D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[TwoSix]

Challenging the statement is fine. Getting upset because someone didn't explicitly state it was their opinion is a bit silly. Go ahead and assume I put an IMHO at the beginning of that last sentence.

To be fair, people who act and assume that their opinions carry the weight of fact are not rare.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it can be a bit more of a concern but still be in a fairly loose good enough category.

In playing Rifts you can see there are wildly variable tiers of character classes in the core book, powerful MDC classes like the Dragon, the Juicer, the big power armor one with the giant boom gun thing, the Ley Line Walker and Techno Wizard and the Super Psy. There are some mid tier classes with OK but inferior stuff compared to the top ones, then bottom tier things like the scholar and city rat who are without MDC stuff and are basically normal people running around next to super powered stuff.

Yeah, you can't go by an individual game, because the people in that game may simply select away from options that are not mutually competitive (by whatever standards they use) where other people, potentially a lot of them, can be trying to play characters that are theoretically useable in the same game but really--not. Rifts one has the advantage that this sort of thing is blatant enough its hard to miss, and no one really expects that in most games the City Rat and the Dragon are going to work well together in the same game. I doubt the same dynamic applies in most D&D-adjacent games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can't think of any that could apply to D&D.

Not relevant to the point that talking about system design and product design are not the same things. Product design only cares about the system to the degree it sells more product, and that isn't directly related to its overall utility when other elements are present.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I can't think of any that could apply to D&D.

Aside from the demonic possession.

 

[TwoSix]

Aside from the demonic possession.

"No, not Blackleaf!"

 

[Oofta]

Some people in this thread seem to think the only thing that can be evidentiary are things that can be measured numerically. As I've said, that's quite a take.

Some people don't accept the difference between subjective and objective while introducing topics that have nothing to do with the difference between the two or D&D for that matter.

 

[Oofta]

Not relevant to the point that talking about system design and product design are not the same things. Product design only cares about the system to the degree it sells more product, and that isn't directly related to its overall utility when other elements are present.

Then how is it relevant to a D&D thread on this forum? You can keep slinging around $20 words, but it doesn't really matter to the topic of the thread or even what this forum is dedicated to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then how is it relevant to a D&D thread on this forum? You can keep slinging around $20 words, but it doesn't really matter to the topic of the thread or even what this forum is dedicated to.

It matters because people keep acting like product success is the same as system quality. By this point I don't know why you don't know that, its only been a topic of discussion for multiple pages.

 

[tetrasodium]

Challenging the statement is fine. Getting upset because someone didn't explicitly state it was their opinion is a bit silly. Go ahead and assume I put an IMHO at the beginning of that last sentence.

Context matters and that doesn't really hold much weight when an opinion is raised as if said opinion carries the weight of fact in ways that should simply end the discussion about actual facts

 

[Oofta]

It matters because people keep acting like product success is the same as system quality. By this point I don't know why you don't know that, its only been a topic of discussion for multiple pages.

In my opinion, quality of a TTRPG means that people enjoy playing the game and continue to play it. Therefore it is a quality game for me and the people I play with. If we broaden that out to the larger target market we can't directly measure enjoyment or retention, the only thing we can do is extrapolate those from the data we have. The data we have is sales and, continued sales growth (up to a certain point anyway, eventually we'll see market saturation).

By your definitions and the irrelevant topics brought up on this thread, the word quality has no meaning.