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But the thing is, when someone tells you they're reading and having internal discussions about it, you still don't believe them. Things like this take time to adjust, and make sure they address things the way that work best for everyone. As James asked, just have a little bit of patience.
The reaction of "someone tells us they're having internal discussions and you still don't believe them" belies a lack of trust.
And to be fair, anyone who got torched by how PFS handled Remaster Oracle and flat out broke a bunch of characters (and the casual disdain showed by them when people brought that up) probably has a reason to be skeptical now. That was a bafflingly bad decision by the PFS folks when literally doing nothing and saying "existing characters can continue to exist without remaster changes" (which is what was promised when the remaster was first announced) was right there... and their response to the feedback amounted to "too bad". That did a lot of reputational damage to PFS leadership.
There's also several parts of Paizo where communication is frankly not very good, which also isn't good for trust. Like, if this was an area James had control over, I don't think people would be reacting the same way because I think people have a lot of trust in James that he'll either do something about it or will explain the reasoning behind why it's not changing.
For comparison, look at the AP changes. There's been folks who don't like those changes either, but the reasoning has been well explained and by and large the response has been "that makes sense", or "even if I don't like it, I understand the business reasoning." James' interaction on that has made a real difference.
Is it fair that the PFS folks aren't getting the benefit of the doubt in the same way? I don't know. But it's the reality.
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But the thing is, when someone tells you they're reading and having internal discussions about it, you still don't believe them.Has anyone said that? If so, please link it so I can decide how much I actually believe it. If not, why bring it up?
Yup, people *have* said that.
Sorry Mr. Jacobs but seeing is believing and this was just posted.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo71fj6?September-2025-Organized-Pla y-Monthly-UpdateThe opinion is practically one sided on the PFS2 changes, but we are being ignored. Its worse they read, no one could be bothered to respond, and ignore feedback to continue unaltered. Not even acknowledging there has been feedback.
This is getting absurd.
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Still radio silence from the powers that be on the (overwhelmingly negative) feedback on the (overwhelmingly unpopular) Society changes.
I wish I could say I’m surprised. :-/
Did you ever stop to think that others are happy with the changes? The forums are often overloaded with people that complain and gripe about things. I like most of the changes to Org Play. I do not like getting rid of the stat blocks which seems to be the biggest complaint.
They could just get rid of Society or just offload it onto the community like WotC did with AL. There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it. On the other hand, we saw during the pandemic where OP saved Paizo's butt and that totally justified every expense ever put into OP.
Pick your poison.
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Always worth remembering that those of us on this forum are a small percentage of the Organised Play player base. And that those making noise about the changes (some of it justified imo) are a small percentage of those on this forum.
Anyone assuming that their opinion is an "overwhelming" one, whichever side of the argument they are on, is almost definitely overreaching.
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But the thing is, when someone tells you they're reading and having internal discussions about it, you still don't believe them. Things like this take time to adjust, and make sure they address things the way that work best for everyone. As James asked, just have a little bit of patience.The reaction of "someone tells us they're having internal discussions and you still don't believe them" belies a lack of trust.
And to be fair, anyone who got torched by how PFS handled Remaster Oracle and flat out broke a bunch of characters (and the casual disdain showed by them when people brought that up) probably has a reason to be skeptical now. That was a bafflingly bad decision by the PFS folks when literally doing nothing and saying "existing characters can continue to exist without remaster changes" (which is what was promised when the remaster was first announced) was right there... and their response to the feedback amounted to "too bad". That did a lot of reputational damage to PFS leadership.
There's also several parts of Paizo where communication is frankly not very good, which also isn't good for trust. Like, if this was an area James had control over, I don't think people would be reacting the same way because I think people have a lot of trust in James that he'll either do something about it or will explain the reasoning behind why it's not changing.
For comparison, look at the AP changes. There's been folks who don't like those changes either, but the reasoning has been well explained and by and large the response has been "that makes sense", or "even if I don't like it, I understand the business reasoning." James' interaction on that has made a real difference.
Is it fair that the PFS folks aren't getting the benefit of the doubt in the same way? I don't know. But it's the reality.
To be fair, I was one of those seeing problems with the AP changes. I was not quite convinced by JJ's arguments, but the civil way in which he posted and the enormous respect I have for him, garnered over more than a decade, made me stop arguing my point.
Doubly so because I do not expect Paizo to undo such a wide change on my behalf.
So, I let it go, even though I am unconvinced by Paizo's stance.
Maybe people here could similarly let it go too.
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Did you ever stop to think that others are happy with the changes? The forums are often overloaded with people that complain and gripe about things. I like most of the changes to Org Play. I do not like getting rid of the stat blocks which seems to be the biggest complaint.
