D&D 4E What was Paizo thinking? 3.75 the 4E clone?

[Shadewyn]

Let me try and make my point more clear ...

NETWORK EXTERNALITIES (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ... foir the non economics majors and MBAs out there)

We had a market that was 3.5 and a new market of 4E. Now we have a market of 3.5 (some folks may not want to go to the Paizo route and also not buy 4E), we now have the 3.75 of Paizo, and 4E.

D&D is not a stand alone game. It never has nor ever will be ... you need OTHER people to play with. If you invest time an resources into a game that has 3 players scattered around the world then you have a failure of an RPG even if it is the most perfect ruleset ever.

The bulk of the market for D&D is going to 4E. The remainder of that market just got more fragmented today with Paizos move. If you wander over to the boards for "gamers wanted" today you can already see the issues folks have locating new gamers. Now the given market for D&D-esque gamers will be fragmented into several pieces.

It was a bonehead move.

Seeking to specialize in a dwinding market for a network externality based product is business failure. Anyone bored with the intrawebs and a business background can cite you dozens of companies tat blindly went down that path. Not sayign they will dissapear overnight but they will firmly cement there role and garage level web publishing.

If you want to stall to get time to grasp 4E rules and such but still sell product then you release a "Pathfinder ~ the History of the world SOurcebook" as your first product and completely ignore rules in favor of setting. 3 months later after the launch of 4E you have an idea how to build your crunch products.

Instead Paizo leaves behind 3.5 and make no mistake those new rules are both a powercreep and flavor tie in to their new products that overshadows any previous 3.5X material.

 

[Dragonblade]

The whole point of Pathfinder is that it will be backwardly compatible. So ALL of your 3/3.5 books will be useable with Pathfinder. That's why Paizo just picked up a couple million new customers with this announcement.

A couple million new customers? You have about 4 zeroes too many there. Try again.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Let me try and make my point more clear ...

NETWORK EXTERNALITIES (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ... foir the non economics majors and MBAs out there)

We had a market that was 3.5 and a new market of 4E. Now we have a market of 3.5 (some folks may not want to go to the Paizo route and also not buy 4E), we now have the 3.75 of Paizo, and 4E.

D&D is not a stand alone game. It never has nor ever will be ... you need OTHER people to play with. If you invest time an resources into a game that has 3 players scattered around the world then you have a failure of an RPG even if it is the most perfect ruleset ever.

The bulk of the market for D&D is going to 4E. The remainder of that market just got more fragmented today with Paizos move. If you wander over to the boards for "gamers wanted" today you can already see the issues folks have locating new gamers. Now the given market for D&D-esque gamers will be fragmented into several pieces.

It was a bonehead move.

Seeking to specialize in a dwinding market for a network externality based product is business failure. Anyone bored with the intrawebs and a business background can cite you dozens of companies tat blindly went down that path. Not sayign they will dissapear overnight but they will firmly cement there role and garage level web publishing.

If you want to stall to get time to grasp 4E rules and such but still sell product then you release a "Pathfinder ~ the History of the world SOurcebook" as your first product and completely ignore rules in favor of setting. 3 months later after the launch of 4E you have an idea how to build your crunch products.

Instead Paizo leaves behind 3.5 and make no mistake those new rules are both a powercreep and flavor tie in to their new products that overshadows any previous 3.5X material.

Yes, yes, the sky is falling.

 

[EricNoah]

...but this does a disservice to all those 3.5 fans and Paizo fans.

As a 3.5 fan and a Paizo fan, I must disagree in the strongest terms. Paizo just gave my 3.5 game a shot in the arm. I now have some very cool options: I can play their 3.5 adventures for the time being; I can preview their Pathfinder RPG in progress and borrow ideas I like for my 3.5 game; and best of all, come 2009 I will have the choice between sticking with 3.5 mostly as written but having a source of very compatible adventure and supplement material, or going to their 3.75 game and being able to use their materals and my old 3.5 adventures & supplements, or brewing up my own in-between version with pieces of 3.5 and their game. Those are very appealing options to me, and I can make them at leisure. I probably wouldn't have switched to 4E in any case, but now ... as I said early on ... there really has never been a better time not to switch editions. The type of D&D I like will live on!

