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Moinkmaster posted:I called out the fact Paizo is eating their lunch and that instead of doing something good and making their own dinner, WotC would sooner make a poor retroclone in tyool 2014 and call the crumbs they are chasing good enough As has been said already 900 times, the money Paizo makes is a rounding error on the ledgers of the accounting department for MtG so WotC doesn't care. D&D exists to retain the IP.
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Jan 28, 2015 21:17
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Lightning Lord posted:As has been said already 900 times, the money Paizo makes is a rounding error on the ledgers of the accounting department for MtG so WotC doesn't care. D&D exists to retain the IP. If it were just "produce product to retain IP" they wouldn't have bothered to court Pathfondlers with 5e's proximity to 3.x
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Jan 28, 2015 22:28
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homullus posted:If it were just "produce product to retain IP" they wouldn't have bothered to court Pathfondlers with 5e's proximity to 3.x First off don't use that dumb Gaming Den name, come on man. Secondly you're assuming a much bigger grasp of control for marketing to have over D&D then I think exists. I think what was far more likely was that Mearls was given mostly free reign to make his own edition because nobody else in WotC even knows what D&D is. 5e wasn't some slick and cunning market-built game to attract large groups of fans with a big flowchartted plan. It was Mearls making the D&D he wants to make with mostly the people he wanted to make it with.
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Jan 28, 2015 23:00
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I have a question about designing combat encounters in 5e. For a 6 person party, what do you feel is a good makeup for the monster team? I was thinking of usually having about 5 monsters, with 1 or 2 tougher ones and the remainder weaker, going on different initiatives. I was wondering what other people feel is the sweet spot for encounter length/action economy balancing. I know there are a lot of head scratching decisions with 5e design, but one of the more perplexing ones for me is how they recommend reducing xp awarded per monster as soon as there are 3 or more of them...
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Jan 28, 2015 23:50
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ProfessorCirno posted:
If this were true, why bother with all the varying playtesting packets and feedback that they ignored anyway? Why bother making a version less regressive than the one we have now? "Mike Mearls' own edition" of D&D was the early playtest stuff, if anything. If you are truly just trying to keep your IP, you spend a little money on marketing while the small, inexpensive team develops one version of the game behind closed doors. You release the game and let third-party people worry about extending its shelf-life. I think WotC is clearly less invested in this version of D&D, but it was definitely not the cheapest, minimum-level effort required to keep the IP.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:48
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homullus posted:If this were true, why bother with all the varying playtesting packets and feedback that they ignored anyway? Why bother making a version less regressive than the one we have now? "Mike Mearls' own edition" of D&D was the early playtest stuff, if anything. If you are truly just trying to keep your IP, you spend a little money on marketing while the small, inexpensive team develops one version of the game behind closed doors. You release the game and let third-party people worry about extending its shelf-life. I think WotC is clearly less invested in this version of D&D, but it was definitely not the cheapest, minimum-level effort required to keep the IP. That... sounds exactly like what they're doing. The team is tiny, in terms of relative budget to even the rest of Wizards they're probably spending peanuts, and they're already having third parties write adventures and (from the sounds of Elemental Evil) splat content.
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Jan 29, 2015 00:57
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homullus posted:If this were true, why bother with all the varying playtesting packets and feedback that they ignored anyway? Why bother making a version less regressive than the one we have now? "Mike Mearls' own edition" of D&D was the early playtest stuff, if anything. If you are truly just trying to keep your IP, you spend a little money on marketing while the small, inexpensive team develops one version of the game behind closed doors. You release the game and let third-party people worry about extending its shelf-life. I think WotC is clearly less invested in this version of D&D, but it was definitely not the cheapest, minimum-level effort required to keep the IP. When the playtest started, the design team was more than just Mike Mearls sitting alone in a box. The team shed designers over the playtest period; most visibly Monte Cook up and walking away.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:01
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Tendales posted:When the playtest started, the design team was more than just Mike Mearls sitting alone in a box. The team shed designers over the playtest period; most visibly Monte Cook up and walking away. It looks like he dodged a bullet there too.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:21
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homullus posted:If this were true, why bother with all the varying playtesting packets and feedback that they ignored anyway? This was probably the most cargo-cultish aspect of Next's design process. Pathfinder playtested and got feedback! FFG playtests and collects feedback! Successful games playtest and collect feedback! So Next will too. But that's where they stopped. They didn't bother with the behind-the-scenes things that successful games actually do with the feedback. They know to ask questions, but not what to ask for useful data. So they ask "What feels like D&D? How much should gnomes be true core rules (1-5)? What color book spine makes you feel most like you're back in Mom's basement?" There's Mearls, airforce uniform painted on his bare chest, waiting on the beach for a supply drop of well-developed game that isn't coming.
