D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Ovinomancer]

My point is that your using terms to define quality based on technical standards.

You cannot consider technical proficiency to be quality? I don't understand this objection. If a film is out-of-focus, has very poor camera control, is poorly framed, but yet has an interesting story, I'm absolutely sure that it's going to be considered a failed film with a caveat that a better production would have suited the story and done better.

You've obviously read up on the art of film making. Someone, subjectively, came up with some of those phrases and standards. Some of it is just your personal preference.

I don't, really. I know a few terms, and I've watched and paid attention to a number of films. Please stop trying to cast me as some kind of expert so that I fit into whatever bin you think I need to be in to dismiss my observations. If you can't refute the observations, attack the person, right?

For me, TTRPGs are much like food. Does the food make you physically ill? Then it's poor quality. Beyond that? Personal preference. Can I read the current D&D books and do they make sense, are they consistent? Yes, for the most part (nothing's perfect). Beyond that? Personal preference.

Anyway, it's just my opinion. A high quality opinion in my judgement of course, but just an opinion.

That's not how food is usually judged, though, it's just a statement of your preferences in food. Food can be evaluated with objective standards. I mean, how you cook a steak is well defined in 5 categories (6 if you include uncooked, 7 or more if you include other preps like treating with acids). This are objectively defined, if a tad loosely (the exact transition from warm red center to hot red center, for instance (medium rare to medium, in other parlance) isn't strongly defined). This is a measure of quality -- a piece of steak specified to medium rare is of lesser quality if it is cooked to well-done. How you like your steak cooked is a matter of preference, but I can absolutely judge the quality of the cooking outside of your preferences.

 

[Oofta]

You cannot consider technical proficiency to be quality? I don't understand this objection. If a film is out-of-focus, has very poor camera control, is poorly framed, but yet has an interesting story, I'm absolutely sure that it's going to be considered a failed film with a caveat that a better production would have suited the story and done better.

I don't, really. I know a few terms, and I've watched and paid attention to a number of films. Please stop trying to cast me as some kind of expert so that I fit into whatever bin you think I need to be in to dismiss my observations. If you can't refute the observations, attack the person, right?

That's not how food is usually judged, though, it's just a statement of your preferences in food. Food can be evaluated with objective standards. I mean, how you cook a steak is well defined in 5 categories (6 if you include uncooked, 7 or more if you include other preps like treating with acids). This are objectively defined, if a tad loosely (the exact transition from warm red center to hot red center, for instance (medium rare to medium, in other parlance) isn't strongly defined). This is a measure of quality -- a piece of steak specified to medium rare is of lesser quality if it is cooked to well-done. How you like your steak cooked is a matter of preference, but I can absolutely judge the quality of the cooking outside of your preferences.

All of those so-called objective standards are just judgement calls that have been codified over time.

Anyway, I'm done. We're just going in circles. Have a good one.

 

[Ovinomancer]

All of those so-called objective standards are just judgement calls that have been codified over time.

Anyway, I'm done. We're just going in circles. Have a good one.

Wait, the temperature and color of a cooked steak is a judgement call?

Again, you can objectively determine this. And you can have a preference for which you like. And, you can then judge the quality of the preparation of your steak by how well the objective measure of temperature and color match your request. If I ask for medium rare, and get well done, I can both determine this objectively, and also objectively say that the preparation is of poor quality.

 

[Ovinomancer]

To expand this to RPGs, I can say that a goal for 5e is bounded accuracy. I can look at the system of 5e and say that it largely fulfills this goal (it clearly breaks with effort, bardic inspiration I'm looking at you), and so achieves a good quality on the axis of "meeting design goals for bounded accuracy." This is entirely independent on whether or not I prefer bounded accuracy or not.

 

[Oofta]

Wait, the temperature and color of a cooked steak is a judgement call?

Again, you can objectively determine this. And you can have a preference for which you like. And, you can then judge the quality of the preparation of your steak by how well the objective measure of temperature and color match your request. If I ask for medium rare, and get well done, I can both determine this objectively, and also objectively say that the preparation is of poor quality.

The categorization is a judgement call that has been quantified. That is not an indication of quality. It may be useful for people to match their personal preference with that categorization, but that is different from quality.

I like my steak medium-well. My brother-in-law prefers it barely cooked. For me medium-well is higher quality than rare. The precision of the chef that is cooking the meat is a separate issue.

