D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[mamba]

360 people working several years is normal software development?

that very much depends on the project. It certainly is way outside the norm for any if the current VTTs (no need to point out that it is not what they are aiming for)

Even so, I am not criticizing how much the invest / what they want to accomplish so much as the way they go about it, with one big release at the end rather than steps along the way that provide income and feedback while they work on their ultimate goal

You agreed with it being high risk, high reward I believe, so we are in agreement on what it is and as far as I can tell you never had a good reason for why to follow it when alternatives are available.

The only reason I see is to get to the destination faster, but unless there is value in being faster that in itself is not enough to justify the additional risk. I am not seeing much value there, maybe WotC could answer that (not the same as them actually wanting to answer it…), and I have not seen anyone mention any here either

 

[Echohawk]

Every time there is even mild criticism, there are people rushing in to defend them. That feels unnecessary, and if anything it usually prolongs the discussion without accomplishing anything.

For me personally, it isn't the intensity of the criticism but the repetitive nature of it that tends to be a little off putting. In almost every thread about a new D&D product, or about a WotC business decision, there will be at least one person criticising the amount of crunch, at least one person criticising the amount of lore, at least one person criticising WotC's approach to canon, etc. Frequently it is the same people voicing exactly the same criticisms over and over again in different threads, or even multiple times in the same thread.

To be clear, I really don't mind reading criticism of WotC. Much of it is valid. I also don't mind reading other people's opinions, whether or not they are the same as mine. However, I'm generally a pretty optimistic person, so when I see someone being negative repetitiously I find myself unconsciously starting to filtering out anything that person says. Which is a pity, because some of the folks doing that are otherwise really interesting posters.

I'm the last peson to try to control what anyone does or says, especially on hobby forum where we're all ultimately investing time because we love the hobby. But for those of you who do like to criticise, there is at least one ENWorld reader who'd put more value in your criticisms if they were repeated slightly less frequently.

 

[mamba]

That's assuming the 350+ people are all working on the VTT, which we do not know.

it is an assumption, but to me a reasonable one, the vast majority of those 350+ hires will be working on the VTT in some form of another

Do we know how many people worked on DDB when WotC bought them? A quick search did not find anything

A significant portion is probably be working on a rewrite of DDB.

what is a significant portion, 5-10% of 350?

From what I can tell there's a real possibility that much, if not most, of the DDB back-end needs to be rewritten for 2024 in order for it to be more flexible.

possibly, I have no insight into that, but I would be surprised if this had been very well designed from the start and needed no changes now

If they're also adding in functionality to implement 3PP materials it could be a pretty massive project.

again, no insight, so cannot say either way, but if this is separate from the assumed rewrite at all, then that is maybe a handful of people for a year, so that basically goes into the 5-10% from above

To me it is basically impossible that of the 350 hired less than 300 were hired explicitly for tasks related to the VTT. If you have any hard numbers either way, it would be interesting to see

 

[Oofta]

that very much depends on the project. It certainly is way outside the norm for any if the current VTTs (no need to point out that it is not what they are aiming for)

Even so, I am not criticizing how much the invest / what they want to accomplish so much as the way they go about it, with one big release at the end rather than steps along the way that provide income and feedback while they work on their ultimate goal

You agreed with it being high risk, high reward I believe, so we are in agreement on what it is and as far as I can tell you never had a good reason for why to follow it when alternatives are available.

The only reason I see is to get to the destination faster, but unless there is value in being faster that in itself is not enough to justify the additional risk. I am not seeing much value there, maybe WotC could answer that (not the same as them actually wanting to answer it…), and I have not seen anyone mention any here either

You're assuming there is an in-between step that make fiscal sense that is more advanced than the Maps tool. I don't believe that is necessarily true which I stated quite a while ago. If you release a "simplified" version, that's likely what people will remember. Besides, very few people know this is even going to be a thing the logic may simply be that it's better to make a big splash all at once and and win more market share. If it's truly groundbreaking on release it will make a bigger impression and stand out from the established products. It needs to stand out in order to compete.