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Jan 29, 2015 01:58
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ProfessorCirno posted:Secondly you're assuming a much bigger grasp of control for marketing to have over D&D then I think exists. I think what was far more likely was that Mearls was given mostly free reign to make his own edition because nobody else in WotC even knows what D&D is.  That has to be way overstating it. D&D is the most famous TTRPG, as it has been (more or less) continuously since it launched the medium in the 70s. WotC was founded to publish RPGs, it was named after a faction from an RPG game, MTG's setting was explicitly inspired by RPGs, and WotC became a direct competitor with TSR until they bought it out. Not even a company as dysfunctional as them could have an institutional memory that bad.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:11
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moths posted:This was probably the most cargo-cultish aspect of Next's design process. Pathfinder playtested and got feedback! FFG playtests and collects feedback! Successful games playtest and collect feedback! So Next will too. Am I very dissatisfied with Fighter feature "Second Wind" because it reminds me of 4E and disassociated mechanics, or because it isn't very effective? I guess it's up to the DM!
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Jan 29, 2015 02:20
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Fuschia tude posted:
First, WotC is owned by Hasbro, a company that is mainly interested in results, and D&D doesn't have them. Second, you say all this stuff like setting D&D up in a closet and ignoring them would somehow be damaging to the organization, which seems like an odd opinion to have. TTRPGs are a business that literally nobody gives a poo poo about, they're fractional compared to basically everything except other books and even within the realm of books they produce one worthwhile product every 5 years. D&D is the only TTRPG that earns anything and it does it no matter what you do.
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Jan 29, 2015 02:41
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The thing you have to understand about WotC: Say they've got Pat working for them. Pat is a great game designer. So now WotC has to decide which project to put this great designer on. They could put Pat on M:tG, where they can contribute to an everlasting juggernaut of profit, or they could put Pat on D&D, which even if it becomes the most successful rpg on the market will not even be a blip on the company ledgers. Of course they're going to put Pat on Magic. It's financially irresponsible of WotC/Hasbro to put anyone talented anywhere near D&D. The exception is the art team; there's plenty of crossover value there. And hey, D&D 5 has pretty great art design.
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Jan 29, 2015 04:02
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moths posted:This was probably the most cargo-cultish aspect of Next's design process. Pathfinder playtested and got feedback! FFG playtests and collects feedback! Successful games playtest and collect feedback! So Next will too. The most part of those surveys was the one where they asked "Which of these 95 spells feel like D&D to you? Page 1/5."And now they are doing it again with every single published feat.
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Jan 29, 2015 04:51
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I heard from a source that there a bunch of WOTC layoffs today. Anybody else able to confirm this?
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Jan 29, 2015 04:54
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They usually dump employees in December, but it's entirely possible they saved the annual canning until after the holidays. I don't see anyone confirming this though.
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Jan 29, 2015 05:01
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Who's left to fire?
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Jan 29, 2015 05:05
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Chris Sims has gotten the axe (he's got "I need a job, willing to relocate" up on his Twitter). ENWorld is saying that an editor named Jennifer Clarke Wilkes has also been laid off. At least they did let 'em stay past Christmas.
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Jan 29, 2015 05:35
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Chris Sims was also an editor, so I see D&D is making the Catalyst gambit! So that's two employees gone (in a team that's less then half the size of Paizo) and a full splat cancelled. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jan 29, 2015 |
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Jan 29, 2015 05:40
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Ouch. I guess 5E sales are undershooting even the most conservative expectations. Maybe they need to bring on some higher-profile misogynists for the next big supplement? Anybody have Mike Krahulik's phone number?
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Jan 29, 2015 05:50
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How big is/was the D&D team?
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Jan 29, 2015 05:55
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FMguru posted:Ouch. I guess 5E sales are undershooting even the most conservative expectations.  I bet dickwolves would be resistant to non-magical weapons too
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Jan 29, 2015 05:55
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Dick Burglar posted:How big is/was the D&D team? D&D team was I think 15, with only half working on the actual games. Now 13. Lisa Stevens has said that Pathfinder is 50 full time employees; work on the actual Pathfinder game is I believe at 20 people.
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Jan 29, 2015 05:58
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FMguru posted:Ouch. I guess 5E sales are undershooting even the most conservative expectations. They aren't even targeting all the terrible nerds with this edition, they very specifically made the game for the 12-years old Mike Mearls demographic.
