Did WotC underestimate the Paizo effect on 4E?

[Jack99]

Let us know what you think.

It was a good book. Nothing new in it, but well presented and very well written. Except for the worldbuilding chapter which fits in my awesome category. I was inspired to make a new world, and I haven't been that in many years.

Cheers

 

[Reigan]

I see the growth of Paizo is a result of WotC pitching their products back at their mainstream audience, the casual player. 3e is a good game, it brought in hard core gamers who previously didn’t play D&D, but it’s also a complex and time consuming one. For a while, everyone was happy, however, in time casual players started to complain, not that 3e was a bad game, they simply didn’t have the time or commitment to make it work. This has been the main driver to how 4e was designed. Unfortunately, this process left a rump of disenfranchised and angry hardcore gamers who were the main beneficiaries of the 3e era. Paizo has quite happily stepped in to fill the needs of these players. This model works in many areas, the big multinationals sell their products to the mainstream, smaller companies thrive catering to the specialist, niche and connoisseur markets.

 

[AllisterH]

re: casual vs hardcore

That's an interesting notion Reigan and somewhat contrasted nicely with the apparent resurgence of M:TG.

I've seen many attribute it's recent upswing in the last couple of years to focusing more on the casual gamer (more multiplayer support like THG) and supporting them and letting go of the hardcore market (the letting go of Randy Bheuler)

 

[GodDelusion]

-- and we're not going to tell the kids that they can finally play pathfinder with us grown ups; we're going to tell the kids they can finally play d&d with us and we're going to do so via pathfinder.

qft!

 

[Shazman]

Presumably they'd not like 4e even if pathfinder existed. The only people that pathfinder steals are the ones that decide they don't like 4e because pathfinder came out.

I really can't agree. They said that they tried 4E, and didn't like it. If they were dead set on sticking with 3.5 or one of it's derivatives, I doubt that they would have spent the money and taken the time to try out 4E. They would have went straight to Pathfinder or stayed with 3.5 without even trying 4E. They left 4E and went to Pathfinder because after trying both, they conclued that Pathfinder was a superior game for their tastes. If I like a try a certain brand of something and switch to another brand because I like it better, than I think it's safe to say that the other brand stole me from the original brand. I hear over and over of whole gaming groups switching to Pathfinder after trying 4E. I have yet to hear about one person trying Pathfinder and then switching to 4E.

 

[Hussar]

Eh, there's a middle ground here. A bit of backstory actually makes some elements of an RPG adventure easier to run. I'd recommend anyone contrast experiences with Keep on the Borderlands, definitely bare bones as far as NPC characterization and story, with Return to Keep on the Borderlands. The latter I found much easier to deal with because there is a lot more detail - it was just organized and written for a beginner with a lot of advice and clarity.

Oh definitely. There are certainly extremes.

I don't know if the WOTC modules are quite as bereft of detail as KotB. They do have named NPC's after all. But, OTOH, I'm very, very sure they are less detailed than Paizo adventures.

Like I said though, even with a very light skimming of flavour, I think most people who like Paizo modules will not be happy. There seems to be a pretty solid audience of modules who want a module to almost be a mini campaign setting, replete with history and whatnot. Aren't the Pathfinder modules actually printed that way? Half module, half flavour? Or something to that effect.

Reigan - good thoughts.

Shazman - confirmation bias perhaps? The idea that there is not one single gamer out there who tried Pathfinder and then went back to 4e is a bit of a stretch dontcha think? Couldn't it easily be that those who tried 4e, then tried Pathfinder, then went back to 4e don't feel the need to evangelize the fact quite so strongly as those who prefer Pathfinder?

 

[Shazman]

I didn't say that no one had switched from Pathfinder to 4E. I said that I haven't heard of anyone doing so. My main point was that I don't see how someone can claim that having customers switch from 4E to Pathfinder doesn't equate to Paizo stealing customers from WotC.

 

[Jhaelen]

Personally, I think Paizo's success has been greater than anyone in either company truly expected. I would not be surprised to learn that Paizo has jumped from owning about 5% of the RPG market to somewhere between 25 and 40%.

I agree with your first sentence. I'm a bit dubious about your estimate in the second sentence, though.

If you are right, then rpgs have really declined tremendously, overall. If Paizo was really controlling 40% of the rpg market, it would have to be because the market has shrunken.

Are you pulling your estimate out of thin air or is there some factual basis?

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I hear over and over of whole gaming groups switching to Pathfinder after trying 4E. I have yet to hear about one person trying Pathfinder and then switching to 4E.

I've been seeing / hearing this locally as well. Actually to be more accurate people have been playing 4E less or out right stopping and moving on to other games, not just Pathfinder. This isn't meant to be gospel or anything just an observation. It's entirely possible that the particular groups that I've observed are in fact playing BOTH Pathfinder AND 4E and or other games. Which in all honesty would be fricking awesome.

 

[pawsplay]

But Pathfinder isn't a retro-clone. it is "current D&D" competing directly with official D&D, simply because it exists. Many of those people that don't like 4E may well have stuck with it if it was the only currently published and supported D&D, but because of Pathfinder it isn't.

I would argue the opposite, that if Pathfinder did not exist, we would have had to invent it. I can't really imagine 4e being shiny enough for me to touch it; the emotions I have around it are similar to the ones I had around late AD&D 2e, which led to a decade-long hiatus from D&D (that ended with the publication of 3e).

Anecdotally, as a writer, I had several 3e projects in various stages of development. When Pathfinder came out, I started adapting the material. Otherwise, I would have been releasing them as 3e products. I'm not the only one. The "shiny" could have kept rolling for probably a couple of years even without a Pathfinder taking the lead.