Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

[Wicht]

A good argument for tabletop RPGs over MMOs if you have to make a choice.

I apparently have to spread the xp around before giving you some more, but I agree. I much prefer buying my books and games once and then having them at hand in my library.

Several try to compare the subscriptions plans of Paizo and WotC but in my mind, there is one clear difference. Paizo sends me real, non-electronic, product for my dollar.

 

[billd91]

Also, if you are forced to "re-spec" your character 3 times per tier because you keep getting hit with the nerf bat, you probably deserved it. I've never played a character that had to be significantly altered more than twice, and I make some ridiculous stuff. I can only imagine the sort of monster you must have created.

Baloney. If you're building a character with legal powers right in the builder for a game that is touted as being so well-balanced, then your accusation is unfounded. He didn't 'deserve' a nerfing for anything other than buying into a game that's in flux and frequently obsoleting its printings.

 

[Dannager]

Baloney. If you're building a character with legal powers right in the builder for a game that is touted as being so well-balanced, then your accusation is unfounded. He didn't 'deserve' a nerfing for anything other than buying into a game that's in flux and frequently obsoleting its printings.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with charop understands that even a well-balanced game like 4e has a handful of examples of wildly under- or overpowered options. One of the guys I played with a while back had a Wizard who picked up a number of very, very powerful options - orb-focused, lockdown, blood mage, mass stun, etc. We all knew he was headed for a heavy nerf. I even tried to bet money on which powers would take a hit. And when the nerf bat hit, it hit him hard. But no one was surprised. No one. We shrugged, he shrugged, he understood that he'd had his fun while it lasted but that it was time to rejoin the realm of mortal characters, and we moved on.

If you're getting hit with nerfs once every one-and-a-third months (that is, three times per tier over the course of a year-long campaign), you're doing some insane character optimization (especially since rules updates only come out once every two months to begin with).

 

[Dannager]

I'm not saying that paying the license is bad for all situations. But my PF Core book will be available for many years to come, long after the equivalent money I would have spent on an MMO subscription has expired. I may have some fun playing on the MMO for that set time, but I'll continue to have fun playing with PF long after that and without an ongoing fee. And that will factor into my decision regarding what to invest in - a tabletop RPG or MMO.

And I operate under the assumption that there will always be a modern, supported tabletop RPG that I want to play. I think that's a fair assumption. My tastes run fairly mainstream as far as the hobby is concerned, and I expect that the hobby will follow those mainstream tastes, or that those mainstream tastes will follow the hobby. And if, for some weird reason, this doesn't end up being the case, I'll still have all my old 4e, 3.5, 3e, 2e and Rules Cyclopedia books.

 

[Dark Mistress]

First let me say, i am not saying this to be negative or meant to be bad or insulting but more curious.

We can all agree the DDI is kinda a MMO model payment style plan to play a game.

The reason i bring this up is the new trend in MMO's the vast majority of them are going '"free to play" with a VIP pay fee, or the ability to buy select things one at a time.

I am just wondering what this new MMO payment plan might have on the thinking at WotC in regards to the DDI, since the f2p is become the future of how MMO's work.

Anyways as I said more curious and not meant to suggest 4e is a MMO or meant as a slight... I hate that I have to be so clear about not being insulting anymore, to just ask a honest curious question.

 

[Dannager]

First let me say, i am not saying this to be negative or meant to be bad or insulting but more curious.

We can all agree the DDI is kinda a MMO model payment style plan to play a game.

No, it's a subscription-based plan. That has nothing to do with MMOs except for the fact that some MMOs also happen to be based on subscription plans. You are not paying a subscription to be able to play D&D. You are paying in order to have access to a set of tools and content that enhances your play experience. The distinction is important, and it keeps us from falling into the oh-so-easy trap of This-Part-of-D&D-is-Like-an-MMO-so-the-Whole-Thing-Must-Be-Like-an-MMO.

The reason i bring this up is the new trend in MMO's the vast majority of them are going '"free to play" with a VIP pay fee, or the ability to buy select things one at a time.

That's because the vast majority of MMOs are poor attempts to cash in on the success of the industry's top dog: World of Warcraft.

I am just wondering what this new MMO payment plan might have on the thinking at WotC in regards to the DDI, since the f2p is become the future of how MMO's work.

This is a myth based on a very common misunderstanding of the MMO industry, and why free-to-play is becoming more common.

In the MMO industry, there is WoW, and then there is everyone else. This is an exaggeration to a certain extent, because there are exceptions to this rule (EVE Online), but it holds in general. WoW is incredibly successful. It rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every month. It is the most successful video game ever sold, I'd bet.

And everyone wants to be the next WoW.

Unfortunately, they can't. The problem is that Blizzard (the studio behind WoW) is just better at this than anyone else. If some other development house comes out with a new MMO that has some cool new feature, within a couple months that cool new feature will be in WoW, and no one will have any reason to play whatever the new game is, because WoW has that cool feature, plus all the other cool features of all the games that came before it.

