Sell the fluff, pimp the crunch

[Randomthoughts]

As a player, I love, love, love, ..., love, love DDI. It is far more cost efficient for me to have everything in one place. And WotC gets more money from me now (per year) than it ever did in the past. Plus my characters can be accessed in far more places.

As a DM, my feelings towards DDI fall to merely liking it. I worry about "renting" adventures and losing my Monster Builder custom material. (yeah, yeah, it doesn't "build" monsters.) For DMing, I would rather have a bound book or magazine.

The net value to me is totally positive. I don't want the 20+ books in my library like @Dannyalcatraz .

I'm the opposite. As a player, I wouldn't see a need for DDI unless I really wanted to "get into the game mechanics" and/or optimize. A player could get away with talking to someone with a subscription and making the appropriate choices as they level.

OTOH, I find DDI invaluable as a GM. I use the Compendium and Character Builder extensively (usually to help players with their builds). I use the classic Monster Builder a lot but look forward to more functionality for the online version.

I have most of the 4e books but really prefer the ease of online use.

 

[Kzach]

So where is the justification for renting something that traditionally is perchased, with no value gain in the rental?

I seriously have to spell this out for you? How about not being deliberately obtuse solely in order to manufacture an argument where there is none?

Mod Edit: Folks, let's not make this personal, or rude, or you'll be removed from the discussion. ~Umbran

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mysterious double post.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Let's try again:

1) If you buy fluff and rent crunch and you stop paying your rent*, you can't play using the rented crunch anymore.

2) If you buy crunch and rent fluff and you stop paying your rent*, you can still play the game using all the crunch with your own fluff.

I know which I'd prefer.






* or lose access to the online datastream for whatever reason

 

[reanjr]

If this is in fact the approach they taking, this model is probably the reason I no longer give any of my money to WotC.

It's absolutely and completely backwards from what I actually want as a consumer. Electronic rules are unwieldy. Requiring an active internet connection makes it almost completely useless for general play. Conversely, physical books are almost completely useless to me for fluff as they do not support searching.

I haven't bought a WotC product since they stopped offering PDFs and they will never change my mind on that.

 

[Matt James]

There has been a great deal of talk about WOTC and their playtesting and its effectiveness.

I have a question --- has anyone here ever been involved in playtesting for WOTC? Does anyone know anyone who has been involved in playtesting for WOTC? I am specifically interested in out of house playtesting.

There are plenty of other companies out there that have had external playtesters for RPGS (I myself have been involved in three) but I have never seen any application process from WOTC.

I would have to strongly agree with this statement --- if you don't have things proofread/playtested by someone who has had little or no exposure to the product prior to that there are inherent assumptions made - if you already know what something is supposed to say that is how you will read it. As Quickleaf said there are/were a lot of pretty basic issues in 4E and I can't help but feel that if they game had been properly playtested out of house that at least some of these would have been found and, hopefully, rectified.

Playtesting has recently started being a big part of product oversight. I can't get into specifics but there are now dozens of playtest groups across the world. If you go to the WotC forums, some users have playtester icons attached to their account.

 

[Matt James]

I haven't bought a WotC product since they stopped offering PDFs and they will never change my mind on that.

This begs the question of why you participate in the 4e forums. Do you still play 4e a lot and just choose to not buy new products? I mean, you have to go out of your way otherwise to find a thread in a game-specific forum in order to have a strong opinion to add. At worse, you are still curious about the game and stumbled upon it?

 

[Mirtek]

Playtesting has recently started being a big part of product oversight. I can't get into specifics but there are now dozens of playtest groups across the world. If you go to the WotC forums, some users have playtester icons attached to their account.

It's kind of sad how things that were marketed as being "advantages of 4e" during the 4e announcement phase are now sold as "look what great things we just now started to get you a better product" four years later.

Just like taking the mags from Paizo and turning them into e-zines was tried to be made palatable by saying how they would now truly be 100% official since everything would be fully integrated into the official design and play-test process just like any other supplement. And then 2 years later it was treated as a big announcement that the mag content would from now on fully integrated into the official design and play-test process just like any other supplement.

So did WotC hope that none would remember what they said two years ago and be happy about this great "new direction"?

 

[Matt James]

I'm not selling anything. Someone brought up playtesting so I mentioned it. I have no insight or influence in WotC business practices. So, your reply to my comment doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Ryujin]

Sell the crunch. Pimp the fluff.

In other words give people a reason to want to pay for the mechanics, behind the story line. Fluff should be 'advertising.'