D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Ovinomancer]

It is true that your theory appeared to me to fall in the category of damning with faint praise. We seem to agree that 5E achieves broad appeal. But there is a strong sense - in your comparing it with CF - that you believe it achieves that broad appeal by compromising the quality of design. It might be that you are instead saying something about the players, but then you would seem to be denigrating their ability to discern good design. It lands in about the same place. If that is not your intent, then I will accept that on face value.

My point is that 5E achieves its broad appeal because of the high quality of its game design, and players choose it because they are capable of appreciating that.

Yes, disagree with this. There are other games of at least as high quality in game design as 5e that haven't achieved broad appeal. 5e's game design is of at least acceptable quality, and other factors (that I've illuminated previously) have also strongly contributed to it's popularity. Not the least of which is that it's called D&D (and, again, I extend that the initial playtest packet would have dominated the market as well).

 

[turnip_farmer]

Which tells us that the trained wine taster knows better what makes a quality wine than most people. It doesn't refute the idea that metrics exist, it only highlights that humans can be deceived and tricked based upon some of the metrics they commonly use (e.g., price).

Nope. Blind taste tests have consistently demonstrated that trained wine tasters are frauds and the alleged gulf in quality between fine and average wines does not exist.

Fraud is maybe an overly harsh word, since they almost certainly believe in the elaborate charade they have constructed. But the idea that the enormous price tags on fancy wines are justified by some actual tastable quality of the wine is objectively false.

 

[clearstream]

Yes, disagree with this. There are other games of at least as high quality in game design as 5e that haven't achieved broad appeal.

For the sake of argument, say that is exactly right.

5e's game design is of at least acceptable quality, and other factors (that I've illuminated previously) have also strongly contributed to it's popularity. Not the least of which is that it's called D&D (and, again, I extend that the initial playtest packet would have dominated the market as well).

It still does not logically entail that 5e has not achieved broad appeal because of its high quality game design. That those other factors were perhaps necessary, but not sufficient.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The entire field of HMI engineering rests on the basis that there is some level of objectiveness to how UIs are presented. IE that quality of use can be evaluated outside of personal preference. They're using understanding of how humans evaluate and interpret stimuli at a psychological and physiological level, which is more than just polling people for their preference.

A UI isn't a product, and ease-of-use isn't just UI. For example, whenever a game makes the jump from PC to console, the old fans inevitably are unhappy that the new game has lost depth and features in order to be easily controlled with a 10-button controller. There's a tradeoff between making a jet fighter game easy to control and making it realistic. Etc.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Arghh!

No, the OP did not unintentionally, nor intentionally, play into anything. Nor was anything framed as you wish it to be in order to make your argument.

Death of the author. Why should we listen to your opinion of what the OP wrote, just because you are the OP?

 

[MGibster]

To suggest that the only reason people play it is because people already play it is a pretty nasty drag on the game that's the lifeblood of the site.

My point is that 5E achieves its broad appeal because of the high quality of its game design, and players choose it because they are capable of appreciating that.

After nearly fifty years, I think people continue to choose D&D because it's a good game. Every edition of the game has been fairly high in quality from the production values to the actual content of the books. You know, if we're judging it by it by the standards from when they were produced. TSR produced a game that people like and WotC has continued that tradition.

 

[Ovinomancer]

For the sake of argument, say that is exactly right.

It still does not logically entail that 5e has not achieved broad appeal because of its high quality game design. That those other factors were perhaps necessary, but not sufficient.

Correct, it also doesn't establish it is of high quality. I wasn't arguing it isn't but that your argument doesn't support it. You made an appeal to popularity, which doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong, but that the argument doesn't support it.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Again, I think this misuses quality. The consumer is the final judge of where, how, and on what they spend their dollars. Quality is an input to this, not the decision made.

I can absolutely say that a brand new, highly rated car is of good quality compared to the rusted lemon on the used car lot, but I might buy the latter because I can't afford the former. My choice doesn't reflect quality, but a different motivation. What consumers consume is not solely, and somethings not at all, about the quality of the product.

I guess you missed the part where I talked about customer satisfaction. Generally speaking, "this is falling apart," is not something that increases customer satisfaction. We don't look at merely "Did somebody buy this? Yes or no? Oh look, somebody bought it! Yay! Quality!" We look at whether improving this or that results in greater sales and/or higher customer satisfaction.

If you define "quality" in such a way that "low quality" results in a product that has great sales performance, crushes similarly-priced competitors, high overall levels of customer satisfaction and repeat business, while "high quality" results in unhappy customers and poor sales, it's not a very useful definition.

 

[Ovinomancer]

A UI isn't a product, and ease-of-use isn't just UI. For example, whenever a game makes the jump from PC to console, the old fans inevitably are unhappy that the new game has lost depth and features in order to be easily controlled with a 10-button controller. There's a tradeoff between making a jet fighter game easy to control and making it realistic. Etc.

I suppose that depends on how you classift product. UI can be a contracted item by itself.

I work in engineering, so "product" just means what someone buys and doesn't really consider point in the sales chain. You seem to be focusing on end user only.

 

[clearstream]

Correct, it also doesn't establish it is of high quality. I wasn't arguing it isn't but that your argument doesn't support it. You made an appeal to popularity, which doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong, but that the argument doesn't support it.

Of course. But it does mean we can't rely on the lack of broad appeal of other well designed games as proof that well designed games can't achieve broad appeal!