Class Design Concepts

[Kinak]

I presume this goes back to what I keep seeing here on the boards (based on comments posted over and over), which is that a whole segment of folks here truly think the guys at Wizards are idiots. Which is why an article like Mike's might seem shocking to people... even though there's nothing he's said that hasn't already been in place from the beginning.

I'd love to blame everyone here. Lord knows every message board has its collection of people who type giant walls of text (guilty) and whine about the smallest things (also guilty).

But the way they've been segregating information has made it very difficult for people to see the goals of the test. I have a pretty good feel of what they're doing... because I've read all the playtest packets and the articles and Mike's tweets.

In practice, though, people aren't even going to read the "Read First" PDF. It's the nature of the beast.

And even if people do, you just get "the wizard's spellcasting ability has been changed for this reason" and not "We're trying something different with wizards, let us know what you think."

I know that it's implied and you know that it's implied, but if the guys at Wizards expect everyone will read the articles to understand what's being implied and then consistently apply those implications, they are being idiots.

If they want totally unguided freeform responses to the test material, they're doing what they should, presenting the material to people and seeing what kneejerk responses come back. If they want a constructive dialogue where everyone knows what the goals are, they really need to imbed that information in the test materials itself.

Because nobody, on finding something they hate mixed in with the settled rules, is going to compare it to old documents and the articles. If it's not labeled "Optional" or explicitly tagged with a "what do you think?" people will think the developers want it in the final game because that's what the document is saying.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Kinak]

The early marketing work on a product line revision is almost always damage control, unless the existing product line variants have gone terribly stale. Your old revisions (and off-shoots) are essentially at war with your new prospective product and your customer base is going to instinctively gripe about being bilked by another reboot.

If you're in the particularly un-enviable position of having created a permanent competing live-branch product due to implementing an Open License without the proper business model then it's doubly important.

I can't say you're wrong here. I'll just wish them the best of luck, because this seems like a particularly painful bout of damage control

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[fu.fang]

I'm really interested in what they are planning about skills.
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