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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JThursby" data-source="post: 8498030" data-attributes="member: 7025596">I've thought about this for a while, and I've come up with a few reasons why discussion around PF2e on this forum and a few others is low:The system is great, the world is awesome, the marketing is terrible:Paizo's designers have made a truly great product in the TTRPG space, I fully believe that.  Paizo has unfortunately done an awful job marketing their stellar product to the public.  Pathfinder 1e directly compared itself to D&D 3.5 as it's functional replacement as well as supporting a more dark and subversive tone in the published story material.  Now it's been over a decade since 3.5, D&D is well into the second replacement to that edition.  Paizo hasn't adequately answered the question of what audience is in the position to benefit from PF2e the most.  Is it for players of 1e that want less bloat?  Is it for players of 5e that want more crunch?  It certainly isn't for the dark storytelling because the setting has gotten noticeably lighter in tone.  The elevator pitch is very weak as there isn't a concrete one sentence mission statement that Paizo has focused on as their sales pitch to the public.  This is frustrating because there are many they could have chosen from to compare it to either game, i.e. a better item system with crafting, martial characters that matter, or a more fleshed out and realized setting.  Instead the marketing material is generic fantasy roleplay stuff, and slogans like "unleash your hero" don't communicate anything about what makes this game worth buying and playing over 1e or 5e.  If Paizo wants their game to take off they need to pivot their marketing to something that highlights the games' actual strengths.  They should also consider more modern approaches to marketing, such as utilizing influencers like independent content creators more fully.Controversy cows creativity:This affects both Paizo itself and fan discussion of the game.  The controversies that Paizo has either courted or had inflicted upon it recently doesn't need to be recounted, but how the new climate of social media affects discussion of the game is worth noting.  To be blunt, there are an increasingly large number of topics I don't feel comfortable engaging with fully anymore on lots of boards, including this one.  As an example, I had an idea for a Gray Corsair campaign that would revolve around disrupting the slave trade of the Inner Sea a while back, but now I feel it would be co-opted by bad actors looking to score internet points, or get me banned by a mod for bringing up a taboo topic.  A lot of what makes Golarion interesting is the inspiration it pulls from Earth's history and the kind of conflicts it creates, but unfortunately history is messy and nuanced, which makes it a poor choice for discussion when all nuance gets stripped away from conversations by rabid internet tribes.Adventure Paths are outdated:What was once the core product of Paizo is now an outdated relic.  The pandemic has proven that more and more players are moving to virtual tabletops.  Pathfinder 2e is very lucky to have a fantastic fan implementation of it's ruleset into Foundry, but that isn't for effort on Paizos part.  Paizo is still interested in being a traditional publishing company, as if any of their customers are buying their products from local game stores.  The player base is almost entirely online, and Paizo should be pivoting toward catering to where their audience actually plays.  Instead they release what should be single-purchase adventures as multiple installment adventure paths.  Adventure Paths were great when the main movers of your product were game stores with highly active tabletop scenes that served as hubs of discussion for newest stuff.  Now the internet is your main customer, and your players are all going to discord and reddit and playing on Foundry VTT.  Make the adventure content in a way that enables discussion better across the internet and caters to your existing customer base, which frankly you could do by just combining adventure paths into larger campaigns.Few good fan shows:This is how new fans get made and existing fans participate when they can't play in a game.  I have tried desperately to find a good live play or parody show of Pathfinder 2e.  None have been at all palletable.  The best Pathfinder fan content I can find on Youtube is Tower of Tomes which does in-universe lore explorations of factions and locations.  I'd love for a more active fan scene around the game/lore, but barring that I'd settle for Paizo just paying noteworthy live play groups like Critical Role or Adventure Zone to do some one shots or mini series in their game setting.</blockquote>

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