Pathfinder 1E Did most PF1e Players migrate to 2e or stick with 1e?

[Koloth]

This is one of my problems.
So I do enjoy gaming, unlike what some of you on these boards think. I had two pretty great Daggerheart campaigns, had a blast with Delta Green, really enjoyed a 1e AD&D tournament game, Fabula Ultima.
To be, the choices being made in PF2 aren't interesting enough for the weight given to them. The "weight" is page count, decisions at level up, time during the game session, etc. For all that, you might get a +1 on a d20 roll under very specific circumstances. And the outcome doesn't really change. You still win the fight. The win might come a round sooner or you might have to spend an extra Heal spell, but you essentially reset after every encounter anyway.
For the same amount of time/gaming effort, I can uncover an interesting cultist plot in Delta Green. I can be tested to see if my Nosferatu still hangs on to enough of his humanity in Vampire.
PF2 and similar games aren't rewarding for me.

A lot of it is What the Players Want and What the GM Wants. The PF2 group is very combat centric as is the GM. When I suggested a simple roll for "How many attention points did we earn?" instead of spending 3 hours on yet another we know how this is going to end arena fight, that GM had a look on his face like I was some sort of wild eyed crazy zombie followed by "But its COMBAT!"
By contrast, the PF1 group is much less a fan of combat and we have gone entire sessions with no combat and several with very minor fights.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my posts, I try to convey that these are my opinions with "for me" or "I feel" statements.

Except often you don't. For example, just in this thread you've twice said that combat choices don't change the outcomes and that the game is slanted so the players will win as givens.

Neither of those is automatically true (the second is entirely a question of the level of encounter as to how true it is, and you of all people should know how much that can change things), but you don't qualify it, but just act as a given.

If one is going to characterize game play in a system you have to qualify it, unless you are either sure your statement is generically true or you are (whether deliberately or not) misrepresenting it by overgeneralization.

There's a big difference it saying how a game has worked for you, and how it works. When people tell you these are different statements, continuing to act like they aren't is not a positive contribution to conversation.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A lot of it is What the Players Want and What the GM Wants. The PF2 group is very combat centric as is the GM. When I suggested a simple roll for "How many attention points did we earn?" instead of spending 3 hours on yet another we know how this is going to end arena fight

They may be combat-centric, but I'm still going to stand on the opinion that unless the group is huge, if they're fights are taking 3 hours, they're not very good at playing out combat. There's absolutely no necessity for that in PF2e; on the whole combat in it runs faster than most D&D sphere games I've seen.

 

[billd91]

I was a big fan of PF1 when it came out and we played it for quite a while (the pandemic took out the ongoing PF game we had), but I was getting less and less enchanted with the supplements coming out like Occult Adventures and the increasingly fiddly character classes. So I already had a sense that my priorities as a gamer and Paizo's, as game designers and publishers, were drifting apart.

Getting the initial rulebooks and trying some adventures at conventions sealed the deal and PF2 just wasn't the game I wanted to play even though I do think it incorporates some very nice ideas here and there (a few of which I may eventually steal). So you can definitely count me as one PF1 player who did not make the jump to PF2.

 

[Retreater]

Neither of those is automatically true (the second is entirely a question of the level of encounter as to how true it is, and you of all people should know how much that can change things), but you don't qualify it, but just act as a given.

A PF2 designer, Mark Seifter, has said that the assumption in encounter design is that the players win 99% of the time. That is built into the assumption of the design.
For me, it's the 99% success rate mixed with the Adventure Path format of having many inconsequential fights and the slower fights and the decision points that don't matter ... To me.
Like, if you love it, awesome. I'm just saying that having a bunch of fights that can be excised without losing any story elements that are just there to reach an XP and GP threshold, when resource attrition hasn't really been a thing in 25 years ... I don't need all that.

 

[Justice and Rule]

A PF2 designer, Mark Seifter, has said that the assumption in encounter design is that the players win 99% of the time. That is built into the assumption of the design.

Wait, where are those numbers from? I've always heard these numbers from Seifter. Never heard about anything along the lines of 99% per encounter. Quote for those who don't want to click through:

The math comes straight from the game, and the interpretation is informed by this interview with Mark Seifter.

By design, creature power about doubles every 2 levels (or is supposed to), and creature power translates to likelihood of winning a fight. So, a PL+0 creature is just as likely to win a 1-on-1 fight with a PC, while a PL+2 creature is going to win 3/4 of the time.

