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Unfortunately, there was a large chunk of people who felt that just the very idea of 3.x being ended was some sort of insane insult and that they were being "cut loose".
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Sep 30, 2015 17:07
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Evil Mastermind posted:Unfortunately, there was a large chunk of people who felt that just the very idea of 3.x being ended was some sort of insane insult and that they were being "cut loose". This is probably  , but you can see a lot of this in this very subforum (even in this very thread!) from people who liked 4e and believe that 5e is some sort of stab-in-the-back.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:15
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There's also that thing where WOTC straight-up said that you couldn't and wouldn't be able to convert your 3e characters over to 4e, which was an objectively correct thing to say in the wake of what a joke the AD&D 2e to 3e "conversion" guide was, but you just know people took offense to it regardless.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:Unfortunately, there was a large chunk of people who felt that just the very idea of 3.x being ended was some sort of insane insult and that they were being "cut loose". I mean . . . they were, though, as with all other editions. If I want to get more 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e content, fixes, adventures, or whatever, I cannot get it from WotC. They are not a company I can buy from, I am not their customer. How is that not being cut loose? Like, I still have all my stuff and can still play "the game" (in my case, 4e). It continues to exist. I understand the "you know the game police won't come and take your books, right?" line of reasoning. But you're going into a whole new (and factually incorrect) area by claiming the relationship between an old-edition player and WotC isn't negatively impacted, if not outright eliminated. 4e is a big departure from 3e, and 5e is a big regression from 4e. There's cause for an old-edition player to be disappointed/"upset" (within reason) and I think you might be tripping over yourself a bit here in your efforts to belittle the reactionaries.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's also that thing where WOTC straight-up said that you couldn't and wouldn't be able to convert your 3e characters over to 4e, which was an objectively correct thing to say in the wake of what a joke the AD&D 2e to 3e "conversion" guide was, but you just know people took offense to it regardless. Which is a shame because 1e and 2e were mostly compatible, and what a new edition of a game should be. A revision not a completely new game that happens to have the same trademark on it. Halloween Jack posted:I remember them making (dumb and bad) cartoons about tieflings replacing gnomes in the PHB, and outright making fun of the grappling rules. Was there more? I'm asking seriously, because I don't remember more than that. Making fun of grappling rules (which I don't think anybody liked anyway) is a little different from saying "this class you like is dumb and wrong, no more for you." Sadly as WotC buries old content every time they update the website I can't grab specifics. There was a general air of being told the books you bought just last month were poo poo but hey buy these new books. As for 4e I'd say it was as much for people who had a problem with 3e while playing it as 5e is for people who played and had a problem with 4e. In both cases the only people who would be playing the previous edition and see the new edition as a continuation of the same game are people who value brand loyalty to the D&D name above any enjoyment they get from the way the rules are structured.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:33
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homullus posted:I mean . . . they were, though, as with all other editions. If I want to get more 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e content, fixes, adventures, or whatever, I cannot get it from WotC. They are not a company I can buy from, I am not their customer. How is that not being cut loose? It's not that people were cut loose (that's going to happen whenever a system of any game changes), it's that people acted like this was some sort of grand betrayal of everything Gary stood for.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:41
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5e didn't even really need to be a continuation of 4e. If the Power AEDU model is too much, if the grid-based combat is too much, if the reaction-counter-reaction model of combat is too much, if the feats are too much, if the magic item treadmill is too much, then fine, dial it back, and you don't even necessarily need to retain 4e's general framework to do it. It's just that 5e already doesn't resemble 4e, but it also doesn't really solve any of 4e's problems either except when they don't exist from the baby getting flushed out with the bathwater.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:42
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The big 4e marketing snafu was that they let folks like Paizo and Green Ronin run around forums like ENWorld talking about how the 4e license is the devil and how it's going to destroy their livelihoods without any counterargument from WotC, if you ask me. You'd still get people getting mad about the gnome videos and the jabs at grappling, but the general attitude towards 4e would have been so much less toxic if they didn't let the argument move so far away from them before release.