I have, and I doubt that is the case. Yes, the people here are only a sample, but how do you suppose literally all polling works? Spoiler alert: they're samples. No one actually asks 300 million+ Americans who they're going to vote for. Nor do I see any reason to believe that the opinions expressed in this thread should be materially different from the player base as a whole.
But even if I'm wrong and these changes are popular, why would that make a lack of response from Paizo better?
They could just get rid of Society or just offload it onto the community like WotC did with AL. There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it. On the other hand, we saw during the pandemic where OP saved Paizo's butt and that totally justified every expense ever put into OP.
Pick your poison.
You claim there is a "pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it," yet you haven't made such a case; more importantly, neither has Paizo. Quite frankly, the evidence I see (both from personal observation and reading Paizo's prior blogs on the subject) really makes it seem like they don't have a good way to quantify the impact of organized play, because they have apparently decided PFS scenarios should be profitable (which is just silly, and I've already covered why).
I'm encouraged that James has said they are still discussing the matter, and I hope that, if they don't change course, they'll at least give an idea behind the thinking here (as they did for the AP changes).
As to why you felt the need to scold people for "complaining" (read: expressing an opinion you do not share), I'm honestly not sure,but I'm certainly not going to be made to feel bad for providing negative feedback to a company I patronize. Honestly it's kinda wild that you apparently think I should.
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To be fair, I was one of those seeing problems with the AP changes. I was not quite convinced by JJ's arguments, but the civil way in which he posted and the enormous respect I have for him, garnered over more than a decade, made me stop arguing my point.
Doubly so because I do not expect Paizo to undo such a wide change on my behalf.
So, I let it go, even though I am unconvinced by Paizo's stance.
Maybe people here could similarly let it go too.
Here's the thing, though: James shared Paizo's thinking with respect to the AP changes. That's really all that is being asked for here: some insight into why they're making what appear to be unpopular and problematic changes to PFS. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
And for the record, I don't actually expect them to change course, either...though I obviously wish they would, because PFS has been struggling for years, and the announced course seems very much like more of the same (cut, cut, cut -- which clearly has yet to work).
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I get that we are on Paizo's own forums, and there are some passionate fans of the company here. But trying to shut down criticism does not help Paizo - if anything, it hurts them.
If I weren't also a fan, I wouldn't bother. I comment because I don't want to see PFS continue to decline.
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It's very simple. James Jacobs has replied quite a few times in this thread. You seem to think no one from Paizo is speaking. They are. They're just not telling you what you want to hear. Since you want to be a huge ball of whining negativity, I said what I said.
Deal with it.
"Huge ball of whining negativity"? I see you've moved on to insults. Very cool.
Ad hominem attacks aside, you remain incorrect: Paizo has not addressed the concerns that many have expressed in this thread...other than to say that they're discussing the matter, and to ask that we give them time to respond. Which I had been doing, until you apparently decided it was time to white knight for Paizo (which is just kinda weird, btw).
Edit: I just noticed you're a venture captain. Holy crap; get it together, man.
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@Xathos: I think there is a wide difference between James responding only about APs and also reiterating that he isn’t responding specifically to PFS decisions and “Paizo has responded to negative critique”.
If, as bugleyman asserts you are a venture captain, it does seem really odd that you are seeming to say Paizo, or PFS leadership for that matter, have responded. I don’t see any response here or on the blog to negative critiques of changes to PFS from Paizo of PFS leadership.
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I get that we are on Paizo's own forums, and there are some passionate fans of the company here. But trying to shut down criticism does not help Paizo - if anything, it hurts them.
If I weren't also a fan, I wouldn't bother. I comment because I don't want to see PFS continue to decline.
FWIW I do not think anyone here tried to censor criticism. Come to think of it, most of the posts about the PFS changes are full of criticism.
I just feel some people want to get into a fight with PFS staff.
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It's very simple. James Jacobs has replied quite a few times in this thread. You seem to think no one from Paizo is speaking. They are. They're just not telling you what you want to hear. Since you want to be a huge ball of whining negativity, I said what I said.
Deal with it.
Nice troll response. You are aware that there's two sets of changes in this post and only one set of them has gotten any response to the feedback, right?
That's part of the problem: one side of the company (James) is doing an awesome job of responding to feedback. The other side of the company (PFS) is not.
Edit: I just noticed you're a venture captain. Holy crap; get it together, man.
I wish I was surprised, but its not the first time a Venture Captain has responded to any PFS criticism by flying off the handle.
Why should they respond to negative critics that are so strongly worded and mostly one-sided?
Historically, this has always ended in vitriolic nerdrage that helped no one.
Yeah this is in no way what the feedback has been like unless "anything other than praise is nerdrage". It reads like someone trying to create a false narrative to then justify why they shouldn't respond.