 

[Stalker0]

Both Paizo and WOTC recognize some of the problems of 3.5, but are handling it in different ways.

I've taken a good look at Paizo's alpha. It has some good ideas, but ultimately does nothing to fix the core issues of 3.5. High level Paizo is going to be as problematic as high level 3.5. Combat manuevers have currently been "fixed" by being greatly nerfed. That may get fixed in the beta, but right now they are of little use.

While fighters got an upgrade, they are still incredibly magic item dependent at high levels, and still get outgunned by a mage.

For those who wish to stay in the 3.5 world, its great that someone like Paizo is willing to do some work on the system. But its not 4e by any stretch, they are just different beasts.

 

[Klaus]

I can only guess that Paizo Publishing has felt slighted by the legal team issues with the OGL and Hasbro. As a result they are publishing their own rules set that addresses issues. It allows them to control their own destiny so to speak. However when you see things such as;

Improve the Game: The 3.5 rules set is excellent, but it has its flaws. Over the past few years, a number of common problems have seemed to crop up again and again, problems that delay the game or cause no end of arguments (grapple and polymorph, for example). I wanted the Pathfinder RPG to clean up these rules, by streamlining in places and adding options in others...

Compatibility: ... I wanted to ensure that any conversion work would be minimal. In most cases, this meant adding to existing rules, instead of subtracting. So, while we changed the way turning undead works, we did not remove turning undead from the game. We added options to the fighter without removing any of them. This design philosophy doesn't always hold true, however...



Looking deeper, tell me if any of these things look familiar from all the 4E announcements ...

• Encourage players to stay in the prime class be making each class deeper themed
  
  Adding more "at will" or "per day" abilities to martial character
  
  Lowering damage output of PCs to extend combats (power attack, sneak attack, etc)
  
  Increased starting hit points to allow low level adventurers to survive their first module
  
  Fighters that specialize in a group of weapons
  
  Simplifying the combat subset rules such as grapple, trip, etc to be easier and more consitent to run
  
  Reducing the number of skills and improving the remaining ones
  
  Introducing reasons to play one class from 1st to 20th with intresting content at each level removing the "need" to prestige class to keep on the power curve
  
  Adding in more significance to the choice of a race beyond 1st level

At some point I gotta wonder how you can say with a stright face that 4E has issues yet address the problems with the similar fixes?

If you have to convert to a "better" version of 3.5 in such a way that your "old" 3.5 material is not written in the same spirit is it really still compatible? Why would I ever take splat book power X from 3.5 as a wizard feat if I can take the new 3.75 Pathfinder free spells per day cheese? Why have old books of P classes, if the old P class abilites are now rolled into the main classes?

Maybe its just me ... but this does a disservice to all those 3.5 fans and Paizo fans. The system Paizo is pushing is not 3.5 its a bad 4E clone, and you will have very little need for the old 3.5 splat books crunch it looks like with the new 3.75 power creep. And the non crunch bit on 3.5 books? Well that was always portable.

Let me get this straight.

You're complaining because two sets of designers looked at the same product (3.5) and recognized the same flaws? Mind you, they are going extremely different ways in addressing those flaws.

You say "deeper themed". Did you at least read the Pathfinder Alpha PDF? The rogue can learn SPELLS at higher levels! Wizardry schools are now closer to the clerical domains, granting powers and benefits. They are making the classes more flexible and customizable, not basing them on a role.

Both 4E and Pathfinder are valid ways of addressing 3.5's flaws. While it will (likely) never compete directly with 4E, Pathfinder can very well be successful enough to support a smaller game company. Paizo will probably cement itself as the #2 RPG publisher in the market.

 

[primarchone]

Let me try and make my point more clear ...

NETWORK EXTERNALITIES (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ... foir the non economics majors and MBAs out there)

We had a market that was 3.5 and a new market of 4E. Now we have a market of 3.5 (some folks may not want to go to the Paizo route and also not buy 4E), we now have the 3.75 of Paizo, and 4E.

D&D is not a stand alone game. It never has nor ever will be ... you need OTHER people to play with. If you invest time an resources into a game that has 3 players scattered around the world then you have a failure of an RPG even if it is the most perfect ruleset ever.

