Tobold's Blog
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
 
Barrier to Entry Games

For Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, I have the "Devoured by Darkness" achievement, which you get if you finish the tutorial. Only 59% of players have that. I also have the "Burning City" achievement, which you get at the end of Act I, and only 40% of players have that. In other words, of all the people who actually launched Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (Steam doesn't count owners, but players for achievements), 40% didn't make it through the tutorial, and 60% didn't make it through the first chapter out of six. The game has a high barrier to entry in the form of the very complex Pathfinder ruleset, and that drives people who try it away.

But as JFK once said, we don't play highly complex games because they are easy, but because they are hard. Which is why I for example increased the difficulty level of my Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous run after overcoming that barrier to entry. Creating one character in Pathfinder is hard, creating a whole group of 6 that works well together is extremely complex. I am now at the end of Act II, which is 15 hours of battle in the Siege of Drezen, and there is joy in finding that you built a group that is able to handle the various different combat situations that arise in that huge battle sequence.

As a consequence I ended up buying all the DLC content for both Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. That adds other, smaller campaigns to those games, and things like a rogue-lite endless dungeon crawl mode. In short, more content to play without having to replay the same main campaign again.

I was especially interested in the modes which let me actually create my whole party from scratch. I do understand why with the given barrier to entry to just creating one single character and then adding companions to the group, the developers didn't want to force players to create six characters. But once you understand the Pathfinder system better, there is interest in exactly that from me. And the main campaigns are very much linked to the companions, so playing it without companions and using self-created mercenaries instead would actually make some story lines go very weird, like the Lost Chapel sequence.

So I am finding a lot of depth and fun behind that barrier to entry. I am happy the two games, Kingmaker and Wrath, are implementing the full rules for maximum depth. But I do see how a lot of players don't make it over this barrier to entry and to the fun point, which is kind of a shame.

- posted by Tobold @ 9:43 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
A lot of the value of the companions is the storyline they bring. Not just forcing the players to make less characters. I would even say some of the storylines are more surprising/interesting than the main story of the 2 pathfinder games.
# posted by Blogger Caldazar : 22/7/26 13:08
 
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