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

[Retreater]

This is why I say other people are fussier about VTTs than I am. All I expect is something that holds maps and allows me to move tokens around. And maybe a dice roller.

For OSR games, I agree. But PF2 is complex enough (for me) to need the automation if I'm already reading an adventure, condition cards, GM screen, Archives of Nethys, and at least one Rulebook while also working on a VTT and online voice chat.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For OSR games, I agree. But PF2 is complex enough (for me) to need the automation if I'm already reading an adventure, condition cards, GM screen, Archives of Nethys, and at least one Rulebook while also working on a VTT and online voice chat.

Well, you need what you need, but if I could run something face to face without digital assistance, I can run it online that way, and PF2e is easier than some games I've run.

 

[teitan]

Surely Amazon sales or Roll20 % played, while far from being precise measures of success, are at least objective measures. Which you can hardly say about a company's own reports of how well it's doing.

Roll20 isn’t because Paizo is partnered with Foundry and buying through Paizo gives you access to the content on Foundry.

 

[Porridge]

Roll20 isn’t because Paizo is partnered with Foundry and buying through Paizo gives you access to the content on Foundry.

I believe Paizo is partnered with Roll20. And Fantasy Grounds, for that matter.

I believe the reason for Roll20s poor support of PF2 is due to internal decision-making about how to allocate resources. Fantasy Grounds has good PF2 support even though they’re a smaller company; their internal decision-making just went the other way.

(As a side note, I believe FG has released user statistics recently. Although Foundry appears to be the preferred platform among the PF2 community, I suspect these FG statistics would provide a better feel for the uptake of PF2 than the Roll20 statistics, since FG is actually making a reasonable effort to support PF2.)

 

[Campbell]

It's also that the actual implementation on Roll 20 is just some fairly poor engineering. You can tell effort was put it, but it's like the implementation of the game was done by someone with no direct experience of it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Except none of what you said is true (quel surprise). Here’s the actual designer talking about the goals.

Before you for some reason took my post as a personal affront, did you consider any of...?
a) there can be more goals than those publicly communicated
b) vendors regularly make up goals for marketing purposes, because that's what they believe their market wants to hear
c) goals and what you actually accomplish are two things, not one

 

[transmission89]

Before you for some reason took my post as a personal affront, did you consider any of...?
a) there can be more goals than those publicly communicated
b) vendors regularly make up goals for marketing purposes, because that's what they believe their market wants to hear
c) goals and what you actually accomplish are two things, not one

I took nothing as a personal affront.
a) yes
B) yes
C) yes.
I considered all of this.

Before you, for some reason decided to post these as main design goals:

• "never again should spellcasters be able to end a fight with a single spell"
• "never again should a player be able to use system mastery to create a clearly superior character"
• "never again will we be beholden to WotC"
• 
  did you consider any of:
• A) it might just be your personal bias and not actually any of their goals?
• B) That what any of you said has actually been supported in statements beyond your interpretation of the game as read and played?
• C) that from their perspective, they hit their own goals of creating and system that’s “a better pathfinder” to play and design for, regardless of your own take on it?

To further clarify, yes obviously they want to remain independent from wotc as they’ve been burnt before, why wouldn’t they?

 

[meltdownpass]

CapnZapp's characterization paint a negative light, but I don't think the points themselves are inaccurate. It would honestly be a red flag if Paizo's development team didn't have design discussions & internal rulings on these issues.

Going back to the statement you quoted, we can examine what it means for a system to be "easier to learn." This kind of phrasing is not really meaningful. I could make a statement that the goal was for the system to be "more fun," but it should be obvious that "fun" varies from player to player. Similarly, "easier to learn" is actually carrying a lot of weight.

For someone who is logically & mathematically minded there is nothing inherently complex or overwhelming about 3E/PF1 rulesets (The complexity comes from sheer quantity of rules and edge-case interactions). You can generally ascertain how effective your character at a task is by the number of bonuses you get to certain rolls. However, if you put this type of person into a FATE game, they will probably struggle to conceptualize how aspects of their character might translate into chance of "success" or "failure."

PF2 largely removed the ability to optimize along the most-easily-communicated metric, the raw numerical axis. This by itself isn't bad, but the game retains the complexity that was ultimately the source of the problem. Players have more decision points than ever. The quantity and edge-case interactions remain. PF2 demands optimization moreso than ever, with a high default-difficulty. It's just that this optimization eschews the obvious d20 +Modifier and is in harder-to-quantify aspects such as breadth of options, action efficiency, and other avenues that require deeper understanding of the system(s) than simply maximizing a number.

