Pathfinder 2E Is It Time for PF2 "Essentials"?

[CapnZapp]

The last time

?

If you think Paizo is off the hook just because you are able to argue that not every single one of my arguments must be unassailable, just wow. The whole point of having an actual discussion where people actually attempt to defend Paizo's choices is to move past the "it's just a taste issue" type of non-discussion.

If you feel you can supply good arguments for, say, the design of Talismans in PF2, or perhaps the crafting subsystem (and mind you, actual fact-based arguments, not the misguided arguments based on how people think or want that subsystem to work) you would be most welcome.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don’t need to be. The fact that many are happy with Paizo’s choices is it’s own defence (not that it needs defending).

I disagree.

"many are happy with" is a statement that could be said about any system.

It's this relativism that bugs me.

In contrast, I'm claiming "Paizo blew it". Looking at subsystem after subsystem, the design could have been much simpler and cleaner without anything meaningful lost.

The fact people don't realize that, or just don't care, doesn't mean such a claim becomes false.

This is supported by evidence of reviews, people posting here, on paizo’s site and indeed on Reddit. I have seen many Reddit posts on people having declares they are switching from 5e, loving various aspects of it and discussing it.

Again, nearly every game system is met with glowing praise. That tells you nothing.

And very few reviews are actually in-depth enough to unearth (or even encounter!) the criticisms I line up against the system.

Does this suggest a mass migration from PF1 or 5E? No. What it shows is that Paizo has found a niche in that spectrum for those that enjoyed 5e or pf1 but wanted a step up (or step down for pf1) in a degree of crunchiness and customisation.

I'm arguing the game could have been far superior (as in really obviously so) to what we got.

For myself, I’m really happy with the choices taken. The three action system, the flexibility of character creation (such as separation of ancestry and heritage), the siloing of feats so that you pick from various pools that act as customisable levers from your character. They contribute to a more individual build and give various options a chance to shine that they would t get in one complex, monolithic list. The fact that opportunity attacks aren’t automatically given. That monsters have various actions that give them personality, rarity tags on feats, gear and spells etc.

I'm happy with these choices too!

But I'm not talking about these choices. I'm talking about (many of) the other choices taken! In fact, what you're doing is what every single poster before you have done, which is to bend over backwards in order not to have to defend the design choices made for the points I do bring up.

I’d definitely agree that the CRB could’ve used another editing pass. But I’d never claim a system is perfect

I am not asking for a perfect system.

I am arguing the system's design is outright poor.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think most companies that have relied on rules expansions to drive revenue recognize this has a short life cycle. The first expansion sells like gangbusters, the second less so, and there is some Nth expansion which is not even worth the paper it is printed on, at which you reboot the core rules, not necessarily because the core rules themselves are bad, but because you figure you can sell a Monster Manual II more easily than a Monster Manual VIII, and you need new rules that are sufficiently incompatible with the old ones to justify telling people to buy new supplements.

I think this is not entirely inaccurate, but its overstated; notably White Wolf, that was at one time probably the second most successful RPG company in the market (some have argued it was briefly the most successful, but I'm not sure they have any solid data) ran largely on this model, and it kept them going for quite some time. I suspect its more the case that there's a certain organic rules expansion space, and once you start overpopulating that, it no longer works.

Among other things, you have to watch revisiting the same exact kinds of expansions too often (your Monster Manual example is cogent), and some types of RPG have more natural expansion space than others. But I don't think (depending on your definition of "short") an expansion model is necessarily a particularly short lifecycle process, and I think there are pretty fair number of relatively successful companies that have proved the contrary.

The trick is to know when you have reached or are reaching the end of that, and not everyone does.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If I can interject a potential tangent into the discussion here, is the era of the adventure path kinda over? I know that was a huge part of the way Paizo did stuff for a long time, but it seems like maybe they reached a saturation point. I do notice that nobody else is really attempting it either; WotC is putting out "campaigns" that are similar to how Call of Cthulhu traditionally used to do it, where there's one rather thick book that details a single adventure in multiple chapters.

Honestly, the general consensuses in the industry has been that adventures in general are not money makers. I'm hard pressed to assess since as a GM I've never tended to use them throughout my gaming life, so I'm not the market.

 

[kenada]

In fact, what you're doing is what every single poster before you have done, which is to bend over backwards in order not to have to defend the design choices made for the points I do bring up.

