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Is it just me or is there a noticeable downturn in forum activity these last two years?
Where have the discussions gone? I know people are still talking about the latest and greatest in Pathfinder and Starfinder. Where are the new watering holes at?
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Reddit and/or Discord.
I’ve always been a “lurk more, post less” forum dweller.
With that being said I’ve started posting even less because the forums have devolved into the same people bickering and squabbling about everything. Anything.
My time is too valuable to spend trying to filter the signal from all the noise.
I’m hoping the eventual forum upgrades give us the ability to mute specific posters in a thread as well as the ability to just outright block someone.
Right now I use the play by post tools to manage things but that is a cudgel where I want a scalpel.
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I check daily, but I go through periods of lower activity where I skim and the go on to a writing project or something else. My favouritevthreads to respond to are lore topics that I know something about or particularly interesting hypothetical about the cosmology, of which there are generally few threads regularly, and my least favourite are rules discussions where two or more posters treat a minor ambiguity in the text as a clear and obvious support for their interpretation, of which there seem to be many. (Actually, my least favourite should probably the cycling "Wizards? 546 new posts, started three days ago" threads but I mostly avoid engaging those so don't get as exasperated as when watching rulewars.
I've only been here for like 3-4 years now though so I can hardly speak to the downturn in activity over all. I'll grant, I did notice a drop off in certain schools of toxic poster, but I hardly lament that loss.
Starfinder discussion (aside from 2E playtesting, and even then) has moved almost entirely to Discord. But for Starfinder 1E, a dearth of posts is what I would expect; the forum culture here is such that posters are generally only active when it comes to 1. Theorizing what's going to be in an announced book, 2. Asking what's in a just-released book, and 3. Theorycrafting rules or calling out errata in recently released books.
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Well, I wasn't active for most of four years, because I hadn't changed to 2E yet and I'm yet to start my own campaign (other GM's doing their stuff first), so I can't really yet participate in rules discussions and the like, since my knowledge is mostly theoretical. Also, quite a lot of people have moved away from the forum (or were moved away).
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We've had a pretty notable uptick in spam. Quite a few discourse-driving voices have been temporarily or permanently banned. The Remaster kind of mired a lot of conversation down in the mud.
It feels like War of Immortals is picking up some inertia once more, but I also imagine some people are waiting for the website refresh or just happily use Reddit.
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I'll observe that this is a rarer but still repeated refrain.
Overall though, my observations are about in line with keftiu's but I'll add that the site design is, frankly, archaic and clearly not up to snuff considering how much spam gets through on what feels like a daily basis. There is a distinct lack of user-friendly tools to allow for blocking and muting which leads plenty to not really want to engage on here, myself included.
Discord, Twitter, and Reddit are just more conducive to internet interactions at this point... despite each's unique and massive flaws.
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Had to look up when I was last posting on a regular basis, which was around 2021. Was driven away by the negativity going on back then, and I'm kinda tired in general of how everything can only be discussed in black and white colors these days, when there used to be a continuum of opinions a while back, so I kinda withdrew from all kinds of social media, not only this forum. I'll always come back from time to time to have a look and because I still love Paizo, but I also have a huge lot to catch up regarding lore and general on Adventure( Path)s, and those parts of the forum seem to have become way less frequented than they used to be, and I have no interest whatsoever in rules discussions, so there's that.
Still want to go back to playing/running PbP though, and I also have even less interest in things like Discord, Twitter and Reddit, so I'd love to see that forum flourish again in terms of setting and adventure-related discussions.
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a lot seems to happen on reddit
It does, but honestly the amount of posting here + Reddit seems less than the posting that was here in the 1e days.
It also seems to me like the recent WotC converts are going to Reddit, and the people here are mostly the old-timers, and attrition is doing its thing. Also, the game is just a lot cleaner right now, so there isn't as much to argue about. (Just Wizards, I guess.)
a lot seems to happen on redditIt does, but honestly the amount of posting here + Reddit seems less than the posting that was here in the 1e days.
It also seems to me like the recent WotC converts are going to Reddit, and the people here are mostly the old-timers, and attrition is doing its thing. Also, the game is just a lot cleaner right now, so there isn't as much to argue about. (Just Wizards, I guess.)
