying game worldwide(except for the year it was #1) for the entire 10 years of its existence. It isn’t underexposed or under recognized.
It is in non enthusiast circles, but that's because ttrpgs are a small market.
It is in non enthusiast circles, but that's because ttrpgs are a small market.
All Roleplaying Games with the exception of D&D are underexposed outside of the tabletop marketplace, but this thread is specifically about the ICv2 sales statistics for Fall 2019. Pathfinder has, as I stated previously, been the #2 and #1 selling RPG on that list consistently for a decade.
But wasn’t the concern that it was slipping?
But wasn’t the concern that it was slipping?
I don't think it was the main concern because you expect systems to start slipping after a couple of years but I think it becomes much more concerning when sales for the subsequent "splatbooks" start plummeting because that generally means that your core market is probably saturated and you are at that point hoping and relying on new blood finding the system. And I don't think that's a sustainable model.
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So it should be compared at most with last year's number and not with the numbers when PF1 was released a decade ago under an entirely different market.
Specially, if it to gauge "how good it is".
Market conditions are important, and trpgs are way more mainstream now than a decade ago.
Okay, market conditions last year were PF2 was being developed and thus there were no major PF1 releases causing SF to take PF’s place at #2. The year before that PF was #2. The year before that, PF was #2. In fact every year from that point back to its release quarter in 09 it was #2 (except for 2011 and part of 2012 where it was #1.)
It debuted at #2 in 09 and by and large it has stayed there, despite the changes in market conditions.
But wasn’t the concern that it was slipping?
The concern was that it was no longer sustainable. It was a 10 year old game with dozens upon dozens of splatbooks that was built on the chassis of an already 10 year old game with its own glut of product. Over 20 years that system has been pushed to the limit and there wasn’t a lot left you could do with it and continue to hold an audience larger than your loyalists.
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Yup, Pathfinder Classic had run it's course.
I'm glad Paizo recognized it soon enough.
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Yup, Pathfinder Classic had run it's course.
I'm glad Paizo recognized it soon enough.
I don't know...
Inner Sea Sanitation Systems and Aardvarks of Golarion were untapped potential!
;)
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Inner Sea Sanitation Systems and Aardvarks of Golarion were untapped potential!
I had my hopes up for Ultimate Portcullises and Advanced Sub-sub-sub classes Guide
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Can we please avoid the “Ha ha! Let’s laugh at PF1’s foibles!” temptation? It didn’t help 4E’s efforts to win over 3.5 adherents and it won’t help us either.
Some of us still saw plenty of opportunity to publish. It wasn’t that there weren’t any good ideas for books, it was that the number of people buying them was shrinking. Some of the holdouts won’t have converted and laughing at the fact PF1 was getting to the very obscure minutiae won’t help them feel welcome (some of us LIKE the obscure lore books more than the general books).
I would personally have liked a “Thieves of Golarion” (followed by a whole bunch more class books), an Absalom sourcebook, an AP building up a Qadiran trading empire, more fleshing out of the Varisian ‘backwater” towns and villages, more fleshed out steampunk rules....some of those things will make it into PF2, but it’s a new system with the advantages that brings and the disadvantage of needing to do ”the basics” before getting to the truly niche stuff.
You can be bored with what Paizo was offering PF1 fans without mocking those of us who weren’t.
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Agreed, and some recent pf1 stuff like Concordance of Rivals is still incredibly valuable to have.
Speaking of pf1... seeing as it’s been #2 since forever, and now pf2 is #2... where is pf1, on the scale?
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I'm actually wondering if they're even counted separately. Unlike things like Shadowrun 6E, D&D and Pathfinder are just listed under those titles.
Probably. ICv2 is the best we have but it’s pretty terrible.
I believe that there have been instances of FLGSes counting sales of gamemastery flipmats as “D&D” - it’s all compiled from interviews, not from genuine surveys of actual sales data.
Games entering, remaining in and leaving the top five is something worth noting, but it’s important when evaluating survey data to remember the methodology. There’s no objective, standardisation across respondents and the sales through amazon, direct-from-publisher and through stores like Target are all estimates.
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Can we please avoid the “Ha ha! Let’s laugh at PF1’s foibles!” temptation? It didn’t help 4E’s efforts to win over 3.5 adherents and it won’t help us either.