 

[mamba]

In almost every thread about a new D&D product, or about a WotC business decision, there will be at least one person criticising the amount of crunch, at least one person criticising the amount of lore, at least one person criticising WotC's approach to canon, etc.

cannot help that, the only way to avoid that would be a far less popular D&D

Frequently it is the same people voicing exactly the same criticisms over and over again in different threads, or even multiple times in the same thread.

yes, that can happen, I don’t think there is a solution to it though.

The only advice I have is to not engage unless you are interested in the topic and want it to continue, not for the sake of defending whatever, otherwise that just increases the number of posts when you rather have a lower one

 

[mamba]

You're assuming there is an in-between step that make fiscal sense that is more advanced than the Maps tool.

pretty much all commercial VTTs today exist in that in-between space

It needs to stand out in order to compete.

this is the part I very much doubt, which probably explains our different perspectives

 

[Oofta]

...

To me it is basically impossible that of the 350 hired less than 300 were hired explicitly for tasks related to the VTT. If you have any hard numbers either way, it would be interesting to see

Ditto on the hard numbers. Neither of us know. I'm just looking at video game project size numbers and making guesses based at how many people they employ and the nature of the product they produce. I'd be surprised if the majority of people hired are working on the VTT. But neither one of us has hard numbers, I just don't understand on why you're so stuck on this idea that 300+ people are working on the VTT. We're both guessing.

 

[Oofta]

pretty much all commercial VTTs today exist in that in-between space

Which is why in order to stand out they need to do something different.

 

[Parmandur]

You agreed with it being high risk, high reward I believe, so we are in agreement on what it is and as far as I can tell you never had a good reason for why to follow it when alternatives are available.

Sorry, I thought that was obvious: the reason is the high reward. Go big or go home.

The only reason I see is to get to the destination faster, but unless there is value in being faster that in itself is not enough to justify the additional risk. I am not seeing much value there, maybe WotC could answer that (not the same as them actually wanting to answer it…), and I have not seen anyone mention any here either

Inwouldnsaybyour proposal is attempting to rush something outnand get there faster. The approach they are taking seems to me to treat the product like a video game in terms ofndevelopment and hire up properly and give several years to make a full product.

 

[Oofta]

can criticism be taken too far, sure, does that mean no one can criticize WotC on anything without being called out for it? I hope not.

Every time there is even mild criticism, there are people rushing in to defend them. That feels unnecessary, and if anything it usually prolongs the discussion without accomplishing anything.

If the only permitted engagement with WotC is praise or WotC disengages, then that is simply not a realistic requirement


sure, but not all criticism is that. I do not think anything I posted here comes even close to that, yet people go ‘WotC cannot ever win’ when there is at best mild criticism here. Saying they follow a high risk / high reward strategy without me seeing a need for that is about as mild as it gets while still falling under the umbrella of criticism


would be nice if it still did, I can see why it isn’t, comes with the territory I guess, once you attract a large enough crowd, it will be impossible to please everyone, and if that is what it would take to stay engaged…

Many people tend to be like a dog with a bone on certain topics and simply won't take "We made the best decision we could" as an answer so of course people from WOTC don't directly respond. If no explanation is ever good enough, why bother? End of the day the developers simply can't please everyone. There are certainly decisions they've made that I disagree with.

That and it always strikes me as odd how people making criticisms of a game I happen to enjoy regularly take the victim route any time someone disagrees. If you don't like X and I do, why should I not say I like X? It's fine that you don't like some aspect of the game, I don't like everything they've decided either. But the same argument gets raised over and over and over again. It's not like people are looking for advice or how other people have dealt with an issue.

Poster: "X is terrible"
Response: "I happen to like X, it works for me and the people I play with" or "X doesn't really work for me but I found a simple work-around [insert details here]"
Poster: "You don't know what you're talking about! X is terrible!"
Response: "I get that it doesn't work for you, is there anything you could do to make it work? Want to discuss why it works for me and not for thee?"
Poster: "X is terrible and I demand that I post about it on every thread that even indirectly touches on X! Why are you thread-crapping!"