Disappointment in thinning Dragon content

[Zaukrie]

I'm with Joe, send in your emails. I did. Lame, lame, lame.

 

[Neverfate]

I really hope that this is still all part of the wake of restructuring and lack of man-power. There is a bit of a rift forming between fluff and mechanical content (either the fluff having no strong mechanics, or vis versa). I hope, by October after the relaunch (aka Essentials) is over, they will have more time and effort to focus on DDI. As is, though, I feel they are pulled in too many directions. Also, let's wait to see the strength of this months content.

As always, vote with your wallet. If you feel you're no longer getting good content, don't renew your subscription and send a calm email to wotc explaining your cancellation. Keep it short and too the point. That helps.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I
As always, vote with your wallet. If you feel you're no longer getting good content, don't renew your subscription and send a calm email to wotc explaining your cancellation. Keep it short and too the point. That helps.

I did.

When the magazines first went electronic, I cancelled my subscriptions. This year, I purchased the hardcover book.

And judging from the overall tone of this thread, I made 2 good decisions.

 

[Scribble]

Apparently they moved to this short article stuff because of feedback. One would wonder who those people are and if we can find them in the past, using a time machine and stop them. It's been a total disaster. I miss the days where we had quality articles that added new monsters, new demon lords and neat PC options like the gladiators article.

I don't miss the days when we only got articles like 3 days out of the week. "Oh... It's Tuesday... No new articles today. "

 

[Aegeri]

I guess the debate is if lots of crappy articles is worse than one or two really solid articles I personally haven't had anything that's excited me in either magazine for a while and that's a shame.

 

[Scribble]

I guess the debate is if lots of crappy articles is worse than one or two really solid articles I personally haven't had anything that's excited me in either magazine for a while and that's a shame.

I guess I don't agree they've been crappy... I mean they're not all like game altering, but they've been useful. (And like I said earlier personally I think Dungeon has actually improved.)

Guess I just still feel like my subscription is well worth it.

 

[teach]

I would really like to see more organizations for the players to be a part of like the article about the thieves guild. I also think tools to run a variety of campaigns would be excellent as articles. Perhaps each month could be a different theme. One month it could be naval, with a dungeon naval adventure, a city or island described in dungeon, naval feats and powers, how to tie in characters/classes/races to a naval campaign, how to use the traditional skills in a naval setting, sailor/shipping organizations and npcs. You don't even have to do it every month, maybe 4 times a year, and then you could expand that dragon/dungeon issue into a hardcover/boxed set based on response. A lot of people liked the naval month? Make it a supplement that you publish with lots more in it. Not as many people liked it? Don't expand it, but those people who want to play a naval campaign have more resources now than they did before.

 

[Jhaelen]

I preferred the longer articles. After reading the backdrop article about Graywall I looked for other backdrop articles and didn't find anything.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a new backdrop article today (about Q'barra). Apparently they're splitting it into three parts to fit into their policy of 'all articles must be short'.

Currently, I allow almost nothing from the dragon articles in my games (exceptions being a bunch of rituals and races). Imho, they should really concentrate on fluffy articles, especially to provide continued support for their campaign settings.

And where have the articles with new player races gone? I'm still waiting for writeups of the goblinoid races.

 

[Glyfair]

Apparently they moved to this short article stuff because of feedback. One would wonder who those people are and if we can find them in the past, using a time machine and stop them.

I believe those people are much the same demographic as ENWorld.

However, what they were asking for were more articles every day. WotC decided they could only do that with shorter articles, so shorter articles were born. Now they are back down to fewer articles, and they are the shorter articles as well.

 

[Glyfair]

I definately don't get the whole not adding it to the CB. If you're not going to update it to the electronic tools, f it. If your tools are so poor that you don't trust the DM with them, make better tools.

I can understand it, especially with the large crowd that considers everything in character builder "allowable."

Also, it allows them to experiment with options that would not fit well in the character builder (or would require development time beyond the scope of the article).