This has resulted in the existence of a metric ton of relatively unpopular MMOs clogging up the market. Your average gamer can't really be into more than one or two at a time with any real level of dedication, so given the choice between awesome (WoW) and not-awesome (everything else), he typically chooses to invest his cash and time in the awesome.

The guys running the other MMOs, though, are suddenly left without revenue. They have some players (who, at this point, are really only the hardest of the hardcore), but not enough to sustain their business. Until one day someone says "Hey, what if we make our game free, and then give players the option of paying money for cool perks?"

This idea was internet gold. The second-rate-MMOs needed lots of players in order to sustain their game (give it word of mouth, stimulate the in-game economy, shore up guilds), and making it free accomplishes this quite handily. But they also needed money, and they know that the ultra-hardcore players they're still holding onto are willing to spend tremendous amounts of real world cash for in-game perks, because the game is very important to them.

It's important to understand, now, that the model above is not the future of MMOs. It is a future, but it is not the future. And that's because the market will always have room for that one awesome game that everyone is playing, and that game (currently WoW) doesn't need a free-to-play model because everyone is already willing to pay to play it.

So, to recap, if you have the best product in your particular market (for WoW, that market is fantasy MMORPGs), you don't need to go free-to-play. Subscriptions work great. If your product is, by comparison, subpar, free-to-play is great because it gives you a revenue stream from your most dedicated players while populating your servers with less dedicated players who help make the game function.

What can we glean from this as it relates to D&D?

Well, nothing, really.

If we were to apply the model above to tabletop RPGs, D&D would clearly be the WoW of the bunch - it's the one that people play by default, and it's already got the word-of-mouth out there. But I'm not sure the model works for tabletop gaming. There's an extra added incentive for DDI (and whatever its successor service is) to remain subscription-based, because it helps to create a more consistent play experience; you either have DDI, or you don't, but there's not situation in which you have access to 15% of the material, or 70% of the material. It's an all-or-nothing deal.

Anyways as I said more curious and not meant to suggest 4e is a MMO or meant as a slight... I hate that I have to be so clear about not being insulting anymore, to just ask a honest curious question.

And it's good that you were so conscientious, we just have to be careful that someone else doesn't latch onto it and run with it.

 

[prosfilaes]

Also, if you are forced to "re-spec" your character 3 times per tier because you keep getting hit with the nerf bat, you probably deserved it. I've never played a character that had to be significantly altered more than twice, and I make some ridiculous stuff. I can only imagine the sort of monster you must have created.

Yuck. I'm willing to change a character at the request of DM, but getting a character repeatedly changed by outside forces is no fun at all.

 

[Dannager]

Yuck. I'm willing to change a character at the request of DM, but getting a character repeatedly changed by outside forces is no fun at all.

The changes are typically minor and do little more than bring the option in-line with other comparable options, but some people are unsatisfied with having a power that is merely okay, and instead respond by ditching the updated option and finding the next-most-powerful-thing, which is, of course, going to be next in line to receive a nerf.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Until

This is balance run amuck. Too much balance is a bad thing, and Wizards is punch drunk with the idea that to balance the game, their only option is to chop down all the trees so they don't steal any light from the grass.

Eventually all you are left with is a desert of tumbleweeds. They are killing the game with this incessant annoyance. People constantly complain about Twin Strike too. Let's make it single strike, worse than an MBA. And call Rangers a sublass of E-Sheepherders who can only wield farm implements.

I don't suppose the never-ending cycle of errata-for-their-own-sake is fun for some. I don't think it is. Our wizard never exploited ping-ponging mobs into and out of zones...why does he deserve to have the one thing he is good at, minion clearing, completely negated by their latest bone-headed zone fix?

It's a sad, sad, joke.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

This is balance run amuck. Too much balance is a bad thing, and Wizards is punch drunk with the idea that to balance the game, their only option is to chop down all the trees so they don't steal any light from the grass.

Eventually all you are left with is a desert of tumbleweeds. They are killing the game with this incessant annoyance. People constantly complain about Twin Strike too. Let's make it single strike, worse than an MBA. And call Rangers a sublass of E-Sheepherders who can only wield farm implements.

I don't suppose the never-ending cycle of errata-for-their-own-sake is fun for some. I don't think it is. Our wizard never exploited ping-ponging mobs into and out of zones...why does he deserve to have the one thing he is good at, minion clearing, completely negated by their latest bone-headed zone fix?

It's a sad, sad, joke.

That kind of balance is what a lot of people who play 4E wanted in the first place. It's why they jumped to play 4E and cursed 3x in the same breath. And that's absolutely fine. That's their audience. If they DIDNT keep up with the errata and changes for the sake of balance there'd be pitchforks and torches in front of WOTC.

You're not alone with this annoyance though. I recently checked back in with a community that I'd left who primarily were 4E players and they have the same issues as well. I dont know what to say to them or you. I'd say play with the pre-nerfed versions if youre running your own home games. But if you're playing in Encounters or whatever it's called then you just have to deal I guess

I remember people being REALLY enthused about WOTC keeping on top of the errata and stuff to make the game more consistent for Organized Play and what not.