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I rarely post on these forums because I really do not have the time, but more importantly because invariably the discussion goes from sort of on topic to off topic to completely unrelated to the topic.
This discussion should be focussing on four items from what I can see. I may have missed something, but discussions about "Paizo not listening" or "You are a troll" do not belong here:
The issue I see are:
1) Switching APs from monthly to 4x/year hardcovers.
- I really don't have an opinion, hard covers are harder to open and lay out on a table, but will be less expensive to print and purchase, so probably a wash - and for people who run off of PDFs, probably no effect.
2) Elimination of Stat Blocs from the end of PFS Scenarios
- My opinion is above, I think that the monetary argument is limited at best since I do not believe these are even available in paper (so no less cost for printing), and if Paizo has a standard format for stat blocs (one of the goals of 2ed to the best of my knowledge), then this should simply be a cut-and-paste. In addition, many GMs (raises hand) use these extensively and removing is going to create quite a bit more work.
3) 2 Level Tiers
- Again, my opinion is posted above. While I suppose it will occasionally happen, rarely do I see the same 4-6 players at the same time at the same table every game with all characters in the same tight level range (people miss games), thus the probabilities are that there will be a range of levels and by reducing the span (tiers) for each scenario from 4 to 2, Paizo is making it much more difficult to accommodate all players.
- From a business point, this seems like deciding to open a restaurant and deciding not to have anything vegetarian (since only 5% order vegetarian) the end result is the any group with a vegetarian in their group will likely go elsewhere (thus losing far more than 5% of the business).
- I run a business and we accept some referral programs which pay well less than our regular rate. We keep these programs because we like to help people, but more importantly, if the person is happy, they will refer their friends and family, far surpassing any loss from that one discount client.
- The same holds here. If there is a Tier 5-6 being run and 2 friends have a 5, but the other is at level 4 because they were out last week, there is a good change that all 3 will not come to the game. Which could easily result in a table not firing.
4) 3 hour Scenarios
- It is hard to tell a good story in 4 hours. Making it 3 makes this way harder. It will take the same time to get everyone seated and introduced as a 4 hour session, and the same time for set-up and clean up. Thus, really it is closer to cutting the game from 3.5 hours of playing time to 2.5 hours. At higher levels, a single fight can take an hour or more (way more if a party makes foolish decisions), which means the non-combat part of a scenario will need to be very short if there is more than one fight (which is typical). If the decision is to design scenarios for 3 hours and eliminate the challenge point system, then it should be for a 5 person table (many do not have 6 people, even at GenCon, Paizo only schedules 5 person tables (most end up being 6, but 5 are scheduled as a base)). With 5 as a base, the "easy" would frequently be 4 people, and the "hard" would be 6 players (with the ability to adjust if everyone were at the high/low level end.
- In addition, as someone referenced above, if the goal is a 3 hour session, then every scenario should have an optional encounter/chase/influence section that can be added when games are scheduled for 4 hours to allow the party to have a more complete experience.
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James has been with the company literally forever, and is really good at interacting with a passionate fanbase that can get very swingy in how they respond to information, especially information they don't like.
It is not super fair to expect folks that have not spent more than a decade handling situations like this to be as confident and ready to jump in when there is information that might still be in the air/not ready to share. Like the information put into the blog post probably got multiple sets of eyes upon it and was not the thinking of one person. The folks making decisions about PFS have changed over a couple of times since I have paying attention here, and it is doubtful that any of the current folks are looking to jump out and say a bunch of stuff that could get them in trouble not only with the community but also internally. What was put into this blog could reflect many meetings and previous discussions and was all the information that decision makers felt ready to put out. Now there has been a reaction to that information that may or may not be more intense than anyone thought it would be. It could be that PFS decision makers are wanting to let the information get out amongst PFS players and get talked about for a little bit before they decide that immediate reactions from vocal posters is something they need to jump on. We really don't know, and I get how that makes some folks uncomfortable, but the most they would say is, "we hear you, we are talking about it."
That is exactly what James said is happening internally. If someone else jumps into the thread to say exactly that, they are exposing themselves to a lot of potential vitriol for very little reward when the message has already been delivered by as reliable and trust worthy of a messenger as the company has. I think it is fine to keep discussing what people feel about the changes, but I don't see much worth in demanding that someone else step forward to say, "we hear you, we have nothing more to say at this time while we discuss it internally," when we already know that is all that anyone is going to say at this time.
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Did you ever stop to think that others are happy with the changes? The forums are often overloaded with people that complain and gripe about things. I like most of the changes to Org Play. I do not like getting rid of the stat blocks which seems to be the biggest complaint.
I think you have as much evidence that people are happy as we have that people are unhappy, not a compelling argument.
They could just get rid of Society or just offload it onto the community like WotC did with AL. There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it. On the other hand, we saw during the pandemic where OP saved Paizo's butt and that totally justified every expense ever put into OP.