Some of us still saw plenty of opportunity to publish. It wasn’t that there weren’t any good ideas for books, it was that the number of people buying them was shrinking. Some of the holdouts won’t have converted and laughing at the fact PF1 was getting to the very obscure minutiae won’t help them feel welcome (some of us LIKE the obscure lore books more than the general books).
I would personally have liked a “Thieves of Golarion” (followed by a whole bunch more class books), an Absalom sourcebook, an AP building up a Qadiran trading empire, more fleshing out of the Varisian ‘backwater” towns and villages, more fleshed out steampunk rules....some of those things will make it into PF2, but it’s a new system with the advantages that brings and the disadvantage of needing to do ”the basics” before getting to the truly niche stuff.
You can be bored with what Paizo was offering PF1 fans without mocking those of us who weren’t.
That wasn't where I was going at all. Sorry if I came across that way.
You are right of course; there was more that could be done. There were whole regions of Golarion left unexplored, optional styles of game-play to develop, different eras and tech levels to detail, and many fantasy tropes to be fleshed out.
But the truth was the mechanics had reached the end of the cycle. There was just so much you could do with a twenty year old game chassis. And new gamers just weren't coming in fast enough. The Inner Sea region had been fairly well covered, and this was where my joke (which apparently fell flat) was coming from.
PF1 remains the best game of the 3rd edition of D&D, and I'm still playing it and thoroughly enjoying it. But I am now really looking forward to the new system when my current campaign has run its course.
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That wasn't where I was going at all. Sorry if I came across that way.Can we please avoid the “Ha ha! Let’s laugh at PF1’s foibles!” temptation? It didn’t help 4E’s efforts to win over 3.5 adherents and it won’t help us either.
Some of us still saw plenty of opportunity to publish. It wasn’t that there weren’t any good ideas for books, it was that the number of people buying them was shrinking. Some of the holdouts won’t have converted and laughing at the fact PF1 was getting to the very obscure minutiae won’t help them feel welcome (some of us LIKE the obscure lore books more than the general books).
I would personally have liked a “Thieves of Golarion” (followed by a whole bunch more class books), an Absalom sourcebook, an AP building up a Qadiran trading empire, more fleshing out of the Varisian ‘backwater” towns and villages, more fleshed out steampunk rules....some of those things will make it into PF2, but it’s a new system with the advantages that brings and the disadvantage of needing to do ”the basics” before getting to the truly niche stuff.
You can be bored with what Paizo was offering PF1 fans without mocking those of us who weren’t.
You didn’t - I didn’t quote anyone, because I didn’t think there was any malice or glee - just a difference of opinion. I realise I posted just after you, but really intended it as a general comment. I was asking people not to make those jokes, but didn’t intend it as a “you’re a bad person” admonition at all. (My last sentence was poorly phrased).
You are right of course; there was more that could be done. There were whole regions of Golarion left unexplored, optional styles of game-play to develop, different eras and tech levels to detail, and many fantasy tropes to be fleshed out.
But the truth was the mechanics had reached the end of the cycle. There was just so much you could do with a twenty year old game chassis.
I don’t agree with this, but...
And new gamers just weren't coming in fast enough.
I do agree with this.
They could have kept inventing new subsystems, new alternate classes, new optional rules.....for a long time, in my view. However, by all accounts, they wouldn’t have kept selling them in sufficient volume so I’m glad they changed course in time.
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My main point really was that “plumbers of golarion” jibes remind me of “oh my god....you want to GRAPPLE????” comments from 2008
That vibe was an unfortunate part of many 4E fans’ enjoyment of the new edition, in my view. It’s subtle but I think praising the new is far superior to criticising the old. I don’t think it’s as bad in PF1-PF2 as it was when 4E came out, but still.... *shrug*
Yup, Pathfinder Classic had run it's course.
I'm glad Paizo recognized it soon enough.
I don't know...
Inner Sea Sanitation Systems and Aardvarks of Golarion were untapped potential!
;)
Not sure how "we squeezed almost every drop out of our current campaign setting" said that 1E is done, unless you want them to repeat the same setting content again for the new rules. ^^ As far as their past statements go, they specifically want to avoid doing that, so I hope that they'll do a lot of setting content in the unexplored regions of the map, i.e. some more Inner Sea region (Brevoy, for example), then Tian Xia, Casmaron and Arcadia.
