On the marketing of 4E

[Piratecat]

Folks, I've just addressed some problems earlier in the thread. Please be careful to discuss the subject instead of attacking the people who disagree with you. Same goes for avoiding insults. Thanks.

 

[chitzk0i]

They compounded their error of shrinking market coverage by making all their previews only available to those that provided their email address to view content. That meant that casual surfers of the website were left out, while only the hardcore online community was let in.

I think most people have no compunctions about giving WotC their e-mail address. I also think that most of the people that do have compunctions about it know how to register a new e-mail address for signing up to shady-looking newsletters.

Of course, because it was Paizo that was producing Dragon and Dungeon when it was ended. But now I can't causally pick up a copy on the newsstand to browse through. I have to have already chosen to lay out a subscription to see anything at all.

If you poke around the WotC website, you'll notice that there are descriptions of each article available to non-subscribers. Furthermore, virtually every article gets some kind of discussion here on EnWorld. It is also possible to pay for one month and cancel your subscription. It's not free like glancing through a copy at a newsstand, but if you don't want to pay eight bucks to try it out, you probably didn't want to subscribe in the first place.

 

[pawsplay]

When WotC mocked the gnome, I felt they were mocking those who liked the gnome. I felt mocked.

When WotC claimed NPC design took too much time, I felt they were listening to people who mostly lacked a good blueprint for statting NPCs. When they presented their solution (giving NPCs the stat blocks of minis) I knew they had solved a different problem than I was seeing. I perceived that WotC thought character development was a waste of time.

When I was told all the cool kids were playing tieflings, I knew I was not one of the cool kids. WotC seemed to be telling me that the new game was not intended for people who did not think tieflings and dragonborn and six foot long swords were cool.

When they announced the end of WotC support for the OGL, I knew the suits had taken over. WotC was just another company trying to do business in the 20th century way. DDI? If they felt I *needed* a subscription to be a supported customer, I knew they were selling incompleteness.

When I was told I would have to buy another MM to get the frost giant, I knew that WotC wanted me to buy more books. I would not be allowed to pick and choose any more.

Did it make a difference? Maybe. I don't like or play 4e. I probably would not have been as propelled to check out Pathfinder, but then, I wasn't keen on the Beta but I jumped in on the final version anyway. I can see how it would have made a difference in other ways. I would not be as angry with WotC. I would not be on message boards, occasionally remembering that I was angry with WotC.

I would not remember being on ENWorld, and not only being surrounded by those who mock gnome-lovers, but being assured I should enjoy being mocked. Perhaps I would have been granted a title like "grognard" rather than being assigned to the partisan resistance, whethered I wanted to be or not. I would not have heard WotC telling me how much the game they sold to me, that I enjoyed, that birthed a D&D renaissance, sucked. I could have been left to view DDI as an online magazine, rather than as a vision of a future without rulebooks, only subscriptions. I could have been left to view the tiefling and dragonborn as an affectation of the new edition, as Drow had been in AD&D and sorcerers in 3e. I might have the impression that WotC was still warm-hearted about the OGL, but was trying something else for a while. I might not have suspected that the cancellation of Dragon, the new edition, and everything was all an attempt to butcher open design, and it might not have been true. Instead of "edition wars" we could have had "edition profileration."

When 3e rolled out, Wizards treated its fans with respect, and treating with respect the idea that people already had ideas about what D&D was. It's okay to add to D&D, but to attempt to define D&D once and for all, to obsolesce all the D&D that has come before, is not something I would do. Certainly, I would not have bought a Jetta 2000 if Volkswagen went around telling everyone how stupid and boxy the Jetta 1999 looked. If I can turn around today and say what I made yesterday was stinky and bad, that speaks to a lack of integrity. Either I knowingly produced something bad last time around, or else producing quality means nothing to me and I simply quackspeak that the new version is better, because the new version is always better.

I could talk for hours about problems with AD&D, but I'm not going to tell someone, "Your game sucks. Despite the evidence that it has pleased thousands of fans who have gone on to define the RPG hobby, I hereby declare it was unfun and sucked." Every game has its good points and its bad points. 3e was a hugely successful design. To say it sucked speaks of a lack of perspective. When someone compares 3e to accounting or complains about 3e sourcebooks or whatever, I think, "Gosh, this person must not have enjoyed playing very much."