Pick your poison.
"Don't criticize Paizo because they might pick up their ball and go home" is also not a great position to have.
For years, changes happened because people were impassioned on the forums and to their Venture Officers to get changes made. For every change that did happen because we made noise, one or more wasn't made.
Some of us don't (or no longer) have access to those super secret forums and discussions with the powers-that-be, so this is the only way that our voice gets heard. Maybe you have a lot more info than we do, maybe tons of market research was done, maybe Aroden himself returned and told Organized Play "These changes will be good!", but right now, it seems like a hip-shot of "Well it worked for Starfinder for less than 30 days let's disrupt Pathfinder mid-season, because these changes are important!"
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There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it.
You are privy to Paizo's data on the costs and revenues of the OP business? I'm surprised.
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I think you have as much evidence that people are happy as we have that people are unhappy, not a compelling argument.
For either side, apparently.
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Thank you for the update, Mr. Jacobs.
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Still radio silence from the powers that be on the (overwhelmingly negative) feedback on the (overwhelmingly unpopular) Society changes.
I wish I could say I’m surprised. :-/
Did you ever stop to think that others are happy with the changes? The forums are often overloaded with people that complain and gripe about things. I like most of the changes to Org Play. I do not like getting rid of the stat blocks which seems to be the biggest complaint.
They could just get rid of Society or just offload it onto the community like WotC did with AL. There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it. On the other hand, we saw during the pandemic where OP saved Paizo's butt and that totally justified every expense ever put into OP.
Pick your poison.
Or, failing "happy," at least "cautiously appraising the situation first."
I've had some of my best PFS experiences playing/running Quests (especially with new players who don't REALLY know the system and thus don't know what they CAN'T do - as a GM I find it incredibly liberating to hear someone ask to try something totally gonzo and just look at them and go, "You can certainly try"). The thing I think is a real problem is the removal of stat blocks, but that one is also the easiest thing to reverse. I don't want to sound like I'm completely shilling for Paizo, but to me, they've at least earned a cautious "wait and see" attitude rather than "let's get the axes and pitchforks."
That's me, anyway.
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The thing that I maybe just don't understand about the statblocks at the end of an adventure thing, is that it feels like GMs are going to pretty quickly make and share these amongst themselves, and as it is all information available freely on line, and as long as no one tries to charge for it, I don't think it will take very long before there are lists of creature stat blocks for each PFS adventure for the folks who want them.
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The thing that I maybe just don't understand about the statblocks at the end of an adventure thing, is that it feels like GMs are going to pretty quickly make and share these amongst themselves, and as it is all information available freely on line, and as long as no one tries to charge for it, I don't think it will take very long before there are lists of creature stat blocks for each PFS adventure for the folks who want them.
It's still another thing to locate and bring. Having them in the PDF already makes it an inclusive package: all the stats you need to run it are already in it. Very convenient.
I don't think its a big deal since APs already work this way, but it has been pretty convenient to have everything already included.
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I don't think its a big deal since APs already work this way, but it has been pretty convenient to have everything already included.
To me, APs and PFS scenarios are very different beasts.
For instance, I'm currently running Seven Dooms, for which I have a pretty beefy desktop PC, effectively limitless power, and very good (and redundant) Internet access. Not to mention I'm using a Foundry package for the adventure, so all of the stat blocks are right there.
Contrast that with my PFS experience, nearly all of which takes place in a game store, where I typically have much less space, rarely have access to AC power (so no beefy laptop, even if I were willing to bring such an expensive item to use in a public venue), and where Internet access that is often iffy (doubly so for conventions, which is where I play the rest of my PFS). Finally, I often have significantly less prep time for PFS.
YMMV, but to me personally that just isn't a very useful comparison.
To be fair, I'm much less frustrated now that Erik Mona has clarified that the new PFS scenarios will be $6 rather than $9 (i.e. this isn't a stealth price hike), which means I'd actually resume buying them...but pulling the stat blocks is overall too big a blow to my QoL as a PFS GM. My own situation aside, it strikes me as inherently inefficient, because work that could be done once and included with the scenario now has to be done many times (I know there are shared resources available, but I also know that not everyone will use -- or even know about -- those resources).
Overall it just kinda feels like buying a car without tires, only to then be told it's not a problem because tires are available separately.* :-P
* And yes, I do understand this is a flawed analogy. All analogies are, in fact, imperfect -- literally by definition. ;-)
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Hm. I don't pay much attention to how Paizo does monsters in PFS scenarios. Are they always from the Bestiaries (Monster Core I guess they call it now) or do they create new unique ones for some scenarios? If it's the latter, I agree the lack of stat blocks would be an issue. For the former, well, I have the battle cards, so it should be fairly easy fore me at least to pull the ones needed for the scenario. Yeah, if you don't have the battle cards (which I grant are an added expense) you have to manually grab stat blocks from somewhere (the bestiaries or AoN I guess) and that's a pain.
