Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[JFranklin3000]

Again, this is just a repeat of the same song. There is nothing to suggest success. There is a lot more than "just one retailer" to take less than positive information away from. You can poo-poo on each individual indication. But if you don't look at a series of signs all pointing in the same general direction as indicative of an underlying driver, then you have a good chance of having the future let you down.

I just don't have enough information to make a call on is it successful or not. Although the fact that Paizo continues to hire more people looks that they are doing well enough. It looks like they have the 2nd best selling TTRPG product right now. I would have said it would be interesting to see the next ICV2 report (which is still not good but better than nothing), but with the pandemic who knows....

 

[BryonD]

I mean Paizo sales have always had a big black hole that is their direct sales. As far as I know those aren't reported anywhere and probably never will be. Applies to anything of their's that is available on their website.

Completely fair enough. For what it is worth I agree, I just don't see the need to know their sales. We can look at the community to answer the questions that I am asking.

But it is amusing that on the one hand we have the market tea leaves presented as if carved on golden tablets and hand delivered by a talking flaming bush. And at the same time we are told that this is the great forbidden unknowable. It just depends on which position appears to prop up an argument.
I prefer to look at thinsg we can judge and make reasonable ballpark conclusions.

 

[BryonD]

I just don't have enough information to make a call on is it successful or not. Although the fact that Paizo continues to hire more people looks that they are doing well enough. It looks like they have the 2nd best selling TTRPG product right now. I would have said it would be interesting to see the next ICV2 report (which is still not good but better than nothing), but with the pandemic who knows....

This seems to retread ground that has been covered numerous times already.
I have no idea what Paizo's standard of "success" is. I've never claimed to. I've already directly commented on Paizo being well diversified and probably doing just fine.
None of that means that PF2E has moved the needle on their long term position in the Fantasy TTRPG market.
I claim that PF was not doing well enough so they need to move the needle.
I claim that developing a PF2E costs a fair amount and needs to move the needle to justify it.
I claim that Paizo and the PF brand could move the needle.
PF was in the exact same #2 place. SF is the game that bumped it, and we have no reason to think that PF declined at that time, it seems reasonable to presume that PF was till at roughly the same levels and SF was just above that. (No doubt some underlying long term slide continued).
It is only the announcement of PF2E that triggered the crash of PF.
But as of right now it is reasonable to claim that PF might be being PLAYED more than PF2E. That may not be true. But it doesn't have to be, because it is "close enough" that it is reasonable to claim.
That is not moving the needle.

I fully expect PF2E to hang on to #2 for the immediate future. I don't know of anything likely to knock it off. As has been pointed out numerous times, everything not 5E is so far back that is becomes a mash.
Based on the fact that PF's diminished sales were still handily good enough for #2, it is entirely possible it would still be limping along at an unacceptable but "solid" #2 today had PF2E never been announced. This is, of course, unknowable.

But PF2E has not moved the needle looks like a really reasonable conclusion.

 

[JFranklin3000]

This seems to retread ground that has been covered numerous times already.
I have no idea what Paizo's standard of "success" is. I've never claimed to. I've already directly commented on Paizo being well diversified and probably doing just fine.
None of that means that PF2E has moved the needle on their long term position in the Fantasy TTRPG market.
I claim that PF was not doing well enough so they need to move the needle.
I claim that developing a PF2E costs a fair amount and needs to move the needle to justify it.
I claim that Paizo and the PF brand could move the needle.
PF was in the exact same #2 place. SF is the game that bumped it, and we have no reason to think that PF declined at that time, it seems reasonable to presume that PF was till at roughly the same levels and SF was just above that. (No doubt some underlying long term slide continued).
It is only the announcement of PF2E that triggered the crash of PF.
But as of right now it is reasonable to claim that PF might be being PLAYED more than PF2E. That may not be true. But it doesn't have to be, because it is "close enough" that it is reasonable to claim.
That is not moving the needle.

I fully expect PF2E to hang on to #2 for the immediate future. I don't know of anything likely to knock it off. As has been pointed out numerous times, everything not 5E is so far back that is becomes a mash.
Based on the fact that PF's diminished sales were still handily good enough for #2, it is entirely possible it would still be limping along at an unacceptable but "solid" #2 today had PF2E never been announced. This is, of course, unknowable.

But PF2E has not moved the needle looks like a really reasonable conclusion.

So maybe we are just discussing around each other and meaning the same thing.

I think for the most part we agree, other than I am not sure if they moved the needle or not. And like you said earlier we probably won't really know for like another year. Otherwise I think we are definitely on the same page.

 

[JFranklin3000]

Completely fair enough. For what it is worth I agree, I just don't see the need to know their sales. We can look at the community to answer the questions that I am asking.

But it is amusing that on the one hand we have the market tea leaves presented as if carved on golden tablets and hand delivered by a talking flaming bush. And at the same time we are told that this is the great forbidden unknowable. It just depends on which position appears to prop up an argument.
I prefer to look at thinsg we can judge and make reasonable ballpark conclusions.

This is why I hate the TTRPG sales metrics. ICV2 we polled a bunch of game stores. Amazon here is a rank that might change daily and is only really nice for comparison.

 

[BryonD]

This is why I hate the TTRPG sales metrics. ICV2 we polled a bunch of game stores. Amazon here is a rank that might change daily and is only really nice for comparison.

totally agree. If you look at it as a barometer and don't treat it as more than that, then you can work within that broad parameter. Trends and multiple lines of evidence, not decimal places.

 

[Jaeger]

It is a double edge sword, align with D&D in some fashion and the tide will flow in your favor. It isn’t magic though, you still have to execute.