This generalizes to the party and encounter. A party of 4 has equal odds against 4 PL+0 creatures, and should be twice as powerful as 4 PL-2 creatures. Being twice as powerful means having double the likelihood of wiping them out as they have of wiping you out, all things being equal. And, by symmetry, they're fighting a real uphill battle against 4 PL+2 creatures.

But each PL+2 creature is as powerful as 2 PL+0 creatures, so the odds of success should remain the same when fighting 8 PL+0 creatures. This means XP/PC is a good estimate for the party's chance of wiping out the other side.

So, 40XP/PC maps to 50% prob of wiping out the enemy, 30XP -> 67%, 20XP -> 75%, 10XP -> 88%. Meanwhile, 60XP/PC maps to a 33% prob of wiping out the enemies, 80XP -> 25%, etc.

Again, with everything else beibg equal between sides.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A PF2 designer, Mark Seifter, has said that the assumption in encounter design is that the players win 99% of the time. That is built into the assumption of the design.

That's probably true at at level encounters. I guarentee you it becomes progressively less true at up-level encounters. If he was including those, I don't care if he was one of the designers, he's simply wrong.

For me, it's the 99% success rate mixed with the Adventure Path format of having many inconsequential fights and the slower fights and the decision points that don't matter ... To me.
Like, if you love it, awesome. I'm just saying that having a bunch of fights that can be excised without losing any story elements that are just there to reach an XP and GP threshold, when resource attrition hasn't really been a thing in 25 years ... I don't need all that.

But you don't have to have some of that. Less, weighier encounters are entirely do able. You just have to accept that the players will have to be on their game and not play on autopilot, which is not true with a lot of D&D adjacents.

If you want to argue that the Adventure Paths are written in a way that produces that, that's a different question because those are written to be serving the middle-of-the-road group (and when they don't do that, they get a lot of criticism (Age of Ashes being a poster child here). And of course some people want a certain number of low-risk encounters because it allows them to feel like Big Damn Heroes.

But that's not baked into the system. That's the issue; all the problems I see presented here (other than objections to complexity, because any game is too simple for some and too complicated for others) is a case of people either not playing the game in the way its designed to be played, or player/GM pathologies that are liable to be a problem to some degree in most games, but play against the system's strengths. The examples I mention are, its not a system that plays well with people who don't pay attention to teamwork, it doesn't play well with the indecisive, and its not a great choice for people who won't bother to learn the mechanics associated with their class and advancement traits. Its just not a game you can play on autopilot. But neither are most of the classses in 13th Age or most path sets in Shadow of the Demon Lord or Shadow of the Weird Wizard. But you almost never see it come up there.

 

[Retreater]

Wait, where are those numbers from? I've always heard these numbers from Seifter. Never heard about anything along the lines of 99% per encounter. Quote for those who don't want to click through:

It was from a Roll for Combat stream. I can't recall which one. I'll share the exact quote if I come across it again.
The gist is that Pathfinder expects you to fight so many encounters that if you didn't have a 90%+ success rate, many campaigns would end in TPK, which would be bad for their business model.

That's probably true at at level encounters. I guarentee you it becomes progressively less true at up-level encounters. If he was including those, I don't care if he was one of the designers, he's simply wrong.

You're completely right. A GM can go against the suggested encounter templates and the Adventure Path structure to make interesting challenges.
To me, they're awful and boring. They're playing someone else's (bad) fantasy novel. There are too many pointless and repetitive fights with non-existent stakes.

 

[Koloth]

They may be combat-centric, but I'm still going to stand on the opinion that unless the group is huge, if they're fights are taking 3 hours, they're not very good at playing out combat. There's absolutely no necessity for that in PF2e; on the whole combat in it runs faster than most D&D sphere games I've seen.

It isn't PF2's fault. 3 of the group are far more fascinated by the phone and Swtich games they play while waiting for their turn. The GM frequently lets his cats interrupt him. Another player/GM(helps with the VTT aspects) also often has a side gig instead of the game. But all 5 are adamant that we have to slowly play out every meaningless combat.

 

[Justice and Rule]

It was from a Roll for Combat stream. I can't recall which one. I'll share the exact quote if I come across it again.
The gist is that Pathfinder expects you to fight so many encounters that if you didn't have a 90%+ success rate, many campaigns would end in TPK, which would be bad for their business model.

I think my post may link the stream (Which, again, comes from Mark Seifter himself), but I don't think the encounter math really supports that. Adventure design probably does, but that's not a system problem. Given how many times I've heard people complain about how tough certain encounters can be, especially above Moderate, and it just doesn't seem to reflect reality.