Reddit has a lot of movement in my experience, but by the same metric also a lot more anonymity. I remember maybe four or five people there who post frequently, the rest is to me just a mass of people who comment and then disappear again. This forum has people whom I recognize, which helps debate a lot, you don't feel like you are just argueing with some rando you'll never talk to again.
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Yeah, I have no interest in discussions that inevitably turn into massive stacks of quotes refuting quotes refuting quotes about how someone doesn't like the new caster/martial paradigm or something.
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I guess the price of a balanced system is that there is less heated debate over rules interpretations and too powerful builds. ^^
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Most of what I use the forums here for instead of reddit is to discuss adventure paths and lore. Any time I try to discuss either of those things it feels like most of the responses are along the lines of “I run exclusively homebrew adventures in my homebrew setting and you should too” or “I briefly skimmed that AP and here’s why it’s bad” or “all Paizo APs are bad.” Much harder to have an in-depth discussion on anything other than rules stuff on reddit, and the interaction with Paizo developers here is what keeps me so invested as a customer. I wish I saw more of them than just James Jacobs and Michael Sayre most of the time, but I understand that it’s probably not a fun part of the job for most of the team.
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Most of what I use the forums here for instead of reddit is to discuss adventure paths and lore. Any time I try to discuss either of those things it feels like most of the responses are along the lines of “I run exclusively homebrew adventures in my homebrew setting and you should too” or “I briefly skimmed that AP and here’s why it’s bad” or “all Paizo APs are bad.” Much harder to have an in-depth discussion on anything other than rules stuff on reddit, and the interaction with Paizo developers here is what keeps me so invested as a customer. I wish I saw more of them than just James Jacobs and Michael Sayre most of the time, but I understand that it’s probably not a fun part of the job for most of the team.
Yeah, reddit users got some weird hang-ups and the downvote system leads to pile-ons. Not that there aren't occasional comments which deserve downvotes for being rude, but it does lead to a sort of herd mentality.
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I was never a frequent poster here, but I’m older now (48) and don’t really see the point anymore. Despite owning just about every 2e product and probably 75% of every 1e product, I don’t play society and there is always someone else who seems to know more about the setting that what I have to add.
I do pop in here from time to time, though, and really love it when I see Paizo comment on lore (James is the best!)
I left Reddit due to the constant argumentativeness. And sorry, I have zero interest in posts about how wizards are mathematically inferior, or this build has the highest DPS. Totally not my interest.
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The primary reason I would visit the Paizo forums is to read the Story Hour/Campaign logs of other groups playing through the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. With the rise of podcasting and Youtube-ing, this kind of post has taken a nosedive.
I used to post a lot of my own session logs too, but as I grow older and have less time, I have not been doing this as much. Also, I found myself gravitating to 5e and other systems, for a variety of reasons.
It frustrated and confused me that Paizo did not do more to cross-promote Pathfinder for Savage Worlds. One or two blog posts and that was it. No sub-forum, no nothing. Since you went to the effort of collaborating with Pinnacle on that line, I would have hoped for more.
Pinnacle killed their own forums a while back, so there is nowhere else to post about PF4SW, at least for those of us who don't use Reddit/Discord.
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I've only really started posting on the forums fairly recently, but I think the frequent chorus of "New Wizard is Bad! We Don't Like Oracle Anymore!" is uh... somewhat discouraging if you're interested in discussing builds or further character options.
I do pop in here from time to time, though, and really love it when I see Paizo comment on lore (James is the best!)
Whether or not I'm the James in question (we are legion)...
Aww, thank you!
You da man, JJ!
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I love Paizo and everything they make which is what keeps me coming back to check on the forums and the blogs. But I would be lieing if I said they were good. The Paizo site has been outdated almost since it's inception and it is only more glaring in current year.
It has become my sole duty in my group to be the the one who keeps up to date on Paizo/Pathfinder ext because no one else wants to bother with this site and 3rd party aggregation about Pathfinder isn't what it was in 1E's hayday.
If I don't bring it up my group and my lgs don't know about it. I don't know how to fix this as I wish Paizo and Pathfinder were more known and liked than the Coastal Wizards and the Dragon Game as I feel Paizo/PF are better by every metric that matters.
