Quote from: RandyB;1028223Paizo finally bowed to the inevitable - you can only print splatbooks for so long.

Could be worse.
Could be Palladium.

jg

Quote from: KingCheops;1028372I actually found those to be a pretty good deal.  They came with the specialty dice, maps, and tokens for PCs/NPCs/vehicles.

  I think you're thinking of the Starter Sets; those are distinct from the Beta paperbacks that went on sale about a year or so before each game's 'formal' hardcover release.

Quote from: Batman;1028366I feel it's a problem specific to 3E and the OGL/SRD that Pathfinder is based off of. I felt pretty damn heroic in 4th Edition and in the one 5th Edition campaign I played a Fighter in (and Martials in general).  I don't get what the penalty is supposed to represent? Or why they penalize moving more than 5 feet? OR why you need 3 different feats and 4th+ level just to move forward, make an attack, then step away while the robed guy behind you ports in a flaming elemental with the same amount of effort?

The issue I had with the 4e Fighter was that they effectively broke the class in two, one became an ambulatory roadblock (and a damn good one, I admit), and the other was misnamed as a Warlord, which everyone assumed that they were combat god as well as a commander of vast forces from the word go. You know the stuff that the 2e and previous editions gave the Fighter at level 10+.  Not that a Warlord was pretty much a Bard/Cheerleader who shouted healing at you,k which is what the class was.

Quote from: estar;1028367Have fun with your delusions. The problem was D&D 4th edition was its own RPG and shared little with its predecessors other than the same. In contrast Paizo embraced 3.X fully and dominated the market. The proper fix was to address the shortcoming of 3.X by using the mechanics that most consider to be part of D&D. Something D&D 5e was able to do quite well. And as it turns out the market was in the mood for the type of fix 5e represented.

Here's the thing, it doesn't matter how good or bad 4e turned out to be.  It was dead on arrival because of Pathfinder.  The fact that there was an option to stay with the familiar split the fanbase harder than the usual 50% split.  If 4e was actually good, or just wanted, it might have pulled back some more than it did.  I didn't.  But even if it did, it wouldn't have done well enough to save 4e.

Gamers, more than any other humans, in my experience hate change with an unmatched passion.  And Pathfinder allowed them to resist with all their might.  And so they did.  Again, the fact that 4e was a better board game than an RPG doesn't change that fact.  4e was going to fail.  Foregone conclusion.  End of Line.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028392Here's the thing, it doesn't matter how good or bad 4e turned out to be.  It was dead on arrival because of Pathfinder.  The fact that there was an option to stay with the familiar split the fanbase harder than the usual 50% split.  If 4e was actually good, or just wanted, it might have pulled back some more than it did.  I didn't.  But even if it did, it wouldn't have done well enough to save 4e.

That wasn't the timeline. D&D 4th edition was announced in August of 2007 released in July of 2008. Pathfinder was announced in March of 2008 they were developing Pathfinder, and it as released a year later. I was involved in writing Judges Guild material for Necromancer Games and Goodman Games at the time. With the August 2007 announcement every 3.5 project was dead in the water. Everybody was wondering what the 3PP situation was going to be and Wizards wasn't talking. Nobody knew anything throughout the fall and winter which made planning extremely difficult. By the beginning of 2008, many people including Paizo was saying fuck it and started doing other things. Mongoose had Traveler and Runequest to focus on. Green Ronin had Mutants and Masterminds and so on. Paizo started to put together the plan for Pathfinder and announced it in March of 2008.

While publicly playtested it took over a year before the books were released and along the SRD. Even then D&D 4e was #1 with organized play at the stores and conventions humming along. It was not until 2011 that Pathfinder overtook D&D 4th edition.

The problems with D&D 4th edition were well known prior to the release of Pathfinder. Combat took way longer, it didn't share much with past editions so older adventures didn't work well. The GSL was an inferior license and so forth and so on. While Paizo took advantage of the situation, the blame and cause for what happens rests solely at the feet of the Wizards team at the time. Just as 5th edition success is a result of the Wizards team today.

4e was killed by dumbass decisions by Wizards.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028392And Pathfinder allowed them to resist with all their might.  And so they did.  

You should be thanking them for that. Because without a competing rival with a D&D game the sales decline of 4e would have shrunk the hobby and industry. And dragged out over a longer period of time. We were lucky in that Paizo had a presence in all the same sales channel as Wizards due to their prior publication of Dragon and other 3.X support material. But with Paizo, Wizards got hit hard and more importantly fast compared to how these things normally go. So the "just try one more thing" syndrome was compressed into one cycle, Essential, and when that didn't work 4e was shot, dumped and the work on 5e began.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028392...
Gamers, more than any other humans, in my experience hate change with an unmatched passion.  ...