Do I want to buy a new edition of D&D from people who think playing D&D is a chore?

And that's why, even though my eagerness to do business with WotC vanished as soon as they pulled their PDFs, that eagerness would be hard to replenish even were those PDFs restored today.

I've been playing D&D since I was eight years old. I have stronger feelings about D&D and roleplaying in general than I do about any city in which I have ever lived.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

When WotC mocked the gnome, I felt they were mocking those who liked the gnome. I felt mocked.

I would hate to live in a world where you are not allowed to mock things now and then. Especially imaginary races. At the 4e launch, many people said ridiculous things about the Tiefling, mocking it as "goth" without knowing anything about that subculture. But that is, it seems, okay and good-natured humor while mocking the Gnome is disrespectful. And personal.

Again, i would hate to live in a world where a company and it´s employees are not allowed to make light fun of something now and then. It´s a truly scary thought.

When I was told I would have to buy another MM to get the frost giant, I knew that WotC wanted me to buy more books. I would not be allowed to pick and choose any more.

I assure you we 4e DMs are still allowed to pick and choose.

I would not have heard WotC telling me how much the game they sold to me, that I enjoyed, that birthed a D&D renaissance, sucked. I could have been left to view DDI as an online magazine, rather than as a vision of a future without rulebooks, only subscriptions. I could have been left to view the tiefling and dragonborn as an affectation of the new edition, as Drow had been in AD&D and sorcerers in 3e. I might have the impression that WotC was still warm-hearted about the OGL, but was trying something else for a while. I might not have suspected that the cancellation of Dragon, the new edition, and everything was all an attempt to butcher open design, and it might not have been true. Instead of "edition wars" we could have had "edition profileration."

I call this the Dragonsfoot defense: "If they would have acted reasonable we didn´t have to attack them on a regular basis." I´m sorry, but "i didn´t like a lot of their decisions and actions" still has a lot of "i" in it and not only "their."

Edition wars are created by fans, not companies. Companies can only help. These are OUR wars: we birthed them, we keep them going, we are responsible for the respective fallout and the anger and agressiveness they create. Just look at this thread.

 

[Cyronax]

When WotC mocked the gnome, I felt they were mocking those who liked the gnome. I felt mocked.

I would not remember being on ENWorld, and not only being surrounded by those who mock gnome-lovers, but being assured I should enjoy being mocked. Perhaps I would have been granted a title like "grognard" rather than being assigned to the partisan resistance, whethered I wanted to be or not. I would not have heard WotC telling me how much the game they sold to me, that I enjoyed, that birthed a D&D renaissance, sucked. I could have been left to view DDI as an online magazine, rather than as a vision of a future without rulebooks, only subscriptions. I could have been left to view the tiefling and dragonborn as an affectation of the new edition, as Drow had been in AD&D and sorcerers in 3e.

I agree with a lot of what you said. I play 4e regularly (in fact as my only regular game system nowadays), but I do have gripes. One of the smaller gripes I had was regarding the way they treated gnomes. Now I know that gnomes are handled differently by a lot of people, sometimes ignored, sometimes treated as furtive tricksters, or sometimes as somewhat crazed genius illusionist adventurers (my particular preference).

Anyway, I can take a joke, but I do get sick of hearing 'I'm a monster' when gnomes are mentioned. At the same time though, I think that animated clip was also making fun of the tiefling and just D&D races in general. The tiefling lady in that clip was a parody of a lot of overblown goth-emo female characters I've seen played over the years (since 2e Planescape .... remember the cloven-hoofed tiefling that was the iconic picture of the Transcendentalist Order faction??) (Edit: Keefe the Thief made a similar point .. and posted while I was writing my points).

Overall gnomes get about as much respect as they always have and to WotC's credit they had gnome stats in the MM immediately (despite some people saying why bother) and the gnome was in the PHB2.

Gnomes got better treatment than some of my now-missing items from past editions -- regular dispel magic (and not just a power that belongs to a single class), the disbursement of the druid into three different classes, or the poor treatment of Illusion magic.