I recall back when PF2 was released trying to explore why Paizo would make the choices they made, and you agreed that reasoning made sense, but you would have none of it: Paizo blew it, and they should have learned from 5e. You’ve accused us of being obstinate. You’ve said that if we haven’t played or run at high levels then we won’t understand the problems the system has. Now it turns out all of our arguments were invalid (presumably because they don’t align with your claims). I agree with @Justice and Rule. Why should anyone want to engage in yet another round of fruitless argument? This is well beyond bad comedy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

When 4e proved controversial, the sales success of pf catapulted them into direct competition but I don’t think anyone (including paizo) expected this or even necessarily desired this. I also don’t think they expected this for pf2.
They were forced by 5e in as much as the design space of 3e was already stretched and the larger market was perhaps finding it too cumbersome. So they wanted to improve pf their way, regardless of what 5e did.
I just find it odd many are placing it in the same sphere as 5e and not any other rpgs, labelling it a failure for not doing what no one else is doing anyway.

Its probably the inevitable consequence of that historical accident I mentioned, where for a period they were at least somewhat competing with D&D during the 4e era. That was never going to last, but its what people tend to remember.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think Pathfinder is a failure because it is "losing" to 5e, when 5e is arguably the most popular edition of the game in decades, and by all accounts is a runaway success. I think the implied question, if maybe poorly expressed at times is whether or not Pathfinder 2e is successful enough.

And that's a legitimate question, but the reasons for people asking it seem usually based on a combination of wishful thinking and overextrapolating from limited metrics.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you'd like to be the first poster that actually stands up and defends Paizo's choices, I'd be happy to converse.

This requires those familiar with your past discussions on this to consider it a useful thing to do with you.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I don't think the mechanics of a system, as such, have a great deal to do with a product's success or failure. Not that they have no effect, but system alone isn't going to do it. I would refer you to the giant, catastrophic hoarder's-home-in-text-form known as "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" for details. VtM's d10 system had lots of problems, which neither prevented the game's rise, nor caused its fall.

I think this is not entirely inaccurate, but its overstated; notably White Wolf, that was at one time probably the second most successful RPG company in the market (some have argued it was briefly the most successful, but I'm not sure they have any solid data) ran largely on this model, and it kept them going for quite some time. I suspect its more the case that there's a certain organic rules expansion space, and once you start overpopulating that, it no longer works.

Among other things, you have to watch revisiting the same exact kinds of expansions too often (your Monster Manual example is cogent), and some types of RPG have more natural expansion space than others. But I don't think (depending on your definition of "short") an expansion model is necessarily a particularly short lifecycle process, and I think there are pretty fair number of relatively successful companies that have proved the contrary.

The trick is to know when you have reached or are reaching the end of that, and not everyone does.

In those terms, then, my point is that building a product lifecycle, i.e. a revenue model, on this, is customer-hostile. There is some number of pages of rules at which point people don't want more rules. The reason is that rules are durable goods, while adventures are consumable goods. People will play with the same rules over and over, sometimes for decades, but they will typically play an adventure once.

Consumers want durable goods to last as long as possible; producers would prefer they break down as quickly as the consumer will tolerate.

 

[transmission89]

I disagree.

"many are happy with" is a statement that could be said about any system.

It's this relativism that bugs me.

In contrast, I'm claiming "Paizo blew it". Looking at subsystem after subsystem, the design could have been much simpler and cleaner without anything meaningful lost.

The fact people don't realize that, or just don't care, doesn't mean such a claim becomes false.


Again, nearly every game system is met with glowing praise. That tells you nothing.

And very few reviews are actually in-depth enough to unearth (or even encounter!) the criticisms I line up against the system.


I'm arguing the game could have been far superior (as in really obviously so) to what we got.


I'm happy with these choices too!

But I'm not talking about these choices. I'm talking about (many of) the other choices taken! In fact, what you're doing is what every single poster before you have done, which is to bend over backwards in order not to have to defend the design choices made for the points I do bring up.


I am not asking for a perfect system.

I am arguing the system's design is outright poor.

I disagree. The statement paizo blew it is your subjectivism not an objectifiable fact. What you’re doing is bending over backwards to nail it to the cross of a badly designed game because it has mechanics and issues that you dislike, ignoring the points people do bring up.

For example, you constantly lambast the surfeit of feats as a major flaw. This suggests one of two things:
1)You don’t understand the way properly the way feats are utilised in this system. Your critique here is more applicable to the monolithic feat list of pf1.
2) You’re not a fan of feats as a way to customise your character, or prefer a very limited pool of feats in 5e (which even though they share the same name, feats, occupy a very different design space in the two systems).

Neither reason is a valid criticism of the system, merely an indication of your personal understanding or opinion on them.