Pathfinder 1E Rate Paizo as a Company!

As a bookend to Rate WotC as a Company, here’s the same poll for our good friends over at Paizo! Same format. Zero and six are for the emotional folks. Have fun.

I’ll make my comments, for whatever they’re worth, after the numbers have collected for a day or two.

Sam

Their fluff is a 5, the best in the industry for a while, but their crunch is a 1. So while I love their fluffy products, those with crunch take a lot of work to make work. That's 3 in average. The fact that they chose to the current edition of D&D to make their own game, took it down to a 2. The fact that said decision was the right one (for their pockets) took them back up to a 3. I can respect that. Although I do think less of them for not just admitting it, instead of playing martyrs. Again, considering their over-enthusiastic fan-base, it seems to work. So kudos for that.

Their customer service would have brought it up to a 4, but last week, they made a mistake which will cost me $40-$50 (a customs issue) extra, for products costing $45, so while past merits shouldn't be erased, it definitely did not give them extra credit in my eyes.

So all in all a solid 3.

Cheers

Paizo = top of the tree.

Wonderful products, wonderful customer service and relations, wonderful company.

Right now, I'd rate them as a solid "4" for their published content, customer relations, and business operations. However, I did find not their online store to be customer friendly at all, and I cannot judge the two as separate entities, so my overall score has to be reduced to a "3."

Personally, I find teir adventures to be really, really designed for "CONSTRUCTED" style players. Basically, if you don't minmax/optimize, you're pretty much hosed in a paizo adventure.

5.

At the moment, it seems Paizo can do no wrong. Their products have consistently exceeded my expectations, their customer service is excellent, and they are all around a quality outfit.

That said, it looks like Pathfinder is not going to fix the underlying problems I had with 3.5e (and I don't think it could, since backwards compatibility was a must for them), and I'm not keen on having to 'upgrade' to an edition that does not do so, just in order to continue using their adventure paths. But that's a matter for another day, until at least after the Beta rules are released.

AllisterH said:

Personally, I find teir adventures to be really, really designed for "CONSTRUCTED" style players. Basically, if you don't minmax/optimize, you're pretty much hosed in a paizo adventure.

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The story seems to be worth it usually, but you'd think the optimization requirement would not be a problem at all for my group since we're pretty much all min/maxers, power-gamers and munchkin. But really, I dislike how it limits character choices sometimes. You can't play a min-maxed Monk, since a min-maxed Rogue/Fighter/somethingelse is still better.

and I'm not keen on having to 'upgrade' to an edition that does not do so, just in order to continue using their adventure paths. But that's a matter for another day, until at least after the Beta rules are released.

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As far as I understood, you don't actually have to 'upgrade'? Or will this change with the final, in that all NPCs will use the more powerful Pathfinder classes and races?

Consistently superb products, excellent customer service, friendly staff. Paizo can do no wrong in my book. I mean, they've gone out of their way to ensure cheap international shipping, even with price rises lately. They give away free PDF's of the products you're subscribed to. The Pathfinder RPG beta rules are going to be free as a PDF too, and that's a 200+ page document.

A 6 from me.

The way they were ready to deal with the transition issues on their website is just one example of something that just utterly blew me away. The subscription model is another -- it's so smart -- I get a constant, steady stream of material and unless I examine my credit card bill in minute detail I don't even feel it, plus I get the instant gratification (and utility) of a PDF version along with the print version. I'm not sure I'm on board with the specific direction the Pathfinder RPG is going but I'm on board in spirit -- and if it means future products from Paizo are mostly 3.x compatible that's all I ask.

I give them a solid 5. I'm mostly a PDF customer and I could not be happier with the result (buying up old 2E PDFs). From what I've seen of the Pathfinder Alpha, I'm incredibly impressed. They've pushed the edge fo the envelope for RPGs and are actually listening to the fan base for the Beta release.

Paizo is sort of like a friendlier and more gamer centric version of WotC 1999.