Ampersand: 2011 releases officially gutted

[SlyDoubt]

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That's mostly how I've felt the whole time. I saw the power books and thought " that's cool but I think I've got enough to play with as it is" and recognized some people probably eat them up. I'm not a min-maxer power gamer type. Actually I've almost never even been a player. Almost exclusively a DM since 3E launched.

I bought the 4E books when it launched because from what I had read before hand it seemed like it had many good ideas. I loved the power format and thought more variety in what characters can do each turn can only be a good thing. I've watched each release but the only thing I purchased beyond the original core books has been the dark sun books and the essentials books (minus DM kit and tiles). I've waited all this time and when I read the Essentials books in a local store I thought it sounded great. Liked the format, loved having a rules compendium and an updated monster manual that comes with tokens. Great stuff all around for me.

I understand people who didn't like essentials. It ate up a lot of time and money to produce essentials and so instead of continuing things as normal for many people a bunch of products they had zero interest in were produced. I sympathize but honestly I've got plenty of other stuff to keep me busy when Wizards isn't putting out books I want to buy. I guess the difference between me and people who can't just accept that and move on is I'm not able to play as often or am not as deeply involved in the hobby.

With each book and change to what I was used to (3E) I was a bit more skeptical but I thought the 4E framework was an excellent one (for the most part) so I just stuck around hoping it'd turn my way. Well it did with essentials but it seems from there it's unknown once again.

If you couldn't tell I'm still really bummed about the class compendium cancellation. That was really like a stake to the heart for my burgeoning interest in 4E and now I feel again like I should just continue my 3.5 Eberron campaign and keep waiting and hoping. We'll see.

I pray wotc provides the class compendium material that isn't specifically optional add-on in the form of downloadable pdfs. I want to know how essentials and traditional things should be handled together as far as swapping and class abilities. I'd kill for an updated phb as far as errata and all and that's what I thought the class compendium would be but now I don't know. I guess I should be printing and pasting...? :/

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Honestly if they switch to a mostly digital VTT model that would be the end of the game. That's simply a realm that is much bigger than what WoTC can handle. It would be a losing battle from the start. D&D has its niche and that niche is not on computers. It's at tables with other people playing in person.

Yes, but the VTT has great potential to actually grow the D&D market.

Here's an example. I have several friends who play D&D with me locally, but I also have several friends who I played D&D with in college that I would play with in a second over a VTT if it was easy to do.

In fact, there may even be more time to play a VTT game than normal games. As it is, we currently play once a week every week when able, although when we started it was every 2nd week.

However, my friends play D&D Online and Lord of the Rings Online, as well as World of Warcraft several times per week. I have no interest in MMOs (despite trying), but I definitely would be interested in playing with my extended friends one a week, and it'd be fairly easy. It's simply easier to head downstairs sit at the computer after the kids are in bed and play, and a soon as we're done, head upstairs and go to bed.

A VTT integrated with the online CB and Monster Builder would make that very easy to do.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

I think the move of those three books to digital format is less about piracy and more about the feedback they got from the DDi users that they prefer that sort of content (rules, feats, class variants, etc) in digital format.

Exactly. There was a survey of DDI users, who are after all, the month-to-month customers of WotC regarding what form they wanted their product in.

I don't know about others, but I had _zero_ interest in buying anymore crunch books. I bought Martial Power 1, but that was the last Power Book I bought and after PHB3, I decided I wouldn't buy anymore 'crunch' books. I'd just get it through DDI.

I'd bet that the vast majority of DDI subscribers said the same thing.

Thus, the only real market for those books are those who aren't in DDI, and I suspect that the return on publishing books of that type has been going downhill.

I'm actually surprised a bit that Heroes of Shadow was also not pulled, but perhaps there is enough interest in that type of book that it's still worth doing.

Like DDM, the splat-book business model is starting to fail, once you get about two years into a new edition.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Pretty much, yeah.

If you're playing 4E D&D using only the books and refuse to pay $6 a month for DDI... there's a chance that in the future you might have to rely on just Player's Handbook I, Player's Handbook II, Player's Handbook III, Martial Power, Arcane Power, Divine Power, Primal Power, Martial Power II, Psionic Power, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, and Heroes of Shadow.

