Roll20 publishes Game Percentages... Pathfinder at 25%

[Selkirk]

[MENTION=10447]DaveMage[/MENTION] if we are to read the roll20 stats correctly(an impossibility i know)-it's not only that 3.5 is that popular but essentially that 3.5 is the present tabletop rpg market. pathfinder (and i do agree with most that say pathfinder is it's own game at this point...but still) is a 3.5 variant to it's core...combining 3.5 and pathfinder numbers we reach essentially 90% of the players at least. does 5e leech players away from the 3.5 community? of course..but what does it all mean? nothing...the tabletop rpg industry delights in secrecy...coy +1 . that way they can justify failures with the poormouth complaints ...we only employ 15 people...etc... at a company like wotc where they had the number 1 book on amazon! hey here's an idea..hire more people .

why don't we know how many 5e phb's have been sold at this point? of course rpg journalism doesn't exist (in fairness how could it?)...a series of press releases substitutes as 'news'...and we are left with speculation about 'dumb' statistics from roll20.

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm a little bit surpirised that PF has that muhc of an edge compared to the other games. It really drives home the point that WotC lost their first place in the fantasy RPG scene and Pazio managed to get on top by a large margin.

And I'm surprised that this is the impression you get from looking at this data.

What I'm seeing is that 44.6% of all games are D&D games (OD&D, AD&D, 3.5, 4e, or 5e). So, D&D is still definitely the most popular game (among VTT users...).
I'm more surprised to see that there's still more 3.5 games than 4e or 5e games. I'd have thought that almost everyone who feels that 3.5 was the best edition of D&D would have switched to Pathfinder by now.

 

[Jhaelen]

Now, it is possible that there is some 5E "bubble" and once the initial enthusiasm fades, the growth trend will reverse. But I kinda doubt it.

Well, that depends on how well 5e works at mid-high levels, right? I can definitely remember how my enthusiasm for 3e waned at that point. It might take a year or more until that effect shows, though.

I've taken the PF and D&D figures only, put them on their own graph, and extended the lines into next year.
Warning: this is complete nonsense.

Err, yep, it is. It's even more non-sensical than a 'serious' attempt at extrapolating, which would already be nonsense.

 

[JesterOC]

Would people running off of the SRD consider that 3.5? If so it might explain why 3.5 is still doing well, it is free. It might not look pretty, but it is open and has tons of 3rd party support as well as a lot of application support.

Concerning the data itself, I find in fascinating. When I look at it, I only really care about products being sold that benefits the creators of the work. I would classify that as Pathfinder, 5e, Star Wars RPG, 13th Age, FATE etc. Mainly I can because it is only the titles pushing money into creators pockets that will allow for new product to be released.

While it is nice for D&D combined to be more popular than pathfinder those older editions are not putting food on the table for the creators (unless you count DDI subscriptions for 4e folks). And why do I care about the creators, I want to live in a world that can sustain more than 50 people making a living off of publishing RPGs, and so I want the new products to do well. Does not make any sense really, but that is how I feel.

 

[ronaldsf]

There's another thing going on in this graph: a lot of people are moving over to D&D 5 who were playing D&D 3.5 earlier, possibly at a faster rate than the numbers shifting over from Pathfinder.

 

[ronaldsf]

Actually, I now have a completely different take on this graph:

- Note the big spike in D&D 3.5, D&D 4, and Pathfinder around the time that D&D 5 was launching. It looks like the D&D 5 launch (and maybe some effect of the beginning summer), increased interest in RPGs in general.
- Since that big spike, the amount of people playing D&D 3.5, D&D 4, and Pathfinder are returning to the numbers from the beginning of the year.
- At the same time, there's a new crop of people who perhaps weren't playing RPGs earlier, who are now playing D&D 5.
- Perhaps some of those people were former RPG players who are now returning to play D&D 5.

To me, the chart refutes the whole zero-sum game that a lot of people tend to presume in these conversations.

 

[Cherno]

And I'm surprised that this is the impression you get from looking at this data.

What I'm seeing is that 44.6% of all games are D&D games (OD&D, AD&D, 3.5, 4e, or 5e). So, D&D is still definitely the most popular game (among VTT users...).
I'm more surprised to see that there's still more 3.5 games than 4e or 5e games. I'd have thought that almost everyone who feels that 3.5 was the best edition of D&D would have switched to Pathfinder by now.

A viable point of view. Personally, I got the impression that the different editions are distinct enough to be counted as seperate games; With a lot of love for 3.5, a lot of hate for 4E, and so on. However, I only got this impression through forum browsing as opposed to being a real part of the RPG gaming scene.

 

[sgtscott658]

At our local meet up last week, only 3.5 was being played which consisted of three separate games. with around 6 to 8 people at each game. I would like to see a 5E game going but nobody wants to step up and DM. I am currently running a 5E campaign on a weekly basis and I really have no desire to DM a secondary 5E game. DM'ing is like Tanking in WoW, its stressful and tiring but usually good times in the end. Hopefully as word spreads on how awesome 5E is, the 3.x crowd will then gravitate towards 5E down the road.

Scott

A viable point of view. Personally, I got the impression that the different editions are distinct enough to be counted as seperate games; With a lot of love for 3.5, a lot of hate for 4E, and so on. However, I only got this impression through forum browsing as opposed to being a real part of the RPG gaming scene.

 

[prosfilaes]

What I'm seeing is that 44.6% of all games are D&D games (OD&D, AD&D, 3.5, 4e, or 5e). So, D&D is still definitely the most popular game (among VTT users...).

I don't see any reason to sum them that way. In what way does an OD&D player or an AD&D player have more in common with a 3.5 player then a Pathfinder player does? Why is that a useful statistic?

Would people running off of the SRD consider that 3.5? If so it might explain why 3.5 is still doing well, it is free. It might not look pretty, but it is open and has tons of 3rd party support as well as a lot of application support.

Pathfinder is free, too, and has a lot more material in its SRD. Is there that much application support for 3.5 that Pathfinder doesn't have?

 

[Morrus]

I don't see any reason to sum them that way. In what way does an OD&D player or an AD&D player have more in common with a 3.5 player then a Pathfinder player does? Why is that a useful statistic?

Well, to be fair, none if this is useful. At least not to us. We're just gossiping, really. It's entertainment, not research.