Which was to be expected, although, I think after that first wave it stabilized. In a nutshell, most people who played PF, because they didn't like 4e, but, in fact welcomed the simplification of 5e already went over.
Maybe. I think a lot of PF fans wanted to finish their campaigns or get one last use of their books. There was likely a slow year-long trickle of people swapping game systems.
Stabilising is nice, however it doesn't imply much growth, which means diminishing sales.
On Roll 20, or are we talking in general? In general, I think there was some movement, when some portion of the people who went over to 5e at first, got bored after a while and went back to PF.
Roll20.
And I'm sure there are some people that got bored with 5e and switched back. But that seems to be an insignificant percentage.
We have no numbers at all for other sources, other than the sales ranks of Pathfinder books on Amazon. And the sales rank of all Pathfinder books has been tracking downward for the last couple of years, with accessories no longer selling consistently in 2012 and 2013 while the Core Rulebook started slipping down in 2014. (See camelcamelcamel.com)
And, yes, I am aware that Paizo sells through their own website so sales could be moving over there. But this seems unlikely. Because their prices are higher and their shipping is killer (and much, much slower). There's no reason an increasing percentage of people would be shopping through their site.
And, as I said above, they doesn't have to compete directly. As long as the playerbase is growing, it doesn't really matter that 5e is that much bigger. Of course it is, it targets a much bigger demographic group. It doesn't mean PF is shrinking. It just means that more people are eating at McDonalds than at a much smaller restaurant chain, but as long as the small chain has its stablie and growing costumer base, it's okay.
Again, we don't know if the PF playerbase is actually growing or if it's shrinking offline and increasing slowly on Roll20 as people look there to find games they cannot in meat space.
Even then, the problem is that the small restaurant chain in this analogy has a huge staff and needs some pretty heavy sales numbers to sustain said staff. They need their current product to keep selling well. It doesn't matter how stable their playerbase is if they're not buying new books.
If/when I do run Pathfinder again, I'm not buying more books. I stopped buying physical books a couple years back, and I haven't even picked up the last couple PDFs after realising that I hadn't even really read the prior two PDFs I had purchased. And I'll probably greatly limit the books my players can use. Maybe an Adventurer's League-esque Core Rules +1.
I think their main audience for the new rulebooks are not primarily new gamers. They have other products for that. That's the thing, WotC's main target audience for their books is new gamers, while Paizo's is more dedicated fans.
This sounds elitist as eff.
It strongly implies that fans of 5e & WotC are not "dedicated" or that 5e's target audience was new gamers. Neither is true. The 5e playtest and design of 5e were strongly influenced and aimed at current & old players and the edition has some heavy retro vibes. It's a very nostalgic edition aimed at older gamers. That it's accessible and appeals to new players is just a perk.
(It also implies that new gamers can't be dedicated. Which is probably not remotely true either.)
I think WotC starts to reach that adventure bloat...
They're close. It's probably a good time for them to switch to one adventure per year and have other types of product. Which, conveniently, appears to be what they're doing.
Or, you know, I might actually make my new character a Shifter... I think you assesment is a bit too black and white. There are stuff in the new books I want to use and I bet it's like that for a lot of people. But yeah, naturally, you won't use everything, but it's still nicer to have it, than not, because maybe your buddy will use it, or one of you players, or whatnot. But yeah, as above, the main target audience of Paizo's books is dedicated fans, that could be labeled as "collectors", especially, since the big books' content is on the website for free.
The problem is that you don't make a new character every four months, which is the rate new hardcover books come out.
Each of the two APs I ran took up the better part of a year, and only had a single character change during them. During a play-through, three books came out with new options plus innumerable Player Companions. By the time my players could play a new character, the concept they had from reading one book had been replaced by one from the most recent book.
You mention wanting to play a shifter. And maybe you will. Assuming you make that new character before
Planar Adventures comes out.
Collectors are a nice audience, but they're a minority. And there's only so much content even collectors will buy before they realise they have five or six books they've never used and a couple they've barely even read. I don't think
Ultimate Combat has ever been used at my table. Or
Occult Adventures. Let alone
Mythic Adventures.
Plus... if you're a collector buying books just to collect and read and not use, then they don't actually
need to be for a game system you're actually playing. They could be art books or map books and it would still count. Or other systems. When I decided my PF collection was "good enough" I moved to Shadows of Esteren. And filling in some gaps in my 2e book collection.
For example, the Advanced Class guide might have seemed redundant, but honestly, I actually really liked at least half of the new classes and want to use them. Will I, taking into consideration the realities of how much I could play? No, but it's still good to have the choices, because I will play some of them.
Advanced Class Guide is a great example. They had ten new base classes and not nearly enough time to remotely test them all. So the entire book is full of shaky mechanics. Rather than, say, pitch the classes and playtest the materials, then pick the six favourites and be able to adequately test and balance them all, they included all ten because they decided in advance that was the contents. Whether they were ready or not, or whether the fanbase really wanted them or not. It was pure content for the sake of content.
(And while you say you liked at least half of them... how many have you actually played for a significant time? Because, liking five classes is enough content for five full campaigns, or 2-4 years of play. It's literally the only PF book you
needed since it was released.)
The vigilante is also a great example of content for the sake of releasing content. It exists solely because the other
Ultimate XXX books had a new base class. It could have been a series of archetypes or a feat. Or a 1 to 5 level prestige class. (Which makes the most sense as being a superhero is something you train into.)
Pathfinder is probably the most supported game system currently published. Possibly second, behind RIFTs. There are more feats, more class variants, more spells, and more magic items then there was for 3e. A couple years back and Paizo was putting out more content than TSR did at its publishing height.
The question is, what percentage of content published by Paizo do you think has actually been used? How many of the 2500 feats have actually been used? Or the 400 subclasses? Or the 40-odd PC races?
How many options have never been taken once in a single game?
Well, that, I could get behind. The big hardcovers are too crunch and player-options focused. The fluff content is good, but I think it should be more that and less another 20 pages of feats.
The 64 page Campaign Setting books are mostly fine, IMO and easily my favorite products from them.
I quite like them as well. There's some great stuff in a lot of those books.
Hmmm. I'm a bit torn, because some of those, I really liked and I think, while yeah, they are scraping the bottom with them there are still good ones, but I'm not sure it won't be better to integrate the content somehow into the big books. Or just making the Companions pdf-only and releasing them annually, or bi-annually with some extra fluff as one big hardcover. Kinda like the old magazine annuals, or the newer hardcover re-releases of the first APs.
Here's the thing... do they need to be regular? Making them monthly or bi-monthly just means they have to release one whether it's ready or not. What if they just released one every 2-4 years when they have a really good idea and it's done? When they need to tie something into the AP.
A hard schedule worked for the subscriptions... but that's magazine thinking being applied to books. It's needless. Again, how many of the 87 Player Companions existed because they needed to release a book that month?
So far, seems like it isn't.