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Sep 30, 2015 17:42
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Terrible Opinions posted:As for 4e I'd say it was as much for people who had a problem with 3e while playing it as 5e is for people who played and had a problem with 4e. In both cases the only people who would be playing the previous edition and see the new edition as a continuation of the same game are people who value brand loyalty to the D&D name above any enjoyment they get from the way the rules are structured. homullus posted:4e is a big departure from 3e, and 5e is a big regression from 4e. gradenko_2000 posted:5e didn't even really need to be a continuation of 4e. The first round of 4e playtesting made it clear to everyone in my group that they were pretending the 4th edition had never existed. It was bizarre. And full of rats. I don't remember a single thing WotC did to cater to people who were actually their customers, unless you count their "I'm with D&D...Any Edition!" marketing campaign. Which as TO points out, is just them begging us to be in love with their brand name regardless of content or quality.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:03
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Terrible Opinions posted:Which is a shame because 1e and 2e were mostly compatible, and what a new edition of a game should be. A revision not a completely new game that happens to have the same trademark on it. Why? Why do i want to pay 50 dollars for a minor revision of the same rules i already own? They call that errata and most companies put it out for free these days.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:22
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MalcolmSheppard posted:With D&D, those preferences are set by market research. When market research indicates a bunch of people wanting a thing? You design it. Period. The problem with this is that the research for Next was so incompetent as to be worse than useless. Questions were loaded and openly phrased. It wasn't quite "Have you stopped beating your wife? (Yes / No)" - but it was "Rate your satisfaction with the amount of beatings you're giving your wife (1 - 5):" There was no room for input that didn't line up with the preexisting assumptions. The team, and presumably Mearls, went into the project with a vision that was not going to be diverged from.
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Sep 30, 2015 18:43
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Lurks With Wolves posted:The big 4e marketing snafu was that they let folks like Paizo and Green Ronin run around forums like ENWorld talking about how the 4e license is the devil and how it's going to destroy their livelihoods without any counterargument from WotC, if you ask me. You'd still get people getting mad about the gnome videos and the jabs at grappling, but the general attitude towards 4e would have been so much less toxic if they didn't let the argument move so far away from them before release. To be fair, the GSL was a lot more restrictive than the OGL, and by my recollection some of the specifics made it so that you could only sell 3rd or 4th Ed compatible products, not both. So when you've already got an established customer base of 3rd Ed fans, you don't exactly want to stop selling to them when you don't know how things are going to shake out with 4th.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:29
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moths posted:The problem with this is that the research for Next was so incompetent as to be worse than useless. Well, some of the research for the playtesting phase was clearly market*ing*. The playtest was one of a number of elements that were designed to make folks take ownership of the game. (Hiring bloggers is another -- did you know Google used to punish blogs' search rankings for that? Man.) I think it's likely that they were punting surveys at selected site users and mining data from their own and other communities long before any of this. WotC has the expertise and money to do that sort of thing. This was probably harvested and distilled into some thesis about what the game should be, so that any other feedback would be to tweak the details.
