D&D General Did 5e 2024 Not meet the economic goals set, and if not, why not?

[Micah Sweet]

I would disagree with the idea that they did not change enough in 5E24. At the barest minimum... they fixed a number of things that people were whining incessantly about for like the first four years of 5E14's existence-- the Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter feats... the Ranger's Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer abilities... the 4 Elements Monk... the Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy ability... etc. Not to mention all the people who kept insisting that WotC's choice to delay any sort of splatbook to give more player options were going to KILL the game.

These things ALONE were enough to drive people up a freaking a wall and they spent YEARS demanding WotC to fix them. And they were going on and on that they thought WotC should reprint the books so that they did so. Well, here we are now 10 years in and WotC have in fact done it... but now it's "no longer enough"?

I guess all those complaints back in 2015 were a bunch of hot air. That their beliefs in what HAD to happen for 5E14 to be success were not in fact based in any sort of objective fact but rather just the rantings of players who were pissed off that THEIR best Dungeons & Dragons game was not in fact a Dungeons & Dragons game that anyone had any desire to publish. And which is exactly why I think all the complaints about 5E24 might very well be the exact same thing.

A few things:

1. They didn't IMO "fix" all those things in 5.5, they changed them. How one feels about it remains subjective.

2. It is WotC that has no desire to publish a different version of D&D, not "anyone". There are plenty of different versions of D&D being published right now, and I suspect many of those publishers would be happy to slap D&D's branding on their products if they could.

3. 5.5 will sell in the long run, I don't see how that could be in doubt. The question is will it sell enough to meet Hasbro's profit standards? It's not like not meeting them has no precedent.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is what I mean, yes. Divergent mechanics. Pain points in the rules for those who aren't directly using the 5.5 core. Is what WotC going to produce worth it to those who are using a base 5e game that isn't 5.5?

Anything that is not strictly mechanics-related will absolutely be able to be used. I mean I would presume anyone playing Level Up has been able to use any of EN Publishing's older adventures with it even though those were made for 5E14 and not Level Up specifically. So there's no reason to think any WotC 5E adventures (during '14 or '24) would be the same thing.

Likewise any campaign setting material is mostly all merely narrative and descriptive information, and thus the mechanical foundation of the game that is using it doesn't matter. People are using and playing with 5E14 settings even though they might be using the 5E24 rules, just like people used the 3E Eberron material while playing 5E14... so there's no reason to believe the inverse of those can't be true-- a setting book released following 5E24 being used by a person playing 5E14 (or TotV or LU or heck even Shadowdark.)

The only books that will have probably the least usefulness to a 5E14 player will be any 'of Everything' book-type thing that comes out that is specifically written to give new character options to 5E24 characters. But if there are people who don't buy those books... that's fine. Every single one of us D&D players don't buy MOST of the books WotC publishes. So it's perfectly okay if 5E14 players choose to skip the splatbooks, as WotC isn't expecting everyone to buy everything anyway. I mean heck... I've been a 5E supporter this entire decade and yet have probably only purchased 1/10th of the products WotC has released (if that). And that hasn't affected the game's success one bit. So 5E14 players who chose not to buy the 5E24 books are going to be just as ineffective to adjusting WotC's bottom line as I was. They don't need us. We are not important in the grand scheme of things. We are all as individuals virtually invisible and what we chose to do or not do does not in fact matter.

 

[Mistwell]

The best information I've seen has been Mike Mearls' speculation. He seemed initially to think it was not meeting expectations but then seemed to change his mind, at least to some respect, as he observed some DnDBeyond numbers, which were much higher. But that's all pretty vague.

 

[Divine2021]

We don’t know, we don’t have any hard data just anecdotes all around, and these kinds of videos are a waste of time imo.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

A few things:

1. They didn't IMO "fix" all those things in 5.5, they changed them. How one feels about it remains subjective.

2. It is WotC that has no desire to publish a different version of D&D, not "anyone". There are plenty of different versions of D&D being published right now, and I suspect many of those publishers would be happy to slap D&D's branding on their products if they could.

3. 5.5 will sell in the long run, I don't see how that could be in doubt. The question is will it sell enough to meet Hasbro's profit standards? It's not like not meeting them has no precedent.