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I've only ever purchased scenarios as pdfs. Unique creatures do get stat blocks, but might be "use x creature with these adjustments." There is a special appendix at the back of pdfs that break the encounters down pretty nicely by tier with the stat blocks, so I get the convenience, but I don't think those are in the printed scenarios anyway. If folks are printing out sections of their pdfs for live sessions anyway, I don't think printing out a supplemental stat block sheet made by another player is very much more of an inconvenience, and would save on production labor, if for nothing else than the extra formatting time, from the company end. Some player is going to end up making a database of these stat blocks by scenario very quickly and then the issue seems like it will largely be forgotten.
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We just had our local convention for the year. 3 scenarios and a quest were run. In all 3 scenarios there was at least one person "out of tier" who wouldn't have been able to play their character under these new rules. In the case of the third one, three people were level 3-4 and three people were level 5-6 so under this new setup that's a pretty severe problem. That was the only table on Sunday at all, and if we try to split it I'd have been the one running the second game, leading to a group of 3 players and a group of 2 players. That's nowhere near as good as a single game of 6 players.
The first one was a 7-10 game, and people around here just don't have large numbers of characters at that level, so under the new rules it would have to be 7-8 to run at all (there's not enough level 9s) and the person that does have a 9 doesn't also have a 7 so they'd have just been forced to sit out/not sign up at all. Second one was a 1-4 and there was a mix of level 2 and level 3 characters.
So yeah: just looking at how this weekend played out, the new, more limited bands are going to be a colossal problem around here. People just don't slot neatly into two-level brackets, and while the interest around PF2 has grown, it's still smaller than it was in PF1's heyday and it's not big enough here to support "run a second game in the other band so they have somewhere else to go." People will just wind up being forced to play a pregen they don't actually want to play or at 7+ just sitting out entirely when they can play just fine under the current limits. And that's not even factoring in the families that came and wanted to play together like they do every year despite not all being the same level. "Sorry you can't play with your kid because he's level 2 and you're level 3" is not a good position.
It really feels like this was conceived for Gencon where there's a zillion tables and it's not a problem, but that's not the reality for smaller communities like mine. These changes are going to make it a lot harder to run games where people can play the characters they want and play together with friends/family. It's going to be really detrimental to the whole experience.
I don't know what to expect at this point given it's been quiet for weeks, but this isn't hypothetical after seeing how this weekend went: under these rules it would have been an absolute mess.
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I just wrapped up a convention and wanted to share some feedback on how the recent changes are playing out in practice.
For context, our SFS2 tables fired at about a 50% rate, while PFS2 tables fired closer to 80%. My primary SFS2 organizer expressed concerns about the scenario length. The only SFS2 game he was able to sit down for ended in two hours, and he left feeling disappointed. His worry—and mine—is how these shortened scenarios will function at conventions. Locally, SFS has been functionally dead at game days for a long time; it only survives at conventions. If scenarios are too short, SFS will either have to be scheduled on an entirely separate timetable from PFS, or else leave long, awkward gaps between sessions.
PFS2 brings its own complications, with scenarios falling partly into the old slot lengths and partly into the new ones. That combination is already shaping up to be a scheduling nightmare. To be clear, I haven’t yet run the newest PFS scenarios myself, but I have already seen negative feedback from the first public runs of SFS2 in my area.
For me personally, the value of Organized Play lies in conventions—meeting new people, seeing wildly varied parties, and facing the unique challenges of mixed-level tables. I run weekly local game days not because I want a fixed, home-game style group, but to build momentum for conventions. The current changes feel designed for weeknight game days at the expense of convention play, and I’m worried Paizo is going to have to decide which format it truly wants to support.
Walk-ups are another major factor. I had many first-time PFS players this weekend. Because of the broader level bands, I was able to shuffle tables and make sure they all got seated. With two-level bands, that flexibility disappears. For this event I scheduled four PFS2 tables and one SFS2 table per slot across a standard seven-slot convention, each slot at four hours. That doesn’t leave much room for maneuvering. I had exactly two Tier 7–10 scenarios scheduled, and both fired: one table with characters at levels 7, 8, 8, and 9; the other with 7, 7, 8, and 9. Under the new system, neither of those tables would have been legal.
Even before PFS2 officially shifts to the new model, organizers are already reacting. One of my coordinators has chosen not to schedule an upcoming Season 7 scenario (Tier 1–4) because by the time Part 2 arrives, it will effectively have been shortened into a much narrower Tier 3–4 experience. That’s discouraging to see before the changes even fully take effect.
