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

[doctorbadwolf]

I was responding to Umbran quoting this statement from a Twitter user:


"...They're marketing tools for retaining the old guard. The goal isn't to fix issues with the game or reach new audiences. It's so they can say whatever they release next is "what 98% of real gamers want"

They did the same thing for 5e's release"


I then went on to say:

My take on that one is a bit different. Sort of a collection of all of the above:

* The playtest surveys 100 % funneled an accretion of responses toward "tradition and nostalgia" (in both design and in tropes). It did this via (a) the actual vessel of the funneling itself (the questions/prospective answers themselves and the surveys' "evolution" as time marched on), (b) and via the (not insignificant...I know probably 50 people who stopped responding early on) disenfranchisement of anyone either (i) looking for alternative design/focus or (ii) who weren't keen on aspects of the "tradition and nostalgia" they were funneling toward in their surveys and design (including the OSR elements they were affiliating with).

So...yeah, they absolutely could cynically say "x outrageous majority of respondents LOVED our tradition and nostalgia approach!" That is what happens when you put your thumb on the scale and disenfranchise people who disagree to the point they they exit stage left!


———-

Then I went on to discuss the rest of the situation in my post (it seems you missed it…it’s on the prior page).

But I agree with @Campbell . I wasn’t bent (unlike the frothing, book burning, edition warriors of the 4e era that made the hobby space, virtual and reality life, insufferable…still do in fact!). just checked out when the writing was on the wall.

Yes I read your posts. I don’t know why you’re just…repeating them at me.

Im saying that what you’re describing isn’t disenfranchisement even by your own, very arguable, usage. You and I weren’t kicked out of the clubhouse, we just didn’t get what we wanted. That’s it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

No, there wasn’t. Full stop.

There was a careful avoidance of using the same names and presentation, but 5e is a progression from 4e.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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



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.

I think it’s also important to note that, the designers weren’t “multiple iterations ahead of the playtest”. That mischaracterizes what happened pretty egregiously, and relies on folks basically calling everyone at Wizards a bald faced liar, and on them being Mycroft Holmes level geniuses.

What happened is that they were testing a ton of ideas, and the stuff that worked for them internally got into the playtest packets, stuff they weren’t sure about but liked got into surveys and L&L articles and the like, and they steered further internal testing by what the response was to the surveys and articles and packets.

What they didn’t do was predict what feedback would be and design a playtest packets that would seem to evolve over time in order to trick us all into thinking we’d participated in a playtest where none of us got exactly what we wanted.

 

[Fanaelialae]

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).




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?

That's not very convincing IMO.

Conducting a play test doesn't mean that they're going to completely redesign the game based on feedback. However, that doesn't mean the playtest had no influence on the design. Likely, it's somewhere in the middle.

There were plenty of things that didn't make it through the playtest. Like the original version of the sorcerer, which I actually really liked.

That doesn't mean that I believe that they put the original sorcerer in as some sort of red herring, when they already actually had the game completely done. It seems rather unlikely that they sat on a finished product for over a year while running playtests for "marketing" purposes. Plenty of people had a negative reaction to the playtest. There were many D&D players who never participated at all. As a marketing strategy, I'm not convinced it was worth forgoing over a years worth of potential revenue. That doesn't seem like a remotely logical business decision.

The playtest may not have produced everyone's favorite edition of D&D, but that doesn't mean that they didn't listen to feedback. It's the most popular edition of D&D ever I believe (pretty sure that happened before Critical Role existed, so that wasn't a factor at the time). Based on that, they presumably did something right, and it seems to me that it would be logical to infer that the playtest played at least some part in that. Not just as a marketing scheme, but influencing the design. Had it merely been a successful marketing scheme coupled with an unfavorable design, we would have likely seen a spike of sales upon release coupled with a sharp downturn thereafter. Which is evidently not what happened.

 

[Campbell]

No, there wasn’t. Full stop.

There was a careful avoidance of using the same names and presentation, but 5e is a progression from 4e.

Not really interested in relitigating this, but they pretty much dropped everything that was important to me in 4e. They already pretty much done so with Essentials though. They showed about zero interest in learning what we loved about it.

It's interactions like this that make me hesitant to engage with this community. No empathy or curiosity is expressed. Just denial.