It'll be tough to survive on such a limited amount of character content, I know... but hopefully you'll be able to do it.

And how about the magic items in their new classes that were 'revolutionized' by essentials? Yeah, that's what most of us who said it was a new edition though. WoTC couldn't even follow through on their own ball game.

 

[SlyDoubt]

Absolutely it could grow the market.

I never meant to say VTT itself would kill the game. I said what I meant exactly which is a mostly digital VTT based model for D&D would kill it. That meaning very little is printed or updated on paper, much like whats currently going on. They're not going to pull in modern teenagers just by going digital. It may save them money immediately but I really do not think it'll keep long term players who definitely make up the majority of the playerbase.

Now if they get VTT running alongside the print product that would definitely be great for things. But again, only if what is in DDI is optional mechanical material, not the home of the core rules with no print product in existence. D&D would simply not survive as a digital only or 90% digital game. It might hang on for a while but it would die. That market will destroy D&D.

DDI should exist to supplement the books with optional material produced monthly (maybe weekly) to keep players involved in the game. Forcing DDI as the only real viable way to play the game in its current form is just a terrible terrible idea imho. VTT and digital format is not the future of the game. It's part of it but it is not what's going to sustain it long term.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

and what type of feedback would that include from the non-ddi users?

Or are they now second class citizens who WoTc will reluctantly take their money all the while tsking that these kids new to get with the ddi program?

Obviously I have no idea about the relative numbers of the DDI customers vs. people who buy just the books, but given WotC's actions and the fact that the last survey was for DDI members only, I have to think that a large majority of their paying customers are DDI subscribers.

Given that, they have a vested interest in knowing what the largest proportion of their customers are interested in buying. If a large percentage of their customers are saying 'we're not going to buy splat books anymore', then unfortunately, you end up with what we've got.

You may denigrate DDI, but for most of the people who pay for it, it's a good value, or they'd quit.

If more people bought the books, then they'd keep making them. But they've obviously reached a point where it's not financially viable to produce most splat books.

You don't expect them to keep producing product that isn't financially viable do you?

 

[JoeGKushner]

But do we know how many people quit after ye old CB online only bits?

We, as customers, have no information as to what WoTC is actually doing or what numbers they're playing with.

In terms of products for example, they may be making money, but as others have said, not enough money.

I expect WoTC to do what they think they need to do. I hope it works for them. I just also hope they're still making products that I want to buy in a manner in which I can buy them.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

If more people bought the books, then they'd keep making them. But they've obviously reached a point where it's not financially viable to produce most splat books.

You don't expect them to keep producing product that isn't financially viable do you?

There is a massive world of difference between 'not financially viable' and 'not massively profitable' and truthfully we don't know which is the case here. I suspect the latter is driving their decision making process under pressure from Hasborg.

I'm willing to bet that producing the books and minis, etc, is still profitable, but not profitable enough, particularly for the Hasborg brass and shareholders. See also, "not meeting internal targets."

Heck, most of the rest of the entire hobby industry makes the products and makes money on things that WotC won't because it's not massively profitable, but these other companies prove (or sometimes not) the financial viability of said products.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

Absolutely it could grow the market.

I never meant to say VTT itself would kill the game. I said what I meant exactly which is a mostly digital VTT based model for D&D would kill it. That meaning very little is printed or updated on paper, much like whats currently going on. They're not going to pull in modern teenagers just by going digital. It may save them money immediately but I really do not think it'll keep long term players who definitely make up the majority of the playerbase.

Now if they get VTT running alongside the print product that would definitely be great for things. But again, only if what is in DDI is optional mechanical material, not the home of the core rules with no print product in existence. D&D would simply not survive as a digital only or 90% digital game. It might hang on for a while but it would die. That market will destroy D&D.

DDI should exist to supplement the books with optional material produced monthly (maybe weekly) to keep players involved in the game. Forcing DDI as the only real viable way to play the game in its current form is just a terrible terrible idea imho. VTT and digital format is not the future of the game. It's part of it but it is not what's going to sustain it long term.

Where are people getting this idea that D&D is going 100% digital?

There's no evidence for this, and they just spent several months publishing products that they've stated that are intended to stay in print, and are the products that game stores are expected to keep on hand.

That would be Essentials.

To put this in 3e terms, they're not making the PHB, DMG and MM digital...just the 'Complete X' books.

