D&D (2024) The WotC Playtest Surveys Have A Flaw

[Retreater]

Can you articulate the meaningful difference between what would make the game better versus what would make it sell better...?

I fail to see the distinction, when people will buy a game if it makes them happy, so designing for making most users happy should sell more.

I'd be happy to do that.

This comes down to the DM Experience. DMs may not purchase the most books when compared to all players combined, but they are an integral part to delivering a quality play experience. So DM support would make the game better, but wouldn't maximize profit (like, say, selling new skins on your VTT avatar might).

The DM Experience in 5e is bad. The DMG is frequently cited as one of the worst books for the edition. There are numerous threads, videos, and articles about the DM Shortage. WotC would have addressed this if they actually cared about the quality of D&D.

The DMG encounter guidelines don't work. The CR system doesn't work. The DMG provides little helpful advice to DMs. It's a worthless book that should've been revised YEARS ago while DMs have struggled through this mess of a system.

But, let's forget the DMG (most people do anyway), and move to other tools. What should WotC be offering for FREE to aid the DMs who basically are doing volunteer work for WotC to keep people playing their game?

• Free Encounter Calculator to help us plan battles by plugging in the monsters from the sources we own
• Free Treasure reward calculator
• Free indices and guides to all of our books (of course, we should have to purchase our books - I only want a database with a page number)
• Tools such as Initiative trackers
• Online character builder that can export to PDF

Revised DMG, free tools to help us run games. What else?

• Good quality DM Screens with the charts we actually use on them.
• Short adventures that don't take a year to run, which we can purchase individually or at least download.
• PDFs that we can search, print out handouts, etc.
• Errata that improves the game as needed to repair obviously broken rules and underpowered options
• Optional rules that recognize some tables prefer tactical depth - that actually work with the system. (Something like Tome of Battle, Skills & Powers, etc., would've given 5e more "legs")

None of these suggestions would make the game sell better, necessarily. Some might even lose money, but I think most of these would improve the quality of life for DMs, which could translate to a better overall gaming experience.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

If they're expecting it to sell like the 5e books, I think we'll be seeing those in Ollie's Bargains by the start of the 2024 holiday shopping season.

The 2024 books will replace the 2014 books on the shelves. Going forward, if a new player, or an established player wants a new book in 2025, and they go to their FLGS or the big stores, they're pretty much going to see only the 2024 books. And when they flip through those books they will see mostly the same rules, with a different layout and different art, and see more character build options. Over time, that book content will trickle into everyone's games in some way.

If people want to buy the 2014 books, they will still be available for cheap purchase online or in used book stores for years, kinda like how older edition books currently work.

Even the 2014 hardliners are still going to get access to the new rules via DDB. They are not going to toggle those character options off becase it's literally more options. If they think that a spell or subclass was updated to be more compelling than before, they'll use it.

It's the nature of the beast. People will yoink the good stuff they like and ignore the stuff they don't. And that is by design. It won't cause a rift like 4E did. The 2024 book will be at least as compatible, or more compatible with the 2014 rules as Level Up or ToV. It's pretty much giving the PH the Tasha's treatment for options, and pounding in some proud nails in the 10 year old system.

 

[Retreater]

The 2024 books will replace the 2014 books on the shelves. Going forward, if a new player, or an established player wants a new book in 2025, and they go to their FLGS or the big stores, they're pretty much going to see only the 2024 books. And when they flip through those books they will see mostly the same rules, with a different layout and different art, and see more character build options. Over time, that book content will trickle into everyone's games in some way.

Yeah. Eventually people might have to buy them as older books fall apart, but that's hardly an incentive to do a massive print run. In the meantime, retailers will be stuck with these books that everybody already owns.

Even the 2014 hardliners are still going to get access to the new rules via DDB.

A free upgrade? Or will they have to buy the new PHB on DDB?

 

[payn]

Yeah. Eventually people might have to buy them as older books fall apart, but that's hardly an incentive to do a massive print run. In the meantime, retailers will be stuck with these books that everybody already owns.

I never bought a 2014 version to begin with. I do like the sound of a anniversary edition though. I dont think its a safe assumption that everybody already owns the book so wont buy a new one.

 

[Mistwell]

If they're expecting it to sell like the 5e books, I think we'll be seeing those in Ollie's Bargains by the start of the 2024 holiday shopping season.

Yeah. Eventually people might have to buy them as older books fall apart, but that's hardly an incentive to do a massive print run. In the meantime, retailers will be stuck with these books that everybody already owns.

Just quoting this to come back to it a year after the release of the 2024 PHB and see how your prediction turned out for that book.

And because it's not fair to just have you hanging out there with a prediction and not me as well, I predict they will sell out of the first print run of the 2024 PHB edition by then.

 

[payn]

Just quoting this to come back to it a year after the release of the 2024 PHB and see how your prediction turned out for that book.

And because it's not fair to just have you hanging out there with a prediction and not me as well, I predict they will sell out of the first print run of the 2024 PHB edition by then.

 

[Parmandur]

DMs may not purchase the most books when compared to all players combined, but they are an integral part to delivering a quality play experience.

Juat as an aside, the evidence suggests that DMs do almost all the book buying: there aren't any 5E products that aren't essentially DM products.

None of these suggestions would make the game sell better, necessarily. Some might even lose money, but I think most of these would improve the quality of life for DMs, which could translate to a better overall gaming experience.

I'm not using Beyond tools, but it seems most of what you are asking for is available there...? And theybare putting out a revised DMG shortly, which looks to address precisely many of these concerns.

And again, I fail to see how anything that actively made DMs happy wouldn't sell better? One big issue might be that different people need different things from the game, amd WotC is aiming for the mass D&D market.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Yeah. Eventually people might have to buy them as older books fall apart, but that's hardly an incentive to do a massive print run. In the meantime, retailers will be stuck with these books that everybody already owns.

A free upgrade? Or will they have to buy the new PHB on DDB?

Retailers have known this was coming since last year. Wizards isn't printing the 2014 core books anymore, and FLGS's will slow their purchasing the closer they get to release. I don't think they'll get stuck that bad.

As for an upgrade, DDB will offer the new OGL stuff for free, as usual. How much of the 2024 book will they add? Will it only be one subclass per class? That is likely, but they could surprise us.

But the new book will certainly be sold on DDB. And people will only buy it if there is enough value to them to warrant buying it. (Or people who always feel they need every product as a sense of completion.)

It's literally one of the cheapest hobbies I know of, though it does have the capacity for even greater investment if the money and desired peripherals are available.

 

[Zardnaar]

They've said this before, that people on forums like this skew very different from the general population of consumers of their products.

And, because there is some pain involved in accepting that (my pain - not speaking for anyone else) I am naturally resistant to accepting that.

Think I figured out forum goers are a minority around 2002. I started posting on forums 2001.

Thread seems to be about invalidating the playtest if certain posts don't like it.

Political polling is usually around 1000 people accurate to around 3%.


Think the playtest process is fine. One D&D might not be for me but the world doesn't revolve around me and I assume I either got out voted or not enough participated. Either way tough luck.

 

[Divine2021]

Some of these comments have a real, “statistics, how do they work?” kind of vibe going on.