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Sep 30, 2015 19:45
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By the by, I don't mean to dismiss what you were saying about design documents out of hand. My next question for you is, is there good reason to believe that the D&D team agreeing on a design document with upper management isn't just a rubber stamp process? WotC has the resources to conduct real market research, but a question that's come up on these forums all throughout the 5e development process is how much they're actually bringing those resources to bear on D&D--their visible attempts at polling fans have been roundly mocked. I believe the predominant viewpoint in TG is that the D&D dev team is being more-or-less left to their own devices because D&D itself has been reduced to a legacy brand in anticipation of licensing opportunities.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:04
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Halloween Jack posted:By the by, I don't mean to dismiss what you were saying about design documents out of hand. My next question for you is, is there good reason to believe that the D&D team agreeing on a design document with upper management isn't just a rubber stamp process? It depends on how integrated it is into D&D's business plan. If the design document is "We're supporting market research that says people want X and Y by designing this way, to hit the targets in Z," then yeah, it's not just a rubber stamp. D&D is ultimately managed as a brand, which means that there is a demand for a consistent experience associated with it, and a planned, definite way to translate that into selling stuff, including the game. In any event it looks like Greg Bilsland (their digital marketing guy) does know about D&D as a pastime, and if that's the sort of person doing that work then they need to know how the game is designed, and what the resulting vibe is going to be. Finally, marketing this sort of thing seems way more sensitive to early fandom than it used to be. They know that the first in to any spinoff will include large numbers of TT players who will use word of mouth blogging and social media to judge it according to some notion of the "D&D experience." And nowadays, they know that the sense of authenticity can be taken away from them.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:36
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Literally all they had to do was keep 3.5 around as "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" and release 4e as "Dungeons and Dragons". Because this is exactly what happened except "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" was called "Pathfinder" and there was plenty of space in the hobby for both. Reminder: The #1 and #2 games in 2010 were Pathfinder and D&D trading places. Think about how many arguments get trashed if you do this. 4e is "mmorpg stuff for babies", well yeah, it's Basic D&D. That's the point. "It's like a boardgame", yeah, that's the point. Etc. etc. etc. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 20:47
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Literally all they had to do was keep 3.5 around as "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" and release 4e as "Dungeons and Dragons". I think 4e would have been even better branded as "D&D Encounters" because of its fundamentally encounter-based design. But yes, I think they should have just forked development, given them easily-differentiable logos and branding, and released new versions of each. Release all setting supplements as system-agnostic books with the stat blocks available for $2 online or something. Set up a P500-like system for Planescape and Spelljammer and Dark Sun and Dragonlance books or whatever. They could have made a lot of people very happy. 
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Sep 30, 2015 21:26
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The problem with that is that WotC would still have to crank out 3.X content, and eventually that well would run dry.
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Sep 30, 2015 21:28
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Evil Mastermind posted:The problem with that is that WotC would still have to crank out 3.X content, and eventually that well would run dry. How are things going with Pathfinder right now? (seriously)
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Sep 30, 2015 21:29
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Evil Mastermind posted:The problem with that is that WotC would still have to crank out 3.X content, and eventually that well would run dry. I expect that to happen sometime around 2005.
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Sep 30, 2015 21:39
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Elfgames posted:Why? Why do i want to pay 50 dollars for a minor revision of the same rules i already own? They call that errata and most companies put it out for free these days. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:How are things going with Pathfinder right now? (seriously) Evil Mastermind posted:The problem with that is that WotC would still have to crank out 3.X content, and eventually that well would run dry. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Literally all they had to do was keep 3.5 around as "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" and release 4e as "Dungeons and Dragons". Lurks With Wolves posted:The big 4e marketing snafu was that they let folks like Paizo and Green Ronin run around forums like ENWorld talking about how the 4e license is the devil and how it's going to destroy their livelihoods without any counterargument from WotC, if you ask me. You'd still get people getting mad about the gnome videos and the jabs at grappling, but the general attitude towards 4e would have been so much less toxic if they didn't let the argument move so far away from them before release.
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Sep 30, 2015 21:40
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Halloween Jack posted:By the by, I don't mean to dismiss what you were saying about design documents out of hand. My next question for you is, is there good reason to believe that the D&D team agreeing on a design document with upper management isn't just a rubber stamp process? FWIW, I can speak anecdotally but somewhat confidently that a shitload of market research went into many aspects of third edition, based on conversations with friends who were fairly close to the process. However, that was notably pre-Hasbro so all bets could be off, and it certainly seems plausible that the current senior management does not feel that any investment in market research is warranted given the expected returns on D&D. 4th edition appears to have some market-level goals in mind, at least that's what I inferred at the time. It has a very unambiguous ruleset and playstyle - go into this place, clear out the monsters, level up and roll around in treasure. It's great for not just new roleplayers but also existing roleplayers who are strangers to each other. It's a huge step up in terms of organized play, which was also supported by things like Dungeon Delve and Lair Assault events. The goal seemed to be to make participating in the D&D community a lot more Magic-like; go to your local game store on a set, predictable night to have a positive gaming experience, make social connections for later, and Buy Some loving Product. It supports a great introductory experience, works like gangbusters in Magic, and almost as a side effect yields a great game for veterans as well! Now, I have no clue if 4E was actually built with those concepts in mind, and if so it met internal goals in terms of in-store participation and moving product. If I went through the same exercise for 5E, I'd have to conclude that Wizards decided the market opportunity was in lapsed D&D fans, pretty much to the exclusion of all else. To the degree that the playtests were marketing (a pretty significant degree IMHO) then they were pointed exclusively inward at the community that was already gaming. Appeals to the "old feel of D&D" as opposed to being rooted in good outside design sensibilities. The notion that there were equal pillars of combat, exploration, and social interaction was noble but utterly unrealized in any concrete way in the final document. Here is where I hope people with a stronger marketing background could chime in and say how this scenario could and has played out in a different context. Reclaiming lost customers in the face of a clone competitor at the expense of appeal to new customers - is it a winning strategy? Under conditions that Wizards was reasonably aware of at the time?
