Repeating the Mistakes of the Past

[GX.Sigma]

Most of them - especially the Power books, the PHBs, and Player Options - mainly seemed like filler, the useful bits of which ended upon Character Builder anyhow. 4e didn't really see the publication of interesting variants like Magic of Incarnum or Weapons of Legacy.

Not every feat, power, spell, or magic item needs to be published, especially with a good online suite of tools. In fact, if I was WotC I'd hold off on Adventurer's Vault type books for a few years until you've got a ton of good material, and then publish one giant book rather than three hardcovers over four years (AV 1 and 2 plus Mordenkainen's Magnificient Emporium).

The same with powers, classes, races, feats, etc. Put that stuff online and then compile the best of it when it seems necessary.

That's a really good idea. I'd probably never have purchased Martial Power 2 (if I had been actively playing and buying 4e), but I might have paid a monthly subscription to get a bit of it each month. That kind of content is useful just because it adds more options, but it doesn't really call for a hardcover release. Maybe a companion or subset of Dragon magazine (call it Drake or Wyvern), where the whole pitch is "here's some more stuff."

 

[SteveC]

Oh, my yes! I can't agree more with the sentiments of the OP. WotC employs resources to survey their customers better than any other company in the business, and is constantly surveying us. I fill out a lot of surveys, let me tell you.

But, it seems to me like the surveys are being read by someone in the Bizarro universe. Okay that's probably not true, but I'd say that a lot of the folks who turn in the surveys are not WotC's customers and have no intention of being their customers, and there exists a disconnect about that with how they're interpreted.

I will combine that with the assertion that I've heard from many people who actually work in marketing that the public doesn't really know what they want: what they say they want and what they'll buy are two massively different things.

I've been a great customer of WotC, and so has my gaming group, but we had to stop being a customer because there has been literally no product for us to purchase that we don't already have in the last couple of years. Currently, I'm on my longest hiatus from buying a D&D product since I started back in the 70s!

I get no sense that the next edition of the game is going to address the key issues that WotC has seen over the past few years, and every indication that we're in a sort of "can we get a do-over?" mode at the moment. Obviously, that' just my opinion (as is all of this post!)

With launch, we're going to get a glut of product as the same standard releases happen again. The starting trio of books along with "modular" releases to give back the options that the core doesn't have sound like a lot of books. And since we haven't seen any of the rules for those modules, I expect that much of the material won't be playtested in a robust way, much like previous editions.

I see the rest of the issues in the survey being an issue again as well (lack of organized play, lack of robust support for an OGL like license).

As usual, when I post something that's negative, I hope I'm wrong, since I'm very interested in seeing the hobby and industry succeed, but, man it doesn't look like it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

WotC is a fully-owned subsidiary of Hasbro. It is almost unthinkable that Hasbro would go under, and it certainly won't have anything to do with WotC or D&D.

And WotC make Magic: The Gathering. Last time I ran some estimates for the numbers, Magic: The Gathering ($200 million) was responsible for ten times the income D&D was ($20 million). D&D was around 1/15 of WotC at most - and WotC ($300 million) was not quite a tenth of Hasbro ($4 billion). The only number in there that was an estimate was the D&D income - and that estimate was very much on the high side.

D&D is barely relevant to WotC's bottom line. Hasbro is in another league.

 

[n00bdragon]

The amount if errata for the PHB1 makes that the most broken book.
But I think it was around Martial Power 2 that I put a delay on new books being used by my party until the errata was issued. The problem wasn't a single book but the regularity of updates. They couldn't catch all the errors in the books because they were being written too fast.

95% of the errata for the PHB1 is to update wordings and formattings to keep them in line with later books and clarify ambiguity along with a few typographical errors. Very VERY few balance changes were actually implemented and none of them were so horrible that they would ruin your average game, but that they presented certain problems to organized play. The fact that they actually did errata things as opposed to just leaving them broken does not somehow make 4e a magically more busted system than any other version of D&D. 3e is, objectively, far worse in this regard. There is no errata and Pun Pun and friends are completely legal characters.

You're just villainizing the edition for actually giving a **** about clarity and presentation and using the options available to it to help people who might be confused or frustrated while implicitly giving other games that won't admit their mistakes a free pass. That's pretty unfair.

 

[Jester David]

95% of the errata for the PHB1 is to update wordings and formattings to keep them in line with later books and clarify ambiguity along with a few typographical errors. Very VERY few balance changes were actually implemented and none of them were so horrible that they would ruin your average game, but that they presented certain problems to organized play.

Disagree.
There are quite a few balance and design problems. Like the expanded crit ranges on paragon paths open to anyone who can take a feat. The veteran's armour. The size of epic area effect powers.
And so many more problems that could have been spotted by a little extra editing. Such as the paladin build that lacked a power at one level (I think there was a warlock power like that too).

