Sorry for the delay in replying - E N World disappeared on me for a while, and it had not yet returned when I headed off for my game.
The makers of Trailblazer and other products that tried to fix things that are 'defended' from a, if not numerous but vocal, number of fans as 'features' are anecdotal?
Maker. BadAxe is one person. He posts on these forums sometimes (hi Wulf!). I like his stuff, there are things that I use in my games from Trailblazer. But he is not 'most'. In short the 'most critics' you wrote of is in fact, are you ready? Anecdotal.
Frankly, most critics don't give a dang either way. They are not waving flags and singing 'We Love It-er-a-tive Attacks!' but neither are they shouting them down. So there is no 'vast sea of critics' (my words, not yours) but rather there are a few, sometimes impassioned, sometimes talented, vocal critics. In short a much more accurate replacement would be 'most critics,
if they mention iterative attacks at all think that there are better ways to handle things' or just plain 'some critics', which is more accurate and shorter.
In my response to the thread you quoted I mentioned 'Availability Heuristics' - in this case you noticed the few critics mentioning the iterative attacks as a problem, but not the fact that most critics
don't mention it as a problem, or even mention it at all.
Palladium is now an insult??? I'm proud to have the Nightspawn book in an edition before it was renamed Nightbane. I have fonder memories of Rifts than AD&D 2nd.
Yes, it is. (I was tempted to leave that as a one word answer - 'Yes', but I am more verbose than that.) Look around these very forums for how many posts talk about how badly balanced, badly edited, badly laid out, etc.. But I am not going to say that 'most critics' feel that Palladium is something that can be singled out for an attack, but I can point to more than the one that you chose for your own 'most critics' claim.
Many feel that any success for Palladium games (small 'g') is in spite of the publisher, not because of it. And you were not comparing Palladium Role Play to Pathfinder, but rather Palladium Games to Paizo. If you had compared the
games rather than the publishers, this would have been an entirely different thread. There still would be screaming and yelling, but a different thread.
It were my impressions of the current Pathfinder game (not as a whole but the points I made) and they reminded me on the things I heard of Palladium.
And I heard it and tried to move the thread, which was one of your points and tried to remove offensive parts.
Thank you for that, I take it back, your mama doesn't dress you funny, and I liked the article about the giraffes.
Yes, very much so. And, as I mentioned, it appeared that you were trying to use that article s a shield. And I still think that you were.
I don't want an argument, I want a talk/discussion. No answer to my 5 points until the 8th post.
A discussion, with conflict, is an argument. If you were not looking for folks to agree with you then you
were looking for an argument. Odd as it sounds, I am not condemning that - I have no problem with it. Using the article as a shield? That bothered me. Perhaps you could have just said 'Keep this cordial, folks'.
Which other companies do you count as an insult? Rifts has even it's own tag here.
Look for how many threads say things about Rifts along the lines of 'Great setting, great idea, horrible system' and a few that add 'if it were under anybody other than Simbieda...'. And discussions about balance, and the
complete lack thereof....
Once upon a time Simbieada would complain that White Wolf Magazine never had any support for his games. He was both vocal and obnoxious about it. When White Wolf finally
got an article for his game, and asked if they could print it, he said 'No!' and threatened to sue.
White Wolf, being obnoxious in their own way, did an article about how Simbieda was being a complete kneebiter.
But, since you are spending time defending Palladium games, I retract that you were using it as an insult. A poorly chosen example, surely, but perhaps not a deliberate insult. Though I note that at this point you have said kinder things about Palladium than you ever have about Pathfinder.... I think the simplest way to put things is that you
like4e, and that you are disgruntled by the fact that at this point it looks like Pathfinder is the more popular game.
And yes, you do come across as disgruntled, and it is likely that you are. (And I agree with pulling out your grudging praise for Paizo leading last quarter
is acceptable in a supportive argument. You have a horse in that race, and are not a neutral observer.)
If you go looking back to the days when 4e was new and, umm, shiny, you can find plenty of posts where
I was disgruntled. I did not like what I was seeing, and hadn't since seeing the preview books. (I blame those preview books for much of the divide.)
My viewpoint
now is 'I don't like 4e, but if you are having fun playing it, then go and kill monsters'. But when 4e was new....
I don't have to like 4e, or respect WotC (or Palladium) for you to enjoy those games. Pathfinder meant that the architecture that I preferred would stick around. The funny thing is that I thought that I was in the minority, and now it looks like that instead we have a two party system.
As for other companies to use as insults, there are games far...
worse... than Palladium. (Cinnibar, F.A.T.A.L. and the short lived 4th Edition' that had
nothing to do with WotC.) Heck,
some people will tell you that Spawn of Fashan was a bad game, but they
lie! 
And I will point out that even you are not defending Palladium the
company, but merely their games....
And the comparison was not Rifts v. Pathfinder but rather Palladium v. Paizo.
I'm not feeling offended by this. I disagree on the overbalancing, but we could discuss this in another thread (or with PMs), if you want....
We disagree on over balancing, but I think that is one of the core arguments that 3.x and 3.P fans have against 4e, and vice versa - I do not think that is a resolvable argument, because each group,
speaking only for themselves, is right. It is when
either camp starts saying that the other camp is wrong that the complaining camp becomes wrong.
Opinions are shaped by personal experiences, and mine are not yours. You apparently got burned by some inequity you saw in 3.X, but neither I nor my players ever had that problem. Since I am an egotistical sort I will now take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for running a good game. *Pat, pat, pat.*
I see the OP point, but I think there are some big key differences.
I see Palladium as originally trying to be one player's houserules for D&D which they brought out and tried to sale. It evolved, but overall it's just their version which they utilized in drawing on the popularity of D&D to make sales originally. Later it was off other more legal licensed products...but originally it was a sidebar to the D&D crowd. IN MY OPINION.
Pathfinder I see as carrying the torch of the 3.X version of WotC's D20 fantasy game (aka D&D 3.5, though many forget there was a D20 Modern which I can see easily integrated into PF rules...and a SW D20 as well). In that I see it as a continuation for many people, instead of trying to garner sales from the same crowd as WotC. In fact since WotC stopped publication originally of the D20 games in favor of 4e, I see Pathfinder as the direct heir of the 3.X line and D20 lines.
I think many more people at WotC play Pathfinder than the numbers that were found at TSR playing Palladium. I think there's better blood between the two groups (WotC and Paizo) in the companies overall, and even communication at times (mostly unofficial between friends).
Just my two coppers.
You have likely done a better job of seeing the OP's point than I have.
The Auld Grump
