D&D (2024) Class spell lists and pact magic are back!

[Maxperson]

yes, but if you want to create an average based on the survey, you kinda have to pick one number for each, which was my point

No. You can also ask an accurate question and get an exact percentage for everyone. If you just arbitrarily pick a number, you aren't getting terribly useful information out of whatever percentage you get.

that is one problem, the other is that what they really want to know is whether we like this idea better than the current one and want to see it improved (if it is not well enough received right away) or discarded, at least that is how they use the averages they derive

Which if they really wanted to know, could be address by simply following up the question of how we rate it from 1 to 100 with, "If you rated the ability at 70 or less, should we work on a variant of this ability that you would like better?" followed by the box for suggestions on what the person wants to see.

They are only overweighting the 100% if the other three percentages are picked 'wrong'.

No. They are overweighting the 100% if anyone would have picked less than 100%. The other percentages are likewise always going to be wrong, because no matter what they pick, it will similarly be wrong unless everyone who ever answers would have picked the number they picked. And that ain't gonna happen.

In any case, none of the four will be entirely accurate, no matter what value WotC assigns.

None of them will even be close to accurate.

With 40k votes this might not matter all that much unless they pick those percentages wrong however.

They did pick them wrong. It's impossible for them to get it right, because we wouldn't all or even close to all rate the ability at the exact percentage that they assign.

My concern is more that the percentages do not map very well to discard / improve / keep, yet this is what WotC decides based on them even though we cannot accurately communicate this.

We agree on this. Since they quite literally cannot get it right by assigning percentages, whatever the pick won't map well for any of those things.

I meant based on what they are asking today

Then yes, it isn't possible for them to determine the percentage.

 

[mamba]

Which if they really wanted to know, could be address by simply following up the question of how we rate it from 1 to 100 with, "If you rated the ability at 70 or less, should we work on a variant of this ability that you would like better?" followed by the box for suggestions on what the person wants to see.

they overweigh relative to what the person would have chosen, but that does not mean they are overweighted in the aggregate, that depends a lot on what they set the other three percentages to

There are several ways to get more reliable results, the above is one of them. I am not sure there is one where you never ask whether to improve or discard however, and if you have to ask that anyway (even if not for everyone), then I am not sure asking for an exact percentage first is necessary

Asking % and clarification or asking discard / improve / keep are both better than what they are doing, you just arrive at the keep part via a high % instead

 

[Chaosmancer]

as I said before, you do not even know what the implications of the issues I am raising are, so you saying it clearly gives them good information is meaningless. I am not going into the part that you have never managed to demonstrate the 'clearly' part of your post, been there, done that, it's a dead end or an infinite loop, depending on how long I care to keep replying.

No, I am not too ignorant to understand your point. You just refuse to except anything less than the secret blackbox of WoTC's own files as evidence that they can handle basic tasks like "understand how questions work".

It gives them relatively good information, when it comes to avoiding things that are very unpopular and identifying things that are very popular. The issue is in the middle, where things that would be sufficiently popular to at least iterate if not squeeze into 'keep' outright are not always reliably identified.

If all you care about is avoiding the unpopular options and not so much about improving the game in general, then that is something you can live with. I think that WotC's main reason for the survey is exactly that, they care a lot more about identifying and avoiding very unpopular proposals and a lot less about some improvements slipping through their fingers.

That is my gripe with it, esp. since I believe this is why some of the changes I would have liked did not make it.

...

Well no duh that's what they want! Seriously?! This is your big thing after all this? I've flat out TOLD YOU that they aren't trying to "improve the game" across the board. Of course all they are doing is avoiding the worse offenders and making incremental improvements. That isn't some failure of the survey, THAT IS THEIR GOAL!

This has nothing to do with the survey being bad, this has to do with things you like not making it in, even though you think they are exceptionally good designs. Welcome to the World. That didn't happen because they have a poorly formed survey that doesn't give them accurate information. That happened because the votes went against you, and despite how objectively superior you may think your solution is, that doesn't matter in the face of majority rule saying they don't like it enough.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The goal of 5e and even moreso D&Done is to be the "Happy meal" compromise edition. Not anyone's best edition - but the editions that's actively bad for the smallest number of people so you can all meet round a table. Grease and salt but nothing too spicy.

And based on the quality of Sage Advice and most of the half-baked new stuff being pushed this seems to both be the best they can do and something that suits a market leader.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. That's entirely incorrect. Most surveys don't make an attempt to figure out an ultimate percentage based on vague questions. They ask specific questions and report what percentage answered "important," which answered "very important," etc. They make no attempt to be as exact as WotC claims to be.

WoTC isn't claiming to be exact. They are claiming that they took those percentages that answered and used those numbers to come to a general population opinion. Of course it isn't precise within 0.1% of the truth. That was never their goal.

80% isn't the middle. WotC isn't trying to get a middle percentage. Nor are they cancelling out the extremes.

How do you know it isn't the middle? Do you think it is possible for something to score a 0%? How about a 10%, think that is a possible score?

If I gave you the following sequence of numbers, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89 what do you think the average value is? Is it 50? Does that make logical sense?

If it gets tossed in the trash, their 70% or 80% is entirely inaccurate for multiple reasons, not just the one I used earlier.

Just because you ignore their definitions and process doesn't mean their process isn't working. No teacher is every going to happy with a class average of 50%, no matter how much you insist that would be a true average result and that a 70% is completely bonkers and innacurate to real education.

