Perhaps they were just curious about what a D&D incrementally designed from the original would look like, and how it might differ from what we have. Not every gaming is obsessed with the business end of the game, and if that was important to the OP you'd think they would have mentioned it.
Why should they make such radical changes? There are plenty of other games that include the kind of elements you're talking about. Why does D&D need to do it?YES!!!!!! Otherwise, the game will stagnate and devolve. The game needs to evolve, 5(20).x1.1(24) is not the way to go. Mild updates, just rearranging the layout etc is not what the doctor ordered IMO. I'm sure I'll get lambasted for this, but D&D needs to move away from the d20 system and classes need to go. 6E would most likely pique more interest than whatever they are planning on releasing 2024. If I had to pick one thing that needs a significant rework it's the magic system. I really believe they could do a lot if they focused on spell effects rather than spell descriptions. But that is a tale for another time.
P.S. Happy Boxing Day
That is not the question they asked though. Here is the original question
They asked if it was a good thing. You and others interpreted that to mean, "a good thing for sales". I'm not going to assume that unless they come back and clarify.
And sales are required for a consumer product to remain healthy which is generally an easy way to tell if a change to a product was well received or not. I’m not sure why this is such a problem that many people look to that as a measuring stick to determine if something was a good idea or not.
It's a problem because it seems every game design conversation is dominated (not includes, is dominated) by questions of popularity and profit, such that it is clearly considered by this community to be the most important factor in game design.
as I said, they were not asking what an incremental edition would look like.
Because games are intended to be played by people so the more people that play them, the more successful they were at their design intent? Ever notice how happy OSR publishers get when their game breaks a million bucks on Kickstarter? Easy metric to use to assess “man, people really want to play this game!”
So popularity and profit are the only factors that matter to this discussion, and the OP simply "forgot" to reference them in any way?
I've always assumed that said publishers were happy because more money meant they could make a better product for their customer base, not because that way the more money they get the more money they get, which seems to be the assumption here.