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Plenty of games don't see the same large changes from edition to edition that have been happening with D&D since 2000, and have been going for a lot more than twenty years while still finding interesting new products to sell. The idea you need to change the system so it can do more is a very 'D&D' phenomenon. It might be a necessary one for a business strategy committed to a high churn on splats, but D&D 5e has shown that's not a necessary feature even for D&D-a-like.
There are also plenty of games that update themselves significantly with each edition, just like D&D and PF. It is not, as you say, a D&D phenomenon. In fact I’ll go as far as to say that 20 years of support for a largely unchanged game is a uniquely D&D 3.X phenomenon.
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There are also plenty of games that update themselves significantly with each edition, just like D&D and PF. It is not, as you say, a D&D phenomenon. In fact I’ll go as far as to say that 20 years of support for a largely unchanged game is a uniquely D&D 3.X phenomenon.
It is uncommon, but not unique. The latest version of RuneQuest is almost totally compatible with RuneQuest 2 from 1978. There are new rules, but the existing stuff mostly works as-is. Closer than 3.5e to PF1. And they are still using the Glorantha setting which first was published in a board game in '75.
If continuity is your thing, they deserve your respect.
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It is uncommon, but not unique. The latest version of RuneQuest is almost totally compatible with RuneQuest 2 from 1978.
But Mongoose's two editions of RuneQuest weren't overly compatible with the original product, and if you look at RuneQuest forums you can see that even that percentile base system with fewer major changes across 7 editions still has its edition wars - with fans complaining about major changes between editions whether it be to the lore or to the rules or to the fact that it took a version of the game that existed for 8 years and abandoned it in favor of a "back to its roots" compatibility with the older versions of the game.
My point stands that rarely do systems remain frozen in amber, and arguing that PF changing to PF2 is just Paizo following a trend that D&D started in 2000 while other companies just keep rolling along without making major changes from edition to edition paints an inaccurate portrait of the industry at large.
If continuity is your thing, they deserve your respect.
I could do with a lot less of being told what games I'm supposed to give respect to on these forums.
If anyone from Paizo is reading this thread, I'd be very curious to know how PF2 sales have matched with corporate expectations.
Posting the sales and posting expectations are unnecessary. Just a subjective sense of whether people there are relieved / surprised / scrambling to hire / polishing their resumes.
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If anyone from Paizo is reading this thread, I'd be very curious to know how PF2 sales have matched with corporate expectations.
Posting the sales and posting expectations are unnecessary. Just a subjective sense of whether people there are relieved / surprised / scrambling to hire / polishing their resumes.
From the CEO's words in the Take up of Second Edition thread, doing great and scrambling to hire.
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If anyone from Paizo is reading this thread, I'd be very curious to know how PF2 sales have matched with corporate expectations.
Posting the sales and posting expectations are unnecessary. Just a subjective sense of whether people there are relieved / surprised / scrambling to hire / polishing their resumes.
Here’s Lisa’s comment:
Pathfinder 2nd edition is doing great and I am really happy with the way it is selling. And just for the record, Paizo isn't smaller, it is larger than it has ever been. And we are growing even more in the coming months.
I have been involved with quite a few edition change in my 35+ years in this industry. It always takes time for existing customers to take on the new edition. Always. It has nothing to do with how good a new edition is and everything to do with ongoing campaigns that need to be finished up.
And some people will never change, which is also cool. It is great when you are able to give people their perfect game on the first go around and also give them a lifetime of content to play with that game. Actually quite proud that we seem to have done that for quite a few people.
But make no mistake, Pathfinder 2 is doing really well and I expect will continue to grow over the next five years or so. So many new customers in the marketplace that it is the most fertile ground to launch a new edition on in the history of our industry.
That's great news!
I think the point isnt that pf1 ran out of space for content, it's that due to the disunified nature of the core engine every new addition was trading worse and worse on the complexity for depth ratio and was even harder on the devs to keep things in mechanical balance.
I agree with this and I think it becomes rather noticeable when looking at the later releases of PF1's lifecycle. Yes, you could expand Golarion at infinitum but if you don't find satisfying mechanics to pair with the flavour than people probably won't buy-in as much. I think that started showing with the releases of the Vigilante, the Occult classes and in the end the Shifter. While I greatly appreciated the flavour of those I found most of them rather clunky and convoluted to play. So I felt that PF1 hit a design wall at some point but I understand if people feel differently if they enjoyed that new content.
