D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Lanefan]

You stated that WotC measure the success of their surveys based on sales.
I challenged that.
You responded that WotC do surveys because they want to sell more products.
You are falsely equating WotC's goals with how they measure the success of a process.

In the case of WotC, I don't see this as a false equivalence.

WotC's goal as a company is to sell as much product as they can in the short term while maintaining a solid and ongoing customer base in the long term.

Thus, the designers are operating under (spoken or unspoken) orders to design something that will, first and foremost, sell. The simplest avenue to that end is to a) find out what the people generally want and then b) give it to them.

That this process might result in a game not all of us here want to play is, while unfortunate, nearly inevitable; as I think I'm safe in saying that we're generally a bunch of outliers - in all different directions - when compared to the majority of the RPG community.

 

[Parmandur]

This seems to be a circular argument. Something that supplies a basic purpose by a hundred people is not intrinsically a better design that supplies a more specific purpose by ten. Quantity is not the only measure of value; quality matters too.

But what about a design that achieves both...?

And yes, good design is a circle, of improving user experience.

 

[Parmandur]

In the case of WotC, I don't see this as a false equivalence.

WotC's goal as a company is to sell as much product as they can in the short term while maintaining a solid and ongoing customer base in the long term.

Thus, the designers are operating under (spoken or unspoken) orders to design something that will, first and foremost, sell. The simplest avenue to that end is to a) find out what the people generally want and then b) give it to them.

That this process might result in a game not all of us here want to play is, while unfortunate, nearly inevitable; as I think I'm safe in saying that we're generally a bunch of outliers - in all different directions - when compared to the majority of the RPG community.

Yeah, the designers certainly care about the game, but I consider it quite virtuous if they can subliminate their personal tastes and focus on what people want (if they must: Crawford and Perkins seem to be enjoying what they do, and the next gen of designers who started with 5E seem to be as well).

 

[Thomas Shey]

But what about walking around the square ifopposition, and a game that both serves more people, and better...?

I do not believe that's intrinsically possible, given that there are people who have oppositional needs. You can start to approach it with universal systems (and I'm a big fan of those) but even the core mechanics are not serving some people as well as others do, and to cover the ground intrinsically makes the system either more complicated or more simple than some people enjoy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But what about a design that achieves both...?

See my other post. I don't think those pieces of rope meet in the middle. D&D5e clearly serves a large number of people adequately. It also doesn't serve some at all (me) or well (Micah). I do not believe it is possible to serve me or Micah better while still serving a good part of its market, because we fundamentally do not want the same things.

And yes, good design is a circle, of improving user experience.

This, however, seems to assume everyone wants compatible things. That's quite a take.

 

[Parmandur]

I do not believe that's intrinsically possible, given that there are people who have oppositional needs. You can start to approach it with universal systems (and I'm a big fan of those) but even the core mechanics are not serving some people as well as others do, and to cover the ground intrinsically makes the system either more complicated or more simple than some people enjoy.

Experience suggests that it is definitely possible to both please huge numbers of people, and to do so deeply. Quality versus popularity is not a sliding scale, anymore than they are necessarily correlated.

And the way to get there? Do deep dive research about what people by and large like and want...which WotC has been doing for over a decade now, and continues to do. And what 4E did not do at all.

In one old Happy fun Hour, Mike Mearls gave his take on what happened with 4E and it's reception, and the issue ultimately came down to lack of information on the audience. Mearls pointed out that it was like a dozen older white guys in a room hashing out what they individually liked...without any consideration of the vroader audience, juat assuming that would work out if they focused on what the very small group liked. That ended up causing issues, which is why they now did the opposite: find out what people broadly love and make that. User-focused design is absolutely superior to some John Galt-ish idea of designer elites who can tell people what they like.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, there are always issues. But the abstract nature of the D&D combat resokition system including AC and HP is way more clear when you have big chonksnof time to narrate exactly what you do based on the numbers. 6 seconds is not long.

And yet a minute is too long.

20 or 30 seconds seems about right; mechanically, 30 seconds still has the useful feature of being divisible by both 6 and 10 (for round segments), while 20 seconds maps nicely to each number on the d20 representing one second.

 

[Lanefan]

"Widely useful" and "better" are not synonyms.

Disagree.

If I can buy one widely-useful thing to do jobs for which I'd otherwise have to buy (and then carry around) five specialty things, that feature alone makes the widely-useful thing about five times better.

 

[Parmandur]

See my other post. I don't think those pieces of rope meet in the middle. D&D5e clearly serves a large number of people adequately. It also doesn't serve some at all (me) or well (Micah). I do not believe it is possible to serve me or Micah better while still serving a good part of its market, because we fundamentally do not want the same things.

They don't have to serve everyone, as long as they can serve as many as possible. And plenty of people love 5E rather than tolerate it.

This, however, seems to assume everyone wants compatible things. That's quite a take.

Everyone, no. Most people? Seems very doable.

 

[Parmandur]

And yet a minute is too long.

20 or 30 seconds seems about right; mechanically, 30 seconds still has the useful feature of being divisible by both 6 and 10 (for round segments), while 20 seconds maps nicely to each number on the d20 representing one second.

I dunno, seems short enough to provide action bit long enough to make it clear that abstractions are abstract.