D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Campbell]

When it comes to any form of testing or feedback process what you are testing and the sort of feedback you illicit is just as impactful as the size of your testing base. I mean while it was not as large in size Pathfinder Second Edition also had a wide open playtest where they also elicited feedback based on their creative vision. I don't think anyone would argue that Paizo wanted to build a particular sort of game with PF2. I don't think it should be all that controversial that Wizards designed the sort of game they wanted to and used the playtest to finetune it.

I actually think that's how you should test a product. The testers are not game designers. Design by committee tends to suck. You need targeted feedback, not a wish list. I think mostly the issue I tend to have is not with the playtest process, but some of the magical thinking that goes with open playtests broadly. The perception that the game is the result of collected community feedback instead an iterative design process by professional designers who used that feedback as a means of acceptability testing with their target audience.

 

[Manbearcat]

Is 'disenfranchisement' the right word to describe when a corporation fails to make an entertainment product custom-suited to your needs & interests? Kinda cheapens the more common uses of the term, like when one's voting rights are being threatened.

And I say this as someone holding out hope Hollywood will pay Wes Anderson a boatload of money to remake Barbarella, with a soundtrack full of Stereolab!

4th times a charm.

It’s about the process of the playtest and surveys and big tent being marketing speak and rebranding…but not real things.

So folks who thought they were engaging in an actual playtest (plenty of play testers with a lot of prior experience and engineers among them who have experience giving feedback and iterating in an authentic environment), rather than an exercise in rebranding and marketing, sniffed out what was happening, became disenfranchised with the process, and stopped engaging/responding to surveys.

 

[Fanaelialae]

4th times a charm.

It’s about the process of the playtest and surveys and big tent being marketing speak and rebranding…but not real things.

So folks who thought they were engaging in an actual playtest (plenty of play testers with a lot of prior experience and engineers among them who have experience giving feedback and iterating in an authentic environment), rather than an exercise in rebranding and marketing, sniffed out what was happening, became disenfranchised with the process, and stopped engaging/responding to surveys.

Is there any proof that this happened, or is it based on conjecture?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Gamers (and indeed, most sub-cultures) often engage in a myth of exceptionalism - that by sharing an interest in some broad sense, that means we are all better people. Gaming does not specifically select for good human beings - we are as mean as humans are in general.

There is a bit of a bias toward normalcy in your response, too, though. Fan spaces, especially online fan communities, bring out certain negative behaviors in greater concentration than the general public, IMO.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

4th times a charm.

It’s about the process of the playtest and surveys and big tent being marketing speak and rebranding…but not real things.

So folks who thought they were engaging in an actual playtest (plenty of play testers with a lot of prior experience and engineers among them who have experience giving feedback and iterating in an authentic environment), rather than an exercise in rebranding and marketing, sniffed out what was happening, became disenfranchised with the process, and stopped engaging/responding to surveys.

I’d need some evidence to take this seriously, tbf. Speaking as someone who was greatly disheartened by the playtest.

 

[Manbearcat]

Is there any proof that this happened, or is it based on conjecture?

I mean…I doubt it. Go ask that Twitter person that was quoted. But is it really that controversial?

If you’re hiring Zaks and Pundit to be internal consultants vs (say) Luke Crane and Vincent Baker?

Odds are good you’ve got a pretty concrete vision for your game!

If your lead designer is talking about Warlords shouting arms back on? That’s a pretty strong endorsement of one of the bigger edition war epithets!

And we knew they were working on an iteration beyond (perhaps 2 iterations) the materials we were being given access to.

And the surveys were what the surveys were. ROBUST funneling toward nostalgia and tradition in both their questions and the possible answers to those questions.


It’s a pretty straight forward deal. I don’t even see how this is even controversial. It’s a brilliant (but probably should have been predictable) move by WotC given the clustereff around 4e’s lack of community engagement over its design (and the fallout that came from that).


My guess is that the vast, overwhelming majority (a one would expect) of the design work was the exclusive property of the internal design and playtest groups (again, who were one or more iterations beyond us at any given time).

I’d need some evidence to take this seriously, tbf. Speaking as someone who was greatly disheartened by the playtest.

Wait…do people actually think that their survey feedback moved actual substantial units in the final 5e product (beyond aesthetics and naming conventions)? Is that a widely held belief?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When it comes to any form of testing or feedback process what you are testing and the sort of feedback you illicit is just as impactful as the size of your testing base. I mean while it was not as large in size Pathfinder Second Edition also had a wide open playtest where they also elicited feedback based on their creative vision. I don't think anyone would argue that Paizo wanted to build a particular sort of game with PF2. I don't think it should be all that controversial that Wizards designed the sort of game they wanted to and used the playtest to finetune it.

I actually think that's how you should test a product. The testers are not game designers. Design by committee tends to suck. You need targeted feedback, not a wish list. I think mostly the issue I tend to have is not with the playtest process, but some of the magical thinking that goes with open playtests broadly. The perception that the game is the result of collected community feedback instead an iterative design process by professional designers who used that feedback as a means of acceptability testing with their target audience.

Considering how broadly they tested things? Nah. The only sense in which they wanted to build a particular kind of game was “a game at least somewhat based on past versions of D&D”.

A lot of stuff got tested, or at least asked about. They flirted with multiple sized resolution dice, ditching 1-20ish ability scores in favored of a 1-5 scale where your score is your mod, no skills, 1 action per turn, 1-10 class design, etc, just off the top of my head. There are the seeds of at least 3-4 completely different games, at least as different as 4e D&D is from ODND, in that playtest.

Anyone that came in expecting an indie game with no relation to D&D’s History was completely being unreasonable, not to mention fooling themselves, but within “it’s a D&D”, they tested the waters much more broadly than your claim suggests.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Wait…do people actually think that their survey feedback moved actual substantial units in the final 5e product (beyond aesthetics and naming conventions)? Is that a widely held belief?

You are completely convinced of a thing that has literally no evidence to support it.

 

[Umbran]

This is all well and good…but the point being made that you quoted from the Twitter person was that the playtest was overwhelmingly marketing ploy and engagement with the fanbase

So... a person on Twitter made an assertion. Barring evidence, I take that to be their opinion or impression, not a fact.

So folks who thought they were engaging in an actual playtest (plenty of play testers with a lot of prior experience and engineers among them who have experience giving feedback and iterating in an authentic environment), rather than an exercise in rebranding and marketing, sniffed out what was happening, became disenfranchised with the process, and stopped engaging/responding to surveys.

I think the appropriate word there is disenchanted, not disenfranchised.

At the scale in question, no, that playtesting was not going to look or operate in the same way as when smaller companies do playtesting. In retrospect, yes, WotC could have set expectations better. But it was unprecedented in scale, such that I wouldn't expect even WotC to know for certain beforehand how they'd work with the information in the end.

 

[Campbell]

I think if your definition of D&D here is pretty much through line of Dragonlance to AD&D Second Edition, 3rd Edition Adventure Path play, and whatever Essentials was it did consider most of that. If your through line included pretty much anything that was good about 4e or B/X there was a failure to consider parts of the tradition.