What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[ggroy]

Let me try this: How can one's strategy be considered to be "cultivating a long-term customer pool", if the only effort put into cultivating is with "new" customers, while neglecting to entice current customers to stay?

Basically, I'm saying that WotC's marketing has not seemed to be geared toward creating a long-term customer pool (at least until the Red-Box Essentials line). Maybe that's changing a bit now. But for those saying that WotC is targeting teens in order to generate a long-term customer pool, the logic doesn't add up. WotC already has a long-term customer pool that for the last few years they have seemed to be unwilling to woo.

Generating a few years (or even a decade) of loyalty from a customer does not, to me, equate to a "long-term" customer pool. Perhaps our definitions are different, but I view a long-term customer as someone you attempt to keep for the majority of the customers life. Even a ten-year customer plan is just a short term targeting of a specific demographic for maximized short-term earnings. But then again, maybe my concept of this is simply at odds with standard American business philosophy?

What would be an example of a "long term customer pool" in the rpg business?

Outside of rpgs, the only "long term customer pool" I can think of offhand would be for various food brands like Coke, McDonalds, etc ...

 

[Shazman]

They've addressed the hp bloat of monsters in MM3 and I believe will have the DDI updated for this change.

Ultra-gamist? How is Divine Challenge...the god of a paladin punishing those who ignore him in honourable combat any different than say Lay on Hands, the god granting the paladin the power to heal?

Martial Healing bothers you? So you've never heard of great leaders who pushed on their soldiers through pain? I know I have. HP is an abstraction of damage so it does work fine.

I find divine challenge silly. Having the god smite the paladin's enemies makes sense. Having the god smite only those enemies that attack other party members makes no sense. It is a gamist construct that exists only because the paladin is supposed to be a defender. I can possibly see martial leaders inspiring others to push on when they are hurt, but what about when a character is dying (in game terms) and shouldn't even be able to hear the encouraging shouts of the warlord? He literally goes from dying to being able to fight just fine because someone without any magical healing capability shouted at him? Sorry, that crosses the line for me. I am actually surpised they didn't go even farther with divorcing 4E from any reality or versimaltude, cause once you get to this point you might as well say that all PC's can fly, don't need to eat or sleep, and can breathe and move in water just fine because that's more "fun" than your characters acting like real flesh and blood characters.

This thread has done a pretty good job of staying away from edition wars. Don't shove it in that direction, please. ~ PCat

 

[Beginning of the End]

We also know from sales figures that certain 4Ed releases are at least as strong in the market as 3.5 was. Those sales have to come from somewhere.

I'll confess ignorance. Could you link me to these sales figures you're talking about? I'm unaware of WotC releasing any comprehensive data like that.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

So Fireballs and other things only ever explode with feat support.

The feat came in 3.5. 4th edition came later - so designers were experienced and had more things to add to spells and effects. BUt my point was that 3.5/PF CAN support effect like this in spells, regardless of when they was first introduced. Some spell has feats "directly built into" like delayed fireball and Delay Spells. The fact that I have feats to apply increases customization and enjoyment of the system, at least for me.

Bullrush is the opposite of what I am talking about. In a Bull Rush you take a running start and try to slam into someone. You are really trying rather than simply driving someone back because that's how you roll.

Bullrush is push people using strenght. You can fluff it in thousand ways. Jump and push with your feet, headlong rush, take and launch back (even if this is more like grapple), strike with the top of your axe on the face and then use a strike with your shoulders... and with PF CMB vs CMD, yeah, is actually how high you roll.

Shield Slam is just about starting to get there. But it's again trying too hard. It's not that I hit someone with my shield. It's that I'm a large arrogant SOB with my shoulder behind my shield - and I am going to try to force you backwards and pin you against a wall automatically.

I don't see what's the problem with this feat... I don't understand what you mean here.

Um... no. You push people with your shield because you use your shield to punch them out. A better method would be crowding them out - using your offensive weapon and crowding forward, your body behind your shield and forcing them to backpeddle. Which is exactly what any fighter (no BAB +6 requirement here) who wants to use this sword and shield style can do. And that is the way I fight much of the time when reenacting and armed with sword and shield. Shield bashes are something else.

I continue to do not understand.. you mean that is the same of Tide of Iron, but in 4th fighters take ToI before? This is a good point but I don't see other things. And are not things like ToI that make me wonder, but for this see below.

So it takes a BAB of +6 and three pre-requisite feats to get your alternative to my RL combat style - and that's a wildly OTT charambara style rather than the controlled and disciplined one I'd expect. Right.

Shield proficency, fighter already has it. So TWO feats. As I said, I can understand the BAB that one can consider too high.. but remember that is an additional control given to one dude that is beating you. If a PF fighter starts to beat you, you are not "marked". You are gonna die.