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90% of my posting here is in Play by Post games. I typically play 3 to 4 games at one time, so I'm here a lot every day. I use to play PF2e PFS live while there was still a local group, but unfortunately that ended about a year ago. Now I mostly play SFS PBP here.
Outside of posting to games, I read the forums to keep up with the news but I tend to look more than I comment. Starfinder general posting has slowed down a lot on the Paizo forums.
Until recently the old Starfinder Reddit was still very active especially with new players coming over from 5e. Now some of it is split up with the new SF2e Reddit. But for me, the new Reddit layout is just an eyesore, so I only spend about 10% as much time there now and left all but a few Reddit groups.
I had started typing about my experience with using Discord for the last 2 years, but as the saying goes if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all, nothing bad happened there I really just don't like the user interface, so I'll leave it at that.
It would be nice if the forums got an update or complete redo someday, or before that at least a clean up. A lot of the time a lot of advice or rules questions get asked in the General PF2e or General Starfinder despite there being sub-forums for those topics if traffic here is slowing down maybe combining some of those sub-forums into the general forums would make things look more active. I rarely check the sub-forums.
I'm just burning out on social media in general. The Paizo forums might be old but it's one of the few places I don't mind posting to anymore, and I think Play by Post on the Paizo forums is highly underrated.
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I used to do a lot of PBP here too but moved over to Myth Weavers since the games here all feel like they are primarily Organized Play games (which I frankly have no interest in) and there really aren't many options for refining posts. Hell, the time limit on editing posts alone is profoundly annoying. We even have to type out the BBCode tags ourselves.
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I used to do a lot of PBP here too but moved over to Myth Weavers since the games here all feel like they are primarily Organized Play games (which I frankly have no interest in) and there really aren't many options for refining posts. Hell, the time limit on editing posts alone is profoundly annoying. We even have to type out the BBCode tags ourselves.
I've been curious by Myth Weavers for a while, I like that it's built for PBP, unlike Discord which seems to want to do everything but is only good at a few things. Gameday XIII Event listings this year had 151 PBP games listed, only 1 was on Myth Weavers the rest look around 50/50ish on the Paizo forums and Discord.
I only play on a laptop so I don't mind typing BBCode. All the people I know who moved to Discord from the Paizo forums left because they mostly posted from a phone. I see how typing BBCode on a phone would get annoying, especially for a GM. This relates back to the OPs original question "Where are the new watering holes at?" I wonder how much where people are active now has to do with whether they mostly use a phone or computer for posting.
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Yes, there does seem to have been a downturn. I certainly post far, FAR, FAR less than I used to (which some would say is a good thing, but I digress). I also agree that some of the problem is a lack of features that have become commonplace on other forums (ignore feature, SPAM mitigation, etc.).
I think it's worth mentioning, however, that there is real value in Paizo maintaining its own forums, however clunky. For those who may be unaware, Reddit in particular has been up to some shenanigans recently with respect to charging search engines prohibitive amounts for the API access necessary to index the site, effectively locking out smaller players and ultimately contributing to a tiered, pay-to-play Internet. In my opinion that sort of behavior is extremely bad for everyone.
I've been curious by Myth Weavers for a while, I like that it's built for PBP, unlike Discord which seems to want to do everything but is only good at a few things. Gameday XIII Event listings this year had 151 PBP games listed, only 1 was on Myth Weavers the rest look around 50/50ish on the Paizo forums and Discord.
I only play on a laptop so I don't mind typing BBCode. All the people I know who moved to Discord from the Paizo forums left because they mostly posted from a phone. I see how typing BBCode on a phone would get annoying, especially for a GM. This relates back to the OPs original question "Where are the new watering holes at?" I wonder how much where people are active now has to do with whether they mostly use a phone or computer for posting.
MW is profoundly more robust when it comes to providing tools and encouraging creativity in PBP. It is, however, a generalist site built for many different systems whereas Paizo games are primarily going to be played on the Paizo forums.
If you're starting a game, I would highly suggest doing so on MW.
I just hate that MW doesn’t keep old threads around. I went back to reread the one game I played on there and it was gone, all that work deleted.
I've never used MW, but perhaps they support easy exporting?
I just hate that MW doesn’t keep old threads around. I went back to reread the one game I played on there and it was gone, all that work deleted.