Go against the rising tide and you MAY find stunning success, but we KNOW the rpg industry, stunning success in this industry may not be enough to support a Paizo, especially the Paizo of a few years ago. Maybe.

I agree with you that RPG companies aligning with 5e does work for them if they do good 3rd party product.

I obviously was not clear in that when I meant other RPG companies not benefitting from the 5e boom - I am referring to Non D&D systems.

I realize now, after thinking through they way you responded, (and how I responded back), that it was an assumption I thought was obvious, (evidently not!).

Just about everything you've added to this conversation has been un-provable as well or at least anecdotal without any data to back it up.

Oh! Look everyone... A drive-by post!

...
That said, I'll offer a couple vague thoughts I bet would have helped:
1)Shake off the PF complaints and be more objective. They seem to have been fixated on addressing PF flaws to the point that it muddied the idea of just making a really great game .

Agreed.

My opinion:
And one of PF1 biggest flaws was that they did not fix any of the fundamental issues with 3.x. It was essentially Pazio house rules on top of 3.x.

To me PF2 seemed to be a doubling down on the Pazio house rules that made PF different from 3.x.

When IMHO, what they should have done is address the fundamental issues of the core 3.x engine, then build up from there - while keeping aware of what direction the "hobby"/D&D as a whole was going.

Which leads to:

2)Remember how you got here. I don't think they needed to "tweak" PF. ... But their fan based gravitated to a relatively heavy and relatively sim oriented style. 4E went all "math works" and they lost a ton a folks. PF2E followed that path.

One blind spot for Pazio I think was that they failed to remember that the conditions of PF initial success were not reproduceable.

I think that they forgot that the PF system largely succeeded because it wasn't 4e, not because it did any great thing system-wise.

And In terms of the direction of PF2, I think that they failed to realize that if they wanted to get new players to try PF2, that doubling down on relatively heavy and relatively sim oriented style is probably not the best way to do that. They just made their game more niche IMHO.

3)If you are going to make a big deal about a playtest then you need to really truly mean it. I don't think they were at all dishonest when they said it. But I think they were rattled when they received the amount of pushback on +level that they did. And they were not prepared to make that kind of change. ...

They got similar complaints with the PF1 playtest as I recall - grumblings of it being more of an affirmation document than one that they would be willing to make serious changes to.

It would have been interesting to see if some other player had gone head to head with Paizo and created another 3X successor. A lot of ways that could have gone.

It could have been interesting, but I don't blame anyone for taking a pass!

Pazio does have market position over most everyone else in the D&D clone department. I'm not sure anyone would have been able to maintain a game line to the degree that Pazio does to keep up with them. (Pazio basically puts out as much PF2 material as 5e!)

...
I do think right now that the "new" fans of 5E are, by and large WAY more casual than what somebody who would bother to make an ENWorld account presume when they think gamer. ...

100% Agreed.

And I still believe that this is a rising tide lifting all boats deal. You seem to be arguing that 5E has sucked in some number of existing gamers from other systems,

Not that it sucks them from other RPGsystems, but that it is now so market dominant that the other non D&D/d20 systems have a much harder time getting noticed than in the 1990's.

...it has created a huge number of new gamers for itself, and some tiny fraction of those new gamers are also spreading out to other systems. ...

And this is where I will quibble a bit.

I agree that a ton of those new gamers are super casual. And because there D&D habit is more on the casual side than past surges in the hobby I would say that IMHO they are not really RPG gamers per se. They are casual D&D players.

In my opinion; The number of "new" gamers that D&D is actually bringing into the Non-D&D/d20 side of the rpg hobby, is barely registering.

 

[BryonD]

You need an editor.

Anyway, I don't disagree with anything. Your "quibble" at the ends, I think, paints ALL new gamers as this super casual subset. Obviously there are always going to be a steady flow of "more serious" (that isn't supposed to be read as any version of "better") gamers in the mix. And I do believe that some non-zero portion of the truly casual gamers will have an epiphany moment and become more of a heavy gamer. Not saying that is a big slice, but the world's collective pool of gamers who are also not "casual gamers" will be some finite amount larger.

So there.

 

[darjr]

I’m sitting here doing deadlifts and thinking, this is gonna suck, but I should do them to get to my goals.

I think Lisa Stevens is a genius, and now I realize that she must have foreseen this as a distinct possibility and if so maybe, in part, chose a way to navigate and survive long enough to have time to capitalize on some future opportunities.

I’ll say it again, ANY other rpg company would be thrilled with Paizos current position. And the past Paizo may not matter in today’s equation of success. Not for Paizo itself.

At this point I can’t bring my self to say Paizo has “failed”. Unless they planned badly with out of wack expectations.

I would believe they saw this future as a possibility and went for that gamble that would at least give them a shot in the arm and time to plan and adjust while it played out.

 

[JFranklin3000]

I’m sitting here doing deadlifts and thinking, this is gonna suck, but I should do them to get to my goals.

I think Lisa Stevens is a genius, and now I realize that she must have foreseen this as a distinct possibility and if so maybe, in part, chose a way to navigate and survive long enough to have time to capitalize on some future opportunities.

I’ll say it again, ANY other rpg company would be thrilled with Paizos current position. And the past Paizo may not matter in today’s equation of success. Not for Paizo itself.

At this point I can’t bring my self to say Paizo has “failed”. Unless they planned badly with out of wack expectations.

I would believe they saw this future as a possibility and went for that gamble that would at least give them a shot in the arm and time to plan and adjust while it played out.

I think you have hit upon something important here. What matters or at least what should matter to Paizo is how their sales look. If 2e and SF have sales that allow them to continue as a company that is what really matters. Comparisons to other companies are just fun for us.
Now if Paizo actually thought they would take the number 1 sales spot back that is a much bigger problem.