 

[Mallus]

...became disenfranchised with the process, and stopped engaging/responding to surveys.

Oh you meant disenchanted with the process. Got it. Never mind then. Carry on!

 

[Umbran]

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.

Yes, but that's a function of people and situations, not a function of being fans.

I have a friend who helped drive the creation of a dog park in his town. The behavior seen in the Facebook group about the dog park is not substantially different from a bunch of fans.

I mean, look out at the world, dude. Folks are crappy to each other every day, by the thousands and millions.

 

[Manbearcat]

That's not very convincing IMO.

Conducting a play test doesn't mean that they're going to completely redesign the game based on feedback. However, that doesn't mean the playtest had no influence on the design. Likely, it's somewhere in the middle.

There were plenty of things that didn't make it through the playtest. Like the original version of the sorcerer, which I actually really liked.

That doesn't mean that I believe that they put the original sorcerer in as some sort of red herring, when they already actually had the game completely done. It seems rather unlikely that they sat on a finished product for over a year while running playtests for "marketing" purposes. Plenty of people had a negative reaction to the playtest. There were many D&D players who never participated at all. As a marketing strategy, I'm not convinced it was worth forgoing over a years worth of potential revenue. That doesn't seem like a remotely logical business decision.

The playtest may not have produced everyone's favorite edition of D&D, but that doesn't mean that they didn't listen to feedback. It's the most popular edition of D&D ever I believe (pretty sure that happened before Critical Role existed, so that wasn't a factor at the time). Based on that, they presumably did something right, and it seems to me that it would be logical to infer that the playtest played at least some part in that. Not just as a marketing scheme, but influencing the design. Had it merely been a successful marketing scheme coupled with an unfavorable design, we would have likely seen a spike of sales upon release coupled with a sharp downturn thereafter. Which is evidently not what happened.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything other than why a huge chunk of folks bowed out of the playtest very early because of deeply slanted surveys, the hiring of ZakS and Pundit, Mearls “Warlord shouting arms back on” comment, Warlords being out, Damage on a Miss being out, balance at the Adventuring Day vs Encounter, and the accreting perception from these things and others that their feedback was not the feedback WotC was looking for. That the surveys and trajectory were selecting for an AD&D 3e aesthetic (even if not consciously, that was what we are seeing).

No one would possibly believe that WotC was sitting on a finished product. That’s absurd. I suspect that the way they used feedback on their actual internal testing was that they grabbed whatever had the most overwhelming positive or at least not a negative response (like enormously overwhelmingly so) > fed that to their internal play testers to fold in > maybe it got included. So something like Adv/DisAdv would have been a product of the playtest.

 

[Umbran]

It's interactions like this that make me hesitant to engage with this community. No empathy or curiosity is expressed. Just denial.

Empathy needs to be a two-way street though. Did it not occur to you that his strong response is likely based in some major negative experiences? If you want empathy and curiosity shown to you, you kind of need to show it to others in return.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not really interested in relitigating this, but they pretty much dropped everything that was important to me in 4e. They already pretty much done so with Essentials though. They showed about zero interest in learning what we loved about it.

It's interactions like this that make me hesitant to engage with this community. No empathy or curiosity is expressed. Just denial.

I am a 4e fan who spent a lot of time trying to make the desires of 4e fans heard in the playtest.

There are aspects of 4e that were rejected by the community at large, and others that, once couched in different terminology to reduce flaming, were eagerly accepted.

5e is more loosely defined because that is what people told wotc they wanted. Bounded accuracy, hit dice, how cantrips and upcasting works, and a dozen other aspects of the system, are all evolutions of ideas used in 4e.

Essentials was better received than base 4e because people want thier friend who hates having to worry about a list of recharging mechanical widgets to play in the same campaign as thier friend who loves the widgets and wants to collect them all. 5e is popular, in significant part, because it is better (for the biggest game in town) to allow both players to have what they want in the same game.

Yes, but that's a function of people and situations, not a function of being fans.

I have a friend who helped drive the creation of a dog park in his town. The behavior seen in the Facebook group about the dog park is not substantially different from a bunch of fans.

I mean, look out at the world, dude. Folks are crappy to each other every day, by the thousands and millions.

“It’s the same everywhere” is a fallacy. People behave differently in different places and contexts.