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Sep 30, 2015 21:43
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From what I hear, Shadowrun also rolled out a 5th edition that rolled back a lot of what the 4th edition did, but without that whole "lost a ton of business to a knockoff" problem.
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Sep 30, 2015 22:20
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Wasn't that also due to 4th edition Shadowrun being a pile of steaming garbage?
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Sep 30, 2015 22:23
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It's a bad comparison. SR5 dialed back a decent amount of stuff SR4 did, but most of it is on the fluff level, and the actual engine remained the same. SR4 radically changed Shadowrun's engine, but unambiguously for the better in just about every way.
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Sep 30, 2015 22:34
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Personally, I liked it, but it suffered from a serious problem of the hacking rules being very poorly explained, as well as dispensing with a couple sacred cows. (Namely, hacking being a complicated minigame based on Neuromancer, and requiring an expensive cyberdeck that effectively bound you to being that particular "character class.")
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Sep 30, 2015 22:39
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From what I've read/heard Shadowrun has never really had a truly great edition of it's rules. Each edition has had it's share of issues. But I've never heard anyone call it's 4e a "pile of steaming garbage".
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Sep 30, 2015 23:18
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I appear to have been thinking of Paranoia 5th edition, and apologize for parroting half remembered things about games I don't play.
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Sep 30, 2015 23:35
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MalcolmSheppard posted:With D&D, those preferences are set by market research. When market research indicates a bunch of people wanting a thing? You design it. Period. Furthermore, it's not a solitary process. It's set by a design document, and that design document is ultimately the promise you make to the folks above you. You want to break that promise? You have to have a meeting and negotiate those changes. So the idea that Essentials was Mearls making D&D his is absurd. It never was. It will never be. For better or worse, there are no auteurs, and the way they work is designed to crush that. So we have an actual example of their market research from a few months back. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/june_survey2015 quote:Which of the following character types from prior editions would you like to see updated to fifth edition D&D rules? (Please choose all that apply.) *This question is required. This list includes a bunch of low-popularity 4e classes but guess what's missing?
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Oct 1, 2015 00:07
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homullus posted:better branded as "D&D Encounters" That sounds like the name for a very very creepy dating site.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:17
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Dr. Tough posted:From what I've read/heard Shadowrun has never really had a truly great edition of it's rules. Each edition has had it's share of issues. But I've never heard anyone call it's 4e a "pile of steaming garbage". You haven't read through the Shadowrun thread here then.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:20
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Kai Tave posted:You haven't read through the Shadowrun thread here then. Places other than SA. Some people here have weirdly fringe opinions that I honestly do not encounter elsewhere with any kind of frequency.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:39
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bunnielab posted:That sounds like the name for a very very creepy dating site. It does! It was also the name they used for organized play.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:42
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Dr. Tough posted:From what I've read/heard Shadowrun has never really had a truly great edition of it's rules. Each edition has had it's share of issues. But I've never heard anyone call it's 4e a "pile of steaming garbage". I was one of the people who missed the Pool mechanics. They had problems, but I thought they were unique and interesting.
