What did Wizards learn from Essentials?

[Tony Vargas]

The thing that WotC /should/ have learned from Essentials was 'don't piss off the fans by rolling out a half-ed only two years after a new ed.' They should have learned that from 3.5, too.

They clearly still /haven't/ learned that lesson, since they're now doing a full rev-roll years early.


Gamers do not buy rulebooks with the expectation that they'll be obsolete in two years or so. We buy them expecting to use them for many years.

 

[LurkAway]

They clearly still /haven't/ learned that lesson, since they're now doing a full rev-roll years early.

Except that the polls here on Enworld suggest that a majority are feeling positive about the news AFAICT.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Gamers do not buy rulebooks with the expectation that they'll be obsolete in two years or so. We buy them expecting to use them for many years.

Actually, we buy them cause they're there to be bought, regardless of when they get released.

Because we realize after dropping that fourth $60 on another latest release video game in a single year... spending $70 on three new RPG books every three years is cheap as hell.

 

[IanB]

Strange you should say this, because I found the Essentials books harder to read. I could easily skim through the first Players' Handbook and notice the important facts and sections which I wanted to read, and each class had a clean layout of powers. Essentials classes were walls of text to sift to find the rules for each feature and level. A power is presented in a clear, uniform format, and one can see at a glance how it is different from another power.

Flavour is all a matter of taste. Most modern fantasy and roleplaying-derived fiction is trash, so I really dislike wading through second rate prose to find the rules and explanation for a class's schtick. Far worse was when the Wizards started attaching craptastic fluff notes at the beginning of each power (in addition to the short flavour text): the Warlord class when Essentialized doubled its page count with absolutely no additional information!

For me the problem with reading the Essentials book was entirely about the size of the pages compared to how much information they contained. It worked really well for the Rules Compendium, not so much for the player books. Too much page flipping.

 

[Mokona]

Then when they released the 'Advanced'PHB they would already have all that experience and feedback designing classes and powers that aren't so bland and uninteresting to me.

Mike Mearls full quote doesn't make any sense or at least he is making odd claims about time-space.

Because 4th edition came out first, the designers of Essentials were able to understand what didn't work and produce something that was less "bland". Had Essentials come first they wouldn't have had to the necessary experience and Essentials would have been the terrible product.

Either way the first release would have sucked.

Now 5th edition has an opportunity for the first release to not suck because of open playtesting. D&D 3rd edition also had extensive playtesting and it didn't suck.

 

[Sirot]

How does everyone feel about the subclass system that Essentials introduced? What I am talking about is the Ranger actually being a Hunter (Ranger) or a Scout (Ranger).

It is something I am hoping they will bring to 5e because it'll allow multiple classes to share one pool of resources. For example, you could have a Warlord (Fighter), Knight (Fighter), Berserker (Fighter), Kobold Warrior (Fighter) and so on.

So if you are a person who likes the idea of the fighter, but want a tweak to how its played, you can pick a subclass of the fighter that closest fits what you want him to be and work from there by adding a theme and feats.

It's a great way to implement Wizard Specializations or Warlock Pacts for example.

 

[pauljathome]

Except that the polls here on Enworld suggest that a majority are feeling positive about the news AFAICT.

Self selecting internet polls need to be taken with EXTREME care.

I've glanced at the WOTC forums and the impression I get is that the people who like 4th edition aren't reacting as favourably. But that vague impression is very much subject to the caveat above

People always react well to hype, at least at first.

So far, all we're really seeing is the initial reaction to a well done marketing campaign. This is NOT a slam. At this point a well done marketing campaign is as much as we can really hope for. And it definitely beats the pre 4th edition marketing campaign.

The first really interesting point will be when the Open Playtest starts and we see the actual rules. Until then, we're all just speculating.

Then we'll start to see how well the rules ACTUALLY succeed at uniting various gaming styles. At how good the game really is. Whether the modular approach works or yields an untestable unbalanced mess (clearly a real possibility if there are sufficient number of modules that significantly affect game play)

Also importantly, we'll start to see whether WOTC really and truly DOES listen to the feedback or not.

In other words current reactions, especially self selected reactions, really don't mean much of anything.

 

[FireLance]

Mike Mearls full quote doesn't make any sense or at least he is making odd claims about time-space.

Because 4th edition came out first, the designers of Essentials were able to understand what didn't work and produce something that was less "bland". Had Essentials come first they wouldn't have had to the necessary experience and Essentials would have been the terrible product.

Pre-Essentials 4e was itself a reaction to lessons learned from 3e.

If I were to list the lessons learned in just one aspect of D&D (there are other aspects, and other lessons) it would be as follows:

2e learned that if you wanted each player to run a single character over an extended campaign, "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" was a problem.

3e learned that giving warriors bonus feats was not enough to solve the "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" problem. The Book of Nine Swords suggested that giving warriors "powers" might be a better approach.

Pre-Essentials 4e learned that putting warriors and wizards on the same AEDU power structure balanced them very well, but sacrificed a certain amount of distinctiveness which was important to some players.

Essentials learned that it was possible to achieve sufficient balance between warriors and wizards while making the classes more distinctive by having somewhat less linear warriors and significantly less quadratic wizards.

What will 5e learn from Essentials? Only time will tell.

 

[WanderingMonster]

Hopefully they learned not to do anymore X.5 editions. Essentials confused me. I didn't know what it was for, why it was needed, or how I could run it alongside a 4e game.

3.5 re-released all the core books, and went full steam ahead with the revised rules. Essentials was launched with a whimper. I was not, and am not, really sure what to do with it.

 

[SlyDoubt]

Mike Mearls full quote doesn't make any sense or at least he is making odd claims about time-space.

Because 4th edition came out first, the designers of Essentials were able to understand what didn't work and produce something that was less "bland". Had Essentials come first they wouldn't have had to the necessary experience and Essentials would have been the terrible product.

Either way the first release would have sucked.

Now 5th edition has an opportunity for the first release to not suck because of open playtesting. D&D 3rd edition also had extensive playtesting and it didn't suck.

I realize that. That's more an issue of how long it was in the oven and how much they did to get fan reactions. Which I don't think they did enough of. They just went with the gut motivation to fix the complications brought by 3E and codify the game to facilitate easy and organized play.

Obviously they realize that was an issue. Essentials showed that. 5E shows that also. So yeah clearly Essentials only existed because they had the experience and reactions from the PHB. But if they had approached 4E the way they're approaching 5E, I feel it would have turned out a bit different.

Hindsight and all.