When did WotC D&D "Jump the Shark"?

[BryonD]

How many blind guys are we talking about though? I mean, in that thread that you are referencing, there was another blind guy who owns this site arguing that 4e has been very, very good to him.

You are mangling both my point and your own analogy.

The blind men and the elephant has nothing to do with how many men there are, just that there are several and because they have different bits of data on the elephant they reach wildly different conclusions. The data is not wildly varying, quite the opposite, it is remarkably consistent.

And I don't see how you can be paying attention to what I have been saying and turn around and suggest that 4E doing great for Morrus is remotely contrary to my position. What have I said that contradicts that?

My position is that both games are doing well, but that there is a split in the fan base. Every reference I had pointed out supports that BOTH PF and 4E are doing well.

No matter how many times the clarification is offered, you keep lurching from "split" to "4E is failing". A claim not only not made, but expressly rejected.

Again, you claim that there is a deep split in the fan base. It's the DEEP part that I dispute, not the existence of a split. Disputing the existence of a split would be pretty stupid all things considered.

I'll have to settle for that. Certainly it is progress....

 

[BryonD]

I think the problem is nobody here is saying PF doesn't sell as well as 4e.

As with Hussar, I'll take that as good progress.

What we have are a bunch of blind men feeling around, sure. The problem is if one feels a leg and one feels a trunk and one feels a tail then someone might say "aha that has to be an elephant!" but that doesn't mean it IS an elephant. You're LOOKING FOR AN ELEPHANT and finding one. Maybe its a tree, a snake, and a rope.

I think you are torturing that anaolgy now. They are not finding "a leg", "a trunk", "a tail", and then drawign lines to make an elephant.

They are finding "equity", and "equity", and "equity".

Finally, it just doesn't matter all that much. 4e is a good game (or the devil's spawn if you prefer) and OBVIOUSLY WotC isn't giving up and abandoning the game. They sure aren't showing any signs of doing that this year, that's for sure. If they were they'd have given a bunch of their staff the boot, eh. Never once has the existence or non-existence of PF made any difference to me. If there's some vast quantity of people that are 'divided' from me and won't play 4e with me you're going to have to come over here and show me those people, because they simply don't exist in my experience. I don't even really care what happens in some other place, but given the obvious popularity of 4e I'm not real concerned that I'd be able to find players anywhere I'm likely to go.

Did I mention that I think 4E is popular? Maybe I should have mentioned that. Oh wait, I did.

My experience has been that there are a lot of people who like 4E and avoid 3E. My experience has been that there are a lot of people who like 3E and avoid 4E. My experience has also been that there are plenty of people who like both. But the first two groups *seem* to outnumber the third.

Is it "important".
We are talking about a game. We can say nothing is important. I certainly enjoy debating this stuff in part because I don't care about the conclusions nearly as much as I do about things like politics. And that makes the debates much more of a recreational activity.

I do think that there is some significance to gaming as a whole when the leading brand causes a split like this. But, certainly "gaming as a whole" is still quite the small teapot for this tempest.

But I'm still just looking at the information and making observations. Not long ago the idea that there was any split whatsoever, or that PF was remotely comparable to 4E in the marketplace were far more controversial ideas than
this debate. So the simple fact that these items are now taken for granted is an interesting point.

 

[BryonD]

The evidence you're basing your inferences on is incomplete and self-selective.

Heh, you respond to my offer to assess your data and you respond by simply saying my data is "self-selective". Please, tell me what I have failed to select.

 

[Fifth Element]

My position is that both games are doing well, but that there is a split in the fan base. Every reference I had pointed out supports that BOTH PF and 4E are doing well.

But this does nothing to demonstrate a deep split in the fan base. Both games could be doing well because both are being bought by most of the same people, for example. Since we have no data on who is buying the games and what other games they buy, there's no grounds to infer that there is a deep split.

Surely not everyone who plays PF plays 4E and vice versa. There is surely a split of some sort, but you conitnue to insist on this split being very deep, without having anything to support the assertion.

You can't assess my "data" because I don't have any, as I've said repeatedly. My position is that you don't have any real data either, leaving only conjecture that you insist is fact.

 

[Fifth Element]

My experience has been that there are a lot of people who like 4E and avoid 3E. My experience has been that there are a lot of people who like 3E and avoid 4E. My experience has also been that there are plenty of people who like both. But the first two groups *seem* to outnumber the third.

Now this is getting somewhere. There is a world of difference between this and "There IS a deep split, prove me wrong!"

As long as you're saying that it seems this way based on your experience, then there's nothing to say against it. It doesn't match my experience, which is that all 4E players I know also play some version of 3E. So it seems to me that there is not a deep split, but I certainly can't be sure of that.

 

[Fifth Element]

or that PF was remotely comparable to 4E in the marketplace

I'd say this is far from taken for granted; see previous in this thread. "Remotely comparable" is a very nebulous term, and you can fit a heck of a lot in there. But we already tried that discussion.

 

[TheUltramark]

I don't mean to crap on anyone's parade, but why would anybody care even in the slightest if there is a split in the fan base??????????

How could that possibly affect your gaming experience ???????

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I don't mean to crap on anyone's parade, but why would anybody care even in the slightest if there is a split in the fan base??????????

How could that possibly affect your gaming experience ???????

You asked that before, and had a reply on page 14....

And it was a pretty common sense answer. A split in the fan base can mean a smaller hobby - if the threshold market is damaged. The split, as demonstrated by so many edition war threads, is potentially divisive, making both markets smaller than they might be.

Welcome to the department of the bureau of redundancy agency....

The Auld Grump

 

[BryonD]

"Remotely comparable" is a very nebulous term, and you can fit a heck of a lot in there. But we already tried that discussion.

Actually, we have not. You keep trying to latch on to adjectives as a means of ignoring the rest of the point and then ducking the issue that you have yet to produce a drop of contrary evidence, despite repeated requests.

And then you try to declare that a conversation "already had".
If you have a better rebuttal, I'd assume you would offer it.

If you actually do make a point, I'll be here. But I feel no obligation to simply play argument clinic with you.

 

[Fifth Element]

Actually, we have not. You keep trying to latch on to adjectives as a means of ignoring the rest of the point and then ducking the issue that you have yet to produce a drop of contrary evidence, despite repeated requests.

Once more: the party making the positive assertion has the onus of evidence placed upon it. I am not making a particular argument, specifically because I do not believe there is sufficient evidence to make such an argument.

Is that clear now?

And then you try to declare that a conversation "already had".
If you have a better rebuttal, I'd assume you would offer it.

I'm not offering a rebuttal, I'm suggesting you have not defined "in the same ballpark" such that it has any meaning. I can't rebut an opinion, which (it seems to me) is all you've provided.

For example, you could be saying that 4E and PF are in the same ballpark, and are very close to each other, and the third-ranked RPG is very far out of the ballpark. Or you could be saying that PF is just barely in the same ballpark as 4E, and the third-ranked game is just outside the ballpark, such that it's closer to PF than PF is to 4E. I don't know, because you haven't provided any meaningful points of comparison, just a lot of "it seems" and nebulous terms.