Finally, on the volunteer side, the changes to stat block inclusion are also concerning. This weekend I had to ask a GM to step in on just a day’s notice. Because the scenario was a Season 6 Tier 1–4 with stat blocks included, it worked out. Without those included resources, it would have been a much heavier lift to expect them to go print everything and prep it overnight. As I often say as a long-time volunteer for Paizo and other organizations: every barrier to volunteering, no matter how small, reduces the number of people willing to do it.
I’ve been encouraging everyone who shared these frustrations with me to come here and voice their feedback directly. I can share my perspective, but real pushback needs to come from the wider community. My concern is that Paizo may be hearing mostly from the most engaged fans—the ones who are already posting here or filling out surveys. Meanwhile, the convention organizers, store owners, and casual players who are unhappy often don’t bother to say anything—they just quietly stop showing up.
That’s what worries me the most.
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The first new format scenario will be in our hands in January. Till then, we can only guess how it will adress the varied levels concern.
Except not really, because we can see what would have happened with that in place in very real situations. The result is poor unless it's a large convention with a large number of tables.
This is going to severely hamper our ability to organize anything at 7+ and will prevent a lot of folks from playing their own characters if they want to play at all since they'll be forced to use a pregen, which is a really substandard experience in comparison.
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The first new format scenario will be in our hands in January. Till then, we can only guess how it will adress the varied levels concern.Except not really, because we can see what would have happened with that in place in very real situations. The result is poor unless it's a large convention with a large number of tables.
This is going to severely hamper our ability to organize anything at 7+ and will prevent a lot of folks from playing their own characters if they want to play at all since they'll be forced to use a pregen, which is a really substandard experience in comparison.
With all due respect, I think we only have a few tiny pieces of info about the whole 2-levels range thing. We do not take into account the 6 PCs baseline, nor the harder/easier mode, nor any other relevant things the team has not yet shared with us.
I feel it's like asking PF1 experts to assess a PF2 PC. Without knowing about the complete new paradigm and systems, their opinion will likely be pretty off-base.
We'll know for sure in about 3 months.
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With all due respect, I think we only have a few tiny pieces of info about the whole 2-levels range thing. We do not take into account the 6 PCs baseline, nor the harder/easier mode, nor any other relevant things the team has not yet shared with us.
The 6 PC baseline is a seperate thing from the level bands, which is what I'm talking about specifically. That is going to be a huge problem because we simply don't have players with characters in such narrow ranges showing up due to numbers. People show up with a wider range, and if forced to slot it down to 2, a bunch of them are either being forced into using pregens they don't want to use, or at 7+ simply not playing at all.
We don't need to wait and see how that will play out because we can look at what just happened and see how the new rule would have applied. The answer is badly.
I need to see what a 6 baseline and the easy adjustments for fewer players look like before I have much to say on that, but it does feel like a symptom of the same problem: they're setting this up with large convention assumptions that don't apply to small conventions. (Especially since in PF2 it's easier to scale encounters up than it is to scale them down. That's a known property of the system with years of experience.)
I feel it's like asking PF1 experts to assess a PF2 PC. Without knowing about the complete new paradigm and systems, their opinion will likely be pretty off-base.
Not really. Plus, if all feedback is dismissed with "well we haven't seen it in action yet", then there's really no point in asking for feedback at all, is there?
We'll know for sure in about 3 months.
Gonna be too late by then, given how long it takes to change course on something like this. By time we see it going badly in action, it's going to be causing a bunch of bad experiences for folks that won't come back.
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With all due respect, I think we only have a few tiny pieces of info about the whole 2-levels range thing. We do not take into account the 6 PCs baseline, nor the harder/easier mode, nor any other relevant things the team has not yet shared with us.The 6 PC baseline is a seperate thing from the level bands, which is what I'm talking about specifically. That is going to be a huge problem because we simply don't have players with characters in such narrow ranges showing up due to numbers. People show up with a wider range, and if forced to slot it down to 2, a bunch of them are either being forced into using pregens they don't want to use, or at 7+ simply not playing at all.
We don't need to wait and see how that will play out because we can look at what just happened and see how the new rule would have applied. The answer is badly.
I need to see what a 6 baseline and the easy adjustments for fewer players look like before I have much to say on that, but it does feel like a symptom of the same problem: they're setting this up with large convention assumptions that don't apply to small conventions. (Especially since in PF2 it's easier to scale encounters up than it is to scale them down. That's a known property of the system with years of experience.)
I feel it's like asking PF1 experts to assess a PF2 PC. Without knowing about the complete new paradigm and systems, their opinion will likely be pretty off-base.Not really. Plus, if all feedback is dismissed with "well we haven't seen it in action yet", then there's really no point in asking for feedback at all, is there?
