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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 8204164" data-attributes="member: 60075">This seems both fair and unfair. One implied question CaptnZapp is replying to is: how could PF2 perform better than its current single digit marketshare? And one obvious answer is that, to outperform 5e or compete with it, you have to identify what it does well and then do it better. Ditto for what 5e does badly and then do a better job in your own design.5e has so many strengths and weaknesses that the opportunities seem rife for those with time and talent (personally have neither).And coming from that angle, CaptnZapp‘s point seems to be that PF2 doesn’t appear premised on a solid understanding of those strengths in 5e. It’s ok to not copy 5e and for a new game to still be a success—nobody is arguing otherwise; but it’s hard to look at PF2 and describe much of what’s going on there as building on 5e as a learning experience. Some of PF2 obviously is a response to 5e’s broken promises though. The 5e playtest promised three pillars of play, because people got tired of the hack and slash in 4e (esp. early modules). Sound familiar, right? And it’s a bigger theme at implementation level in PF2 than 5e, I’d argue, and part of the game‘s appeal.The 5e playtest also promised other things it failed to ever implement—like modularity in design complexity. A clear recognition that people would find that appealing. Now how does PF2 build on that? Arguably not at all. Wouldn’t it have been better to roll out the product with a base game ruleset, and then push half the CRB to the GMG, and half the published GMG to Unearthed Arcana? It’s not just bloated writing, it’s the distribution of content that seems to be dictated by late 1990s/2000s legacy issues rather than sober recognition of the market in 2019 and beyond.So I think using 5e as a benchmark of sorts to establish a success metric is Justified; even if we don’t want to argue that you have to be a 5e retroclone or similar to be successful in a post-5e world.</blockquote>

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