Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E's reception?

[BryonD]

Internally, the writing might have been on the wall, but externally? I'm not so sure. Pathfinder tied with D&D 4 for the first time in Q3 of 2010 - right as Essentials was coming out (and right after the publication of the 4e Dark Sun materials). In hindsight, 4e was sputtering - but at the time it didn't appear to be dead. In fact, it seemed to be in the midst of a course correction to stave off further problems.

Essentials was an interesting time. There were absolutely people who saw it as a "course correction" as you describe. But there were also people who saw it as hopeless flailing and other still who saw it as pointless knee-jerk reaction to a vocal minority.

 

[dave2008]

Not what you think of PF2E, but how would you characterize the general opinion on it? Positive, negative, divisive?

Hard to say, but I think it has generally been positive and also divisive.

 

[CapnZapp]

Hard to say, but I think it has generally been positive and also divisive.

Hard to tell if you're aware (by your incredibly generic response [emoji846]), but you responded to a spambot later adding links to its post. I reported it.

 

[Zardnaar]

And I always like to note Paizo only passed D&D when it was already known that 4e was ending production. Paizo still should get credit as the only company to ever do that. No one had ever before, even when TSR went bankrupt and didn't print a product for 6 months. But the idea that anyone will ever pass D&D as the number 1 RPG when it has a popular product is just very unlikely.

No they passed 4E late 2009 maybe and no later than early 2010. Paizo had an article and one of the distributers basically confirmed it along with icv2. rticle us still on Paizos site iirc.

4E was still in print when it got outsold.

White Wolf if they beat TSR it was when they got bought out and no new product.

Popular story is they did, I think some ex White Wolf said they didn't but came close.

 

[Zardnaar]

Essentials was an interesting time. There were absolutely people who saw it as a "course correction" as you describe. But there were also people who saw it as hopeless flailing and other still who saw it as pointless knee-jerk reaction to a vocal minority.

Wasn't a vocal minority. More people went and played and bought Pathfinder than 4E.
That excludes people who stuck with 3.5 or just stopped playing.

2010 outsold.

paizo.com - Community / Paizo Blog

Online more people ended up playing 3.5 than 4E and Tweet who designed 4E is on record on his Grandfather Fish AMA calling 4E a disaster.


Art and Arcana also write about 4E and yeah confirms it and that was printed by WotC themselves.

The 4E was successful thing was pushed by board members in denial, not supported by any evidence whatsoever and at the time they called fake news when evidence in favor of Paizo was presented.

4E using 3rd place online for D&D online, OSR is bigger but split over several editions and clones. 5th place if you count Pathfinder as D&D so it's beaten by 5E, 3.5, Pathfinder 1 &2, OSR combined and us barely more popular than 1E by itself.

It gives you a relative idea of the collapse of the 4E playerbase.

 

[BryonD]

Wasn't a vocal minority.

I said that "others saw it as".

I 100% agree with you on what really happened.
But this was more about perception. And I was being soft with my choice of words.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Essentials was an interesting time. There were absolutely people who saw it as a "course correction" as you describe. But there were also people who saw it as hopeless flailing and other still who saw it as pointless knee-jerk reaction to a vocal minority.

I still play and enjoy 4E, and was heavily involved with the 4E community at the time. I don't recall a ton of people in the community being ACTIVELY excited by Essentials. It didn't generate the vitriol of the anti-4E crowd either though. A lot of the community felt it was unnecessary, and that it signaled a shift in WOTC support away from the things they liked in 4E (I guess they were right) and some thought it was just another way of doing a new edition and getting people to re-buy core books.

Not sure of the reaction outside the 4E-fan community, but I'm not aware of literally anyone who didn't like 4E pre-Essentials, but then decided that with Essentials they did like it. If there were some, they were a really small minority.

"pointless" is probably the simplest description most people would agree to: 4E fans basically shrugged or sighed unhappily, and 4E haters didn't change their minds. Maybe WOTC made some money off it, but it didn't change the game for them, so pretty pointless for them also

 

[BryonD]

I don't recall a ton of people in the community being ACTIVELY excited by Essentials.

Right. I didn't say anything contrary to this. I do recall some who hoped that this was going to generate a second look from those who did not like 4E, and argued that it addressed concerns. Those are the people I meant in my agreement to course correction. But, I agree with you. As I saw it, the great majority 4E fans were pretty much still in denial that 4E needed any fix. So the "knee-jerk" attitude was there, though it was mostly tempered by the fact that they also seemed to be ok with the details of Essentials changes, so the reasoning upset them, but the product not so much. As I said, it was an interesting time.

It didn't generate the vitriol of the anti-4E crowd either though.

There was a little bemusement that this was supposed to change anything without addressing the underlying concerns. But, yeah, changing a game you don't like into a slightly tweaked version doesn't draw a ton of response.

Not sure of the reaction outside the 4E-fan community, but I'm not aware of literally anyone who didn't like 4E pre-Essentials, but then decided that with Essentials they did like it. If there were some, they were a really small minority.

I don't think I can disagree. Was Essentials the one that also had the new Red Box in biog box stores? That was also supposed to be a new player salvation. But, truly, I can't recall at this stage if I'm conflating two separate things or not.

"pointless" is probably the simplest description most people would agree to: 4E fans basically shrugged or sighed unhappily, and 4E haters didn't change their minds. Maybe WOTC made some money off it, but it didn't change the game for them, so pretty pointless for them also

 

[dave2008]

I still play and enjoy 4E, and was heavily involved with the 4E community at the time. I don't recall a ton of people in the community being ACTIVELY excited by Essentials. It didn't generate the vitriol of the anti-4E crowd either though. A lot of the community felt it was unnecessary, and that it signaled a shift in WOTC support away from the things they liked in 4E (I guess they were right) and some thought it was just another way of doing a new edition and getting people to re-buy core books.

Not sure of the reaction outside the 4E-fan community, but I'm not aware of literally anyone who didn't like 4E pre-Essentials, but then decided that with Essentials they did like it. If there were some, they were a really small minority.

"pointless" is probably the simplest description most people would agree to: 4E fans basically shrugged or sighed unhappily, and 4E haters didn't change their minds. Maybe WOTC made some money off it, but it didn't change the game for them, so pretty pointless for them also

I basically agree with you, but I will just relate this: We had a 4e game from the beginning with a group of 4 (5 w/ me as DM). When we add 2 more players later I had them use essentials classes and the played seamlessly with the originals. I am not sure what the reception was in general, but it worked well at out table. I actually kinda wanted to go back and change all the classes to essential classes, but that shipped had sailed.

 

[dave2008]

There was a little bemusement that this was supposed to change anything without addressing the underlying concerns. But, yeah, changing a game you don't like into a slightly tweaked version doesn't draw a ton of response.

I actually think had the done a few things, 4e probably would have been a bigger success:

1. Don't change the lore / cosmology by default. The could have offered as an alternate setting cosmology a year or two in (like eberron in 3e), but start out of the gate with the traditional.
2. Started with the essentials design, then introduce the standard 4e desing 2-3 years down the road. I believe essentials did address a lot of concerns people had with 4e, it was just to little to late.