We'll know for sure in about 3 months.Gonna be too late by then, given how long it takes to change course on something like this. By time we see it going badly in action, it's going to be causing a bunch of bad experiences for folks that won't come back.
I still believe all the pieces put together will end up making sense and far more than they do separately.
And we cannot give feedback without that. Only opinions.
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We don't need to wait and see how that will play out because we can look at what just happened and see how the new rule would have applied. The answer is badly.
Yup.
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I haven't played PFS for a while now due to life constraints, but it seems like the new meta for players is that you are pretty much going to have to keep a large stable of characters and expect to play a whole lot of low level adventures for a long time, and have new low level characters ready to play anytime people show up without the higher level characters ready to go.
I can understand why a lot of players are not going to like that. It means it is going to be exceedingly rare to get to play the higher level scenarios, and it will be harder to play PFS like a campaign where you have a single character learning a lot about each season's meta-narrative.
At the same time, I don't think it is going to be detrimental to newer players wanting to get involved unless the lodge is really trying to push forward into the higher level scenarios and the tables are not ready and kind of expecting to play mostly levels 1-2 and 3-4 scenarios most of the time with the occasionally lucky break where the players who show up have the stable of characters to support it. Like as a GM, I would almost never prep something higher level unless people signed up well in advance.
I am guessing the plan is for the new style scenarios to stay in the 1-2 and 3-4 level ranges until there are tons to choose from. It is also probably easiest to get new writers to write for those levels so from a production stand point, I can see why they did it this way.
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I still believe all the pieces put together will end up making sense and far more than they do separately.
And we cannot give feedback without that. Only opinions.
How's the small convention analysis concerning level bands given here is not a feedback? Do you really see any factors which would change the outcome in any way? More players with more characters would suddenly magically appear everywhere? In small communities there won't be enough characters and players to fill 2-level bands. That's an almost mathematical fact. The situation will be worse than for 4-level bands. Also a fact. People generally like to play their own characters more than playing pregens. A fact.
What you do here looks like closing your eyes, plugging your ears, not thinking about it - and then going and telling someone else to do the same.
Let's have a little dream and imagine there is a level 7-8 scenario with additional rules to include a level 9 PC.
Magically, all tables mentioned above are perfectly legal.
And I think this is how things will be.
Naysayers are hyperfocusing on the 2-levels band and refuse to take anything else into account.
The PFS team has all the info we use in our own analysis and more. Do you really think they are unaware of what so many posters, from the very first post talking about the PFS changes, see?
They have the full picture and we do not.
Which is likely why they have not actually asked for feedback BTW.
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Let's have a little dream and imagine there is a level 7-8 scenario with additional rules to include a level 9 PC.
Magically, all tables mentioned above are perfectly legal.
And I think this is how things will be.
You think that things will be as they are now, when they've explicitly stated that they're changing things to not be as they are now?
What's the point of narrowing the level band if they have to immediately turn around and go "here's how you add people who don't fit the narrowed level band"? They literally already have that without doing anything. That's what they're getting rid of with the change, so assuming that they'll turn around and add work for themselves to undo the change makes no sense whatsoever.
Your argument is "people shouldn't assume whats going to happen based on evidence, because I've made an assumption about what is going to happen that is grounded in absolutely nothing where it all works out."
Naysayers are hyperfocusing on the 2-levels band and refuse to take anything else into account.
Fanboys are running in making up excuses to try and defend every decision being made even when they have nothing to base that on.
See? I can do name calling too. It's not at all useful.
Other people have in fact already talked about other parts of the announcement, which you seem to be ignoring for some reason. Besides, none of the other changes actually impact the issues caused by the 2-level band and they don't change anything.
The one that WOULD has been talked about and they're not doing it: letting people create characters at levels other than 1 the way SFS does.
The PFS team has all the info we use in our own analysis and more. Do you really think they are unaware of what so many posters, from the very first post talking about the PFS changes, see?
They have the full picture and we do not.
Which is likely why they have not actually asked for feedback BTW.
I mean, the PFS team also had the full picture on remaster Oracle and picked the "absolute possible worst way of doing it for players and ignore what we said previously would happen" approach. So the idea that they're infallible is absolutely not backed by reality.
I think these changes are being made because they'll be helpful at big cons like Gencon where there's lots of tables and having narrower bands will make it easier to prep. I also think they're either ignoring how it'll impact small cons... or they've decided they don't care.
Either way, they put the announcement up in a place where feedback is explicitly made available as an option, so people are providing it. If you consider that "not asking for feedback", then I don't know what to tell you, but James coming in to say "we're reading all the feedback" directly contradicts the idea that they don't want feedback.
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Agree to disagree it is then. No problem really.
I think what they actually want to get rid of is the Challenge Points system.
