Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[Aldarc]

I still don't understand why you haven't just made your dream heartbreaker project for 5e rather than hoping that Paizo or EN Publishing did the work for you. I think that you could do a good job and undoubtedly have a better vision for what you want out of an advanced 5e.

 

[CapnZapp]

I still don't understand why you haven't just made your dream heartbreaker project for 5e rather than hoping that Paizo or EN Publishing did the work for you. I think that you could do a good job and undoubtedly have a better vision for what you want out of an advanced 5e.

No, the fact I can theoretically do it myself does not mean I'm not allowed to have opinions on the work of others.

I'm writing these posts as free advice. I'm hoping Level Up heeds it, since "othernessization" is what has sunk so very many projects with similar goals to Level Up. I'm drawing attention to what I know to be very easy to forget about otherwise.

For instance, surveys. I'm positive that if the project listens too much to feedback it will immediately bloom out to become something much more than what was communicated as its original goals. That's just human enthusiasm for you. But something more is also something else, and therein lies the danger.

Playtest feedback is nearly never answered by people who care about the issue I've drawn your attention to. It falls upon the dev team to remember their original goals and weed out lots of really great ideas that just have no place in a book that isn't entirely its own thing.

 

[dave2008]

No, the fact I can theoretically do it myself does not mean I'm not allowed to have opinions on the work of others.

I'm writing these posts as free advice. I'm hoping Level Up heeds it, since "othernessization" is what has sunk so very many projects with similar goals to Level Up. I'm drawing attention to what I know to be very easy to forget about otherwise.

For instance, surveys. I'm positive that if the project listens too much to feedback it will immediately bloom out to become something much more than what was communicated as its original goals. That's just human enthusiasm for you. But something more is also something else, and therein lies the danger.

Playtest feedback is nearly never answered by people who care about the issue I've drawn your attention to. It falls upon the dev team to remember their original goals and weed out lots of really great ideas that just have no place in a book that isn't entirely its own thing.

Capp, I assume you are giving this advice in the LevelUp forum, but this is the Pathfinder forum on a thread about PF2e sales rank. I wasn't following how levelUp came into the conversation and just wanted to make sure you knew where you're posting

 

[Aldarc]

No, the fact I can theoretically do it myself does not mean I'm not allowed to have opinions on the work of others.

I'm not saying that you aren't allowed to have opinions on the work of others when I ask you why you haven't made your dream vision of 5e. I'm genuinely just curious why you haven't since you seem to have a clear vision for what sort of thing you want.

 

[Porridge]

The APG is out, and PF2E is much lower than it was when this prediction was made.

Yeah, looking at Amazon rankings over time, the PF2 CRB rank has noticeably slumped starting in August, while the 5e PHB sales have remained steady. (Source: Amazon Sales Estimator, plugging in ASIN: 1640781684)

Interesting.

One possibility is that after holding more or less steady (relative to 5e) for over a year, there's suddenly been a sharp drop off in interest starting in August. That's possible, though a little surprising - you'd expect a drop off in interest in a product to be more gradual.

Looking at the data more carefully, another possibility presents itself. Namely, the lowest FBA price for the PF2 CRB (using the tool above, the bright red line) has been $38.99 for almost a year (from Nov 2019 to Aug 6th 2020), and then it jumped up to $53.99 -- an almost 40% price increase -- at the start of August, and has stayed there. Since the timing of this increase coincides perfectly with PF2's slump in Amazon rankings, I'm inclined to think this is a more plausible explanation.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yeah, looking at Amazon rankings over time, the PF2 CRB rank has noticeably slumped starting in August, while the 5e PHB sales have remained steady. (Source: Amazon Sales Estimator, plugging in ASIN: 1640781684)

Interesting.

One possibility is that after holding more or less steady (relative to 5e) for over a year, there's suddenly been a sharp drop off in interest starting in August. That's possible, though a little surprising - you'd expect a drop off in interest in a product to be more gradual.

Looking at the data more carefully, another possibility presents itself. Namely, the lowest FBA price for the PF2 CRB (using the tool above, the bright red line) has been $38.99 for almost a year (from Nov 2019 to Aug 6th 2020), and then it jumped up to $53.99 -- an almost 40% price increase -- at the start of August, and has stayed there. Since the timing of this increase coincides perfectly with PF2's slump in Amazon rankings, I'm inclined to think this is a more plausible explanation.

Even more likely, the humble bundle deal that sold people a bunch of pdfs at a discount, with a copy of the physical Core Rulebook at the top tier, cheaper than it normally is, led to a significant portion of the population that was buying gradually jumping on the deal to buy all at once.

This naturally led to a depression in the Amazon Sales Ranking because far fewer people were buying the book from Amazon in that time, or shortly after.

We know it was very successful, it cleaned them out of their current printing and led to folks having to wait for a new printing to get their book.

 

[ronaldsf]

I only discovered this online tool recently, but it looks like the Subreddit for Pathfinder 2e has been steadily growing, with an uptick of interest since the APG's release: Subreddit Stats - statistics for every subreddit

 

[dave2008]

I only discovered this online tool recently, but it looks like the Subreddit for Pathfinder 2e has been steadily growing, with an uptick of interest since the APG's release: Subreddit Stats - statistics for every subreddit

Very cool, thank you for sharing. How do you tell the activity is going up? I've never been to this subreddit (or the 5e one), but I do check out the UA one a lot.

For those who are interested, this is what you get at the link:
PF2e:

And this the general Pathfinder subreddit stats:

For comparison, here is the 5e & Unearthed Arcana subreddits too:

Spoiler

5e

Unearthed Arcana (5e also -I go to this one a lot)

 

[ronaldsf]

Very cool, thank you for sharing. How do you tell the activity is going up? I've never been to this subreddit (or the 5e one), but I do check out the UA one a lot.

For those who are interested, this is what you get at the link:

[/spoiler]

Strange... do you not see graphs? This is what I see:

 

[dave2008]

Strange... do you not see graphs? This is what I see:
View attachment 126558

It's there, not sure what I did before (maybe I just didn't scroll down!

Interesting, the graph is little misleading as it goes back to 2018 and PF2e wasn't released until August 2019 was it? Anyway. good to see the growth!

For comparison, the general PF subreddit I posted before is growing too, but not as fast as the PF2 subreddit:

Here are the graphs of the 2 D&D subreddits I posted as well:

Spoiler

5e

5e UA