I've never had that problem. Was it a thread on their old site? It should still be in the archived version.
Yeah, the shift to the new site disrupted a lot of things, you should be able to long into their archived version of the old site and be able to find all your old posts. It's not super convenient and you might need to use roundabout methods but it should all still be there.
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Aggressively suppressing the opinions of anyone who doesn't buy into the latest movement of the products can have that effect.
Rest of us moved on to greener pastures, or at least places with less toxic fandoms/toxic positivity.
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Do you mind sharing what those specific opinions are? Saying this sort of thing without at least gesturing in a specific direction almost begs to be taken the least flattering way possible.
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I post less than I used to (only about 10-15 posts per day on average, mostly nonsensical rambling first thing in the morning). And what I do post is mostly out of habit these days. I don't engage with too many people (for various reasons). Most of the older crowd who were around when I first started posting (nearly 20 years ago) are gone.
But I also don't really game anymore (except a few video), and don't buy any game products. So that limits the topics I'd be engaging in anyway. The most RPG stuff I do is make maps.
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Do you mind sharing what those specific opinions are? Saying this sort of thing without at least gesturing in a specific direction almost begs to be taken the least flattering way possible.
I mean I don't know if other communities are really less toxic, but getting belittled everytime you state that you'd prefer certain things not to be changed by a new edition, things (to give a few examples) like Vancian Casting back before the 4e days, removing alignment, or to get in some hotter waters, evil dark elves and orcs, will, in the long run, make you either go away, or make you so angry that you say something stupid (which, of course will get you punished, while the people provoking you can triumph that you fell into their trap).
And there used to be a certain group of people that did that for a very long time by playing the system and just staying polite enough to not get moderated. Probably still does, though I don't follow those things anymore so I don't even know if they are still here.
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And there used to be a certain group of people that did that for a very long time by playing the system and just staying polite enough to not get moderated. Probably still does, though I don't follow those things anymore so I don't even know if they are still here.
The two most egregious offenders disappeared about a year ago and haven't returned, so fingers crossed that they were permabanned. The rest of their coterie apparently got the message and things have been quite calm since then.
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I mean I don't know if other communities are really less toxic, but getting belittled everytime you state that you'd prefer certain things not to be changed by a new edition, things (to give a few examples) like Vancian Casting back before the 4e days, removing alignment, or to get in some hotter waters, evil dark elves and orcs, will, in the long run, make you either go away, or make you so angry that you say something stupid (which, of course will get you punished, while the people provoking you can triumph that you fell into their trap).
And there used to be a certain group of people that did that for a very long time by playing the system and just staying polite enough to not get moderated. Probably still does, though I don't follow those things anymore so I don't even know if they are still here.
Now, you say that but I'll counter that an entrenched vocal minority espousing those views repeatedly in the face of popular opposition is part of the reason I'm brunt out on these forums. They are not getting run off this site in any meaningful way unless their attachment to, say, an entire ancestry being inherently evil is revealed to come from a tangle of other less socially acceptable views.
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You can have a fun space, or you can have a safe space.
Paraphrasing George Carlin: "Censorship is telling a man he can't have steak, because a baby can chew it"
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I'd really like to know your definition of 'fun', Ignis Fatuus, because the phrasing implies that it involves giving certain people free rein to be abusive and toxic. I would wager our definitions of 'fun' might be vastly different.
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Maybe you can be a fun, safe person instead.
You can't. You can only be a "safe person" if you keep quiet and kept your head down; otherwise, you will offend someone somewhere. Even then, there are people that claim that in action is support and will be offended by someone not caring or actively supporting their cause.
Unless you mean "safe and fun" to your in-group, which doable depending on how tolerant your group is and how prone to purity spiraling.
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I'd really like to know your definition of 'fun', Ignis Fatuus, because the phrasing implies that it involves giving certain people free rein to be abusive and toxic. I would wager our definitions of 'fun' might be vastly different.
Just enjoyment, amusement, or light-hearted pleasure.
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I'd really like to know your definition of 'fun', Ignis Fatuus, because the phrasing implies that it involves giving certain people free rein to be abusive and toxic. I would wager our definitions of 'fun' might be vastly different.Just enjoyment, amusement, or light-hearted pleasure.
You say that, but then your other statements imply otherwise.