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Jan 29, 2015 12:27
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Awesome. "We're going to actively discourage people who have started playing the game in the last 7 years (4E players) from buying this edition - hey why are our sales so lovely?"
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Jan 29, 2015 13:10
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Tendales posted:The thing you have to understand about WotC: Say they've got Pat working for them. Pat is a great game designer. So now WotC has to decide which project to put this great designer on. They could put Pat on M:tG, where they can contribute to an everlasting juggernaut of profit, or they could put Pat on D&D, which even if it becomes the most successful rpg on the market will not even be a blip on the company ledgers. Of course they're going to put Pat on Magic. This isn't quite true. Let's say you have Jason Morningstar working for you. Great designer - but nothing I've seen shows that he'd be any good at all at designing Magic: the Gathering. I don't think he's the right type for numbers or complex interactions. Of course this doesn't mean you want him on D&D; the ideal place for him would be a form of big box Ameritrash boardgame (can't you just see a version of Fiasco produced on a big budget which uses about as many cards as Dominion? Or one of those old boardgames they occasionally used to advertise with a DVD to go with them for Night Witches? Or The Climb with props?) And the ENWorld boards really don't like it when I make comments that this is what D&D going into mothballs looks like. Edit: It's not just "We're going to discourage people who've started in the past 7 years" - it's "We're going to appeal to people who haven't spent any money on our products in the past 7 years - we're going to try to actively create a new market".
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Jan 29, 2015 13:22
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To be fair to them, that discussion happened during the early playtests, before they started to round out their product (yes, they did the playtests about midway through the design process). Since then they tried to duct tape some 4e-looking elements onto their game (Hit Dice ~ healing surges, Battlemaster figter ~ warlord), while completely missing their point and role in 4e. This had the dual purpose of a) angering those in the originally catered-to audience who noticed the 4eisms tainting their D&D with MMO bullshit b) unimpressing most of those who liked 4e for the overall tighter mechanics.
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Jan 29, 2015 13:30
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I tell myself that it's probably just the internet being the internet and a small vocal minority, but you'd never guess that Next is selling badly from how much people gush over it, even (especially?) for people who aren't anti-4E grogs. I have to wince though whenever I see someone that's entirely new to the hobby make a post about a rules interaction in Next. People really don't deserve that kind of experience.
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Jan 29, 2015 13:31
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I think a lot of the gushing from non-gaming sites falls into the same category as pieces about The Walking Dead or Minecraft. Someone on staff had a boner about a pop-culture thing and wrote a thousand words on a slow news day.
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Jan 29, 2015 14:12
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FMguru posted:Ouch. I guess 5E sales are undershooting even the most conservative expectations. You don't need many editors when you're not producing many of your own supplements. FFG uses freelance editors and proofreaders for its RPGs; I wonder why WotC bothers to continually hire & fire when they could just go on a contract basis.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:16
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What boggles my mind about the development of 5e is that they put Mearls on it at all. If you start with the premise that Magic is essentially a brain-drain on the whole WotC enterprise by virtue of it being where you want to put anybody with a proven record of sales or creativity, then you wouldn't put somebody like Mearls on DnD; you put a young, energized-but-unproven person at the helm of the thing and instruct them to turn the brand into an empire. This is basically what Catalyst was trying to do this last year. Say what you will but there are a lot more people aware of the niche Shadowrun brand now than there were two or three years ago. This puts the cart before the horse a bit and nobody would ever accuse Catalyst of being made up of young, savy business people. Shadowrun: Returns came out and they capitalized on it with some success and a lot of bellyaching, as any trip to the Shadowun thread will tell you. But back to the start - you'd want someone to create that effect on the DnD brand. I sometimes wonder if they put Mearls on the edition to keep the brand warm while somebody much smarter manages things like videogame licenses and boardgames, which is where they expect to actually make money.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:31
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Mendrian posted:I sometimes wonder if they put Mearls on the edition to keep the brand warm while somebody much smarter manages things like videogame licenses and boardgames, which is where they expect to actually make money. God have mercy on the poor soul that has to program the surprise/stealth rules.
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Jan 29, 2015 15:40
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Are the videogames actually making money? Have they even made anything new in the last 5 years apart from the Neverwinter MMO?
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Jan 29, 2015 15:54
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goatface posted:Are the videogames actually making money? 
