D&D 4E What was Paizo thinking? 3.75 the 4E clone?

[Shadewyn]

So, you're worried about something that isn't going to happen until August 2009...

Which is even worse ...

Way for Paizo to completely miss the 4E rush AND fail to be timely at delivering their 3.75 product.

Paizo seems to be hoping to recapture their 3.X days where they entered the market late when the adventure path from WotC was over and could step up as a high quality publisher. Most of the 3rd party stuff for 3.X early on was horrible in graphics, balance, gameplay, quality ...

Paizo made a name by showign that quality products had a market as a 3rd party.

Guess what there are more folks than Paizo that can do that now. Can they step back into the market late 2009 if their experiment failed? By then a Green Ronin, or Necromancer, or other names will have that market ... remeber in the 3.X days none of the 3rd party publishers were good enough to really be a name breand early on so you could enter the market late.

What can we say at Gencon 2009 when they debut PF?

Welcome to last year when it would have been relevant?

 

[Minicol]

As a 3.5 fan and a Paizo fan, I must disagree in the strongest terms. Paizo just gave my 3.5 game a shot in the arm. I now have some very cool options: I can play their 3.5 adventures for the time being; I can preview their Pathfinder RPG in progress and borrow ideas I like for my 3.5 game; and best of all, come 2009 I will have the choice between sticking with 3.5 mostly as written but having a source of very compatible adventure and supplement material, or going to their 3.75 game and being able to use their materals and my old 3.5 adventures & supplements, or brewing up my own in-between version with pieces of 3.5 and their game. Those are very appealing options to me, and I can make them at leisure. I probably wouldn't have switched to 4E in any case, but now ... as I said early on ... there really has never been a better time not to switch editions. The type of D&D I like will live on!

What he said, I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

Let me try and make my point more clear ...

NETWORK EXTERNALITIES (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ... foir the non economics majors and MBAs out there)

We had a market that was 3.5 and a new market of 4E. Now we have a market of 3.5 (some folks may not want to go to the Paizo route and also not buy 4E), we now have the 3.75 of Paizo, and 4E.

D&D is not a stand alone game. It never has nor ever will be ... you need OTHER people to play with. If you invest time an resources into a game that has 3 players scattered around the world then you have a failure of an RPG even if it is the most perfect ruleset ever.

The bulk of the market for D&D is going to 4E. The remainder of that market just got more fragmented today with Paizos move. If you wander over to the boards for "gamers wanted" today you can already see the issues folks have locating new gamers. Now the given market for D&D-esque gamers will be fragmented into several pieces.

It was a bonehead move.

Seeking to specialize in a dwinding market for a network externality based product is business failure. Anyone bored with the intrawebs and a business background can cite you dozens of companies tat blindly went down that path. Not sayign they will dissapear overnight but they will firmly cement there role and garage level web publishing.

If you want to stall to get time to grasp 4E rules and such but still sell product then you release a "Pathfinder ~ the History of the world SOurcebook" as your first product and completely ignore rules in favor of setting. 3 months later after the launch of 4E you have an idea how to build your crunch products.

Instead Paizo leaves behind 3.5 and make no mistake those new rules are both a powercreep and flavor tie in to their new products that overshadows any previous 3.5X material.

I've been saying this all along and totally agree with you. Are we the only two members on this board that have a degree in economics and management that can see this and know the science. We aren't puling this out of where the sun doesn't shine, it is science and it's fact. If I had the numbers, I would crunch it and do the curve. I doubt I will ever see the numbers. I don't need the numbers here, it's slapping me in the face and should do the same to you.

 

[Filcher]

They're currently the only ones committed to producing new 3.5 products. There is no one to compete against.

There is no one else producing 3.5 material.

Tangential to the discussion, but this is not true. Code Monkey just announced new Blackmoor titles that will be 3.5.

 

[Ourph]

They're currently the only ones committed to producing new 3.5 products. There is no one to compete against.

