D&D (2024) D&D playtest feed back report, UA8

[Mistwell]

Goodeberries should not give any food equivalent.
Give it 20 berries per spell level, so you can use that spell out of combat as reliable healing to top off everyone for full HP.
horrible combat healing, excellent out of combat healing

Sure I'd be fine with that too

 

[DEFCON 1]

Sometimes it's not what we say but how we say it. Even something as simple as making a declarative statement that something needs to happen in the game versus suggesting the game could benefit from having the option will change the resultant responses.

After all... every single one of us instinctually knows that when someone makes a post, there is essentially an "In my opinion..." that invisibly precedes the posting. But if the post doesn't itself include that phrase, then their post appears like they are saying something objective, which will result in people showing up to say "No, you're wrong." And then the discussion devolves into the participants being "right" or "wrong" and not about the substance of the post itself.

Different ways of presenting opinion in our posts will result in different ways people respond, and the different parts of the posts people latch onto to argue. And it takes a bit of doing on our part when we present our opinions, such that you can get folks to actually discuss the parts of the post you wanted to discuss, and not the extraneous other stuff we get ourselves wrapped up in-- like word choice or attitude or stuff like that.

 

[Pauln6]

Sometimes it's not what we say but how we say it. Even something as simple as making a declarative statement that something needs to happen in the game versus suggesting the game could benefit from having the option will change the resultant responses.

After all... every single one of us instinctually knows that when someone makes a post, there is essentially an "In my opinion..." that invisibly precedes the posting. But if the post doesn't itself include that phrase, then their post appears like they are saying something objective, which will result in people showing up to say "No, you're wrong." And then the discussion devolves into the participants being "right" or "wrong" and not about the substance of the post itself.

Different ways of presenting opinion in our posts will result in different ways people respond, and the different parts of the posts people latch onto to argue. And it takes a bit of doing on our part when we present our opinions, such that you can get folks to actually discuss the parts of the post you wanted to discuss, and not the extraneous other stuff we get ourselves wrapped up in-- like word choice or attitude or stuff like that.

Stop oppressing me. Help, help - I'm being oppressed! I never realised that Monty Python predicted social media before...

 

[Hatmatter]

I don't even consider that a cynical view. It's just a realistic take that open player feedback is of limited value and is not appropriate for all situations. Over the years and in different situations I have seen so, so many horrible takes and attempted suggestions from the players of various games.

As is often cited, players are good at flagging problems and terrible at devising solutions. They don't see the big picture, they don't understand the under the hood mechanics, they don't know any of the behind the curtain business concerns. UA releases are for flagging potential problems with an idea. It is not an all purpose system. Random anonymous players are not equal co-participants in the design process. That's how it is and how it should be.

Well stated!

 

[CapnZapp]

Don't think of UA as a true playtest. That's what their internal tests are for, with controls and full information and detailed feedback. UA is a glorified customer survey to get the temperature of the player base and see if they're going in the right direction. So they only put stuff in UA that they feel they can get useful information about.

Are they going to nerf a bunch of the over performing spells? That's gonna be hella unpopular, even if it's necessary, so they're not going to UA test it. Are they still making significant iterations on the encounter design tool based on internal testing? Then there's no reason to put it out for a UA popularity poll when it's still that unfinished, because any feedback would already be outdated by the time it was processed.

The main reason for doing this public playtest is to provide cover against any criticism they didn't actually fix any but the most superficial of problems with the edition.

WotC's main objective here isn't to actually take any risks you need to take to actually fix anything.
WotC's main objective here is to be able to keep milking their cash cow.

How make everybody purchase all their 5E books all over again without making people mad?

By making a public playtest. This way they can scrap any risky ideas since they will invariably fail to reach a high degree of satisfaction, since people can't handle having things taken away from them, even when it is for the greater good.

Had D&D Next come out right out of the blue, people would be mad it mostly contains niggling small tweaks that mostly serve to invalidate the 2014 content without actually fixing much.

Now WotC can tell us "this is what you wanted".


Contrast the release of 3.5 with the release of 5E.

In the first case, WotC promised every problem with 3E would be fixed. 3.5E is almost the exact same game as 3E. Yes, it's not worse, but all the systemic failures of the edition remain.

Now consider 5E. Here WotC was with their back to the wall. They really wanted to fix things, after the debacle that was 4E. They did not say silly things like "unless 70% of you agree to scrap the 4E Warlord we will keep it".

This resulted in actual progress. 5E actually does fix many of the things 3E was accused of.

It could not have happened with today's WotC. Today's WotC just want the money to keep flowing in. They have no incentive to risk angering their customer base even if that would actually make for a better game.

But this was exactly what was needed in order to create 5E in the first place.

I predict that the 2024 edition will be remembered as a new 3.5. Everybody will move over to it, simply because WotC has made sure to tweak an annoyingly large number of things making the statement "you can keep using your old books" suitably hollow, but it will not fix much of anything.

 

[OB1]

I remember noticing this in the very first playtest. WotC proposed a rule change where monsters couldn't crit yet didn't go into any detail on how they would change monster design if they made that change. Like would the monsters be designed to be more deadly so being able to crit would be devastating for players? If so could we get some example stat blocks to compare to monsters that currently exists?