Because the edition was young and knowledge of the system was rougher, a lot of the problems are excusable. They just didn't know.
But as the edition continued so did the errata, with regular large updates after every book. Stuff that should have been caught by even a cursory editing pass. Like the battlerager fighter, whose problems should have been obvious after a single playtest session.

I think it was at its worst in 2010 when it seemed like they weren't even trying to do last minute editing figuring they could catch it as an update.

The fact that they actually did errata things as opposed to just leaving them broken does not somehow make 4e a magically more busted system than any other version of D&D. 3e is, objectively, far worse in this regard. There is no errata and Pun Pun and friends are completely legal characters.

I didn't bring up editions. I brought up WotC and its glut of books, which covered most of 3.5e as much as 4e. The monthly content being generated faster than it could be tested. That's a problem regardless of edition.

I was asked directly what the most broken book for 4e was and answered. I could also tell you my pick for the worst 3.5e book.

Now, 4e was a *little* worse for this because it had a much higher crunch:fluff ratio, so there was that much more content to generate in the same time. And the balance was much tighter, broken options stood out more.

You're just villainizing the edition for actually giving a **** about clarity and presentation and using the options available to it to help people who might be confused or frustrated while implicitly giving other games that won't admit their mistakes a free pass. That's pretty unfair.

You're making it about editions, not me. I was trying to discuss WotC's former practices in general, recalling how they managed to repeat a lot of TSR's mistakes (and start a reminder of what not to do next time).

 

[Zardnaar]

My theory is WoTC is like a punch drunk boxer trying to reach the highs of past glory (2000/2001).

 

[sabrinathecat]

There have been hard-cover books released every month? Where? Oh, you mean when 4E first got started. There's been jack for the last year unless you were a member.

WotC's policy toward the end was to release tons of basic ideas with no support afterward. How many races/classes received no followup support whatsoever? Everything in Heros of Shadow and Feywild. Splatbooks were put out for Dragonborn and Tieflings, but nothing else. Runepriest: need I say anything?
And in mid-system, they created massive turmoil with Essentials, fragmenting the game community between 4e, Essentials, and people who don't care and will use both (usually thinking the division is silly and arbitrary). Rules getting retconned and changing the game. Stupid imbalances that showed some character builds were never play-tested.

Character builder changing from a perfectly usable database system to an unwieldy and slow online-only/membership only system.
Playtesting for 5e announced before 4e was even 5 years old.

WotC revamping the existing online membership boards from something that worked to something so disgustingly ineffective and unwieldy (not to mention painfully ugly), that huge portions of their online users fled (many coming here).

If they were actually listening to their fan-base, they might have noticed a massive loss of fan-base caused by bad decisions.

 

[Mistwell]

and 4e was "gluttonous" compared to Pathfinder. .

I truly don't get statements like this.

It's like massive numbers of people are blind to the release schedule from Paizo for the past two years.

It's not like this is a subjective opinion. You can count the number of products, you can count the page-count, and you can see for yourself.

Paizo has been putting out MASSIVE amounts of material this past two years. It definitely surpasses anything WOTC did with 4e, in any particular year of 4e.

I suspect people somehow place special importance on whether the binding of some books is hard or soft, or maybe it's the subscription-nature of some of the Paizo material.

But on any measure I can think of, Paizo hasn't been "slow" publishing for two years. They've been sprinting like mad to put out tons and tons and tons of material.

And it's not all adventures. Heck, it's not even campaign materials. There are tons of new rules in the past two years as well.

I just don't get why people are not seeing what Paizo's been doing this past two years, the sheer quantity of material they've been putting out. How can anyone say 4e was glutonous compared to how Paizo's been doing it this past two years? I mean, just go into any game store that stocks both games, and LOOK at the shelf space taken up by each, and compare for yourself.

 

[Mistwell]

And WotC make Magic: The Gathering. Last time I ran some estimates for the numbers, Magic: The Gathering ($200 million) was responsible for ten times the income D&D was ($20 million). D&D was around 1/15 of WotC at most - and WotC ($300 million) was not quite a tenth of Hasbro ($4 billion).

Well, you are mistaken.

Here is their most recent, public, official chart.

If, as you say, D&D is 1/15th of all of WOTC (and I think it's more than that myself, once you include licensing incomes), that puts it as a rather important segment of Hasbro.

 

[GSHamster]

But, it seems to me like the surveys are being read by someone in the Bizarro universe. Okay that's probably not true, but I'd say that a lot of the folks who turn in the surveys are not WotC's customers and have no intention of being their customers, and there exists a disconnect about that with how they're interpreted.

Or alternatively, maybe you are not representative of the majority of WotC's customers.