Without knowing exact percentages, they cannot tell if something hits 70%, 80% or 5%. They can't tell if it got a super majority or not.

False as has been stated over and over and over and over and over again.

Very dissatisfied would be 0-25%. Dissatisfied would be 26-50%. Satisfied would be 51-75%. And very satisfied would be 76-100%. There are 4 categories to divide up 100%.

Sure, you could do it that way. But that'd be a dumb way to do it and would lead to bad results, and that isn't how they are dividing the categories. Stop insisting that the only possible way they could do it is your way. Especially when you are clearly working on such a limited amount of knowledge on the subject.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But it is 80% and 81% and 82% and 83% and...

That's the problem with their method. They are trying to achieve an 80% rating without having an inkling of what people actually rate the abilities. "Very satisfied" doesn't tell them anything about where in the real range a given answer is. If they are using them all at 100%, they are grossly overweighting the "very satisfied" answer. All of the other answers are similarly weighted by those of us voting, but unknown to WotC because they are asking the wrong question.

....

I agree with that. I'm sure they do arbitrarily assign a percentage that is wrong. That's the problem. It's arbitrary and wrong. To be right they need to ask the better question I suggest above.

....

Oi Vey!

"I, as a lay person, can tell you that doing something this way is stupid and wrong and would never work. Therefore this company that has been doing this for a decade must be doing it in a way that is obviously stupid and wrong and would never work, because I cannot conceive of a method they could use to get a different result other than my solution. And since they aren't using my solution, they must be doing it in the obviously stupid and wrong way. That's just facts and logic."

You have no conception of the weights they are giving the numbers. You have no conception of how they are utilizing the data. Maybe they convert it into numbers 1 through 4, maybe they convert it into percentages from 20% to 90%.

There is more than one way they could go about this. So there is no reason to assume they are blithering idiots.

 

[mamba]

This is your big thing after all this?

no, it was my thing from the very beginning

This has nothing to do with the survey being bad, this has to do with things you like not making it in

despite reaching over 70%, their stated threshold, thanks for that, Crawford

And as I said from the start, this has nothing to do with what I wanted not making it in and everything with the flaws in the methodology. I have consistently distinguished between the two, the only correlation is that they were what made me look into this

If I had confidence in their survey and the stuff would still not make it in, I would not be complaining. As it stands I suspect it did not make it in because of the crappy survey methodology, and I am complaining about that approach, not about wanting ‘my stuff’ in the game, but I guess these distinctions are lost on you

 

[Maxperson]

WoTC isn't claiming to be exact. They are claiming that they took those percentages that answered and used those numbers to come to a general population opinion. Of course it isn't precise within 0.1% of the truth. That was never their goal.



How do you know it isn't the middle? Do you think it is possible for something to score a 0%? How about a 10%, think that is a possible score?

If I gave you the following sequence of numbers, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89 what do you think the average value is? Is it 50? Does that make logical sense?



Just because you ignore their definitions and process doesn't mean their process isn't working. No teacher is every going to happy with a class average of 50%, no matter how much you insist that would be a true average result and that a 70% is completely bonkers and innacurate to real education.



False as has been stated over and over and over and over and over again.



Sure, you could do it that way. But that'd be a dumb way to do it and would lead to bad results, and that isn't how they are dividing the categories. Stop insisting that the only possible way they could do it is your way. Especially when you are clearly working on such a limited amount of knowledge on the subject.

Hey. If you think arbitrarily picking a percentage for thousands of people who are thinking about a range of likes and dislikes(percentages other than what was arbitrarily picked), then that's great for you. I'm going to continue to understand that they can't possibly be accurate or even close to accurate that way.

What they can do is get close to their arbitrarily and incorrect goal percentage, because they've self selected that incorrect number, but they can't be correct or accurate about the true percentage.

P.S. The earth continues to be stated as flat over and over and over and over and over again. Stating something repeatedly doesn't make you right.

 

[Chaosmancer]

no, it was my thing from the very beginning


despite reaching over 70%, their stated threshold, thanks for that, Crawford

And as I said from the start, this has nothing to do with what I wanted not making it in and everything with the flaws in the methodology. I have consistently distinguished between the two, the only correlation is that they were what made me look into this

If I had confidence in their survey and the stuff would still not make it in, I would not be complaining. As it stands I suspect it did not make it in because of the crappy survey methodology, and I am complaining about that approach, not about wanting ‘my stuff’ in the game, but I guess these distinctions are lost on you

Okay, its been a few weeks. What was it that had 70% approval or more, as stated by Crawford, that they got rid of anyways? And how is that because of the survey methodology?

If it isn't just because you can't believe you were out-voted, then it must be something crawford announced, in his videos, and in which case it should be completely unambiguous.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hey. If you think arbitrarily picking a percentage for thousands of people who are thinking about a range of likes and dislikes(percentages other than what was arbitrarily picked), then that's great for you. I'm going to continue to understand that they can't possibly be accurate or even close to accurate that way.

What they can do is get close to their arbitrarily and incorrect goal percentage, because they've self selected that incorrect number, but they can't be correct or accurate about the true percentage.

P.S. The earth continues to be stated as flat over and over and over and over and over again. Stating something repeatedly doesn't make you right.

Prove they picked the numbers arbitrarily and not on a scientifically sound principle.

Don't state (yet again) that they couldn't possibly have any idea what the results really mean. Prove that they picked the numbers arbitrarily, and not based on any methodology that has a solid track record of working. Because your entire point rests on this idea that they have no accurate reasoning behind the numbers they picked.