Yeah, I haven't been able to access it for several months now. It still seems to be running, frustratingly enough, which makes it seem like it's an issue of absentee admins who just haven't really noticed.
But maybe my experience with it has been uniquely frustrated.
It's a shame. I was really hoping for there to be an active -- if quite small -- Pathfinder community here. The subreddit is... Not my cup of tea.
Did one of your spellcasters know the Gate spell? If so, what stopped the PCs from pulling the BBEG out of their lair and beating them up from the comfort of their homes?
Anti-magic field?
The BBEG has taken great efforts to hide their true name?
Private Sanctum spell?
The fact that Gate is an inter-planar spell, and not an intra-planar spell?
As the GM, one of your jobs is to present challenges for the party to overcome. That means actively countering their abilities list just as often as it means giving them a bone and letting them shine. The big moments of flexing mean a hell of a lot less when all they do is flex.
I was under the impression that the whole thing has been about Tencent wanting to license the digital product rights to D&D, not the actual game. I'm not sure why that's caused an uproar over the actual IP ownership.
Huh. I asked it to make me a level 5 Wizard for PF2e, and it spit out... python code to generate one myself???
And Tencent has a minority stake in, like, every functioning software company that's ever done an investment funding around at this point. They make it a point to diversify their holdings across basically the entire software industry at this point.
They're fairly hands-off in those endeavours, since they're doing it to protect themselves against shifts in the market.
Their in-house made stuff, though, is... Well, let's just say it's efficiently monetized.
Yeah. The Bidens are safe. The assailant is under arrest. Nobody's dog got shot.
It's obvious why this is a confusing outcome.
Me, noticing Riker: "I don't get it. Why is Abraham Lincoln here?"
Me, finally noticing Picard: "KILL IT WITH FIRE!"
They 100% think of it as a lever that makes expenses disappear. They're often just a little bit surprised when it results in labour disappearing along side the expenses, though.
Importantly, though, this kind of dehumanizing language is purposeful, and it's extremely harmful. It makes it easier for management to treat people's livelihoods and lives as disposable.
Keep in mind that "human resources" (sometimes called "human capital" at some especially icky places) is also one of these dehumanizing terms. Treating people as resources that are available to use or process is really gross, and that's literally the name of the department.
And yet it still has a bunch of ads for PC+ littered throughout it. Despite being grandfathered in, I abandoned it earlier this year for Podcast Republic, which hasn't spammed me or locked me out of any features I've tried to play with despite not having paid them anything.
I just came across this video, which, while still focused on GMs, I think has some very good seeds for players. It's all about dramatic combat, and there's a lot that players can do to initiate dramatic scenes in game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeGjsBcR3rE
Honestly, I'd take a woody window to replace the clear glass overlooking the scenic parking lot outside literally any of the apartments I've ever lived in.
My guess, based off of absolutely nothing, is that they expected stronger growth out of the gate, given the rate at which r/Pathfinder2e had been growing, and hoped to see that community choose the Fediverse. But the mods there crated their own forum that drew very little traffic in its own right, a bunch of people shifted to the discord, and then everyone quickly filtered back to the subreddit when it became clear that there mods had no will to actually do anything beyond the symbolic.
So, they lost interest.
But that's naked supposition and conjecture.