The bulk of the market for D&D is going to 4E. The remainder of that market just got more fragmented today with Paizos move. If you wander over to the boards for "gamers wanted" today you can already see the issues folks have locating new gamers. Now the given market for D&D-esque gamers will be fragmented into several pieces.

It was a bonehead move.

Seeking to specialize in a dwinding market for a network externality based product is business failure. Anyone bored with the intrawebs and a business background can cite you dozens of companies tat blindly went down that path. Not sayign they will dissapear overnight but they will firmly cement there role and garage level web publishing.

If you want to stall to get time to grasp 4E rules and such but still sell product then you release a "Pathfinder ~ the History of the world SOurcebook" as your first product and completely ignore rules in favor of setting. 3 months later after the launch of 4E you have an idea how to build your crunch products.

Instead Paizo leaves behind 3.5 and make no mistake those new rules are both a powercreep and flavor tie in to their new products that overshadows any previous 3.5X material.

Hi!

I don't post on these forums much, but I find it extemely refreshing to find a poster who understands how this small niche called gaming works.

Kudos to you sir!

Back to deep lurking.....

Primarchone

 

[ShinHakkaider]

If you want to stall to get time to grasp 4E rules and such but still sell product then you release a "Pathfinder ~ the History of the world SOurcebook" as your first product and completely ignore rules in favor of setting.

You mean like THIS?

And as far as stalling goes, stall until when WOTC is ready to give the 3rd party companies the GSL? Which was supposed to have been in Jan? Paizo needed to have the rule in time to become familiar with them so that they could put out product in time for Gen Con if they were going the 4E route (which honestly I think that if they had the GSL in time we would'nt be seeing this announcement...).

As far as splitting the market goes, I dont really get that either. I'm looking at my gaming bookshelf right now and I have about 16 different games on it. Now I like 3.5, there are elements of 4E that I was planning on incorporating into my 3.5 game, but as a whole I don't think that 4E is for me. I might play in a pickup game if someone else is going to run it, but I'm not going to invest the thousands of dollars that I did in 3.5. Paizo is company that I was planning on supporting (unless they went 4E, in which case I'd have no need for their product) who has announced what basically is going to be a 3.5 / 4E hybrid, which is something that I was planning on doing myself anyway. Will I still for the most part be able to use my expansive library or 3.5 material with this hybrid? Probably more than I 'd be able to with 4E and really that's a priority not only for me but for all of the people who feel left out in the cold by WOTC's drastic switch.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that 4E sucks, but I want to ADD to my D&D game not REPLACE it. Which is what I'll have to do if I decide to go 4E. Paizo is a company that I like supporting, just like WOTC used to be a company I liked supporting (I'm once again looking at my bookshelf from where I type this and there are ALOT of 3E and 3.5 books on this shelf). WOTC no longer has a product that I'm interested in supporting. Paizo does. If Paizo had gone full on 4E as much as I like them, I could not support them. It's not personal. I'm not saying that 4E bosters are idiots. There are enough idiots on both sides of this argument and I'm honestly glad that NONE of them are at my table when it's time to game. But for me it's about the game, my game and what I'm will to do at my table with my players.

As of right now my players (of which there are 5) are more tolerant of house rules and modification of existing rules, than of going out and buying / moving to a new edition.
They want no part of 4E, they are good with our modded version of 3.5. Maybe that will change but the more I talk to other gamers in real space the more I'm finding out that my group isnt the only one like this. Sure I've run into a few who are excited about 4E and god bless 'em, whatever makes them happy. I'm not trying to say that my anecdotal evidence is proof of anything other than MY OWN OBSERVATION. But it's still my own observation and it's important to ME.

 

[IanB]

A couple million new customers? You have about 4 zeroes too many there. Try again.

Not only are his numbers out of whack, they fail to acknowledge what at least anecdotally appears to be a not insignificant number of customers that Paizo lost, like me.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Not only are his numbers out of whack, they fail to acknowledge what at least anecdotally appears to be a not insignificant number of customers that Paizo lost, like me.

I can count the number of people Paizo has lost that I have observed on one hand. (Although, if I put some effort into it, perhaps two!)