I don't know, "gamers" IME are just as often "cult of the new". When it comes to systems that involve a lot of investment (time and money) then yes a lot of people are likely to stick with a "good enough" game that they already know and or own but it is rare for an old edition to continue to thrive while the new one fails, which should be quite common if the base just hates change.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028357There was no chance involved.  The OGL let them know in advance that all they had to do was copy WoTC's previous work, and they had a built in audience to effectively steal.  And because of the OGL, 4e was dead before it was even born.

Not really. Fans whould not have jumped ship to Pazio if WOTC hadnt rolled out 4e, or if 4e hadnt been effectively incompatible. Too many potential customers are sick and tired of the edition treadmill. The OGL opened the door though for someone to carry the flag when WOTC inevitably hosed themselves with rocket fuel then lit the match. They went out of their way to ensure 4e failed. Marketing especially.

So 4e wasnt dead before it started unless WOTC screwed up. They did and Hasbro really tightened their leash after that and other screwups around that time.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028358Ever since 3e, D&D is the only form of fantasy entertainment that actively tries to neuter the most common archetype of hero in it.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1028359This is sad, but true.

Then 5e fixed that. Fighters can and usually do deal out the most damage of any class. With the rogue coming up second IF they can team up with someone else. The rest fall way back dur to limitations or being situational.

Quote from: Omega;1028397Not really. Fans whould not have jumped ship to Pazio if WOTC hadnt rolled out 4e, or if 4e hadnt been effectively incompatible. Too many potential customers are sick and tired of the edition treadmill. The OGL opened the door though for someone to carry the flag when WOTC inevitably hosed themselves with rocket fuel then lit the match. They went out of their way to ensure 4e failed. Marketing especially.

So 4e wasnt dead before it started unless WOTC screwed up. They did and Hasbro really tightened their leash after that and other screwups around that time.

Also note that according to Ryan Dancey one of the points of putting out the d20 SRD under the Open Game License was

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QuoteI also had the goal that the release of the SRD would ensure that D&D in a format that I felt was true to its legacy could never be removed from the market by capricious decisions by its owners. I know just how close that came to happening. In 1997, TSR had pledged most of the copyright interests in D&D as collateral for loans it could not repay, and had Wizards of the Coast not rescued it I'm certain that it would have all gone into a lenghty bankruptcy struggle with a very real chance that D&D couldn't be published until the suits, appeals, countersuits, etc. had all been settled (i.e. maybe never). The OGL enabled that as a positive side effect.

Hobbyists forget how close we came to losing D&D during the collapse of TSR. In regards to Pathfinder versus D&D 4th edition, the OGL operated as intended. Ultimately forced a course correction on Wizards that resulted in 5th edition.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028392Here's the thing, it doesn't matter how good or bad 4e turned out to be.  It was dead on arrival because of Pathfinder.  The fact that there was an option to stay with the familiar split the fanbase harder than the usual 50% split.  If 4e was actually good, or just wanted, it might have pulled back some more than it did.  I didn't.  But even if it did, it wouldn't have done well enough to save 4e.

Gamers, more than any other humans, in my experience hate change with an unmatched passion.  And Pathfinder allowed them to resist with all their might.  And so they did.  Again, the fact that 4e was a better board game than an RPG doesn't change that fact.  4e was going to fail.  Foregone conclusion.  End of Line.

Customers have a lot of options. In entertainment, your #1 competitor isn't somebody else's product. It's disinterest. If there was no Pathfinder, a lot of people probably would have just quit playing D&D, or stuck to their old books.

Because 4th ed was just awful.

What? People are buying Starfinder, that was based on Pathfinder 2.0? Oh, the humanity.

Just by the 2nd ed Stars without Number and use the appendix that details using magic in a Sci-Fi Fantasy campaign. If you need the fluff, just get Strange Stars. It's like ten dollars for the print version and less than half that for the PDF right now.

Makes me wonder if someone is going to clone Pathfinder 1e now.

Quote from: RunningLaser;1028436Makes me wonder if someone is going to clone Pathfinder 1e now.

Why bother? Just re-clone 3.5.

Quote from: RunningLaser;1028436Makes me wonder if someone is going to clone Pathfinder 1e now.

The Magic 8-ball is cloudy, check again when the playtest is released.

If it is a change like the difference between 5e and 3.5e, then I expect there will be some folks that will continue to write support for Pathfinder 1e maybe even a clone.

Part of what made it possible for Paizo to have the impact they did was their corporate setup. For example their experience with full color offset printing, they had an established presence in various distribution channels, etc. Most importantly all of this was up and running with Dragon magazine and Adventure Path before things went down with 4e.

Is there anybody in a equivalent position today?