D&D 5E Player satisfaction survey

Mercule said:

I'm overall pretty happy with 5E. I have some issues with a couple of the earlier classes, alphabetically, but those aren't game killers.

Where I've really been chaffing is that I'm feeling somewhat constrained by the system, creatively. I'm very much an old-school, GM is God, GM-fiat makes the world go 'round kind of guy. I don't say that in an authoritarian way, other than as a side-effect. I mean I hate stopping the game to look up a rule detail, whether that's squirrelly grappling rules or because a player thinks he should get a flat +2 in a circumstance instead of advantage.

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Hmm. I don't get that feeling at all. To me, this has been the most 'freeing' edition of D&D I have played. No more solid rules for "what happens if I throw this potato at that hobgoblin, while it is sunny out", that 3e seemed to bring. Fiddly bits from 2e and 4e also seemed to hamper my creativity more than this current edition (2e was probably the least hampering). With this edition, I feel a lot more comfortable with making rulings on the fly, and not worrying about what the book tells me I should be doing. "I run the game, the game doesn't run me", and all that.

Reading your comment, I wonder the same, is it more of the Published adventures? I too decided to try published adventures this edition. I had never run one before, in any edition (as a DM). While I didn't dislike the experience, and still found enjoyment with it, it didn't feel the same as my own written campaign. So I stopped. Started running my own world once again, and I couldn't be happier with it. That, in itself, has really gotten my creative juices flowing. With the help of my players having equal amounts of fun.

I hope that you also can find that level of enjoyment, if you have not yet had it with this edition, or otherwise.

Edit: Almost forgot... I think the majority of players and DMs are satisfied. This forum is filled with DMs, and a smaller extent players, that want to improve their craft and experience. Taking a vote for I like this, but I do need/want to tweek it, as a dissatisfied, to me is incorrect.

Istbor said:

Hmm. I don't get that feeling at all. To me, this has been the most 'freeing' edition of D&D I have played. No more solid rules for "what happens if I throw this potato at that hobgoblin, while it is sunny out", that 3e seemed to bring.

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Ridiculous. Most potatoes that any PC is going to throw will be russet anyway. You only need to look up the rules when they chuck a Yukon gold or new potato. It's not the rules' fault that you can't be bothered to look up the appropriate potato chart.

schnee said:

WOTC have been doing extensive customer satisfaction measurement the entire time, by qualified researchers. Their numbers are HUGELY positive.

They also say that web forums don't track even remotely close to their statistical sample, to their surprise. That was in a talk given to a design school about their process.

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Forums are full of dour, argumentative sourpusses. Any poll here means nothing in the bigger world.

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Cite?

TwoSix said:

Very true. Each edition is its own game, and playing them under the game's assumptions, rather than your own, is probably going to give you a better experience overall.

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I don't find it helpful when designers publish a new edition of an existing game and treat it like it's "its own game". I consider D&D to be a toolset I can use to help run the game at my table. Like any set of tools, I expect new versions of D&D to be useful for the same tasks as the old version. To me, that means I should ideally be able to use the new rules to run the same style of games I did before, in the same campaign worlds, and with the same character concepts. That is, of course, only the ideal, and in practice one can never expect a new version of a tool (whether it be a roleplaying game or productivity software) to remain completely backwards-compatible and still have sufficient changes to be a noticable upgrade.

Ultimately, I think it's entirely valid to praise or criticise a new edition based on how useful it is for running the same games as the previous edition. To me, that's part of what being a new edition means. If a new ruleset is intended to be "its own game" then I think it should be published as a new game, and not as a new edition of an existing game.

I realize that many people disagree with me, and that's fine. I'm probably somewhat idiosyncratic in thinking of D&D as primarily a tool rather than as a game itself. Accordingly, I may be in the minority with my preference for a D&D upgrade path that more closely resembles the development cycle of productivity software rather than the successive stand-alone titles of a videogame franchise.

Ovinomancer said:

Cite?

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All of the customer surveys WoTC has put out since the playtest. And Mearls' tweets that pretty much back that up, that opinions on 5e have been very positive. Then you've also got the sales #s that seem to back this up as well.

Shiroiken said:

I've found very few people that are 100% happy with 5E, but there's a reason for that. ...

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The reason for that, IMO, is because it exists. Only the most extreme fans of any edition are 100% positive on every aspect of a game.

Li Shenron said:

Nope. You are counting "mostly satisfied" because it sounds positive as a whole, but it still implies that they want or "need" changes. I am counting only players who are satisfied with things as they are, instead of thinking how they could or "should" be.

Barbarian: 28% sat, 72% unsat
Bard: 47% sat, 53% unsat
Cleric: 42% sat, 58% unsat
Druid: 25% sat, 75% unsat
Fighter: 38% sat, 62% unsat

"unsat" = "want to change at least something"

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But it IS positive on the whole, it just isn't perfect for them. The way you are portraying the answers is like saying that almost everything is "unsatisfactory". Olympic performance of less than straight 10's because they could have tweaked the landing; unsatisfactory. Games rated 9 on BGG; unsatisfactory. Kid gets 99% on a test; unsatisfactory.

I am loving 5e, I love almost all the classes and don't hate any of them, yet I don't think they are perfect. It doesn't mean I won't be happy playing them RAW, it just means they aren't perfect for me RAW, as in every other RPG I have ever played.

My players never asked to change anything in a class they play. If they have a problem, its mostly about perceived balance issues between them and another player, but most of those issues are created by players who want to keep thing simple (aka, doesnt even open the book to create her character) versus players who build more efficient things (like GWM barbarian). If someone argue that another class/archetype is overshadowing him (I dont allow my players to call another ''OP''), I gather both parties and try to work out a solution based on each ones perception of what would be ''balanced''.

I also have one new player that comes from Pathfinder that find most classes lacking because he could do ''so many more cool things with his old PF character'', but in the end he always gets in line with my DM's call.

Istbor said:

Hmm. I don't get that feeling at all. To me, this has been the most 'freeing' edition of D&D I have played. No more solid rules for "what happens if I throw this potato at that hobgoblin, while it is sunny out", that 3e seemed to bring. Fiddly bits from 2e and 4e also seemed to hamper my creativity more than this current edition (2e was probably the least hampering). With this edition, I feel a lot more comfortable with making rulings on the fly, and not worrying about what the book tells me I should be doing. "I run the game, the game doesn't run me", and all that.

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I think some of my pain is a hold-over from 3E. I have one player who learned with 3E and is very much in the camp of "I should have X magic items by Y level" and really didn't care for the fact that I didn't give access to a magic Walmart. Another player slides easily into rules-lawyer mode and is still recovering from the "player empowerment" of 3E -- despite the fact that he was the most critical of the precision of 4E rules and keywords. Calling it out like that makes it sound worse than it is. They really aren't horrible. It's just one more thing that chafes while running the published adventures.

Thus, my knee-jerk reaction is still kind of to go with something like Fate for a bit, just to rip the bandage off and radically change the momentum. I think I'd be fine to just stop running published adventures, though.

Sacrosanct said:

All of the customer surveys WoTC has put out since the playtest. And Mearls' tweets that pretty much back that up, that opinions on 5e have been very positive. Then you've also got the sales #s that seem to back this up as well.

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Hmm, it occurs that I may have been too subtle....

Ovinomancer said:

Hmm, it occurs that I may have been too subtle....

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Or I'm thick headed. Which is known to happen.