Who knows. I doubt anyone at Wizards knew either and they were just throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck.

One of the great things about the playtest is that it's sparked ideas for house rules for me. I ran with this rule, but tweaked it so that monster crits recharge any expended powers of the monsters (not much at low levels, but becomes increasingly scary at higher levels).

I think the reason for the experiment is clear. 1 in 8,000 combat encounters have monsters critting on their first three attack roles, so while the odds of that happening to any particular party is low, there are dozens of tables a week who experience that run of bad luck. Add in the new monster design post MotM (say an Astral Elf Warrior, CR3, 1d10 + 3d6, avg 32 damage on a crit, 96 damage if enemies roll 3 crits in a row), and bad dice luck TPKs probably happen to some party every single day (in fact, I would have TPKd the party I was running through LoX on the first session had I not been using my modified crit rules inspired by the UA).

While it was soundly rejected by the community, I'm still thankful they experimented with it, and also hope that the rule sees the light of day in the DMG as an option and perhaps even a recommendation for newer DMs and players.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I predict that the 2024 edition will be remembered as a new 3.5. Everybody will move over to it, simply because WotC has made sure to tweak an annoyingly large number of things making the statement "you can keep using your old books" suitably hollow, but it will not fix much of anything.

That's because all the stuff you think need fixing are things a large swathe of the player base couldn't care less about.

As far as why most people would move over to it? It's cause we don't find spending the $180 to do so to be a big deal. I believe the calculation was saving just $7 a month starting back when OneD&D was first announced would allow you to have the money you'd need to buy all three books when they finally got released. If people chose not to do that... that was their choice.

 

[Kurotowa]

The main reason for doing this public playtest is to provide cover against any criticism they didn't actually fix any but the most superficial of problems with the edition.

WotC's main objective here isn't to actually take any risks you need to take to actually fix anything.
WotC's main objective here is to be able to keep milking their cash cow.

See, now this is the highly cynical take that goes to the opposite extreme. One where if the devs don't follow the feedback as a strict blueprint, then the UA release cycle is pure marketing fluff with no real impact on the development cycle. Not that any of us really know what the aggregate feedback looks like, beyond suppositing from our personal feelings and whatever echo chamber of a forum we read.

This is not game design by popular vote. We are not instructing the devs on how to act. They want outside opinions, we give them if we feel like it, and they take them for what they're worth. Which is often not a lot. Have you seen the nonsense some people post online?

 

[Amrûnril]

Now WotC can tell us "this is what you wanted".

This, I think, is the reason the developers' descriptions of their survey analysis methods bother me.

If the first version of Mechanic X receives 55% satisfaction, for instance (however % satisfaction is actually defined), it would be perfectly reasonable for the developers to say that based on a combination of survey feedback, internal playtesting and professional judgment, they've decided not to proceed with X. It would not, however, be accurate to say (absent additional evidence) that the community didn't want Mechanic X.

I understand that the developers want to show they're listening to the community (and I think they really are doing so), but emphasizing conclusions that don't actually follow from the data and methods described is ultimately counterproductive to that goal.

 

[Quickleaf]

You'd think that people who don't want working rules for the other two pillars could just... not use those rules and keep playing it the way they do now?

Impossible, I know!

How dare you! How daaaare you

The main reason for doing this public playtest is to provide cover against any criticism they didn't actually fix any but the most superficial of problems with the edition.

WotC's main objective here isn't to actually take any risks you need to take to actually fix anything.
WotC's main objective here is to be able to keep milking their cash cow.

How make everybody purchase all their 5E books all over again without making people mad?

By making a public playtest. This way they can scrap any risky ideas since they will invariably fail to reach a high degree of satisfaction, since people can't handle having things taken away from them, even when it is for the greater good.

Had D&D Next come out right out of the blue, people would be mad it mostly contains niggling small tweaks that mostly serve to invalidate the 2014 content without actually fixing much.

Now WotC can tell us "this is what you wanted".


Contrast the release of 3.5 with the release of 5E.

In the first case, WotC promised every problem with 3E would be fixed. 3.5E is almost the exact same game as 3E. Yes, it's not worse, but all the systemic failures of the edition remain.

Now consider 5E. Here WotC was with their back to the wall. They really wanted to fix things, after the debacle that was 4E. They did not say silly things like "unless 70% of you agree to scrap the 4E Warlord we will keep it".

This resulted in actual progress. 5E actually does fix many of the things 3E was accused of.

It could not have happened with today's WotC. Today's WotC just want the money to keep flowing in. They have no incentive to risk angering their customer base even if that would actually make for a better game.

But this was exactly what was needed in order to create 5E in the first place.

I predict that the 2024 edition will be remembered as a new 3.5. Everybody will move over to it, simply because WotC has made sure to tweak an annoyingly large number of things making the statement "you can keep using your old books" suitably hollow, but it will not fix much of anything.

Corporations gaslighting their customers? Unheard of!

Yeah, based on what I’ve read & recent pivots, I suspect there are two camps within WotC that have different priorities: one that is exactly as corporate as you describe, the other that genuinely wants to improve upon the game they love.