 

[transmission89]

CapnZapp's characterization paint a negative light, but I don't think the points themselves are inaccurate. It would honestly be a red flag if Paizo's development team didn't have design discussions & internal rulings on these issues.

Going back to the statement you quoted, we can examine what it means for a system to be "easier to learn." This kind of phrasing is not really meaningful. I could make a statement that the goal was for the system to be "more fun," but it should be obvious that "fun" varies from player to player. Similarly, "easier to learn" is actually carrying a lot of weight.

For someone who is logically & mathematically minded there is nothing inherently complex or overwhelming about 3E/PF1 rulesets (The complexity comes from sheer quantity of rules and edge-case interactions). You can generally ascertain how effective your character at a task is by the number of bonuses you get to certain rolls. However, if you put this type of person into a FATE game, they will probably struggle to conceptualize how aspects of their character might translate into chance of "success" or "failure."

PF2 largely removed the ability to optimize along the most-easily-communicated metric, the raw numerical axis. This by itself isn't bad, but the game retains the complexity that was ultimately the source of the problem. Players have more decision points than ever. The quantity and edge-case interactions remain. PF2 demands optimization moreso than ever, with a high default-difficulty. It's just that this optimization eschews the obvious d20 +Modifier and is in harder-to-quantify aspects such as breadth of options, action efficiency, and other avenues that require deeper understanding of the system(s) than simply maximizing a number.

Exactly this (Although I disagree with the idea of the complexity being a problem ) This is what I was getting at. I think ”easier to learn” is really just meant to be a short hand for a reduction of edge cases and the trimming of more obtuse mechanics.
Paizo felt a clear need for a second pathfinder edition. Certainly income was a factor, but for a design point of view, one could speculate that the designers were chafing. The pf system was really just a case of bolting on lots of features to the 3.x engine(for example archetypes).

I can imagine they felt (and as design goals have actually gone on record stating as such in interviews) that they wanted to allow those kinds of things built into the new engine.

This has clearly been achieved as even with just the core rule book, you can see the where they have left room for expansions of ideas (the core archetypes are arguably anaemic, but you saw the potential that they began delivering on with the apg).

So again, I’d say they achieved their own design goals. The end result is not for everybody, as always. Is it perfect? No. As always.
Again, I find myself in yet another thread saying it should be critiqued as such rather than a failure to meet one person’s constant bizarre expectations of a 5e++ despite that never being Paizo’s goal. ”Level up“ is that way (which personally, I see as a misguided project missing the point of 5e and trying to serve a need that pathfinder 2e already meets. But that is my own opinion and I refrain from going into those threads and thread crapping there. Why spoil other people’s fun?)

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

CapnZapp's characterization paint a negative light, but I don't think the points themselves are inaccurate. It would honestly be a red flag if Paizo's development team didn't have design discussions & internal rulings on these issues.

Going back to the statement you quoted, we can examine what it means for a system to be "easier to learn." This kind of phrasing is not really meaningful. I could make a statement that the goal was for the system to be "more fun," but it should be obvious that "fun" varies from player to player. Similarly, "easier to learn" is actually carrying a lot of weight.

For someone who is logically & mathematically minded there is nothing inherently complex or overwhelming about 3E/PF1 rulesets (The complexity comes from sheer quantity of rules and edge-case interactions). You can generally ascertain how effective your character at a task is by the number of bonuses you get to certain rolls. However, if you put this type of person into a FATE game, they will probably struggle to conceptualize how aspects of their character might translate into chance of "success" or "failure."

PF2 largely removed the ability to optimize along the most-easily-communicated metric, the raw numerical axis. This by itself isn't bad, but the game retains the complexity that was ultimately the source of the problem. Players have more decision points than ever. The quantity and edge-case interactions remain. PF2 demands optimization moreso than ever, with a high default-difficulty. It's just that this optimization eschews the obvious d20 +Modifier and is in harder-to-quantify aspects such as breadth of options, action efficiency, and other avenues that require deeper understanding of the system(s) than simply maximizing a number.

But that's also the systems greatest strength, some gamers like having a lot of decision points and tactical choices. If you read the subreddit threads on why people left 5e in the first place, you see a lot of people actually value this kind of depth. Raw Complexity isn't a benefit, but the depth that can only be achieved by a little complexity used efficiently, as it is in Pathfinder 2e, is very desirable.