LordEntrails
Hero
Another perspective, or corollary to this, is since we know the number of D&D players has more than doubled in the last few years, and I'm pretty sure that the number of people discussing DPR and such on forums such as EN World has not doubled in the same time frame. (No data to actually support those assumptions, but I think casual observation upholds them.)With D&D, the conversation often centers on damage output and the many 'musts.' I am astonished at times at how vehemently people claim something is a 'trap,' when what might be more accurate is 'slightly lower bonus' to a particular roll. When new players read or hear this, I think it gives a skewed view of the game.
Most new players don't care about DPR. And as has been discussed before and and in many ways, most players, old & new, don't care about DPR. It's only those that spend so much time on ENWorld etc worrying about DPR. (Note, I rarely see optimization posts on Facebook).
Over looked here, and probably in most places too. And trying to analyze the subjective, is only going to appeal to (mostly) the same set of players that worry about DPR in the first place.Often overlooked are other issues which are important to the game. There is exploration and social encounters and general problem solutions (utility) and so forth. However, we don't really have a metric for this sort of discussion.
I would ponder, are these need/desire to quantify due to some concern that "if I don't optimize, I'm not getting the most fun out of the game that is possible"?