Every Edition is a Failure

[Yora]

No, that's just the internet.

 

[Shadeydm]

disagree

In my book every edition of D&D is a winner. I've played them all DM'd them all except for 4E and had a great time in every instance. You should not be suprised to see people voicing thier dissatisfaction with 4E even if not everyone is as articulate as you might like. On the whole if 5E is going to be the unification edition its going to be important to identify what the most wide spread 4E deal breakers are for people who didnt stay with it. Since some of those items may need to be supplimental instead of core in 5E.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Every single edition in the end, failed. None of them are "evergreen" products. None of them managed to stay in print.

WOTC told us that the Essentials line was evergreen and would stay in print. The new red box was the first evergreen product.

Do you think WOTC will actually do this?


OTOH, the 1E books have long been out of print. So long in fact, that there are a good number of D&D fans that have never seen or played it. Yet the 1E core books are being reprinted again this year. If 1E were a failure, and a really old one at that, why would WOTC reprint those books while letting a line they promised as 'evergreen' fade into oblivion?

What I think is that as long as D&D remains with a company as large and bloated as Hasbro it will NEVER be a winner as a tabletop rpg. There simply isn't enough money in the hobby to satisfy the demands of such a company.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I mean yeah the comments from the average gamer who didn't like 4e are very vague. And I can see how this can be frustrating.

But I don't think they can be dismissed. Even if they can't really articulate anything more than "just didn't like something about it".

The vagueness is frustrating. But doesn't even come close to the aggravation caused by the outright lies spread about 4e in internet discussions.

So all editions fail. But at least WotC considers 4th Edition a greater failure than the others.
Just two years after release, they tried to redefine the game with Essentials

3.0 only lasted three years. But as far as I know, D&D was not being judged against a $50 million target. 4e was. Older editions just had to make a profit.

Oh, and with dates from wiki, 4e isn't lasting a whole lot worse than 3.X. Wizards started developing 3e in 1997, for 2000 publication. They published 3.5 in 2003. And two years after that they started developing 4e.

 

[Yora]

But you can't count 3.0 and 3.5 as different editions but treat 4th and Essntials as the same.

Yes, 3rd Edition did get a minor overhaul after two years, compared to a more significant overhaul of 4th Edition after 2 years. But 3.5e went for 4 years after release before 4th Edition was announced. Essentials just barely made it for only one year before 5th Edition was announced. I consider that a very different quality.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The vagueness is frustrating. But doesn't even come close to the aggravation caused by the outright lies spread about 4e in internet discussions.



3.0 only lasted three years. But as far as I know, D&D was not being judged against a $50 million target. 4e was. Older editions just had to make a profit.

Oh, and with dates from wiki, 4e isn't lasting a whole lot worse than 3.X. Wizards started developing 3e in 1997, for 2000 publication. They published 3.5 in 2003. And two years after that they started developing 4e.

Except 3.5 was not a new edition. It was little more than a minor revision.

But I really think there is no comparison. 3E was quite a success. It brought people back to D&D and brought new people to the hobby. 4E initially sold well, but was quicklh challenged by pathfinder. During 3e most people were playing 3e, during 4e the base was split between 4e and pathfinder. 4e was successful with a core group of fans (as we can see in these threads), but is also continues to be highly unpopular with about half of the D&D fanbase.

 

[Siberys]

But you can't count 3.0 and 3.5 as different editions but treat 4th and Essntials as the same.

Yes, you can; Essentials was not a revision, it was a supplement. It didn't change how the game worked; it only provided alternate character creation, much like Psionics did the year earlier. Not so with 3.5; that actually changed rules, as opposed to just providing new material to use with the rules. The confusion comes from Essential's presentation. It's marketed as a core rulebook, and people tend to think of a new set of core rulebooks meaning a new edition or iteration. Not so in this case; the non-class rules work exactly as before. But people like to make mountains out of molehills.

Imagine someone took the 3.5 PHB and ripped out all of the magic-related rules elements, then dropped in XPH's classes and rules, and then switched out the flavor of that psionic stuff to be arcane or divine magic - frex, the Wilder renamed Sorcerer, the Psion named Wizard, the Psionic Warrior renamed Paladin, &c. You'd have a different way of running a wizard, but it would in no way invalidate running an existing wizard - the rules would just be in a different book. that's basically what we got with Essentials. The analogy's not perfect, mind, but it covers the idea fairly well.

 

[Umbran]

I am suspicious of anyone who claims to have a better metric for how well-designed a game is than public perception of said game.

Yes, but that works both ways - public perception doesn't necessarily indicate the design quality either. There's any number of well-designed games out there that didn't take off. I daresay most games never take off, period. How well they are designed does not matter.

This goes doubly or trebly when your impression of public perception is based upon statements made on internet messageboards, where moderate voices are either underrepresented, or shouted over by extreme opinions and thus undercounted.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And once again... people completely miss or ignore the intention of a thread and go off to complain/debate about 3E & 4E, making the same tired arguments that have been made for years.

It's really not that hard to understand, people...

Hussar's entire point was that if you're going to claim some aspect of the rules from one of the D&D editions does not work well and should not be adapted to 5E... back up your argument with evidence.

THAT'S IT. END OF STORY.

If you can't do that... then obviously your argument is invalid.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And once again... people completely miss or ignore the intention of a thread and go off to complain/debate about 3E & 4E, making the same tired arguments that have been made for years.

It's really not that hard to understand, people...

Hussar's entire point was that if you're going to claim some aspect of the rules from one of the D&D editions does not work well and should not be adapted to 5E... back up your argument with evidence.

THAT'S IT. END OF STORY.

If you can't do that... then obviously your argument is invalid.

People are giving evidence. The argument hussar describes is more complocated than "everything from 4e is bad because 4e failed". Normally when people suggest 4e mechanics should make it into core 5E, they are mechanics which were related to 4e's unpopularity (surges, martial dailies or encounters, etc). The point of 5e is to re-unite the base but you cant do that if the very things thag caused the split are core parts of the new edition.

Do you deny that 4e powers or healing surges were divisive innovations? Because those are among the chief criticisms of 4e.