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Jan 29, 2015 15:57
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My hope is that D&D Next isn't D&D Last. Until we see sales numbers we can't say for sure; WotC lays off people every December, regularly, so it doesn't surprise me that they trimmed staff (again). 4E's decline, as it were, is interesting as a quick google of "Why did 4E fail?" gets you articles from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 - so I am wary of doing the same for Next. My general thoughts that no one asked for on D&D:
I've played Next from levels 1 to 7 with a range of characters. The game is basically just boring by itself, the encounter and monster design is a massive step backwards, and Spell Descriptions take up half the core book. The DMG is uninspired. The base philosophy of the game, Rulings not Rules, would be great if the actual Rules parts didn't feel so goddamn LAZY. Thats my nerd analysis.
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Jan 29, 2015 16:14
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Mendrian posted:What boggles my mind about the development of 5e is that they put Mearls on it at all. This actually brings to mind an excellent question: Why DID they produce a new edition of DnD if, as it appears, they have little ambition to actually market anything DnD related? I really don't know the official sales numbers for 4E during its lifespan, but I CAN tell you, from experience, that the local game store I used to play at (And was really close friends with the people who owned and operated the place) could not keep 4E material on the shelves. They were snatched up practically the very day they arrived, and there were gobs of pre-orders. Pre-ordering was practically the only way I could actually get my hands on any of the books, honestly. This died down a bit near around the time Essentials dropped, but it was still a bitch to find a copy of the Rules Compendium since they just flew out the freaking door the moment the shipments came in. Maybe this one store was an anomaly, but to me it looked like 4E was a colossal financial success. But here's the catch: outside of the game system and all its books, there was... no merchandising for anything DnD related during 4E's lifespan. Why? The only thing I can think of is the board game Descent. There were no video games, novels, board games (Besides Descent) or anything outside the sphere of the game system itself. I compare this experience to having lived through the d20 glut decade, in which, at this exact same game store, d20 books sold like poo poo. I'm not even joking, the store almost went under multiple times because they could not sell ANY of its d20 merch. There was a single copy of the 3.5 Monster Manual that, I kid you not, sat on the shelf for over TWO YEARS before the store finally put all its d20 junk in a box for storage and I never saw any of it again. This particular store kept afloat through the selling of Magic cards and Warhammer Fantasy and 40K minis, but it could not sell anything d20 related during the 3E era to save its life. Yet 3E had a TON of merchandising outside of the game system. There were heaps of video games and books and even a MOVIE. Why was this inverted during 4E's comparitively short lifespan? Now it looks like 5E is marketing even LESS outside its system sphere, let alone the system itself, which seems to already be floundering with book delays and very little on what's gonna actually come from WOTC for 5E that isn't just outsourced. I honestly wish I could actually see sales numbers for each edition's lifespan including 5E's so far, because it feels like since 4E, WOTC has been dropping the ball every way it can when it comes to marketing their own loving product. Did they think they could just coast on 3E's "success" by reputation alone? They seem to have their poo poo together in every one of their markets EXCEPT DnD. What gives?
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Jan 29, 2015 18:27
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Agent Boogeyman posted:This actually brings to mind an excellent question: Why DID they produce a new edition of DnD if, as it appears, they have little ambition to actually market anything DnD related? I really don't know the official sales numbers for 4E during its lifespan, but I CAN tell you, from experience, that the local game store I used to play at (And was really close friends with the people who owned and operated the place) could not keep 4E material on the shelves. They were snatched up practically the very day they arrived, and there were gobs of pre-orders. Pre-ordering was practically the only way I could actually get my hands on any of the books, honestly. This died down a bit near around the time Essentials dropped, but it was still a bitch to find a copy of the Rules Compendium since they just flew out the freaking door the moment the shipments came in. Maybe this one store was an anomaly, but to me it looked like 4E was a colossal financial success. But here's the catch: outside of the game system and all its books, there was... no merchandising for anything DnD related during 4E's lifespan. Why? The only thing I can think of is the board game Descent. There were no video games, novels, board games (Besides Descent) or anything outside the sphere of the game system itself. Probably because Mearls doesn't like 4e and doesn't want people thinking of the current D&D as something he doesn't like.
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Jan 29, 2015 18:43
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mastershakeman posted:Probably because Mearls doesn't like 4e and doesn't want people thinking of the current D&D as something he doesn't like. Until high fantasy adventure becomes vogue again (like when the LotR movies first came out), Wizards will probably keep people on like Mearls to keep D&D warm. Once the trend swings back around, they'll probably try to squeeze something out of it again like a movie or video game
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Jan 29, 2015 18:57
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Did you miss the Hobbit movies somehow?
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Jan 29, 2015 19:54
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The Hobbit movies were so bad they probably set back interest in fantasy by a decade.
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Jan 29, 2015 20:04
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