C.I.D.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I believe the request was for actual quotes as to what was said, not for your recollection or interpretation of what was said.

Ain't got my books on hand, so let me run through the vague quotes and I can fill them in with the word for words later if you really need me to. Most of these are fairly well circulated through, and you sure as hell know exactly what I'm talking about.

If you used profession skills in your game, you're running a bad game.

If your players talk to the guards, you're running a bad game.

Lawful good is boring compared to grim dark anti heroes*

Aasimar are lame, grim dark anti heroes with ATTITUDE are the cool ones*

Great Wheel was just pointless symmetry for no reason, who the hell liked that?!

Gnomes were treated as just one big joke.

*See Races and Classes, a book with such odious designer thoughts that, as I mentioned earlier, nothing before has ever turned me off of a game faster.

 

[pawsplay]

It wasn't funny then and it's not funny now. Maybe it would seem funnier to me if it didn't come across as so progagandist. And I am still not amused by Keefe's suggestion that I should take it as good-natured rubbing. That is exactly the sort of suggestion that made this place seem unfriendly throughout the 4e advertising campaign. Basically, I feel the gnome clip did an excellent job of encapsulating the 4e design philosophy, good and bad, and then used that as a vantage for mocking anyone who was so foolish to think gnomes needed stats simply because someone might want to play one.

I always wondered if WotC thought that since gnomes were so unpopular, even people who liked them didn't want to play them. "Everyone loves dwarves, you can play a dwarf, too! Gnomes? Won't even miss 'em."

Plus, I was still cheesed over the whole favored class: bard thing. Gnomes with banjos?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I would hate to live in a world where you are not allowed to mock things now and then. Especially imaginary races. At the 4e launch, many people said ridiculous things about the Tiefling, mocking it as "goth" without knowing anything about that subculture. But that is, it seems, okay and good-natured humor while mocking the Gnome is disrespectful. And personal.

Except pretty much all the tiefling jokes aren't made about "Ololo tieflings" but the bizarro love WotC had while introducing them as LONER REBELS FILLED WITH EXISTENTIAL ANGST THAT NOBODY LIKES. People make tiefling jokes because WotC took something that people liked and decided to change them into ANTI-HEROES THAT EXIST ALONE IN SOCIETY, BUT THEY DON'T PLAY BY THE RULES MAN, THEY DON'T PLAY BY THE RULES.

And what I'm typing there isn't making fun of them, it's just a rehash of everything we were told ABOUT tieflings. Seriously, when WotC says "Tieflings are anti-heroes filled with angst who don't play by the rules," and then other people go "What the hell? Tieflings are anti-heroes filled with angst who don't play by the rules?" It's a little odd that it's awesome and positive coming from WotC, but the same thing being said by someone else is insulting.

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

Hey there folks,

I am going to steer clear of the main discussion here, but I did want to clear up a few small points concerning the Pathfinder promotion and playtest.

1. "The Bard Sucks" bit. This came from out April Fools blog and was the only time I ever used such harsh language in reference to the old game. We like the 3.5 rules, but felt like they could use some improvement, and that is where our rules come from. It was never my intention to insult the game that inspired us, it was just some fun on April 1st.

2. The playtest bit. There were thousands of playtesters (this is not based off the downloads, but the number of posters to playtest threads, the number of downloads was significantly higher). Some did get shouted at and down, but fortunately, being shouted at did not disqualify a poster's idea from our considerations. I, personally, spent a lot of time searching through such threads for the kernels of interesting ideas and observations. There were competing arguments, looking at topics from both sides. This was actually quite productive to our design process as it let us get a good look at an issue from all sides.

That is all...

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

 

[Windjammer]

A lot of anecdotal reports said that people were getting shouted down for that sort of thing.

A couple of people providing high quality feedback were indeed shouted down during the open playtest at paizo.com; some of these people, namely those otherwise frequenting the GamingDen forum, were also vocal about that fact. What isn't true, however, is that all posters providing negative feedback were excluded from the actual feedback circle (as in, them making an impact on the final game).

All of this, however, pales in comparison to what WotC did with the Barbarian playtest before the release of PHB 2. It is conclusively documented here, that WotC asked its fans for feedback which they turned a deaf ear on.