This is always a strange position to take. Obviously I agree with @Dire Bare on this, but I would just say that, to an extent greater than, AFAIK, any other publisher in the industry ... WoTC takes great pains to both collect and analyze date before and after making decisions. We are not privy to their data, or all the ways they collect it, or all the ways they use it, and it's always possible to "Monday Morning Quarterback" their decisions, but more often than not, what we see is people who start with a position (My Preferences Aren't Being Met) and then use that to assume that the data WoTC is using must be faulty.
Whereas the more reasonable assumption is that, perhaps, your preferences are not exactly what WoTC is designing for after they review the data.
That's an inaccurate and hasty assumption rather than reasonable assumption.
Disagreement or otherwise isn't the issue here, and it's rather facile to assume it is, but that's apparently your
entire position here - you're just
assuming that personal disagreement is
everything.
It's
not - even when I agree entirely with what WotC are doing (which I have done on numerous occasions!), there's zero evidence that they're taking a data-driven approach generally, and you haven't even noted any ways that they are re: overall strategy, despite asserting they are.
Whereas the more reasonable assumption is that, perhaps, your preferences are not exactly what WoTC is designing for after they review the data.
This doesn't mean that the data is infallible, or that they are using it correctly, but given that WoTC does extensive playtesting and surveys and we know that they also use additional data (both in terms of surveying other sources and, increasingly, DDB), and that they have, by far, the largest data set of any RPG (since the most people play it), the only laughable thing is to think that random internet people know more.
The issue I'm pointing out, which seems to have passed you by, presumably because your initial assumption was an inaccurate one, is that WotC doesn't show any clear evidence, in their decisions, of making data-driven decisions about D&D's
overall strategy.
The surveys they've done, for example, support my contention that they're not using data to drive overall strategy, because the surveys are very narrow in scope, and focus almost entirely on "Do you like X", where X is a specific feature or race or subclass, a narrow little thing in the grand scheme of D&D (and don't even make provisions for things like "good idea, bad execution"). They absolutely could ask big questions about D&D, but I think they've done so what, twice ever?
the only laughable thing is to think that random internet people know more
It's not my position that we do - so it's also a strawman as a bonus to being basically an ad hominem! Not terribly helpful, convincing or useful to the discussion, I'd suggest. Has someone else taken that position? If so, who?
What I'm saying is not "GAMERZ KNO BETTAH!" or some ridiculous nonsense. You can keep pretending I am, but no-one is helped or informed by that.
My position simply "I don't see any concrete or convincing information that WotC's overall strategy for D&D is significantly 'data-driven' in any meaningful sense".
Their strategy re: class/race design is clearly data-influenced, but by an incredibly small data set. One issue today is that "data-driven" is often an synonymous with "I made it up", in both business and politics. I think in business it's less often intentionally that, but very often mistakenly that. I've seen very reasonable people essentially take themselves in and claim they were making "data-driven" decisions when in fact they were just making decisions whilst a PowerPoint was open in front of them, and the data was either so incomplete as to be largely meaningless, or they were clearly interpreting it favourably to an existing opinion - something a lot of people do, of course.
Also, just to backtrack a little, have WotC even claimed that they're operating in a primarily data-driven way re: D&D's strategy? Or is this something a gamer made up?