Again: there is a certain level of quality in the coherence, consistency and conciseness for a game. Beyond that? It's personal preference.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Snarf Zygag

What I am saying is that is not popular because it satisfies disparate tastes, but because it satisfies a specific set of widely held expectations phenomenally well. The same way Call of Duty does or CSI does. Fast and the Furious is another good example.

But ... no. It doesn't. Look at your repeated requests for play examples!

How many times have you seen people in these threads argue/discuss about playing 5e?
About whether they should play by the book, or not?
About ToTM, or grid?
About playing it as primarily a combat game, or a narrative game?
About the amount of control given to the DM or the players?

I could keep going on, but I will repeat two examples I have seen recently:
In the first, 5e was played with a beautiful, set-piece battle that took up the whole gaming session. It had miniatures, and a giant table with an intricately constructed village, and it was amazing ... but pretty darn close to a wargame (and with optional flanking rules, measurements for area spells, etc.).

In the second, it was a complete narrative (TOTM) game; the players were establishing large parts of the "world" while they were playing, and "control" was easily ceded between the DM and the players; dice rolling was minimal.

Both of those were obviously D&D, and obviously 5e. The groups had taken the game in disparate directions, but, and this is key, this is one of the major defining features of 5e. When I hear people say, "But the game is only the rules," I get a little weirded out, because it's so much more- it's the people, the community that grows up around the rules. And that's what 5e is. It is a "big tent" that allows for a multitude (heteroglossia) of playstyles. There are many other games that are incredible, but these incessant demands to look at the "system" misses the forest for the trees.

And I am done with the issue. As I said, I respect your position, we just disagree.* And there will not be agreement, which is, again, okay!


*EDIT: Seriously. You have a well-thought out position that you have clearly considered, and you assert it in good-faith. I have nothing bad to say, I just have a different position.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The consumer is the final judge of quality, and businesses pursue quality in order to get sales. You can win all kinds of industry quality awards and get rave reviews from critics, but ultimately, the consumer is looking at a whole bunch of different things, and what's really annoying is that each individual consumer weights each factor slightly differently. If something sells really well, beyond the point where we can just call it a fad, resulting in very large numbers of satisfied customers, it's doing something right, maybe a few things really right, maybe a lot of things mostly right. Regardless, it's not a misstatement to say it's overall a high-quality product.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The categorization is a judgement call that has been quantified. That is not an indication of quality. It may be useful for people to match their personal preference with that categorization, but that is different from quality.

I like my steak medium-well. My brother-in-law prefers it barely cooked. For me medium-well is higher quality than rare. The precision of the chef that is cooking the meat is a separate issue.

Again: there is a certain level of quality in the coherence, consistency and conciseness for a game. Beyond that? It's personal preference.

You're just mixing quality with preference and claiming their the same. I can absolutely say that Restaurant A is of poor quality because they routinely cook their steak improperly, and that has nothing at all with how I prefer my steak.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

The counterpoint to this is: both Windows and 5e DnD do a pretty good job of delivering what people want. Windows may not be the best, but if it failed to let you do what you wanted with your computer, you would find another OS that will. Since 76% of people haven't felt a need to switch from Windows - it's fair to say that it is satisfactory.

Most people don't switch brands when someone comes out with something that's better in some way. They switch brands when the brand they've been using stops meeting their needs.

5e DnD is the same way, in a way: most people are having a great time playing the game, to the point where they don't see any reason to even research other systems. They often know they're out there, they just don't care because they already have a game that works for them. So they stick with it.

An OP's point is that at least part of the reason so few people feel a need to switch is it is satisfactory for people with a wide array of tastes. 4e, for a counterpoint, drove a lot of players away. Not because it did what it did badly, but because a lot of players wanted to do something else, so they found a tool that did that instead.

(The restaurant analogy breaks down here, because people generally don't have brand loyalty to restaurants outside of industry niches. You might only go to Wendy's for fast food, but you don't always want fast food.)

I largely agree with you here, and I'm both a Windows user and 5e player!

 

[fearsomepirate]

There can be factors in quality that are somewhat mutually exclusive, although maybe Oofta's steak example isn't the best-chosen analogy. For example, in software, people like "more features" and "easy to use." The same user will typically tell you that they like both. At some point, feature-addition militates against ease-of-use. If you take the same product and deprecate some features in order to streamline the UI, some power users will regard this as a regression in quality. Other users will regard this as an improvement in quality.