Specifically they're the splat books. The already announced Shadowfell supplement is still coming out, as is Mosnter Vault 2. Same with this summer's superadventure.

This doesn't even include any products that haven't been announced yet at DDXP.

It's like people complaining that the NHL All Star game isn't going to be East vs. West anymore and then complaining that the NHL won't survive once they start having the players wear blindfolds when they're on the ice.

 

[Aegeri]

That's why I called it an olive branch, and why I was a little saddened, but ultimately not surprised, to see that some took offence to it and what it represented. Every time I see someone call it 'dumbed down 4e' a little part of me wants to scream and froth at the mouth and chew them out.

There is one main reason for this and the arguments have yet to be fully resolved. If I were you, I'd expect this to get worse and especially if 4E falls over essentials is going to take the brunt of the blame/hate by the community. If you've seen hate now, just wait until heroes of shadow comes out and any "new" class doesn't follow AEDU (at-will, encounter, daily and utility power format. Like all the classes in the original PHB).

The first is that a lot of us who play 4E, including myself do not like 3.5 and I think that game is absolutely terribly designed. I hated the concept of fighters that did absolutely nothing except swing an axe for increasingly little return, while any spellcaster eclipsed them in power so bad it was just brutal for that player. That 4E gave martial classes like fighters the same degree of options and balanced the power level out was a revelation. One that a tremendous amount of people really liked about 4E. It was equivalent and you could build any class with a bunch of great options at every level - instead of being completely screwed if you weren't a spellcaster.

When essentials "regresses" it started to look like pieces of the system that 4E was built on that those who actually liked 4E played it for were going. Martial classes got the options that finally made them equivalent "stripped away". Slayers, Knights, Hunters and Thieves are heavily toned down on options, being near literal linear railroads from level 1 to 30 (they get a paragon path and ED choice). It isn't really that these are replacements for older martial classes, which they are certainly not in any manner and it's more that it indicated (to many) the future of 4E design. That more classes would lack the options and abilities that were enjoyed by all other classes since release, would turn into boring MBA spamming "railroads" these players don't enjoy.

Now if they are right or not remains to be seen and I think HoS would be the proving part here. If we have a book where all the classes - except maybe spellcasters like the necromancer/nethermancer (mage builds incidenally) - lack AEDU options then their conspiracy theories will have been proven right. That essentials was the "death" of normal 4E design and now the game has been changed for the worse. Basically that the game design principles that many (including myself) liked about 4E initially have now been abandoned in favor of appealing to people who weren't there since the start.

In effect wizards would be shooting themselves at the foot, because essentials is still close enough to 4E that it really doesn't change a bloody thing to begin with. It doesn't make casters gods who can do whatever they want to break the game and the essentials classes keep up with traditional classes very well. Straightforward and direct does not equal them being bad or worse by any means. The problem with this though is that traditional 4E fans really hate it. On another forum where I make the OP for the 4E general thread, the posters in there really dislike essentials and the general direction of the company. Essentials was loudly and very often complained about as dumbing the game down or appealing to grognards instead of wizards actual fans. Although a few of my players are using essential classes (Executioner and Mage), I've found there hasn't been a lot of interest in the essentials classes in general - the more simple martial classes especially don't appeal very much to my players.

Ultimately that's really the problem with essentials and why certain decisions, like making magic missile auto-hit were not received well. Many playing 4E are playing it because it's a better, more balanced and generally more consistent system than 3.5. Many love the core design where martial classes actually had options and such. To summarize all this simply, when it looks like the game is going to start publishing new classes with less options than the old ones, it reduces enthusiasm and interest from those initial 4E fans. They feel rather aggrieved by this and if future books cease to support AEDU classes, instead of the more railroaded (arguably) and class feature based essentials style they are going to get more bitter. If support for older classes also ends, another fear from many of those older fans then they might stop subscribing DDI/buying new books altogether.

So ultimately wizards has put themselves into an incredibly precarious position and hasn't really done them any favors whatsoever. Essentials coming out, with the sparse release schedule afterwards and the canceling of books is being taken to indicate a total lack of leadership/direction at wizards. If Wizards goes to a 5E, expect the criticism already directed at essentials style classes to grow and the decision to release essentials as being the death blow of 4E.