Two weapon fighting is not only used for shields. You can use 2 shortswords and be a thrower with that feat. The fighter will switch "stance", simply dopping or placing in the backpack weapon not needed, and drawing the more appropriate. A good fighter takes advantage form every feat he has, not only from capstones. And tries different strategies from different feats and weapons. Even S&B can vary dramatically, if I'm using Combat Expertise, improved trip and Shield + Light Flail, or Power Attck and Shield + Handaxe.

Name three martial ones. (I'll grant you a few from the Swordmage list starting with Lightning Lure - but this is less of a problem for spellcasters as they can work on what they want to do first, then calculate a spell). IME, martial powers are fluff first then mechanics - and sometimes the mechanics don't quite live up to the fluff (see: Come and Get It).

Come and Get it Strengt vs AC (??) Exorcism of Steel. You complain about Shield Slam by level 6? Here we have a disarm by level 17 (but this is on the same weirdness of Sand in the Eyes)!! Blinding barrage (why don't stab them directly in the eyes, you you are so accurate?). IMO, they simply decided that Rogue needed a blinding power, and then fluffed it.

No. In 4e, Efreeti can grant Wishes to mortals. However this is solely under the control of the DM because Wishes are always plot devices. And as a plot device, the DM needs almost complete oversight. If an Efreet regularly grants wishes, it becomes almost unusable for anything else. If not, it's entirely up to the DM.

IME, Whishes are not necessarily plot devices. they can be unexpected tricks, surprises, gift or disaters both for PCs and DM. And I would decide by myself if use or not to use an Efreeti, instead to recurr to DM-fiat and to a monster that iss redundant with a devil or a fire giant (has horns and kills me with fire).

Say slightly suppressed at most rather than gone.

We have different concepts of "slightly suppressed" so .

But by moving the wishes to the fluff, you don't change a thing. The Wishes are going to be given out by DM fiat and interpreted by DM fiat anyway. The DM can still hand out wishes from the Efreet as a plot device when he wants to. Nothing has really changed here. A clever rogue who finds the bottle in the lost temple still gets a plot device coupon (which is what a Wish is). Nothing has changed here.

If anything, I'd say that restricting the Wishes of an efreeti to the specific 9th level spell of the same name and thereby rendering them mechanical is the part that's taking away some (trivial) amount of magic.

Meybe they change with an errata.. but IIRC is clearly stated that Efreeti don't grant wishes. A favor to anoble one grants another favor, that the lore check (see under DC 30) states as a "wish". And i read as a "of course is a wish" with a pat on my shoulder.

Something has changed here.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Otherwise, no rpg system does anything more than supply rules for specific situations, and guidelines for extrapolating from those rules in a fair and consistent manner (i.e., fudging).

Here there are two things sharing terminology.

When fudging was brought up first (low level), I was thinking of the fudging to keep PCs alive. Slight DM intervention to change results of the sort you need when wizards have d4 hp and weapons do d6 damage. Explicitely and secretly changing the rules as things go on. Rather than responding and playing fairly but creatively.

If a system thinks it can cover ever contingency within the covers of a book and never expect any fudging, then I'm not such a big fan of the system.

Of course. You're never going to get a perfect RPG

On the other hand, any good system should strive to minimise the amount of fudging you actually need. Or quite intentionally make it very open (as the 4e skill/skill challenge system does)

Come and Get It, as an example of the general approach, was discussed and the expectation that the players will look at their mechanics (game play) and then define a role play response to fit. ("pop quiz roleplaying")

And yet, to me the core problem with CAGI is that it was a power someone worked out and thought cool (which it is) and the mechanics of the implementation lag behind the goal. (I'd have done Close Burst 3, Str+2 vs Will, Hit: Target must move their speed, moving closer to you each square by the easiest path until they come adjacent. Secondary attack: Str (+ Weapon) vs AC.

But I don't tend to bounce around. I generally play one system. And all these facts have the same reason. The *game* isn't that important to me. It is the creation and roleplay that is paramount to me. That is what I love.

And me - but a good system facilitates good RP to me and makes me feel more like my character. A clunky system with a lot of looking up (e.g. Rolemaster: Tables Lore) or mechanics that make competent characters incompetent (e.g. Serenity) throws me out. The kinaesthetic nature of 4e helps draw me in.

It is also an exercise in futility, unless you sharply limit what can be done within the system.

Eliminating crime is an excercise in futility unless you shoot everyone or make everything legal. This doesn't mean I don't want a good legal system or police force. There's merit in the goal.

Within this context, the oft-cited Page 42 might well be entitled "Your Guide to Creative Fudging". And that's cool. That's a good thing.