I do not think that the sales of the core game matter as much at the moment to Hasbro as the ability to leverage the IP (aka the "brand"). TTRPGs are a low margin business, and no amount of edition, or splat book churn is going to change that.
Movie, tv, games are profitable as long as one can knock out some hits on a regular basis. Can Hasbro/WoTC do this, I do not know.
Merch, I suspect, is insanely profitable but a very crowded marketplace.

Becoming the social media platform for gamers could be insanely profitable and may have been in the back of someone's mind when Sigil was being created but that is a venture capital play and Hasbro does not have the funding to make that play work, or the intestinal fortitude to burn money like that and they probably would not play well with the venture capital bros.

 

[DEFCON 1]

3. 5.5 will sell in the long run, I don't see how that could be in doubt. The question is will it sell enough to meet Hasbro's profit standards? It's not like not meeting them has no precedent.

There is no point in asking Question #3 or debating #3 or worrying about #3. We don't know... we will never know... so bringing it up or using it as some sort of evidence for one's beliefs about the state of Dungeons & Dragons is a waste of time.

As I said... WotC's game line continues. Right now that's the beginning and end of it. For us it's a binary switch-- the game is being published or it's not being published. That's all that matters.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There is no point in asking Question #3 or debating #3 or worrying about #3. We don't know... we will never know... so bringing it up or using it as some sort of evidence for one's beliefs about the state of Dungeons & Dragons is a waste of time.

As I said... WotC's game line continues. Right now that's the beginning and end of it. For us it's a binary switch-- the game is being published or it's not being published. That's all that matters.

It should be noted that there is no correct answer to the question, the investors view can and do change over time.

 

[mamba]

After watching the video, I agree that 2024 had financial motives behind it and was not born from a desire to fix design issues in 5e.

The playtest lacked direction and was executed badly (the individual pieces were reviewed independently, exclusively focused on player options instead of integrated, along with updated monsters etc).
Add to that the OGL debacle and it derailed the test even more. The promised tests for DMG and MM never materialized.

The result is a lackluster edition with no clear direction and unable to create the excitement WotC would have wanted from it.

The failure of Sigil is probably worse for WotC however, since their whole strategy revolved around it and they poured way more money into it than the 2024 books.

That being said, we do not have sales numbers, let alone WotC’s expectations, so discussing why it failed to meet expectations is premature, we cannot even really discuss whether it did.

 

[tetrasodium]

... they fixed a number of things

There is a difference between fixing things and very slightly altering the wording in a thing in such a way that it is pretty much functionally identical in play. Even if one considers that deck chair rearrangement to be "fixed", it's not to a degree that justifies dropping the money on 3 new books for many... Hence the thread.

Wotc might have designed 5.024 for your explicit needs, but every time you start talking about your games you wind up describing the leading edge of the standard d&d gameplay curve's leading edge,. Much like how 4e tried to appeal fairly exclusively to a thin slice of wargamer d&d players but failed to appeal broadly enough, that fraction of a fraction of the curve is not large enough for many to justify buying 3 "new" books to justify facilitating the continued publishing of new books. Even stuff that could have been an easy sell to justify that like how future books were going to make use of unified subclass progression was never even mentioned because the play tests did not even say why it was done or that it was a deliberate change rather than a mistake until JC told us it was getting tanked for being too experimental.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

If people did not talk about their unverified theories, what would a forum do?

I have been reading about 2024 here and elsewhere for a long time. My brother joined a new group and found they are playing the 2024 version. He grabbed a PHB and I got to peruse it.

For established players, I don’t see the strong incentive to upgrade unless others do so and you need to as well.

With 3e, it was an exciting decision point. I remember lurking and reading what I could on Eric Noah’s site. It was a radical change for a 1e fan as I was.

I am turned off of 2024 for reasons that may not be widely shared. But more generally, what rules changed substantively enough to excite a player?

Casuals playing 5e might not feel the need. More passionate players like me are going to be a mixed bag. Some will like the rules changes. I think they are a step back.

In other words I don’t think it’s enough of a change to matter to most and the changes made are not uniformly a positive.

Time will tell. It will do well enough to not be like 4e. There is no disaster looming.