No, they're committed to producing new 3.75 products, which means they are competing against every other alternate D&D-clone out there. If they stick with the 3.5 RAW, THEN they would be the only one committed to producing new 3.5 products, and that would be a big, big deal.

There is no reason that Pathfinder modules should be using the new PF PC classes for NPCs.

Assuming I concede the point to you that PathfinderRPG PCs are egregiously overpowered, and also that Paizo then uses those PC classes for NPCs appearing in their modules, then I'll further concede the point that Paizo has made a mistake with regards to compatibility.

I think we're actually in agreement, since the highlighted portion is actually exactly what I'm saying.

 

[Rauol_Duke]

Way for Paizo to completely miss the 4E rush AND fail to be timely at delivering their 3.75 product.

How can anyone (other than WotC) not miss the "4E rush" with no GSL?

Guess what there are more folks than Paizo that can do that now. Can they step back into the market late 2009 if their experiment failed? By then a Green Ronin, or Necromancer, or other names will have that market ...

Paizo is the publisher for Necromancer, so they will have 4E products out. They have also not ruled out producing their own 4E products down the line (depending on the GSL), but it will not be in Pathfinder.

 

[Shadewyn]

I've been saying this all along and totally agree with you. Are we the only two members on this board that have a degree in economics and management that can see this and know the science. We aren't puling this out of where the sun doesn't shine, it is science and it's fact. If I had the numbers, I would crunch it and do the curve. I doubt I will ever see the numbers. I don't need the numbers here, it's slapping me in the face and should do the same to you.

Let me just say ... ROLL ON YE BEARS ... and if you were from any other university economics area aside from Berkeley then I suppose we can forgive your trangressions as you at least picked the right major.

MBA stuff covers this as well, but I honestly think aspects of economics have a HUGE impact on gaming in general.

Specifically the micro econimcs sub specialty of Game Theory.

If you cant talk about Prisoners Dilema, Chicken, Tragedy of the Commons, etc then you probably should not be doing modern multiplayer game design. So many games release every year with massive glaring violations of classic economic game theory and its sad to watch them all struggle to try and reinvent the wheel from scratch (especially in the MMO market where you can almost cut and paste form the last hundred years of game theory research and have it applicable to modern online game failures)

 

[trancejeremy]

Tangential to the discussion, but this is not true. Code Monkey just announced new Blackmoor titles that will be 3.5.

Code Monkey isn't exactly a big (or even small) publisher, though. The only Blackmoor products they've actually put out are PDFs of old stuff that was written long ago, but never released through Zeitgeist.

And as near as I can tell, future releases (that have yet to be written) will be 4e.

 

[Filcher]

Code Monkey isn't exactly a big (or even small) publisher, though. The only Blackmoor products they've actually put out are PDFs of old stuff that was written long ago, but never released through Zeitgeist.

And as near as I can tell, future releases (that have yet to be written) will be 4e.

You probably have a better read on it than I do (I don't follow Code Monkey at all) but it looks like their City of the Gods is going into editing as 3.5.

http://www.codemonkeypublishing.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=920

Claims an update is due this weekend. Maybe a preview? *shrug*

 

[Minicol]

I've been saying this all along and totally agree with you. Are we the only two members on this board that have a degree in economics and management that can see this and know the science. We aren't puling this out of where the sun doesn't shine, it is science and it's fact. If I had the numbers, I would crunch it and do the curve. I doubt I will ever see the numbers. I don't need the numbers here, it's slapping me in the face and should do the same to you.

Actually, I have one, and I completely disagree with you.

But since I have rarely seen two experts on any business subject ever agree on anything so the analogy is quite worthless anyways.

Ain't this America ? The land of ballsy capitalists who create their own destiny by doing the unexpected and providing the market with what it truly wants, rather than just following the dead trends to their inevitable bitter ends ?

What would be the American economy today if some courageous people had not shaken the establishment of their time ?

After all, without the Microsoft of some 20 years ago, we might be doing this chat on a IBM mainframe now.

I am going Paizo and not looking back.