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Oct 1, 2015 01:37
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Halloween Jack posted:I saw people who were afraid that with one roll, a hacker could hack someone's cyberarm or smartlinked gun and make them commit suicide. That's cool as hell. Not as a one roll kill, but yeah.
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Oct 1, 2015 01:49
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The biggest problems SR4e had, in no particular order, were: a terrible rulebook layout that made actually running a diverse party a chore (not unique to this edition, either), wireless hacking being half-baked and not nearly as rigidly designed as decking was, and a switch to straight point buy for character creation that made the whole process needlessly complicated and prone to getting broken. I haven't played 5e at all yet, so I can't comment further on how much of this still is or isn't the case. Though I did hear they set character creation back to a priority build system instead of point buy.
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Oct 1, 2015 01:52
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Terrible Opinions posted:A large revision of the underlying math/balance like 2nd edition Dark Heresy, or the new versions of World of Darkness would be worthwhile. "New versions of WoD", like the minor updates between the shift of oWoD and nWoD? or are you talking about the actual shift between oWoD and nWoD? Because Old vs New WoD is just as much of an enduring and insufferable edition war as 3.Pe vs 4e. If you are talking about the revised rules, well, it's not like those small updates have really helped World of Darkness as a brand at all MalcolmSheppard posted:It depends on how integrated it is into D&D's business plan. If the design document is "We're supporting market research that says people want X and Y by designing this way, to hit the targets in Z," then yeah, it's not just a rubber stamp. D&D is ultimately managed as a brand, which means that there is a demand for a consistent experience associated with it, and a planned, definite way to translate that into selling stuff, including the game. In any event it looks like Greg Bilsland (their digital marketing guy) does know about D&D as a pastime, and if that's the sort of person doing that work then they need to know how the game is designed, and what the resulting vibe is going to be. Talking about marketing research is all well and good, but what about 5e's production and current state imply any effort was put into actually trying to crunch data/track cultural trends to better cater to a market? And I'm not talking about "What a bunch of pro/anti X edition people said about it in our blog posts," either. Like, what gives any indication hard data was collected to give some objective measure of what the market wanted? The design team is so small rn that they outsource the actual writing and production of all their books, and someone having to take an emergency leave of absence caused major delays in their output. What about 5e as a game implies that Hasbro has any interest in it besides keeping it around as an IP farm until the next movie bombs? What about 5e reflects that they want D&D as a game to grow and gather an audience? Inclusive art and that awkward "you can be a transgender if u want" in the PHB were an okay start, but it's not really something that sustains itself. How has 5e capitalized on initial positive buzz? Or responded to negative feedback?
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Oct 1, 2015 03:42
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Nuns with Guns posted:"New versions of WoD", like the minor updates between the shift of oWoD and nWoD? or are you talking about the actual shift between oWoD and nWoD? Because Old vs New WoD is just as much of an enduring and insufferable edition war as 3.Pe vs 4e. If you are talking about the revised rules, well, it's not like those small updates have really helped World of Darkness as a brand at all
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Oct 1, 2015 06:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:Unfortunately, there was a large chunk of people who felt that just the very idea of 3.x being ended was some sort of insane insult and that they were being "cut loose". I find the anger shown by any D&D game fans over support ending for any of their editions to be bizarre, particularly 2e and 3e. Nearly any version of D&D has more material than anybody could ever conceivably use up in a lifetime; I think people are more attached to the abstract notion of their game being "relevant" (whatever the gently caress that means) than actually giving a poo poo about the material released for a game. Oh no, there were only over 75 hardback books released for your game! How hard it must be not to get more mechanical garbage like the buomanns or the soulknife? Personally, I remember what it was like to lug my 3.5 material to run games at a friend's house in a milk crate that must have weighed well over thirty pounds. Never again, thank you. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 07:18
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Funny thing in my experience with wod edition wars: I never really see it online or irl. Occasional "I like X more than Y" in both directions, sure. The most common thing I see is people who like both saying stuff more like "I miss A and B, but I'm glad C got changed." For an edition war that's gotta be the most low key and civil one I've ever seen.
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Oct 1, 2015 07:21
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