And the existance of page 42 reduces the amount of fudging required - I'm not making it all up, instead I've got guidelines and a framework. Like a police force it's never going to be perfect but a fair attempt is a very good thing.

 

[renau1g]

WotC should, IMHO, official endorse this philosophy, both in its books and in its adventures. Focus on moving the adventure forward through role-playing, interaction, and skill challenges. Make tough combats a penalty for failing in a skill challenge, with the stakes of the combats being more than just life-or-death, and the goals of the NPCs being more than just killing the PCs.

For example: PCs want to save NPC sacrificial victim (SV). A skill challenge allows them to get close enough to disrupt the ceremony, and then they have to fight their way out. Failure in the skill challenge means they have to fight their way in, against a ticking clock....And if the sacrifice is completed, the enemies all become much more powerful.

When the goal becomes something other than "maximize your damage potential", all those nifty powers that PCs have matter a lot more. This is as true in 4e as it is in any other edition.....including "unofficial editions", like LL and OSRIC.

I agree with this, I wish there was more consequence to combat, but as you say, not edition specific. I may have to take a look at your rules then.

I find divine challenge silly. Having the god smite the paladin's enemies makes sense. Having the god smite only those enemies that attack other party members makes no sense. It is a gamist construct that exists only because the paladin is supposed to be a defender. I can possible see martial leaders inspiering others to push on when they are hurt, but what about when a character is dying (in game terms) an sshouldn't even be able to hear the encouraging shouts of the warlord. He literally goes from dying to being able to fight just fine because someone without any magical healing capability because someone shouted at him? Sorry, that crosses the line for me. I am actually surpised they didn't go even farther with divorcing 4E from any reality or versimaltude, cause once you get to this point you might as well say that all PC's can fly, don'y need to eat or sleep and can breathe and move in water just fine because that's more "fun" than your characters acting like real flesh and blood characters.

Actually, having gods smite people makes no sense in any context, nor does casting magic missile, or divine healing, or 99% of D&D. If you have no problem with a wizard stopping the very fabric of time (Time Stop) I fail to see how it's that different.

Ok, so you can't hear the warlord physically, maybe the spirit of the warrior has yet to enter death's door, the light is inviting and so warm, but suddenly there's a pull from somewhere else, a familiar voice cuts through the darkness and reminds the fallen hero that there's unfinished business. Somehow, this hero pulls away from the light and returns to his body, ready to continue his quest.

Very little in D&D is actually "acting like flesh and blood" that's for far grittier systems. There's no real-world physics in any edition of D&D, fireball doesn't light anything on fire? Really? How does that make sense?

 

[Umbran]

Honestly Merric, I don't have much experience with high level 3e and I think this might be one of the things WotC messed up on. They assumed that everyone ran super long campaigns into high levels, on a regular basis... when I would argue that is probably a small subset of DM's.

My recollection from the time of 3e's release is a bit different from that:

The market research had shown them that a typical campaign that got off the ground ran for 12 to 18 months, and whatever level it go to at the end of that time is what it got to. The assumption is that during those 12 to 18 months, folks wanted to see a greater percentage of the power levels available at the system - that in an 18 month campaign, you could reach level 18 to 20.

So the game was designed such that playing once a week, three or four encounters per session, 13.3 encounters per level (on average - so roughly one level per month), and you get into that upper tier near the end of 18 months.

If there was a flaw in the assumptions, it was that folks wanted to see those higher power levels.

 

[Shazman]

Yay, I can spend more money to get monsters that work right in my game!! Just like skill challenges!!

Okay, so it took them 3 monster manuals to maybe get monsters right. In this case, "getting it right", is having the monsters do more damage, so perhaps DMs will use lower level monsters, so perhaps combats will be slightly quicker. Sounds like too little, too late to me. I still can't fathom how they didn't see the "grind" in playtesting, or if they did, they didn't consider it to be big enough problem to try and fix it. It really makes me skeptical as to how much playtesting was done, cause I don't see how they would have deemed a typical 4E combat to have been completed in an acceptable amount of time unless they always used mostly minions in their encounters.

 

[BryonD]

I'll confess ignorance. Could you link me to these sales figures you're talking about? I'm unaware of WotC releasing any comprehensive data like that.

I don't have any links. But the initial core for 4E sold a ton. There is no doubt about that.

 

[El Mahdi]

What would be an example of a "long term customer pool" in the rpg business?

Outside of rpgs, the only "long term customer pool" I can think of offhand would be for various food brands like Coke, McDonalds, etc ...

Those are exactly what I envision when I think of a long-term customer pool.

Maybe my definition is different than those used by most businesses?