And I honestly don't see how the 2-levels band would create value in big conventions when it apparently does not in small ones.
And you're right. I can be utterly wrong about this.
As I said, it's only an opinion and we will likely have to wait a few months more to know the whole of it.
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The day you can freely create PFS characters at any level is the day I stop running PFS. Full-stop. I don't want to be responsible for running games, especially games on a timetable, when people may not have a clue how their characters work. That solution would solve the two level band, but it's not one I am willing to run for. I honestly don't even want to play on tables where someone sits down with a level 7 build they found on YouTube and want to test drive. To me, that's a solution worse than the problem. I don't think it's a big deal in Starfinder right now because there's only one level band, but my experience running the high level play test stuff was agonizing. Nobody had a clue how anything worked. That's fine for a play test, but if that becomes the new norm, I'm out. I've run about 200 pf1e games and about 75 pf2e games, just to establish my experience level. I'm not saying I know more than anyone else, I'm just saying that's where my hard line is.
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I don't want to be responsible for running games, especially games on a timetable, when people may not have a clue how their characters work.
Bold of you to assume people know how their characters work at level 7 now. ;)
But seriously: yeah, I sympathize with this feeling. Pregens are already a problem for this, especially the more complicated ones (and even more so with Korakai who is just built incorrectly and requires someone at the table that understands Remaster Oracle to explain how he should work).
Throw in a bunch of characters you've never seen before that players also don't understand, and it'd be a whole thing. I played a level 3 Commander this weekend that was brand new to me, but that was earned via chronicle sheets so its not like I've never played the game before.
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I'd be okay with buying the ability to start higher with achievement points, even because you have to run or play Pathfinder to get them. I routinely start off my characters at higher levels because of GM chronicles. For a ton of folks, that wouldn't be an issue. But for a public game day, that's where you'll have problems. It's the brand new player who wants to try the cool blog build or someone who's trying "basically 5e" for the first time that worries me. The only way I can see to screen for "I have a solid understanding of the rules of the game" is making it achievement point gated. Even then, you'll have issues, just not as many, I don't think.
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I'd be okay with buying the ability to start higher with achievement points, even because you have to run or play Pathfinder to get them. I routinely start off my characters at higher levels because of GM chronicles. For a ton of folks, that wouldn't be an issue. But for a public game day, that's where you'll have problems. It's the brand new player who wants to try the cool blog build or someone who's trying "basically 5e" for the first time that worries me. The only way I can see to screen for "I have a solid understanding of the rules of the game" is making it achievement point gated. Even then, you'll have issues, just not as many, I don't think.
I know this isn't probably what you're referring to, but I think I like the idea of having certain achievement point gates for character building. When you start out players can build a level one character, and if you get a certain number of lifetime achievement points earned you have the option to build a character at first or second level. At another threshold you get the option to build first through third level, and so forth. After they're built, characters continue to progress with XP normally.
This gives an options for experienced players to skip the low level grind only after they prove they've got the systems knowledge to do it, and doubly rewards GMs because they're probably (hopefully) much more familiar with the system than players are.
Not sure how it would work in practice, but I know it can be a drag grinding through those first few levels. It would also be helpful if we are having a narrower band to let experienced players build low level (but not first level) characters to fit into a particular level band.
Not sure how this would work in practice, but I like the idea.
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As I said, it's only an opinion and we will likely have to wait a few months more to know the whole of it.
The truth is that nobody will ever truly "know the whole of it," because perfect information simply doesn't exist. How could it? Even if the reporting system and underlying database weren't poorly designed — and to be clear, for those who know what to look for, they absolutely are — how would one even collect data about tables that didn't happen...from every GM at every game day, everywhere? That is manifestly impossible.
Consequently, it seems to me that what you are in effect doing is summarily declaring invalid any analysis that is not based on a (non-existent) complete dataset. Which is not a hill I'd choose to die on, but you do you.
Personally, I'll rely on (admittedly incomplete) personal observation coupled with deduction. And yes, I could still be wrong...but not all arguments are created equal.
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As I said, it's only an opinion and we will likely have to wait a few months more to know the whole of it.The truth is that nobody will ever truly "know the whole of it," because perfect information simply doesn't exist. How could it? Even if the reporting system and underlying database weren't poorly designed — and to be clear, for those who know what to look for, they absolutely are — how would one even collect data about tables that didn't happen...from every GM at every game day, everywhere? That is manifestly impossible.
Consequently, it seems to me that what you are in effect doing is summarily declaring invalid any analysis that is not based on a (non-existent) complete dataset. Which is not a hill I'd choose to die on, but you do you.
Personally, I'll rely on (admittedly incomplete) personal observation coupled with deduction. And yes, I could still be wrong...but not all arguments are created equal.
That is definitely not what I meant but you read my words as you wish.